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[Komnos]

Another newbie here.  I have three above-ground farm plots, but their production is very, very low.  I'm mostly trying to raise wild strawberries.  They're 9x9 plots, and rarely will more than three or four squares of each have any plants growing.  I've been fertilizing them and keeping fairly constant production of potash up, so I don't understand why so little is growing.  Any tips?  Thanks!

[blue emu]

Another newbie here.  I have three above-ground farm plots, but their production is very, very low.  I'm mostly trying to raise wild strawberries.  They're 9x9 plots, and rarely will more than three or four squares of each have any plants growing.  I've been fertilizing them and keeping fairly constant production of potash up, so I don't understand why so little is growing.  Any tips?  Thanks!

Do you have enough Strawberry seeds? Do your Growers have enough time to plant the plots?

No-one seems to have mentioned the other way to irrigate:



Mine out your farming room. Starting (and finishing) at least one tile away from the walls, channel out an area two tiles wide and as long as desired... eg: 2 tiles x 7 tiles. Leave the ramps at each end as they are, but remove all the ramps from the central stretch of the channel. On the upper level, designate each seperate channel tile as a Pond, extending from the channel onto the un-mined shelf above it. You MUST designate the Ponds from the level above, and they MUST be filled from the level above, so the split-level room is probably the simplest way to do it. Your Dwarves will start filling each of the "Ponds". As soon as they dump a single bucket-full of water into a tile, pause the game and remove that particular tile's Pond designation. You will soon have a layer of mud on each channel tile. You can now build your Farm Plot, without even waiting for the water to evaporate, since level 1/7 water does not interfere with labor activities.

[Komnos]

I'm thinking I didn't have enough available farmers.  My herbalists were all preoccupied gathering plants.  Once a few dwarves became farmers, it seemed to start working.

[Kav]

Ah, thanks. I've restarted about 10 times today as I've realised things were missing. At least thats one averted.

There's almost no hard 'deal breakers' in dwarf fortress. There is always a way to get by. In some of my best forts I forgot something essential. One time I brought no axe/pick, just ore, fuel, and an anvil. I then realized I brought tin instead of copper. You can't make tools out of tin. I spent 2 years harvesting berries, brewing them with my 1 spare barrel, and planting the seeds. I wrestled wildlife (and later invaders) and turned their bones and hides into crafts for the caravan until I could buy a pick so I could mine for ore so I could make an axe.

Forgetting a specific skill is a simple, if sometimes troublesome, thing to overcome. Take your example; you don't really need an experienced mechanic to make working mechanisms. Yeah they're slightly slower, and the weapon traps jam more, but they get the job done. The only things I actually hate forgetting is appraiser, and grower. In fact I typically drop practical useful things like woodcutter, carpenter, miner, or mason because they are easy to level up, and swap them out for things that are more troublesome to level up like weapon/armor smith, siege engineer, or architect.

Don't try to make every fort 'perfect'. You'll drive yourself mad, I know, I've tried. Just take each fort for what it is, flawed or otherwise. In my current fort the appraiser/architect just incremented the goblin score board. But that's no reason to restart, things are only just getting interesting. You've got to roll with the punches, because every once in a while everyone gets murdered by skeletal alligators.

In another one of my forts I lost 5 dwarfs and all the dogs immediately after embark to ant-men and troglodytes. The wagon horse was so horrified he actually jumped into the chasm. It ended up being one of my favorite forts. I buried them underground and walled off the entrance and had to build an aqueduct across the chasm to drain a pond for farmland mud. After a few immigrants arrived I dug a cistern for the pond after the rain filled it back up so I could build a well. I loved that fort. Right up until the orcs snuck in during some wood gathering and horribly murdered everyone. Such fond memories.

Don't give up on the little guys so easily, they'll surprise you. Good luck.

[KrazyDocK]

Another newbie here.  I have three above-ground farm plots, but their production is very, very low.  I'm mostly trying to raise wild strawberries.  They're 9x9 plots, and rarely will more than three or four squares of each have any plants growing.  I've been fertilizing them and keeping fairly constant production of potash up, so I don't understand why so little is growing.  Any tips?  Thanks!

9x9 plots (and THREE of them!) is very large and unnecessary.  Of course, that's the same thing as saying "dwarfy".
If you want adequate food and booze supply, I have found that four or five 1x5 plots to be sufficient.

KD

[Lord Darkstar]

Komnos, you problem is too much farm plots for the amount of farmers and seeds you have.

Set all but 1 of your 9x9 fields to fallow for ALL SEASONS.

Make sure your farmers are set to ONLY do farmer tasks. I set mine to Plant fields, Collect Plants, and Harvest Plants, because I like my farmers to thresh and go out into the great wilds to grab wild plants when I screwed something up and am getting low on plants... But they don't do anything else, so they will do farm type tasks as soon as possible.

Make sure you set the (o)ptions - harvest to only farmers harvest. A trained farmer harvesting will get a lot more food then random unskilled or low skilled dwarves.

a 9x9 plot is really too big for almost all forts. Early on, a single 3x3 or 2x4 will keep you well stocked in a year round plant (ie, any above ground plant or plump helmets). Add small plots of similar size when your fort starts running low on plants in a couple of seasons, and you'll find food isn't a problem anymore--- booze is.

Good luck!

For irrigating, I use bucket brigade method (see the dwarf wiki entry irrigation) or use floodgates and fill chambers. If you make a "fill chamber" that is 1 tile per 6 tiles you want to irrigate, then you don't have to worry about over filling your new farm room with water. To do a fill gate irrigation, build a small chamber between the brook/river inlet tile and your farm room. Put a second door or floodgate on it, so when you pull its lever, it opens, and allows the contents of the fill chamber to flow into the farm room. Put a flood gate on your river/brook inlet, hook it up to its own lever, breach as desired. Now you can let your fill chamber get full, close the inlet, and then open the fill chambers gate/door into your farm room. Perfect amount. For LARGE farm rooms, I usually add a single tile to my fill chamber to make up for the water that will evaporate while the water floods into the room.

Pro tip: When breeching into a river or brook, if you build a door one tile back from your floodgate (or door), you can safely breach the water source without worrying over how long it might take a dwarf to come along and flip the lever to close the new inlet's floodgate/door.

Bucket brigading and draining a small pool are very quick and easy ways to create a muddy room. Using floodgates and doors hooked up to levers is more dwarvenly to me, so I personally like to use that method when it isn't too inconvenient.

[KrazyDocK]

Make sure you set the (o)ptions - harvest to only farmers harvest. A trained farmer harvesting will get a lot more food then random unskilled or low skilled dwarves.

Are you sure about this?  I was always under the impression that the skill of the PLANTER rather than the HARVESTER was the important thing?  For me, the reason I've always used "only farmers harvest" is because that way the farmers get all the experience rather than having the experience "stolen" by non-farmers.

KD

[Psieye]

Make sure you set the (o)ptions - harvest to only farmers harvest. A trained farmer harvesting will get a lot more food then random unskilled or low skilled dwarves.

Are you sure about this?  I was always under the impression that the skill of the PLANTER rather than the HARVESTER was the important thing?  For me, the reason I've always used "only farmers harvest" is because that way the farmers get all the experience rather than having the experience "stolen" by non-farmers.

KD

That's how I go by it too - you want better training on your farmers so they can plant more with the same amount of seeds. Harvest-all is useful for "oh shit my farmers are all busy, someone gather those plants before they wither!" moments.

Incidentally, nobody has suggested to just breach a pool and then wall it back up as irrigation?