I'm having a bit of grief with the complexity of the game. so i have 3 questions:
1. How do i deal with animals? All mine die / do nothing ever. i put some on a pasture and they took slightly longer to die last game, it felt good.
2. How do i start messing with pumps and fun right? i want to try pumping water into a big reservoir underground so i can not have all of my dwarves die of thirst again (despite having adequate dwarven wine, they all died. i made a thread about it and no one can think of the reason~). Later on magma for lulz
3. How should i effectively manage labour? i've been using dwarf therapist but im not very good and just have general jobs like 'craftsman' - a dwarf with stonecrafting, mason, stone detailing etc activated, who does lotsa work like that, and 'cooking staff' - all purpose brewers and farmers (though i dont really cook food, im too noob to go into all of that, i just plump helmet spam~)
1. Those that die must be grazers/herbivorous. You need to either be sure that you are in a biome that has topsoil grass (non-mountainous/desert/tundra/glacier) that can regrow or breach the caverns where there is always some forage for them.
2. You need to make a corkscrew (carpenter's workshop, easiest place to make one) and pipe section + mechanisms and construct a pump screw. I forgot how to link the wiki so could anyone help here?
Also, always get into the farming industry by late autumn at most, get extra drinks in the starting build and brew those plants like there was no tomorrow, you need drink more than food as drink gets consumed faster.
3. Maybe try assigning labors to every migrant as he/she enters the map? I can handle a full 200 fortress without therapist but in terms of a big fort, there will be idlers. So here's a tip, for those who will do important work (farming[growers], masonry, carpentry...) give those skills to the starting seven or assign then to a dwarf that has hauling labors off. That will concentrate their focus and keep them busy as those jobs take up most of the time and are crucial to a fort's survival. Make some dwarves (those that are peasants or have neigh useless jobs like lye makers/soapers [used once in a blue moon]) do full hauling and nothing else, or put them in the military