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[Cheese]

Hey,
I'm new to DF and have been following the 2 tutorials in the stickies. I've figured out that I need to irrigate my land, even stuff that shouldn't need it anyway, to make farms. My first fort I didn't know about this, so when I came to laying seeds in my farm, it didn't work. I decided to start a new fort up and try irrigation. I set up my bedrooms but probably spent too long mining them out, then went to the second z level down to make my farms so I could link up the river. By the time I'd set everything up and flooded the farms, it was late summer and I'd already received my first 4 migrants and was running out of food before I'd even gotten my farms running. Then I closed the floodgates, but the water was taking forever to drain.

It was then Autumn so I gave up and decided to make a third fort. This time round I'm only going to make 2 small rooms and then stair down to set up the farms, should hopefully get me there faster. I'm wondering if there are any tutorials on the best ways to set up irrigation early, or if you guys could give me tips. Also, is there anyway to drain the water out quicker? Or perhaps some way to give the rooms an even, controlled distribution of water. What does channelling do? I have a feeling it may help.
Thanks, Cheese

[bongotastic]

Hey, it is a bit of a race against time. I usually get the farm done before the bedrooms*. You can dig a tunnel of length x+2, add to it two floodgates so the area of the tunnel is x, connect it to a room of area 5-6x and link to levers to control the floodgates (including building the mason and mechanics' workshop) well before the fall. This, of course, assumes that you have a river. Investing embark points in a great miner, a mason and a mechanics is a good starting strategy.

I'm not sure what is in the stickies anymore. So my comment may be repeating what is there.

* Dwarves can rough up sleeping in the dirt for a while if this is the worst thing for them to cope with.

[Tuxman]

Channels do this:

Think of the entire world of Z levels. Each Z level is comprised of two layers. The "Floor" and the "Wall".

X = Wall
_ = Floor

Digging means removing the "wall":

XXXX      
________
XXXXXXX
________


Channeling means removing the "wall", the "floor" and the bottom "wall":

XXX
___
XXX     
__________



Farms should be high priority.

One solution might be to build an "airlock" or sorts:

Basically calculate how much water you need for your farm. It should be 1/7 per tile (including the "airlock" as well)


X= Farm
x= "airlock"
~= water
+= floodgate



XXXXXX  x  ~
XXXXXX  x  ~
XXXXXX+ x+~
XXXXXX  x  ~
XXXXXX  x  ~


The airlock fills up with water first, which is a calculated amount required to fill your specific farm, and then floods out into the farm. You can re-irrigate (incase newer versions make mud dry out) if you please. And there is no overflow.

Requires  8 stone rocks

Make 2 floodgates at a mason's workshop.

Make 6 mechanisms at a mechanics workshop.

Make two levers on the floor respectively somewhere.

Place the floodgates in their correct positions

Connect the levers to the floodgates via orders [q] over the lever, "connect to floodgate" and then (+) and (-) to scroll through the floodgates. Select with (enter) and then select the mechanisms with (enter) (doesnt matter which mechanisms you use, they are mostly the same).

Pull the lever connected to the outer lock, then pull it again. then pull the  inner lock and make your farms. You don't need to wait for all the water to receed.

Hope this helped.

[Cheese]

Thanks for the advice guys. I'm mining the stuff out at the moment, about to start my farm level.
Tried your advice, Tuxman, it works great! It's early summer now, just setting up the farm and stockpiles

[Psieye]

I've never heard of mud drying up in the new version - mud disappearing due to a Reclaim yes, but not drying up over time.

THE fastest way to irrigate is with a handy murky pool - those things are everywhere. I pause, count how many tiles the pool is, multiply that number by 6 (because 1/7 of the pool will remain behind), then dig out that many tiles 2 z-levels directly underneath it, with a staircase from surface to farm level letting the water in. Once the farm area has been dug out, I breach the murky pool via channeling (it's how you make holes in walls from a z-level above where you want it) and watch the water levels (I change the init settings so I see depth information, not the vague '~' symbol for water). The farm level won't completely be irrigated (there are losses all over the place) but enough will be muddy to feed the whole fortress for all years. Now... seal that breached pool back up, you don't want rainwater filling it up and then flooding your farm zone. Also decide whether you want to floor over that stairwell between surface and farm level, or just wall off a section of the surface so you have an enclosed outdoor farm area too. I'm planting my farms within 1 month of embark with this approach.

Regarding sleeping arrangements: I bring 10+ pieces of wood on embark, so the very first thing my carpenter does is kick out 7 beds. These get placed together in some random hole and I designate a Dormitory room from the central one. That's sleeping arrangements sorted until I get nicer beds when my carpenter is more skilled - no individual rooms to dig out, everyone sleeps together as a nice community. Incidentally, I also bring some 15+ stone on embark so I can immediately build some workshops and kick out 4 pairs of tables & thrones - now my dining room is set up in that same random hole as before.

[Taranli Maren]

I was going to explain my irrigation technique, but decided so simply recommend you take a fisherdwarf (and maybe another with fish cleaning) and plenty of booze on embark.  It seems to me that a fisherdwarf can feed a small fortress by himself in the latest version.

Edit: Just make sure you have a suitably sized stockpile (and enough barrels), as fish will rot.

[Cheese]

Thanks guys, I've got my farm up and running now, next time I'll try some other stuff you guys have said, like bringing a fisherdwarf.

[FuzzyDoom]

It seems that your question was answered, but here's a helpful video anyways.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMNw4iPMWUc

[Cheese]

Thanks Didn't even know he'd made a 2010 one.

[FuzzyDoom]

Thanks Didn't even know he'd made a 2010 one.

There's like 4 or 5 episodes. Really useful videos.

[gtmattz]

X= Farm
x= "airlock"
~= water
+= floodgate
#=  1 tile raising bridge



XXXXXX  x  ~
XXXXXX  x  ~
XXXXXX+ x#~
XXXXXX  x  ~
XXXXXX  x  ~

By making the above change (in red) you can control this with 1 lever and use less mechanisms and construction steps.  Link the lever to both the floodgate and the bridge and 1 pull of the lever will close the bridge (thus blocking the water source) and open the floodgate to irrigate your farms.  Pulling the lever again will close the floodgate and open the bridge, refilling the measuring chamber.  Here is a screenshot of my standard farm set up:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I fill the chambers from a pressurized cistern a few levels above, but they can be filled from the side just as easily.

[Cheese]

Thanks for the diagram. It appears I haven't done it like this, but another way O_O. It works anyway so meh.

[Ephemeriis]

I'm still having trouble getting the first few bits settled in a timely manner...  I'll wind up spending too long on one thing or another and wind up with some unhappy/hungry/thirsty dwarves.

Best luck I've had is simply bringing a couple buckets along at embark, channeling out a narrow strip for farming, and designating lots of 1x1 ponds on it.  They seem to fill it up pretty quickly, and I can cancel the pond designations as soon as there's just 1/7 water there.

It's been much quicker for me than draining a murky pool or setting up floodgates or anything like that.  And I can construct floors over the channel and use the upper floor as storage once everything is done.

[zergl]

I also subscribe to the "just poke at a pond" school of rapid irrigation.

As a matter of fact, most of the time I spend looking at the site before unpausing is picking the right pool (closeness to where I roughly want to put my fort entrance), then I designate the farm plot and work my way back from there.

In the latest embark I decided not to spend any effort on exactly counting the ponds water level against farm plot size and water lost in transit and just poked at the biggest pool in the area I want the farm to be and put some properly sized overflow reservoirs one z-level below the farm plot. This has the big advantage of providing you with an early game indoor source of water for hospital business and dorfs cleaning themselves without exposing themselves to ambushes without significant additional effort.

[Lorden]

Can you give screenshots of what you mean by poke? Without floodgates, what's to stop your farms from being irrigated everytime there's a rainfall?

I'm still working out the ideal way to setup irrigation for a noob, as in my last fort my dwarves died of thirst since I couldn't setup my brewing operation in time. (Forgot to bring ale & couldn't find seed in the embark menu).