Military:
a. When a military dwarf grows attached to a weapon, does this translate to any benefit in combat?
not really
b. I am very liberal with my military (squads of 10 with only 6 up at any given time) and yet they bitterly complain about long deployment and it’s keeping their morale down. What gives?
throw them out of the squad for a season or so, enjoying life as a civilian, AOL, every soldier needs it. Even when not active, they'll be on standby and kinda edgy, sticking to the barracks area. Build royal bedrooms and legendary dining halls there so they stay happy longer?
c. As a corollary to b, is there any benefit to having larger or smaller squads? Is there a point where there are so many dwarves that they are hindering rather than helping each other in combat?
Training seems to benefit from even numbers. Also, more squads means more flexibility where you can deploy
d. Also, is there any benefit to having mixed squads vs. weapon specific ones?
More the other way around. Squads will train together, and spear dwarf will learn faster from another spear user, moreover, they wont have to watch axe demonstrations. That being said, multiple squads barracked in the same area will pick up some basics from glancing at the others anyway, even if they dont participate. CIVILIANS will gain rudimentary combat skills from seeing a weapon demonstration
e. Can training in basic combat skills (non weapon specific, like fighting) take place between squads if they have the same barracks, or do squads only train with their specific squad? Also, if I have a dwarf who is legendary in a fighting skill, will his teaching benefit all or just the ones in his squad? Does it make sense then to have a large “training” squad with your two best guys and 8 recruits, until they all become competent?
Part of it already answered. The bigger the difference the faster the learning, teacher, observer and student skills may help
f. Is there any benefit to military happiness to having an awesome barracks, or only their room and dining hall?
what? you havnt remade the whole fort in gold anway, because you can? shame on you. They get happy thoughts from any high quality items they interact with. demolishing beds and replacing them with better ones works, so just strife for the best
g. How many z levels must a goblin fall to reliably kill it? I have a 5 z level drop trap and it barely scratches them. Also, will a long fall damage the equipment they are wearing? I just plan to melt it.
the equipment never damages. Dont know about the fall, just drop him in a heavilly trapped place
h. In the military screen, the ammo field, is that how many bolts are reserved for entire squad or each dwarf (e.g. I have it set as 100 metal for combat and 100 wood and 100 bone for practice).
I never study that much into that
training always uses lowest quality, but emmmm... it means 100 bolts are reserved for training, 100 for hunting (unless you changed it) so it may be a bit hard to get enough bolts for fighting. For actual fighting they collect the best bolts anyway
General Happiness:
i. What is the benefit to a dwarf if they prefer a material? I had a noble who liked copper, but copper is a pretty worthless metal, so in that case is it better to make him a copper statue or just one of a high value material like gold? What is “preference” worth?
Keeps a noble happy, they're an annoying bunch
try to find someone who likes statues or something generic like that. Keeping your workers happy is always good
j. Is there any limit to the happiness boost of bedrooms/dining rooms? What I mean is, can you solve any problem by just giving everyone an engraved room with gold statues, or is there some hard limit to the amount of “good” thoughts a room can generate.
almost
k. I had a noble who was utterly traumatized by a lesser’s living arrangement, but he had by far the largest and best room in the fort. No one even came close. Is this thought based on relative wealth or do nobles just get pissed if commoners go above a set wealth value, no matter how many times more wealthy they are in comparison?
Press (n)oble to see what he wanted
l. If I have a legendary clothier making awesome clothes, do my dwarves raid my stockpile to upgrade their own wardrobe or do they always stay in the clothes they came with, leaving all the good stuff for export? I’d actually LIKE them to upgrade their threads if they can.
Dunno.
Other Questions:
m. I noticed in a youtube let’s play that a player build a wall right on the edge of the map – literally the edge. He did this in the caverns but my question is for both caverns and surface. If you do this and say wall off everything but one small area, will this automatically force all invasions/caravans/wild animals/forgotten beasts to enter your map from only that point?
n. I’ve heard that for FB’s with syndromes that you should allow your dwarves to walk through water to clean themselves to prevent spreading. Trouble is, any flowing water eventually reaches 7/7 and drowns your dwarves. Is it possible to create say a constant flow of 2/7 or 3/7 water? How is cleaning dwarves accomplished?
Use floodgates, bridges (act like walls when up) and pumps to regulate water level
o. What is the optimal size for farm plots? Lets separate food farming from textile/dye farming, though I’d like to optimize both, both surface and underground varieties. Right now I have 208 dwarves, but any rule of thumb would be helpful.
with 115 dwarf pop, 6x 3x3 underground and 4 3x3 above ground produce so many crops my storage is overflowing and i cant brew alcohol because all barrels are ful of plants or seeds
the rest of the storage is full with lavish meals that i made with farm products, trying to reduce the amount of seeds. I'd say a couple of 2x3 plots will see you through a long, long time
p. I like the idea of underground civs, but is there any chance in the future they can actually have buildings and defenses, rather than just wandering groups of essentially mobs (in the MMO use of the term)? A dwarf can defend a “burrow” so it shouldn’t be too hard to use that same concept to create a cavern society you can trade with and who will only become hostile if you enter their “burrow.”
try looking at some of the mods
Hello! I’ve been playing for awhile now and have a few questions I can’t seem to get the details on in the wiki (excellent resource!) and I have tried to search this board but often I get way too many results for my search terms, and most of them are unrelated to my questions. If something has been answered before in this 1000+ page thread I apologize. I will letter my questions for ease of answering. I chose to put my questions here rather than start a new thread - I hope that was the right decision to get the most pairs of eyes on my questions since they are a bit technical.
Thank you all! From this board to the wiki to all the lets plays on youtube (more than most commercial games) one of the main strengths of DF is the community - I think the fact that the game is ungodly complicated only makes we, the chosen few, more proud and fanatical about it. If I have to listen to another person telling me how much I'd love Minecraft...ehhhhh.