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[lifayt]

My second fort just perished because 3-4 dwarves die of thirst in the winter. I was under the impression dwarves only needed beer/wine to drink? What should i do to have a stock of drinkable water underground?

Thanks in advance!

[FleshForge]

Drill a well

Not everyone can drink booze (wounded, babies) and if you only make a single kind of booze, they get bored of drinking it, although I don't know if they'll die of thirst just to spite their boredom.  Probably something else is wrong if they're not drinking your booze but you'll want a well in any case.

[Proteus]

But always remember...
the well has to be underground,
of it is overground (even if you build walls and a roof over it)
the water in the well will turn to ice (even if the well is supplied by an underground channel ).

[Flaede]

It could be that the booze in the barrels also turned to ice. In which case the dwarves couldn't drink it. Was the booze kept undergound in a place that had never seen the light of day? If not, then it was probably frozen.

[greycat]

I've actually had dwarves die of thirst when I still had booze in the fortress, so I suspect I know what happened here.  I could be wrong, though.

If you have about 20 dwarves, and about 30 units of booze... then you have a Big Problem.  The 30 units of booze are probably in 3 or 4 barrels.  That means only 3 or 4 dwarves can drink at one time.  If 8 dwarves get thirsty, then 3 of them get a barrel of booze and hold on to it for a day or so while they slowly drink it.  The other dwarves stand around and get nothing.

You need more booze.  As a rule of thumb, I try to keep 5 units of booze for each dwarf.  So if my population is 21, I try to keep about 100 units of booze, minimum.  More is always better.

And yes, try to get a well over an underground (non-freezable) water supply as early as you can.  Otherwise injured dwarves will die of thirst.  In a real pinch, dwarves can collect water directly from cavern lakes, but that's risky, and not as clean.  Wells are the way to go.

[vassock]

The well is always more important than booze. Anyone can drink from a well, even if booze is the preferred drink for some dwarves sometimes. To make your well monster-proof, mine until you're one square away from getting a rush of water from an underground cavern, place and connect a floodgate right next to that last square of wall (switch should be inside your fortress), open the floodgate, carve a fortification in the last stone square and then leave the area. You should now have an endless stream of underground water to be used in your well and safe from enemies since no enemy can destroy terrain (construction and natural walls). The floodgate isn't really necessary if you never plan on going down there.

[Proteus]

...To make your well monster-proof, mine until you're one square away from getting a rush of water from an underground cavern, place and connect a floodgate right next to that last square of wall (switch should be inside your fortress), open the floodgate, carve a fortification in the last stone square and then leave the area. You should now have an endless stream of underground water to be used in your well and safe from enemies since no enemy can destroy terrain (construction and natural walls). ...

That is not totally correct...
swimming monsters can swim through fortification.
While this doesnīt happen often (maybe coupled to probability), it happens (for example with forgotten beasts...
but swimming mounts of invaders (if you supply your well by the river/brook or moat instead of the underground lake)
could also go through fortifications to gain entrance to your fortress)

[FleshForge]

I've never had a forgotten beast (or anything really) swim through a fortification, although maybe I've just been lucky.  Swimming mounts of invaders as well.

[Proteus]

Definitely ...
in once past version of DF 2010 (think it was version 4) I had a siege with goblins on cave crocodiles...
my fortress was surrounded by a moat (with a well behind a short channel and a fortification getting supplied by the channel) 
as you would expect, the crocodiles immediately entered the moat, thereby drowning their riders.
Well, thanks to the archery-bug I wasnīt able to do too much about the goblins, especially as my military was very weak during this time, so I hoped, that finally the cave crocs would drown enough riders, that either the invaders would leave, or the invaders were weak enough to get attacked by my few military dwarves.
Well, while my attention was diverted somewhere else, I suddenly got lots of messages about "Dwarf x cancels task y because of cave crocodile"...
A cave crocodile had enetered the well room thgrough the well and was trying to attack my dwarves (fortunately quickly killed by my military dwarves and a few drafted miners). (it was the only cave crocodile who made it through, so I definiely wouldnīt say that a fortification is useless)

As for a forgotten beast...my fortress had this case last year (i.e. with version 12)...
well supplied by underground lake, swimming FB entering the lake...as the lake was huge, my well was behind 2 fortifications (ug-klake->channel and channel->well reservoir)  and the FB didnīt make any attempts to enter the well room, I didnīt take any security precautions, like closing the flood gates...
nothing happened for a few years, but finally I got a message about "FB has destroyed a door"...the FB was standing directly in my well room..obviously it finally had made its way past these 2 fotifications (fortunately it took only a few losses to kill it)

[Flaede]

Same experience here, with the swimming through fortifications. No one I've talked to knows if fliers can manage the same trick, however it also renders magma-submerged fortifications just as useless.

I'm told creatures cannot destroy "up", however, so a deep well shaft with a 'floor' grate one or two z levels below the water's surface should be a more effective barrier, and still allow for wells.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

What about "brook" tiles? Can baddies swim through those as well?

[Psieye]

Aren't brook tiles just floor tiles? Anyone can walk over them. The true monster-proof design for a reservoir involves pumping out the liquid into your reservoir, and then constructing a floor over the hole that you used to pump liquid in. Nothing can get past a constructed floor and it was the only way for the water to come in. Using the pump means you have dry land to build that construction in the first place, after you've filled the reservoir.

[Hague]

Also consider that if there is no pathable path into the fortress, then a building destroyer won't head that way. Pumping water through a grate seems to work reasonably well.

I found a sweet fort location atop a waterfall. I dammed it up in the winter and channeled out 2 z-levels below and added a low-LOS causeway for three entrances. At the bottom of the waterfall, I dug out a cistern for a well and blocked it with steel bars. Since the water at the bottom will not flow upward, I don't have to worry about my fortress flooding and it never freezes over. Now I have wells at integral points all around the fortress on multiple levels. If at all possible, make sure to get a well placed directly inside a hospital zone, that way cast-making and water-giving are very quick.

[Sheb]

I think I know what happened, it is known the moving water can push stuff trough fortification. That explain how that cave crocodile got there, and why he was the only one. (He can't path, but was pushed trough it by random luck)

[Proteus]

Thatīs probably correct