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[assimilateur]

I find I tend to bring horses instead of an anvil, for livestock.

Cows are more expensive, but their modvalue of 2 makes them arguably a better investment than horses.

[csebal]

I like cows too and not just for their haunting moos Differentiating between the male and female of the species is easy, which i find is important if you want to have any kind of sensible breeding going on, without completely trashing your fps. Not that you cant get rid of that problem with some modding of the data files to give those males or females special names.

As for mining, i tend to have quite a lot of active miners. My workforce is usually 6-10 dwarves at any time, except the starting 7, but even then its 3-4 miners active.

It is such a nice skill to train dwarves with, as it levels up rather fast, so i tend to rotate experienced miners out to do other jobs to gain more attributes, or straight to military if they are though enough already.

Actually, the work cycle is like this:
1) hauler -> these also work train on pumps in their spare time. For a hauler pool of 20 i usually have about 6 pumps up.
2) miner, once a miner is rotated out of the miner pool, i pick the best pump operators and turn them into miners. These miners also perform common masonry tasks, like walling or floor laying. A miner is usually rotated out, once he gets to bout level 10 or so. Reason is simple: at that level, they already mine too well, leaving a lot more stone than desirable, and taking away work from less experienced trainees.
3) soldier or siege operator. with a well built catapult range, mass training siege operators is kinda easy.
4) by this time they are usually superdwarves already, so really the only thing left is to give them some proper military training, which will also give a few more bumps to their attributes.

End result, dwarves that can walk through walls. (given they still have their picks of course )

Obviously i keep a few legendary guys around for vein extraction, but thats pretty much all they have to do. The rest of the time they just sit in the great hall, hold parties at the obsidian statue or scratch their head wondering how 20 puppies, 20 cow calves, 15 horse calves and about the same number of adult animals all fit into a single wooden cage. For some reason tho, this gives them a happy thought, so hey.. who am i to complain?

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Ah. Far more reasonable than pump operating, as it gives you some dabbling miners in case the good one dies. Makes good sense.

I prefer to spend points on mining and use one dwarf in case I strike ore, gems, or kimberlite (I like the blue color, and make as many structures out of kimberlite as I can) in my (generally long) entrance halls. That's just a preference issue.

Yeah, that's reasonable. The other angle for me is that some skills are just harder to train than others -- the metalworking ones especially. Mining, by contrast, is among the easiest to skill up. So even if I'm going to have one guy be a professional miner, I'd rather have him start with two other, harder to train skills at proficient (metalcrafting? seige engineering?) and just skill up once I get to the site. It seldom takes more than a single season to get an unskilled miner to proficient.

[The Architect]

The reason you don't want everyone mining (or in masonry, or carpentry for that matter) is moods. It is unimportant f you don't care about manipulating moods.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

The reason you don't want everyone mining (or in masonry, or carpentry for that matter) is moods. It is unimportant f you don't care about manipulating moods.

If you watch your moodable dwarves and turn off mining once they get a few skillups, that's manageable. Also, I expect that in the new version, I'll be embarking with a soldier dwarf (to give everyone combat training) and a medical dwarf, who likely won't have any moodable skills to start anyway, but also won't be doing their jobs full time (at least initially) so should be perfect Miner candidates.

That's really the thing -- even if you want a dedicated miner, it makes more sense to give him something else to start and then train him in mining once on site, because mining skills up so readily. Even if you don't need a Seige Engineer per se, it makes sense to grab one at start instead of a miner, just to keep your late-game options open.

[Skid]

Masonry is actually fairly good for moods if you leaves some valuable ores around the masonry workshops.  Artifact platinum ore furniture isn't to be scoffed at.

[The Architect]

Certainly, but most of us prefer artifact armor and weapons.

[Kaelem Gaen]

You know I tend do the  "Down Enter" dance on trading because Most of my wood (even in heavily wooded areas) goes to Barrels for brewing, so Bins end up as a back seat untill I need more I used to sell the bins till I was busy with other things and suddenly the wood was needed for my furnaces and such (I rarely start near magma, only recently have I been).   Granted I'm also WAY farther along in my fortress by that time

Hmmm...
Would I have to restart a fortress if I changed it so Female Dogs were named Bitches (Eh, technically correct once they pop out some pups)  For easier destinction...  For horses it's Stallion and ... erm ... Mare right?

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Masonry is actually fairly good for moods if you leaves some valuable ores around the masonry workshops.  Artifact platinum ore furniture isn't to be scoffed at.

Yeah, this is a good point, too (and you'll get similar results from Mining moods, as odd as that is). I tend to like a mix of weapon/armor and item artifacts in my fort -- artifact warhammers are cool, but so is having an Obsidian Throne or five.

[nenjin]

I always take additional picks at start because I like digging out my fortress immediately. I'll have two miners to start, and one floating. I find I stick to design better when I'm not growing my fortress on demand.

RE: Tradiing stuff

Can we just agree that trading is pretty lackluster no matter what you choose to sell, and that it involves 90% personal enjoyment and story value right now? Trading is one step removed from selling straight bones and rotten meat. You could make an entire economy out of hewn rocks if your dwarves would learn to smash them into smaller pieces.

So the whole "what you choose to trade" is totally academic right now. I choose left over clothing from enemies because, as was said, it doesn't create new storage requirements AND there's nothing else you can do with it other than add to a 8,000 item long dump list. At least selling it gets it off your map (for those of us not magma dumping.) And by weight/value ratio, it has the highest generally, way higher than what most of your non-legendary, non smithing dwarves can produce. But I could just as easily produce 400 basalt mugs and it would have the same level of impact on my economy.

Trading just needs its turn in the dev cycle, but I've done a bit of thinking on how it could be better none the less. 

[assimilateur]

So the whole "what you choose to trade" is totally academic right now.

I'm undecided as to whether or not I agree, mainly because I don't know how "academic" was meant in this context. The fact that you can trade almost anything is pretty well demonstrated, but just in case it wasn't known to some of the newer players, a few things should really be pointed out, namely:

1. Trade values are ridiculous.
2. Accordingly, you don't have to use up scarce resources on trade goods. Dozens of stone mugs will work just as well as comparatively few pieces of metal armor, while only the former uses a resource that is available in virtually indefinite amounts.
3. You can combine the sustainability of stone mugs with the less labor-intensive logistics of metal armor by using prepared meals.

If you insist on using up ores on trade goods, that's of course up to you, but it should really brought to the attention of new players that metal isn't the only raw material usable in the production of high-value exports.

[nenjin]

I think in general quality level > material for the core items, (stone, wood, metal) with metal having the most exceptions. What's the most you've ever need to trade to survive though? Buying out everything I either needed or wanted bigger stockpiles of, the most I've spent is 10k, requiring ~20k to get an ecstatic reaction out of a trader. A basic stone mug is what, 10? So figure 40,000 in trade to buy a fortress every single thing off of a trader...is 4,000 stone mugs, of which probably 9/10ths will be of a higher quality than basic, and I dunno....5/6th will be masterworks?

I think that's academic hehe. For new players, the signs are on the wall pretty quickly that you can trade/sell anything. I immediately figured out that you can lean on rock for a lot of mass-produced items, both economic and not. Wood door are nice but wood is consumable. That took me my first fortress to have it really sink in. Same with coffins, floors, fortifications, walls, tables...

It's also important to note that you can get straight to rock/wood production of items. Metal anything is a multiple step process, including harvesting and refinement. I know it took me a while to get that far, while I was making stone crafts almost immediately. 

[assimilateur]

That's the thing, though. 40k* is how much you could get out of 2 stacks of syrup roasts made by a good cook, and that's a whole hell of a lot less clicking and hauling than the equivalent value in mugs.

*40k is a very low estimate if you order things like armor, weapons or GCS silk cloth.

[100killer9]

I find I tend to bring horses instead of an anvil, for livestock.

Cows are more expensive, but their modvalue of 2 makes them arguably a better investment than horses.

Really? Damn. I thought they were all the same, and liked horses for their strength.

[Lost Requiem]

40K in a trade? Lightweights.

I usually trade around about 100+K worth of goods during a Human or Dwarven trade. I end up having to import a lot of my metal, since this map I'm on doesn't have a lot of metal, but as a twist, has virtually infinite flux materials. And I buy EVERYTHING metallic on their wagons either for using or melting. Anything to sate the endless thirst for metal my nobles have.

Trading with elves also gives the potential for getting something actually good, like a Giant Eagle. However, there are some days I try to resist tossing them down into the pit of despair when they bring me damaged goods.