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[Mr. Svinlesha]

Howdy, all.

I've been playing DF for a while now, and as I go along, all sorts of minor nagging questions keep popping up.  So I thought I'd start a thread for general questions concerning game play.  Fellow beginners are welcome to pop in with their own questions, and answers/advice from experienced players will be gratefully accepted!



I'll just start off with a few of my own questions:

1) Whenever I open the U menu, the names of some of my dwarves are blinking.  What does the blinking indicate?

2) Once my Bookeeper has achieved the highest possible accuracy level, is there any reason for me to keep him busy updating stock records? (My Z screen appears to remain accurate even when I set him/her to the lowest level of accuracy.)

3) What are some important considerations with regard to fortress defense? 

(I'm in the middle of my second season, and I've had some goblin ambushers show up.  I had built a system with two drawbridges in a 5-tile corridor, one right behind the other.  I thought I'd draw up the inner bridge, wait for my opponents to storm in, draw up the outer bridge, and then -- WHAM! -- lower the inner bridge on the poor trapped bastards.  Instant goblin mush, I thought: so tasty, and so good for ya!  But the goblins didn't come near my bridges.  They just mulled around outside until both were lowered, after which they came running into my hallway in order to die grisly deaths in the teeth of my stone-fall traps. So: do I need to figure out some way to lure my opponents into my evil lair, and if so, how?)

4) I'm not exactly the most technically gifted geek on the planet, and I can't make heads or tails of the wiki's explanation for how to build a mill powered by a windmill.

I have a room allocated to milling, one level below the surface.  Can someone explain to me, step for step, exactly what I need to do in order to get it up and running?  Do I:
A) Dig channel on surface
B) place millstone under channel
C) place windmill on millstone
or, if I build the windmill on the surface, do I need a gearbox to connect it to the millstone, and if so, how does that work?

5) Moats? Moats! We don need no stinkin moats!

Back to defenses again: I've had start over several times because I make a total hash of my defenses.  I recently flooded my entire fortress by mistake trying to build a moat.  I dug channels from a river across my underground hallway entrance, attached a flood gate to a river, and opened 'er up.  Why didn't the water flow into the channel?

6) I have a stockpile specialized to accept only articles of clothing that my dwarves keep dropping around the fortress when they wrestle and such.  I've set it up under armor, and blocked also specific pieces of armor -- plate, chain, etc. Both u and j are toggled as well.  My fortress is rapidly filling up with stray pieces of clothing and I'd like to clean up.  I can't see what I'm doing wrong.  Am I missing something?

[Leonidas]

1.  Blinking dwarves are legendary in something.  That's good.

3.  Goblins need a clear path to your fortress before they start moving.  Expect bigger goblin attacks as your wealth increases.  Stone fall traps aren't so good because they have to be reset each time.  I like weapon traps.

5.  You probably dug it all one level too high.  To tap the river, you need to channel a flashing blue square.

6.  Discarded clothing seems to be something of a bug.  They're considered owned, so your dwarves won't touch them.  Maybe cabinets and coffers in rooms will help.  Maybe not.

[Teeto_K]

Back to defenses again: I've had start over several times because I make a total hash of my defenses.  I recently flooded my entire fortress by mistake trying to build a moat.  I dug channels from a river across my underground hallway entrance, attached a flood gate to a river, and opened 'er up.  Why didn't the water flow into the channel?

It probably did flow into the channel, filled it, and then overflowed it?

Channels don't have any special water-containing properties to them: If the water source for a channel is infinite, and on  a higher elevation than the channel, it will fill, then overfill.

At least, that's what it sounds like you did.

[Pilsu]

Give your wrestlers shields, this stops them from oiling up, throwing themselves into a big hairy pile of quivering muscle and taking each other's clothes off

The center square of the windmill building has to be above the millstone. Make sure it's actually running, not every spot has wind

Remember that the blue squares might in fact be the river's surface, not the river itself. Stupid mistake but I had trouble grasping it myself when I started. The water flows one z level down


There might be a bug that keeps your stockpile records at 100% complete forever if you get to that point once. At least there was a bug like that. Anyhow, no reason to keep the bastard at it

[Mr. Svinlesha]

Regarding 1), blinking dwarves: well, they seem to blink randomly.  Even peasants blink.  I checked, and none of the blinking dwarves on my screen were legendary.

Regarding windmills: is there any way to check and see if the wind is blowing before building the thing?

Regarding goblins:
So, if I build a long, winding, single lane, trap-filled entrance, they'll snake around in it to try to get into my fortress.  Yes?  I build an entry outside of the drawbridge on one side, and another entry on the inside of the bridge.  When a draw up my bridge, opponents will be channeled into the winding labyrinth of death, and leave my poor dwarves to their abiding interests?

Regarding moats: 
Well, the channel I dug was one Z-level under the surface.  I connected it to the river with a floodgate.  The channel ran back and then across a hallway, also one Z-level below the surface.  (The channel itself was dug from Z-level 1 to Z-level 2).  This all seems straightforward, and in the earlier version of DF I used to play, it worked exactly so.
But in this instance, when I opened the floodgate, the water seemed to flow into the channel and then began to flood my hallway. I checked the channel itself, visible on z-level 2, and it didn't appear to have in water in it: although it occurs to me as I write this that the water animation might have been obscured by the stones in the channels bottom.
Anyway, it seems clear that water works differently in this version of DF than in earlier versions, and I was wondering how one might go about making a water channel underground without drowning all of one's dwarves.  You see, I'm becoming rather fond of the little buggers.

Nice tip about the shields, I'll have to try that.  Thanks.

6) Now I have a mound of abandoned clothing, armor and weapons, sitting at the entrance to my fortress, left by dead goblins. I've tried creating a stockpile for them to no avail.  I've tried marking them for dumping to no avail.  What am I doing wrong?

7) How do y'all dispose your military forces?  What percentage of the population do you draft?  How do you balance melee forces and crossbows?

[(name here)]

6b)  They autoforbid on death.
7) I'm doing well with about 18-20%, mostly guard. the guard is crossbow heavy, because their primary task is to deal with marksgoblins who teleport in using the chronosphere. The others are 50-50 between marksdwarves and sword-wrestler champions.

[Puck]

Hi, my name is Puck, and I'm a dwarf fortress addict, who, let's face it, fails hard at maintaining any noticeable military force.

I can keep the little buggers happy and drunk (one probably implies the other anyway) but for the life of me, I can't get them to fight properly.

Tantrum spirals might be only one unlucky accident at the construction site away, at certain times at least, I don't even want to begin thinking about what would happen if they actually had to do some stuff that's, in comparison, really dangerous. So I came up with what I call the "Lazy ass Puckster automated double bridge defense 2000 ™".

I tried to build a defense system that uses the pathfinding AI of the goblins to trap as many as possible in one go. It could probably be built differently with a higher kill rate, but I found the workload for building/efficiency rating rather perfect. 1 Bridge was not enough, 2 was just fine. I could think of different combinations that would catch more, but I think it's just not worth the resources.

First you dig two holes, three tiles wide and as long as the maximum bridge length (10 squares?). The depth is up to you. Depends on what you want to do with possible intruders. Between the pits you need 2 spaces solid floor (on the ground level, the pit below can be one piece, 22 tiles long). Then you add six pressure plates, (hostile creature triggered, full weight range) at certain spots. Link EVERY plate to BOTH _retractable_ bridges. Looks like this, assuming your fortress entrance is to the left
(P=Plate, X=Bridge, #=Floor):

Code: [Select]

PXXXXXXXXXXP#XXXXXXXXXX
PXXXXXXXXXXP#XXXXXXXXXX   <-- add gobos from here
PXXXXXXXXXXP#XXXXXXXXXX
Make sure the LOS from the entrance of your fort to the bridges is blocked. That's because it helps your retreating dwarves as well as the occasional inside/outside dancers from getting shot. (I'm lazy, remember? "Stay inside" is about as much micromanagment as I can handle) I like to accomplish this with some walls that create narrow paths. Those are perfect for setting up some failsafe weapon traps as well, which you need, because if two full sieges come along, one or two lone runners WILL make it across. Then make sure the bridges are the only way to your entrance/weapon trap area, by walling the whole thing off in an according manner.

Since the bridges are 3 tiles wide you can set up the trade depot somewhere in the "inner courtyard" area, if you want.

Some things to remember:
you probably need an access shaft to the pits below the bridges. For one, to properly and nicely dig it, and maybe because you want to loot the corpses. I suggest walling off the entrance and removing that wall as needed as well as some lockable doors; you don'T want to get screwed over by a single troll that survives the dive.

Also consider an "emergency escape shaft" from your entrance bypassing the bridge setup, just in case something destroys the bridges for one reason or another. Wall that one off til you need it, too

Flying creatures obviously will bypass that setup. I think you can get rid of them by building ceilings over the weapon trap area. (The only dragon attack I had so far ran into a goblin siege or two, because the dragon got stuck somewhere. They duked it out. I think I had some manticores or chimeras or wotstheirname, that died from the weapon traps with ceilings)

I hope I explained it properly. Just had my first coffee...

Oh and about the windmill: couldn't you just build one, just for testing, select it with "q" or summat and then see if it creates power? I don't think you can check wind properties otherwise. You can always dissassemble the thing afterwards.

That being said: WATER POWER IS SUPERIOR (because it has a higher potential to kill everybody in a spectacular manner)

[Aqizzar]

Regarding 2), there's not really a point, though the Bookkeeper will continue to gain skill, so it's a good way to get a beefed up dwarf.  When you set an accuracy level, the dwarf will work until it gets there (it determines how many digits a certain amount of stuff can be before it turns into a rounded number), or just keep working forever if you set it to highest.  Once the dwarf stops working it's no problem, but the 'accuracy' level of your stocks will degrade over time until you need to order some bookkeeping again.

Yep, a thread full of defense suggestions, and the only thing I know about is the bookkeeping mechanic.

[ByDurinsBeard]

Regarding wrestlers dropping clothing, yes they remain on the floor because they are regarded as possessions. Only the owner can touch those, so nobody else will come to clean up. However, cleaning up after oneself is a civilian task so recruited soldiers will not pick up their belongings. You need to undraft them - but elite soldiers cannot be undrafted, so your training grounds will slowly fill up with their discarded belongings.

Shield is not a cure for this, it merely slows it down. Having a shield means sometimes blocking an attack instead of getting wrestled, but this means attacker's wrestling skill doesn't go up nor does the defender's armour use... but shield skill does increase.

Alternative is not to have them wrestle and spar with weapons instead. Of course, having not-so-tough unskilled recruits poke at each other with sharp objects leads to horrid practice accidents. You should give them plate to wear (do this even if you have them wrestle, trains their armour use at the same time), toughen them up by pump operating before distributing weapons, and maybe make some silver weapons for training purposes (though you will need to micromanage between real and training weapons when attack comes).

One wall of my barracks is filled by a row of "exercise machines" - pumps - and every peasant I recruit has to train up on pump operation for toughness before they're allowed to pick their plate and start wrestling. Weapons training starts once I deem their armour use is high enough.

While my melee force is in training, I use traps and let crossbowdwarves in their guard towers to deal with attacks. They're the expendables, but if one starts getting high enough skill I slap leather armour on them and see if they need any more toughening up at the exercise machines.

[Hague]

I build skirmish walls for my melee soldiers. Whenever there are marksmen about I make sure they cannot fire upon my soldiers until they are extremely close, this minimizes the risk of fatal arrow/bolt wounds.

Code: [Select]

<--- Fortress
Z+0
++++++++++   F = Fortification
+++++O-O++   M = Melee Squad
+++++M^|++   ^ = Ramps
+++++M^|++   + = Ground/Floor
+++++M^|++  <---- Incoming Siege
+++++M^|++   - & O = Walls
+++++M^|++
+++++O-O++
++++++++++

Z+1

.....FFFF.
.....+++F.  M = Marksmen Squad(s)
.....vvMF.   F = Fortifications
......vMF.   v = Down ramp
......vMF.
......vMF.
.....vvMF.
.....+++F.
.....FFFF.


As long as none of your melee units stand on higher z-level, they won't see the enemy and thus engage them. Make sure to keep your shooters and melee users in separate squads. I give custom professions to my squad-members and simply manage them in smaller squads. This means they are less likely to abandon their post to follow their leader back to the barracks. The trick is to build a number of these around your map just close enough to your fortress for your squads to react to a siege. You can try building a fortified "blind" out of a drawbridge at the bottom instead of walls. These allow you to station your dwarves behind the blind (the draw-bridge up and with the pull of a civilian on a lever far away, you can force the bridge down and allow LoS with your melee units who will then charge the offending goblins. You can do this with the marksmen at the top as well, and allow them to fire at closer targets rather than firing all their ammunition at once.

[Teeto_K]

although it occurs to me as I write this that the water animation might have been obscured by the stones in the channels bottom.

Yes, this happened, and it annoys me to no end when it does. You can {d}esignate - {b}uilding properties - {h}ide the rocks so that you can see what is going on.

Now, as to an effective moat/hallway system:

Pictured here is a front/cross-section view of the system. Use the left lever to allow water to fill the upper resevoir hallway, then close it.

Then use the middle lever to open the dumping floodgate that will fill the lower hole. Fill your moats in a controlled fashion, instead of directly linking them to an infinite water source.

The bridge can/will allow dorves to walk over top of the lower-moat, and can be retracted by use of another lever.

In case of flooding, keep all levers far away from their targets: You don't want your flooding controls to become inaccessible due to flooding.

Code: [Select]

ó = Lever
_ = floor
# = Wall
7 = Water
X = floodgate
. = Bridge tile over the moat.

Starting state:
_____    _ó___ó____ó
#####7777X____X#...#
##############_____#

Pull leftmost lever to fill resevoir hallway:

_____    _ó___ó____ó
#####777777777X#...#
##############_____#

Pull left lever again to close off river then pull middle lever to dump water into moat:

_____    _ó___ó____ó
#####7777X____ #...#
##############77777#

What happens when you just open the whole thing up and leave it open:

_____    _ó___ó____ó
#####7777777777#777#
##############77777#
Similar methods may be employed using Hatches over stairways instead of floodgates, and/or in the filling of well systems instead of moats.
And regarding goblin goods: Items on killed targets become immediately forbidden, to help prevent your dorves running into combat to store them.

Either use {k} to look at the items and use {f} to control their forbid state, OR, use {d}{b}{c} to mass reclaim over an area.

[TerminatorII]

what map properties will make it more likely for mega beasts to appear?

[(name here)]

what map properties will make it more likely for mega beasts to appear?

None. the odds of megabeasts appearing is solely dictated by how many survived worldgen.

[Mr. Svinlesha]

Thanks everyone for the answers so far!  You've all been very helpful.  (A special shout-out to puck and Teeto_K for their brilliant bridge designs.)

Aquizzar: This isn't just about the military.  I didn't understand how bookkeeping worked, thanks for the answer. 

And it turns out that many of the items my dwarves were ignoring were actually forbidden.

I notice that no one really seems to have an answer for the blinking dworf mystery. 

What about organizing your fortress?  Once you get up to about 30+ dwarves, what tricks do you use to maintain your own sanity?

[ByDurinsBeard]

Structurally, I use a central shaft fortress layout to organize. At top, it has a single entramce with outdoors defensive works guarding the approaches. The entrance leads down to trade depot and after that to my barracks / military level and arrangement to seal any progress further down. From there on, my main access shaft starts: a multi-level hollowed out square (just for looks really) with 2x2 stairs in each corner. Going down, first you reach the living quarters (separate wings for nobles and proletariat), the dining hall and office level (booze and prepared food stored here too), several empty levels for whatever and acting as noise buffer (wiki says work noise carries 4 squares), workshop level and storerooms, underground farm level and storerooms, graveyard and a temple of Armok at the very bottom.

In workforce organization, I go over migrants the moment they arrive and turn off tasks on any redundant arrivals (another tresher, another crossbowmaker, another blacksmith, and so on) and give those the custom job description of hauler. If I need to cover a job I don't have yet I grab a peasant and give them a custom job name (ie trainee wood burner) so I remember the next day that I activated the job on someone.

Also, heavy use of customized stockpules to get what is needed near where it is needed.