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.