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[CobaltKobold]

Embark mats. Metals if you must.

[Geekkake]

It's easy to get through an aquifer in freezing climates. Dig a pit, wait for it to freeze, dig it out, smooth the sides.

If you really want to learn, try again in a non-freezing climate.

That I didn't know. I'm re-embarking as we speak.

[CobaltKobold]

Nah, do freezing- it'll show you what size you need, for instance. And freezing water is a challenge all its own.

[Garrie]

...
nor can I manage to pump PROPERLY (ie: beyond empty the pond into a ditch, in a way that probably doesn't even need a pump to work).

ok, I think I might have persevered long enough to work out how to break into an aquifer. But I need to make a smaller pit the first time I think! I even got a row of screw pumps working a water wheen in perpetual motion for my first time ever.

Trying the same map again, with a tweaked build-team.

[Skooma]

I like it around 50-70. There is enough labor to get what I need done but not enough to bring in nobles I have to build death machines for, start losing simulation speed and have a bunch of layabouts

[HatfieldCW]

I keep my population cap right around 40, both to avoid the nobles and to improve my performance.  When I let it get above 50 or so, I just wind up dumping immigrants into the army anyway, and before you know it I have 80 shiftless champions wandering around tearing each others' pants off and choking marmots.

After I get settled in to where I can handle raids, have an economy that can buy me metal bars and silk cloth, and start really bending my efforts away from sustenance and toward achieving something is my favorite time, which usually comes around year 2 or 3.  Whether I'm putting together an elite strike force to take on the denizens of the HFS or building a novel water feature or engineering some kind of auto-goblin-chopper for the front drawbridge or just trying to make an artificial volcano over my exposed magma pipe, nothing's more exciting then the first stages of a new challenge.  Later on I get frustrated and quit, of course.

And my second-place favorite is when bad things happen and you wind up with three or four survivors, who must rebuild from the ground up.  I've enjoyed it twice, once due to HFS and once due to a truly amazing tantrum spiral that culminated in my godly hammerdwarf with her artifact steel hammer deciding that everything had to die, and smashing workshops, furniture and neighbors alike.  It took some quick thinking and quicker building, but finally I got her locked away with my bait migrant, and she starved.  Four new migrants, with no friends (thank Armok) survived the ordeal and managed to keep their morale just north of crazytown long enough to start stacking the bodies outside, restoring the bridges and furniture, and getting the place shined up in time for the next wave of nervous immigrants.  Good times.  It's like re-embarking, except all the mining's already been done and there are corpses everywhere.

[CobaltKobold]

Ah, yes, rebuilding from major disaster can be fun...

the minor disasters that snag the legendary smith, less so.

[pushy]

I usually keep Only Farmers Harvest.  You get more food/seed and they stack more that way.

Psst, you're talking pish. It's a common misconception and it's been around since the 2D days, but it's bullshit (whether it was bullshit back in the 2D days, I can't remember, but it certainly is now)

There are only two things that have an effect on the number of plants obtained from a single planted seed - the first is whether the soil has been fertilised, and the second is the skill of the farmer that PLANTED the seed. When a crop pops out of the ground, the number of plants produced is fixed and that CANNOT be altered by the skill of the dwarf harvesting the plant.

I've planted 10 plump helmet spawn and turned off farming on the two dwarves that planted those seeds, plus (so the dwarves wouldn't collect the plump helmets prematurely) I've set orders to "only farmers harvest", when there aren't any farmers. As you can see in the below pic, two of the seeds have sprouted, with a total of 5 plump helmets between them.


So, I turned on farming for the other five starter dwarves, all of whom have zero skill at farming. This would make them harvest the plants while my two skilled farmers will continue to leave them alone.
My seeds produced four lots of 3, five lots of 2 and one 1.
My totally unskilled "farmers" managed to harvest four lots of 3, five lots of 2 and one 1. My five new dabbling farmers didn't lose a single plump helmet of the twenty-three that were grown.

[CobaltKobold]

Will result in fewer in the long term, though, as the exp in "grower" from harvesting will not go to the guy who plants them.

[pushy]

Will result in fewer in the long term, though, as the exp in "grower" from harvesting will not go to the guy who plants them.

It's not exactly difficult to get a couple of legendary growers, though, is it?

[Garrie]

ok, I think I might have persevered long enough to work out how to break into an aquifer. But I need to make a smaller pit the first time I think! I even got a row of screw pumps working a water wheen in perpetual motion for my first time ever.

Trying the same map again, with a tweaked build-team.

OK, I succeeded in getting through the first level of the aquifer basically using a version of http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-120-aquifercmv modified  to allow the water to drain back into the aquifer on the outlet side of the pumps. But immdediately below aquifer 1 is aquifer 2. & I haven't really allowed for this.

Is this noramly dealt with by just repeating the same pattern turned around a bit? I am guessing I have to somehow mae a space for my pumps to land?

If anyone knows a map on the file repository where this is "in progress" rather than "completed" I would really appreciate it.

[Aspgren]

Plump helmet jackets??

[expwnent]

My favorite time in the game is after the first migration wave, but before the third. I find it's hard to organize only 7 dwarves, but with 20-35 or so, it's a lot easier to have them specialize. It's harder with fewer, because you have to give them "nonconflicting" jobs as much as possible. And it's frustrating to wait for your dwarves to do what you tell them to do.

Too many dwarves makes the framerate go down. And once they've friended themselves into society, it's hard to kill them off without causing a tantrum spiral.

By the time I have 50+ dwarves and I have everything I need, I get bored.

[Jude]

I think I like the 20-50 dwarves stage  the most. My computer's pretty weak, so my framerate starts to drop after that, and it's early when there's still a challenge to the game. However I also like the huge fort stage, it's just that once I have 120-150 dwarves my FPS is in single digits. I never finish any constructions because of this; I just quit the fort in disgust because everything's taking so long.

I guess I should give up on aboveground constructions with this computer since if each stone block is tracked individually, that's also an FPS drain, but the biggest thing is no doubt the number of dwarves.

[Papa Cauldur]

Plump helmet jackets??

Yeah, just add the [THREAD] tag to Plump Helmets (or any other plant for the matter) and you can use them to make... *gasp* thread!