Ok... so I've recently come back to DF and I'm having a few problems figuring out all the new stuff(new to me anyways).
So I start my first fortress and am going along well... only picking up 2-3 migrants the first few times instead of the 20+ like in the past, but that's ok.
I've got my first squad of dwarves with military training, so no complaints when I recruit them and then disband the squad after they kill whatever the intruder is.
I've got my basic moat going, a well in a meeting room and working on a well for a hospital.
Now... For some reason, all my dwarves are dieing by bleeding to death. They've not been in any fight or anything yet I've lost 90% of the population. I'm not sure what the heck happened there so when the remainder started going nuts from grief(and still bleeding to death) I just abandoned and started again.
This time I discovered that the z-levels have been changed. I can go way in the hell down... so far down I opened up a cavern where my 10 dwarves immediately got swarmed and killed from the damned spiders and a cyclops.
Next fortress... I discover the mass dump command and others... Thank you Devs... If you're ever in Chi-Town, let me know and I'll buy y'all dinner. So on this one, I set up my well and when I go to pull the lever that lets the water in, it works like a charm. Then I set the command to pull the lever again so I don't flood the place... the command is active as if a dwarf is working on it, but whoever it is didn't get to it... now all but 2 of my dwarves are trapped and about to drown... oh well... now for the next one.
The questions I guess are these..
What's with the bleeding to death? Something to do with diseases? How do I prevent it? I've only just started trying to figure out the hospital setup.
The military I'll figure out eventually, I know enough to set up squads as needed and I tend to rely heavily on moats, drawbridges, and copious traps anyways, so I'm not too worried.
How do I get a command to be executed as quickly as possible? I really don't want a repeat of the flooded fortress... that's just a pain in the rear.
Those caverns... can I flood them and kill off whatever is in them? Or would it take forever? Or are there endless caverns in them so the water will never fill it up?