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[Slythe]

Similar to another thread on this forum, I thought I'd share how my first year went in my first real fortress.  Feel free to comment/give advice.  I did play through two seasons of a game to get a feel for the interface and commands, then I played through about a year of another game for more experience, but made some mistakes and didn't like my embark map, so started over.  After generating world after world I finally created one with an ideal embark site with everything I wanted - lots of trees, soil layer, flux stone, above and below ground rivers, magma pipe, no aquifer, calm area.  The land was completely flat so I had to dig down right away.

After reading about embarking with the ores to make your own picks and axes I tried that method, bringing just one pick, three copper ore, two iron ore, and some fuel.  Also brought along 21 each of the 4 types of alcohol, 1 of every cheap type of meat (for barrels), the rest turtles for 40 food total, and the other usual stuff.  I dug a long 3 tile wide trench of ramps, removing all but 3 at one end for an entrance (later filling that trench with 3 rows of stone-fall traps and 2 rows of cage traps), then turned a corner tunneling under the earth to clear out my starter rooms (farm, barracks, dining room, lever room, trade depot).  Next was my central stairway down about 10 levels.  On my Z-2 level I started digging out one huge room for all my stockpiles but realized I needed to start smaller so I could quickly move all my goods inside.  By designating such a huge room off the bat I ended up with partially and haphazardly dug out paths, without big enough areas to designate as stockpiles, so my dwarves and goods just sat by the wagon for far too long waiting.  Very inefficient.

Here was my initial layout:
Z-1 (1 level below the surface): "starter" rooms, refuse room with a diagonal entrance, trade depot, 1 by 3 channel with a drawbridge in front of all of it to seal off the fort if I needed to, chained two wardogs just behind the bridge(and around a corner from the long entry trench filled with traps).  In retrospect I should've put the lever room further back instead of close to the bridge.  If an invader got around the corner any dwarf I tried to send to the lever room would run off and I'd be screwed.
Z-2: huge stockpile room with central stairway right down through the middle of it
Z-3: workshops, each in their own room with a door because I read that in case a moody dwarf doesn't have what he needs and you can't produce it quick you can at least lock them in the room safely.  I know a lot of people like to group their workshops into large open rooms - is that for experienced people who know they won't run into that situation or that they can deal with a potentially tantruming dwarf ?
Z-4: my eventual huge legendary dining hall
Z-9: dug out and filled 22 bedrooms which I thought would be plenty until...

During the first summer I attracted no migrants (just like in the previous two summers I had played in other games).  I think that's because of the delay in the beginning making my own picks and axes, and not being able to really generate any wealth that early, but that's fine.  Later that year in I think either late autumn or early winter I got my first wave of 10 migrants, which was perfect.  I had already prepared enough bedrooms and I really needed the extra labor.  The next spring comes, and about midway through *bam* a wave of 21 immigrants...oh dear...Now I have 38 dwarves with not enough of anything except food and booze.  That's where I stopped it before posting this.

When I had 17 dwarves I drafted 4 of them for a starting military but I can't see how it's possible to make enough armor quickly enough.  One had leather armor he started with, and I had 2 crossbows and 2 axes, but I was desperately trying to crank out steel for armor for my future axedwarves.  In the meantime I had them train wrestling unarmored.  By late in the first year I had maybe 4 pieces of steel armor so I switched the two wrestlers (proficient and talented by that point) to axedwarves, and while sparring one of them got his arm broken and is still bedridden this following spring, which means his partner wasn't able to spar either.  Was I just unlucky or is there a better way to do this?  Now that I suddenly have 38 dwarves and barely any armor or weapons I fear I could get sieged at any moment with a very weak army for defense (although I have traps and I can seal off the fort if need be).  It seems like training and equipping a decent army would take years and I have no idea when the first ambush or siege can or will hit.  Any suggestions?

And finally, here are a few other random questions that popped up while playing:

* One of my cats got killed by a thief so with its corpse sitting in the entry trench I decided to try to add a "butcher a dead animal" job but my butcher never went to get the corpse.  Any ideas?  Maybe it rotted too soon or my butcher was too busy, not sure.

* I tried cooking some meals and I'm assuming I have to do lots of micromanaging if I want specific ingredients to be used.  For example, I enabled the meats I have and one type of alcohol but I don't know if the meals will consist of two meats, or one meat and one alcohol, or two alcohol ?  I suppose it doesn't matter but later if I had say quarry bush leaves, meat, and alcohol, I'd want at least one of each in each meal.

* I finally realized I could designate how many bins would go into each stockpile after seeing tons of individual crafted goods filling up all my stockpile tiles and wondering, "why the hell aren't they putting them into bins?".  Then I noticed every new empty bin I would make was being put in my other stockpiles where they weren't even needed.  So after putting bins in almost every stockpile, it seems that some don't ever get filled.  I made a custom stone stockpile with only bit coal enabled, next to my smelter, with a bin in it, but my dwarves will only put the coal on the floor tiles of the stockpile and not in the bin.  Is this a known bug, or intentional ?

I'm almost tempted to start over yet again so I can do things a bit more efficiently, but the one area I have no idea how to improve upon is getting an equipped and trained military up and running quickly.  I just didn't have enough dwarves or time in the first year to get much going, but maybe that's normal.

[Calhoun]

Not everything is able to be put in bins. Furniture, and Stones/Ores can't. However, Bars and Blocks can. Any stockpile that can have bins in it, dwarfs will normally lay down one or two, so when someone does put something in it, it's ready. Also, if someone is using the bin while someone else want's to put something in a stockpile, it might cause them to bring another bin.

I never worried about what my cook cooked, since i was always over producing food. But if you designate custom stockpiles just outside of the workshop, you should be able to persuade him what to use. Though the Forbid/Unforbid to cook method is still going to be more efficient.

My first serious fort was very successful, got a Baron even. However, it was horribly inefficient and designed. After that, I ran a string of fort's, each lasting maybe 1-2 years, improving on my fortress design, the biggest thing was more efficient use of vertical space.

As for immigrants, they can be a pain. Fortunatley there are tools like Dwarf Therapist which can help you easily manage labor assignments.

You still shouldn't get seiged for quite some time, you're very likely safe. In my experience, suit them up completey, when you give them a real weapon, and only give one a weapon at a time. The other should be able to manage them with their awesome wrestling skills, then, when the dabbling axe-dwarf gets a few ranks up, you can switch the other one over.

Accident's happen tough. Can't prevent 'em.

Trade with the dwarf caravan can be good for getting armor. It's expensive, but if you've got a legendary stone-crafter churning out mugs, it should't be too bad. (Mugs because you get 3 mugs per 1 stone).

Millitary, and the metal-working industry that supports it are defiantly one of the last to get set up (usually).

[Lord Darkstar]

Your butcher didn't grab the dead cat because: they don't butcher dead tame animals. Tame animals can only be butchered live, through the animal section of the (z) status interface.

[AncientEnemy]

It seems like training and equipping a decent army would take years and I have no idea when the first ambush or siege can or will hit.  Any suggestions?

in 40d a military is pretty easy to set up. a few things:

marksdwarves are the hand of god. a few highly skilled marksdwarves will absolutely mow down enemies. works especially well if you build them little guard towers (or similar) with an archery range, so if you need them to fight incoming enemies while they're training they're already in place. it's useful to get them armor (to deflect enemy projectiles) and hammerdwarf skill (since they will melee with their crossbows, using the hammer skill, if they run out of ammo), but not strictly necessary, especially early on.

for melee dwarves (and marksdwarves you intend to train with hammers), wrestling is the most important skill. wrestling improves their ability to dodge blows, so they won't get injured sparring (or fighting normally). don't give them real weapons to spar with until they're pretty skilled at wrestling, and clad in a full set of metal armor. it's not hugely important that their weapon skill be all that high before an attack, because in a real fight their weapon skills will get massive boosts (if you have some relatively weak wildlife roaming your map you might want to send them after it just for training purposes once they do have weapons). wrestling -is- important because it most directly influences whether they'll survive the fight or not. also, while steel is the best, you don't need to worry -that- much about it early on. just crank out sets of whatever metal armor is the easiest for you to produce. you can re-equip them later once you have more steel gear available.

[Rapidfirewombat]

Lots of good answers in this thread already.

The idea behind having your workshops in a more wide-open area is to optimize the traffic flow around them.  If you have, say, a butcher's shop in a tiny room with only one entrance, every time your butcher slaughters an animal, you're going to have at least five dwarves trying to jam themselves into the room at the same time to pick up all the meat, bones, skin, fat, and chunks.  Many different types of workshops can also create lots of hauling jobs really quickly, like stills or craftsdwarf workshops.  If you get a dwarf with a strange mood that you can't satisfy, and you have your shops spaced out in a big area, it's easy peasy to put a wall up around the shop he's claimed until he goes insane and dies.

In 40d, marksdwarves should be your primary line of defense against surface threats.  With an elevated position, one or two well-trained marksdwarves can pretty much end a siege all by themselves.  If a marksdwarf is behind fortifications and has an elevated position, he is damn near invincible.  Since an invincible dwarf requires no armor, and crossbows and bolts can be made from wood, you really don't even need a metalsmithing industry until you decide to start training melee fighters.  So, my advice is to enable masonry on those new immigrants and have them put up a defensive wall just inside your perimeter ditch.  As a bonus, if the only access to the top of the walls is from inside a barracks, then your marksdwarves will have whoever happens to be sparring at the time watching their backs, making sure they don't get flanked.

Yes, cooking involves a fair deal of micromanagement if you have something specific in mind, but cooking should be the least of your worries right now.  Your dwarves can't enjoy a +plump helmet roast+ if they're all dead.  Make that cook do something useful, like build a wall, or crank out wooden crossbow bolts.

Regarding levers, I build almost all my levers in the dining room, no matter what they operate.  Since that's where all the idlers hang out, chances are that it'll be one of them who gets the task to pull it.  And trust me, when that dragon appears on the edge of the map and starts tearing ass through the forest for your drawbridge, getting that lever pulled ASAP is the most important thing in the world.  It's also a good idea to label what all your levers do with the notes (Shift+n I believe) function.  The notes interface takes some getting used to, but it's worthwhile to learn.

My advice is not to start over.  It's those first few forts that you really remember, and those memories can keep you coming back to DF.  I can't even remember what the name of my current fort is, but I still remember the name of every dwarf that ever swung an obsidian sword in my first serious fort.