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[Tally]

My first year, I spent the better part of an autumn futzing around with the proper preparation to drain a lake through my farm, then have it funnel down into my well. Granted, though, 80% of that time was spent having dwarves dismantle the floodgates they walled themselves in with, and then build them back up only to get stuck again. Later learned that my reservoir was deep enough that I could eschew floodgates altogether. So much time wasted.

Took half a summer for the water to flow down to a degree reasonable enough that my farmer could step out to plant seeds. Cue sudden immigration wave. (Which brought a high master armorsmith with talented shield, talented pike, and other such very high rank combat skills)


I also spotted another glitch, however. Building a well DEMANDS you have a chain, specifically. Yet if you have ropes around, as long as you have a chain somewhere in the fort, it will give you the option to use a rope instead.

[Particleman]

I don't care for said feature. I hope it gets changed back.

In the meantime, though, bucket irrigation is for squares. My procedure is to find a murky pool and dig into it from my farming rooms. As long as there are some cheap wooden doors in the right places, it should be pretty easy to get a 1/7 layer covering everything.

You crazy? Use stone doors. Wood can be made into something useful like bins or barrels and the supply is a lot more limited.

Anyway, here's how I irrigated my farms.



Granted it's more complicated than just dumping buckets of water on it, but "Making things more complicated than they have to be for no reason" is kind of the game's credo.

[Walliard]

You crazy? Use stone doors. Wood can be made into something useful like bins or barrels and the supply is a lot more limited.

It's possible he's stuck above an aquifer. They seem to be all over the place in this version.

[nameless]

"I can't seem to figure out how to see the entire list of my dwarfs skills anymore.... Any ideas?  I used to use +/- iirc"

I figured that out.  There are three categories of skills, and you have to toggle them on and off to see them....

[tigrex]

I'm a big fan of the new skill viewing system, though I haven't had time to experiment with skills like

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

biter, student, etc etc etc.

And while all I've done so far is flood some farmland a bit too deeply, I'm tentatively in favour of a little more challenge in getting a farm up and running.

[vhappylurker]

Honestly, I just dug out a 8x8 or so square room beside a small lake then channeled into the lake and let it drain out into the room. Worked out well, compared to my other attempts at farming. Also set up a walled-in surface farm as back-up.

[nameless]

Ok, I irrigated, but my farmer isn't doing any planting.... It looks like I need to fertilize in this version?

[sbr]

Ok, I irrigated, but my farmer isn't doing any planting.... It looks like I need to fertilize in this version?

Stone or soil?  You built plots right?

I had no problem getting my farmer to plant on plots built on muddied soil.

[chaoticag]

No, fertilizer is not needed. I can confirm this.

Maybe its just too late in the season?

[vhappylurker]

Ok, I irrigated, but my farmer isn't doing any planting.... It looks like I need to fertilize in this version?

Does your farmer have any other jobs or skills activated? You might need to turn off everything but Farming and Food Hauling on them. Or set everybody to have "Farming" activated.

[nameless]

I have a plot built, a farmer with farming (fields) turned on, and nothing else on, and when I look at the job list, there are no planting jobs....

Anyone have any ideas?

[vhappylurker]

Do you have enough seeds for your farmer to plant?  And are they the right kind of seeds for the dirt you're using?

[sbr]

I have a plot built, a farmer with farming (fields) turned on, and nothing else on, and when I look at the job list, there are no planting jobs....

Anyone have any ideas?

Have you assigned which plant will be planted in the plot? 

Tongue twister. :p

'Q' over the fresh plot and pick a crop.

[Fossaman]

You crazy? Use stone doors. Wood can be made into something useful like bins or barrels and the supply is a lot more limited.

No, not crazy. Just lazy. In previous versions my order of preparations has always been to dig out the farms and seed stockpile, and get all of that set up, and then dig down in search of rock. I also tend to embark on heavily wooded flatlands, so it's not like I'm going to run short. When I can harvest a thousand logs every five years or so it's not so much of an issue.

[Virex]

The easiest way to get irrigation to work is to hunt for waterfalls. You can then connect the upper part of the river to your farms, through a floodgate and use a drainage passage to drain your farms after the floodgate has been closed.

As for finding waterfalls, they occure in 2 occasions. The most common place to find waterfalls is when 2 streams come togheter, tipicaly in a situation where there is also some height difference. I've found that one of the rivers is almost always several Z-levels above the other. A rarer occasion is with streams in very hard rock (flint or granite) look for a sudden height difference or a large Z-variance. This is less reliable then the 2 rivers comming toghether though, especaily since granite and flint mountain ranges seem to be rare.