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[Maul_Junior]

Here we post fun little things we've come up with to help make our gameplay easier.

I'll start.

1) Food stockpile that only allows seeds, no barrels, gives directly to a Kitchen with a High Priority Make Lavish Meal task. The only seeds allowed are those I'm not using for agriculture (ie almost all surface plants).

This not only gets rid of all the seeds ASAP, it turns them into prepared meals, AND reclaims the bags that would otherwise be storing said seeds. I seem to have an addiction to getting seed-producing plants from caravans.


2) Always get Milk whenever you can.

Getting 1 unit of milk at embark gives you a free barrel once it's converted to cheese. By the same token, you can get low-cost barrels from caravans, turn the milk into cheese, cook the cheese, nad make a heady profit.

[Fearless Son]

Getting 1 unit of milk at embark gives you a free barrel once it's converted to cheese. By the same token, you can get low-cost barrels from caravans, turn the milk into cheese, cook the cheese, nad make a heady profit.

That is true of almost any food/drink item taken at embark.  They all come in barrels, with a minimum of one barrel per stack, regardless of how small the stack size might be.  If I have a few points left over at embark, I usually go grabbing extra food and drink with an eye to maximize variety and minimize stack size.  That gives the most "free" barrels at embark.  Helps keep things tidy before I can devote major resources to the task.

[Sanctume]

0 items or minimalist embarks

Off the wagon, 3 logs are resuable after deconstructing workshops. 
Can go make butcher, tanner and leatherworks to make use of the 2 pack animals. 

2 pack animals that butchers for 2 leather, at at least 60 prepared meats, and bones. 

Deconstructing the workshops gets back 3 logs:
Bowyer, and Craftsdwarf, to make use of bone for crossbow, bolts, and some bone armor pieces.

Not embarking with edged axe or anvil makes it tougher. 

Embarking with 1 anvil and 1 copper ore will be enough to make 2 copper bars to make 1 battle axe, and 1 copper pick later after more wood is harvested.
3 logs from wagon:
Use 1 log to make wood furnace. Make 2 charcoals from 2 logs. 
Deconstruct wood furnace, gain 1 log.
You now have 2 charcoals and 1 log.

Use 1 charcoal to make wood furnace.  Make 1 charcoal from 1 log. 
Deconstruct wood furnace, gain 1 charcoal.
You now have 3 charcoals.

Use 1 charcoal to make smelter.  Smelt copper ore to make 2 copper bars using 1 charcoal.
Deconstruct wood furnace, gain 1 charcoal.
You now have 2 charcoals, and 2 copper bars. 

Use 1 charcoal and 1 anvil to Metalsmith's Forge. Build 1 copper battle axe using 1 copper bar and 1 charcoal.
You now have 1 copper bar, and 1 copper battle axe.

Chop a tree for more logs.

[cyrohound]

Settling with multiple biomes in the embark area means you get the creatures, threats, and plants of both biomes! So if you want to tame ALL the animals, you should have an embark site on the biome borders.

[Pseudo]

Let's see:

Putting diagonals into your corridors helps substantially in the case of accidental flooding, as does putting doors everywhere, as does putting hatches everywhere.

Downramp-door-downramp is essentially invulnerable. Or rather, in general things can only be destroyed by building destroyers if the building destroyer can path to somewhere it can stand adjacent to (or on) the thing in question. Very useful for e.g. windmills.

The manager is your friend. Most of the rote work jobs can be automated and just left.

Assuming you have the wood for it, wooden barrels and bins are better than stone, as they are (much) lighter.

Non-grazing pets can be used as non-dwarf-reliant leverpullers.

Macros are your friend! Want to dig 20 bedrooms? Hit ctrl-r, dig one, move your cursor to the same spot on the next bedroom, hit ctrl-r again, then hit ctrl-p 19 times. So much faster. In the same vein I tend to have a "select10" macro that's just enter->down 10 times. Useful for trading / etc. Find yourself constantly designating into the volcano? Create a macro that undesignates the volcano rim and save it. (PSA: starting your macros with shift-up and shift-left enough times that you always move your cursor to the upper-left of the map means that you can use it from anywhere.)

Try not to dig directly below open space, in general. Trees are far too apt to cause caveins.

[oldmansutton]

Non-grazing pets can be used as non-dwarf-reliant leverpullers.

Wait, what?  Pets can pull levers, or am I reading this wrong?   

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

0 items or minimalist embarks

Off the wagon, 3 logs are resuable after deconstructing workshops. 
Can go make butcher, tanner and leatherworks to make use of the 2 pack animals. 

2 pack animals that butchers for 2 leather, at at least 60 prepared meats, and bones. 

Deconstructing the workshops gets back 3 logs:
Bowyer, and Craftsdwarf, to make use of bone for crossbow, bolts, and some bone armor pieces.

Not embarking with edged axe or anvil makes it tougher. 

Embarking with 1 anvil and 1 copper ore will be enough to make 2 copper bars to make 1 battle axe, and 1 copper pick later after more wood is harvested.
3 logs from wagon:
Use 1 log to make wood furnace. Make 2 charcoals from 2 logs. 
Deconstruct wood furnace, gain 1 log.
You now have 2 charcoals and 1 log.

Use 1 charcoal to make wood furnace.  Make 1 charcoal from 1 log. 
Deconstruct wood furnace, gain 1 charcoal.
You now have 3 charcoals.

Use 1 charcoal to make smelter.  Smelt copper ore to make 2 copper bars using 1 charcoal.
Deconstruct wood furnace, gain 1 charcoal.
You now have 2 charcoals, and 2 copper bars. 

Use 1 charcoal and 1 anvil to Metalsmith's Forge. Build 1 copper battle axe using 1 copper bar and 1 charcoal.
You now have 1 copper bar, and 1 copper battle axe.

Chop a tree for more logs.

This is amazing, so efficient!

[Sanctume]

Non-grazing pets can be used as non-dwarf-reliant leverpullers.

Wait, what?  Pets can pull levers, or am I reading this wrong?   

A pig for example, in a 1x1 pasture room, then door set to forbid non pet passable, then to a room with a pressure plate linked to whatever you want to remotely control.  Manually unforbid the door, and toggle the pasture zone to not active, the pig would eventually roam and trigger the pressure plate.

[oldmansutton]

A pig for example, in a 1x1 pasture room, then door set to forbid non pet passable, then to a room with a pressure plate linked to whatever you want to remotely control.  Manually unforbid the door, and toggle the pasture zone to not active, the pig would eventually roam and trigger the pressure plate.

Oh ok, a pressure plate sure.  I thought LITERALLY a lever, and I boggled.

[Maul_Junior]

so a note on buying milk, exporting cheese. Even withou quality levels (that another thread may or may not be working to mod into the game), 5 Cheese=50 Urists.

Therefore 1 cheese=10 Urists.

You can buy Milk 10 at a time from a human (if elf/human diplomats are enabled) or dwarf caravan. Milk Barrels cost 30 Urists apiece.

Therefore, the 10 units of Milk inside each barrel are worth 2 Urists apiece.

For a small amount of time in a Farmer's Workshop, therefore, you make 8 Urists/unit of milk. And if you ask for as much milk as you can get from the caravans, you generally get at least 1-300 units of milk.

It may not be quite the same profit you could make from sand->Masterwork glass trap components, but there you go.

Numbers all together for easy reference.

Milk Barrels: 30 Urists/Apiece
    Barrel: 10 Urists
    Milk: 2 Urists/Unit; 10 Urists for 20 Milk

Cheese: 1 Urist apiece, comes in wheels of 5 Cheese (50 Urists) at most.
    Proft: 8 Ursits/Cheese

[Immortal-D]

When assigning ammunition for a Marksdwarf uniform, don't bother separating the training and combat materials.  This interaction is incredibly buggy still, so you're better off just using generic 'bolts' for both.  If you have time to prepare before a fight, you can switch to only 'metal bolts' with moderate reliability.  Also, I've yet to find a site where I had both copper, and a small amount of copper, so using those for training shouldn't hurt your copper supply.

[YetAnotherLurker]

so a note on buying milk, exporting cheese. Even withou quality levels (that another thread may or may not be working to mod into the game), 5 Cheese=50 Urists.

This is silly. You're much better off making Cheese Roasts and selling those, the massive value multipliers that prepared meals get make them far better export goods than mere cheese. Exceptional using even commonplace ingredients reach values of 50+ per unit, and Masterwork Roasts using higher-value ingredients can reach 2-300 Urists/unit. Realistically speaking, all it takes is a marginally functional food industry and a single dedicated cook to be able to buy out the entire caravan with nothing but prepared meals.

A single captured breeding pair of Cave Crocodiles will solve all your food and export goods needs forever, given a bit of lead time for the first clutch of eggs to hatch and mature.