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[Olearius]

Ive made my first fortress and its been running for a little while now (70 population). I always seem to be struggling to keep my alcohol supplies from depleating. Im curious about your strategies for alcohol production. It seems like even with massive plant gathering and a few max size farm plots, they drink as fast as I can brew it. I would like to have a surplus of several hundred if possible. Sorry if this has been asked before.

[Derakon]

People do occasionally have problems with keeping their dwarves fed and boozed up. Here's a few scattershot suggestions:

1) Make certain your farms are being used. You set crops to be planted on a season-by-season basis, so when the season changes, your crops do too. Farms default to fallow for all four seasons.

2) Put your seed stockpiles near the farms so that your farmers don't have to walk very far to plant things.

3) Make certain your farmers don't have anything to do except farming.

4) Not all plants can be brewed, and some plants must be processed before brewing. Try sticking with just plump helmets, which can be eaten raw and brewed without processing.

5) Make certain your crops get harvested before withering. Your fort should default to "all dwarves harvest" (you can change this from the 'o' menu).

6) Make certain you have room for your crops in storage. Crops not stored in barrels will decay quickly, especially if they get walked on a lot.

7) And, since you're worried about alcohol, make certain that your brewer has nothing to do except make brews. He or she will need brewable plants, empty barrels, and a still with the "Brew plant" task on repeat.

[Lalandrathon]

Also, if you are generating more food than you are eating by a significant quantity, you will probably need a ton of barrels or else brewing will keep getting cancelled. One still going constantly should give you plenty of booze. Bigger forts may need two for times when increased production is needed.

[Dwarfler]

Some tips that I have found useful as I'm getting the hang of this game:

1) Have one dedicated brewer that has all other labors turned off.
2) Make sure all the plants you want brewed into alcohol have "Brew" turned on in the Kitchen section of the z-stocks screen.
3) Barrels, barrels, barrels.  Keep a carpenter busy building them until you have a good supply, and be sure to reserve some for brewing in the stockpile screen.
4) Be alert for messages that your brewer has stopped brewing for whatever reason.
5) Buy every caravan out of alcohol.  It's pretty cheap, and after the first year or two you'll be looking for ways to get rid of all those narrow pig tail socks anyway.  Plus, less barrels to make.
6) If your alcohol starts to run low, make sure your kitchen is not set to cook alcohol into food.
7) Make sure your still doesn't get cluttered (CLT) or it will slow down your brewer.  If it starts getting cluttered, add more stockpile space for drinks or designate more haulers to move the barrels to the stockpiles.

Following these rules I am able to keep my fortress of ~140 dwarves nicely liquored up with just one still and one dedicated brewer.  Hope this helps.

[Edit: Re-reading your note, you should work to improve your farming efficiency also.  I keep my plump helmet supply going with just one 7x9 farm plot and a couple of dedicated farmers (all other labors turned off).  Supplement with some plant gatherers and fishermen, and you should be golden.]

[ April 22, 2008: Message edited by: Dwarfler ]

[GreyMario]

Step 1: Barrels. Assloads of barrels.
Step 2: Brewers. At least four.
Step 3: Plump helmets. Don't let them get cooked! Disable their being cooked in the Stocks screen.
Step 4: Stills. One for each brewer.
Step 5: More plump helmets, and perhaps other things to brew.

[Logical2u]

Some general ideas...

Create a single large plot for Plump Helmets.
Disable Cooking of Plump Helmets.
Set carpenters to fell trees.
Set carpenters to [r]epeatedly make Wooden Barrels [v]
Set brewers to repeatedly brew drink.
Create large food stockpile near still, farm and furniture stockpile.

Enable brewing and planting in all peasants. Give some crafters carpentry and tree-cutting.

And then disable cooking with drinks.

At the moment, I have 700 food and 700 drink, plus 400 odd cooked food, in my fortress. Yay.

[Karlito]

quote:Originally posted by Derakon:
<STRONG>
4) Not all plants can be brewed, and some plants must be processed before brewing. Try sticking with just plump helmets, which can be eaten raw and brewed without processing.
</STRONG>

No.  Any plant that can be brewed is brewed without being processed.

[ April 22, 2008: Message edited by: Karlito ]

[umiman]

*blinks*

Is it so hard to get a decent amount of alcohol? Four brewers working constantly? Carpenter making barrels constantly? That... makes no sense.

What are you guys trying to do? Breach the 3000 number when it comes to alcohol? Note that dwarves consume alcohol and food at a constant and predictable rate. The only real purpose of stockpiling is a safeguard against emergencies. The most efficient layout you can have when producing is to have supply matching demand exactly; thus, the most efficient amount of booze you would want is so the amount of booze drunk is the exact same as the amount produced.

How is this related? By producing a huge excess of barrels and booze, you are just wasting stockpile space and creating a syndrome where if one percieves the number of booze to be less than the stockpile space and / or the amount perceived in the mind, then you're going to produce more. This is a self-destructive process and you're just creating endless surplus while wasting space (+5000 food, +3000 booze for 100 dwarves... wtf? That's 50 meals and 30 drinks per dwarf It's enough for 5-6 years!).

You don't need to produce barrels ad infinitum, you just need enough to match and perhaps, exceed just a little bit, current demand. Current demand is easy enough to know and doesn't really require much math unless you really, really want an efficient fortress. Just make a set number of barrels and fill them with booze. In fact, a competent brewer producing 30 brew drink jobs will create around 600 drinks. If that's not enough (i.e: if booze remains at zero and your dwarves are all thirsty), then you make more barrels and brew more drinks. There's no need to set anything on repeat and I doubt you will ever need more than 100 barrels of booze.

tl/dr: use manager screen to assign "brew drink x30". If not enough barrels, make barrels. If not enough brewable material, get brewable material. If not enough booze, do it again.

[ricemastah]

quote:Originally posted by umiman:
In fact, a competent brewer producing 30 brew drink jobs will create around 600 drinks.

Actually the skill level of the brewer does not matter. It is the skill level of the farmer that matters because the amount of brew generated per job is based on food stack size. Using an unskilled FARMER, who makes stacks of 1 and a legendary BREWER will still only yield 5 booze per job, totaling 150 booze. So really you just want to get really skilled farmers which should be easy.

[GreyMario]

Underground crops always grow in stacks of 5, no matter what.  

[Kagus]

Uhh...  No they don't.  What are you talking about?

[Derakon]

quote:Originally posted by Kagus:
<STRONG>Uhh...  No they don't.  What are you talking about?</STRONG>

If I had to guess, I'd say he got hideously confused by the fact that, when processed, you get 5 sweet pod syrup / 5 quarry bush leaves from every sweet pod and quarry bush you grow. Or else he's talking about how each brewed plant gives 5 alcohol.

Those are the only 5s that come to mind with regards to food and drink, and they certainly have nothing to do with actually growing plants.

You can get anywhere from 0 to 5 plants from a single seed; how much you get depends on the skill of the farmer that planted it, but has nothing whatsoever to do with the kind of plant you're growing. You can get upwards of 8 plants per seed if you fertilize the field, but it's generally not worth the effort, since each square must be fertilized individually, and that's a lot of potash. This does mean that you can get bags full of 40 quarry bush leaves each, which can be cooked together to make a stack of 160 quarry bush leaf roasts, which is amusing if nothing else.

[Kagus]

Actually, I've gotten stacks of seven sweet pods with a "pretty-good" farmer who was just working on a muddied farm plot.  Not legendary or anything of the sort, I think he was just proficient.

[Greiger]

It's not a dwarven fortress unless you have enough food and booze to survive a nuclear winter.

[RickiusMaximus]

quote:Originally posted by umiman:
<STRONG>*blinks*</STRONG>

I agree, I have no problems keeping them pissed, I only have two stills and even they need to shut down now and again...

In fact I overproduce food so much I have real problems keeping the kitchens and farmers busy enough to not moan about lack of work.

Possibly some efficiency improvements are a good idea?