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[Craftsdwarf boi]

This is a space for human entities to critique other human entities' fortresses
I will start this off by (as a noob that has played for approximately 1 week) inserting images of my fortress onto this page.
(Fun Immense amounts of entertainment ensues since a giant spider 50+ z-levels below my fortress has sprung from ambush and I have nothing but copper picks, useless ore supplies, and no functioning military or traps)

[delphonso]

Three quick things I noticed -

Your fields are too big. You won't need to produce that much food. Your dwarves will spend a lot of time moving seeds around and planting for something you won't need, and worse, you run the risk of running out of seeds if the dwarves take too long planting before the end of a season.

This seem pretty sprawling. A central path and sort of wheel spokes or spiderwebbing from there means everyone can reach everything a bit quicker. You might consider making hallways wider too, as dwarves will bump into each other and slow each other down. 3 wide is what I do.

Finally, you might be able to use ramps more effectively. Some of these ramps are even inaccessible - either use stairs or lead hallways down a level by ending them with a ramp -  there's no benefit in making a rectangle unless it's accessible from every direction.


I must say, I do like the idea of posting fortresses and getting feedback on them. May do so as well soon.

[Bumber]

The first level may be vulnerable to surface tree cave-in bug. Would've suggested putting only the farm plots on that level, and paving the surface above them so trees can't grow there.

[Craftsdwarf boi]

Thanks for the suggestions!
(Btw I am already out of plump helmet spawns)
(and I've got migrants, most of them children)

(But the HIPPIES WILL BE MAD)
(I have built my entire residence quarter there, dangit)
(I have built supports tho)

[daggaz]

Start brewing as soon as you start farming, and turn off your cave crops in your kitchen if you have one, and you will never run out of spawn.

[Iduno]

Re: the spider: https://youtu.be/PfhZB7rQ7iA?t=10

The cavern levels (usually 3 of them) are large open areas that creatures can spawn in, each more dangerous than the previous. 3 options: start with at least one military dwarf and equipment, avoid the caverns until you can handle them, or know when you're close so you can immediately re-seal them (build a wall) until you're ready for them.

Iron ore (the best metal ore you find in abundance easily) is found in sedimentary layers, or igneous extrusive for hematite. Digging deeper past that only gets you trouble and magma. If you don't find iron, you may just have an embark without iron. If that happens, rely on trading for iron. Sometimes it's more cost-efficient to just buy iron equipment/toys/trap components to smelt into bars for what you need. Or steel, which is made from iron.

You also seem to be doing a lot of fishing, which is a thing you can do, but can end up with a lot of rotting fish lying around making everyone upset. If you're farming effectively, you've got more than enough food, drink, and thread (from pigtails). I think they fixed the need to get turtles for shells to keep dwarves from going insane during moods. Alternatively, fishing and herbalism can get you most of what you need if you've got an embark that allows for both, and can get off-duty soldiers used to being outside. If you want to fish, you probably want to change to zone-only fishing, and make a fishing zone in a safe section of river. Ponds run out of fish, dwarves don't know that, and you get a lot of wasted labor *and* cancellation notices that there are no fish where dwarves are fishing.

Ramps are difficult to use, and only offer a benefit over stairs if you plan to move a minecart between levels (wheelbarrows can use stairs). A 2x2 vertical staircase is usually good enough, but 3x3 doesn't take up much more space. Around the cavern levels, you might only want to go down a few levels, make a single-wide tunnel, and dig down a few more levels. Assuming you're trying to avoid having them open to the fortress. That makes it easier to seal off if things go bad.

Start brewing as soon as you start farming, and turn off your cave crops in your kitchen if you have one, and you will never run out of spawn.

I still don't know why you can't set kitchen defaults somewhere. Menu, raws, something. Having to set every single type of food/food-adjacent product to kitchen or brewery or both or neither is insane. Or at least sane defaults: seeds are neither, brewables are brewery-only, everything else is kitchen. Running out of booze because all of the emergency fruit you just gathered got cooked, or running out of plump helmet spawn because they got cooked doesn't add anything interesting to the game if it happens only because you forgot you had to make a choice, and the default was bad.

[daggaz]

Lol, toady breaks about every single game design principle in existence.   Welcome to dwarf fortress, where tedium is almost as much fun as dying! 😆

[Worblehat]

The first level may be vulnerable to surface tree cave-in bug. Would've suggested putting only the farm plots on that level, and paving the surface above them so trees can't grow there.

In case any other readers don't know what this is, the reference I found is here. Good to know about, and it explains why a mysterious hole appeared in the pasture above my fortress a while back...

I still don't know why you can't set kitchen defaults somewhere. Menu, raws, something. Having to set every single type of food/food-adjacent product to kitchen or brewery or both or neither is insane. Or at least sane defaults: seeds are neither, brewables are brewery-only, everything else is kitchen. Running out of booze because all of the emergency fruit you just gathered got cooked, or running out of plump helmet spawn because they got cooked doesn't add anything interesting to the game if it happens only because you forgot you had to make a choice, and the default was bad.

I would very much like this as well. Rock nut paste and oil being my pet peeves of wrong defaults. If you're going to the trouble of making oil, you're using it for soap, so cooking needs to be disabled as soon as it appears. I remember wondering if there was a nice friendly external UI for these settings analogous to how Dwarf Therapist works for labor settings.

[Schmaven]

I usually just toggle off cooking the tallows / oils as soon as they're produced.  It doesn't take that much time to do really.

[Craftsdwarf boi]

I made this fort into a succession game

P.S i have created yet another fort and i have build slade and adamantine walls in year 2 (by conducting modification on the raw files)

[Iduno]

I usually just toggle off cooking the tallows / oils as soon as they're produced.  It doesn't take that much time to do really.

No, but it may take in-game days or months (who knows!) for it to appear on the list so you can remove it. If you've got any other projects going on, you're likely to lose a lot of your oil or whatever to the kitchen.

[feelotraveller]

I usually just toggle off cooking the tallows / oils as soon as they're produced.  It doesn't take that much time to do really.

No, but it may take in-game days or months (who knows!) for it to appear on the list so you can remove it. If you've got any other projects going on, you're likely to lose a lot of your oil or whatever to the kitchen.

It appears instantaneously whenever available quantity > 0 and disappears (while keeping its setting) whenever quantity = 0.

However being able to access and set the kitchen menu defaults is a good suggestion, should be easy enough to implement, and is exactly the type of thing Toady may look at for the Steam release.  So to the suggestions board with you!   

[Superdorf]

Heyy, this is fun! Here, have a fortress to critique!

[Craftsdwarf boi]

From a quick look it seems that your fortress spans every known z-level (except HFS) and is still quite cramped
 

[NordicNooob]

Heyy, this is fun! Here, have a fortress to critique!

I can get behind the general structure of your fort. You are an artisan of zerg rushing military and your forces are well trained, especially for how young the fort is. You have fairly rigorous labor and military structure, which isn't common in larger forts. Lastly, I can also appreciate your individual floor layouts despite the fact that I would do things differently.

You do have some problems, though, which are noted. As a suggestion, you should change your soldier professions to be reflective of their rank, in order to be better informed of the happenings in combat reports, so that instead of "the soldier strikes the goblin" you'll get something more like "the hammerdwarf VII-2 strikes the goblin." Additionally, I'll take note of Craftsdwarf boi's remark about your fort being spread out over too many z levels. While it is true that using extra z levels is more efficient, you have too many excess layers between each functional layer of your fortress. Consolidating your fort to either be near to the surface or near to the magma sea is recommended, even if you have to lug a bunch of magma up in minecarts. This problem is amplified by your iffy staircase design. Dwarves only seem to dodge to tiles N-E-S-W of them when vertical movement is involved, so when you have dwarves going in opposite directions on the same stair, dodging will not happen. Your staircase is also a bit small for a fort of one hundred, especially since you're very vertically oriented in your design. As yet another note in critique of your vertical design, it makes viewing things annoying, which is sometimes dangerous in a subtle way even to observant players. There is one more flaw that I haven't noted: lack of defenses. Sure, your large militia lets you crush anything in your way with ease. But what about the corpses? Cleanup is dangerous in a reanimating biome. Some cleanup mechanism for sieges may be suggested, like a winding maze of atom smashers or a bunch of retracting bridges into magma. I think that the lack of a cleanup mechanism is your biggest weak point, as reanimation and large amounts of corpses will prove debilitating (possibly picking off mooks) and demoralizing in general. Also, doing it underground might be suggested as well, both to avoid evil weather (do you have clouds?) and to avoid having your soldiers be cave-adapted during battle.

That all said, your fort is still well-made in general and I can't argue with it likely surviving for a long time. Insanity and/or thralling clouds (if you have them) are the only things that could potentially undo you in a reasonable situation, the latter being a much more !!FUN!! way to die. Loyalty cascade and your own zombified warriors turning against you?