I'm gonna be an ahold today
- Never embark on watery soil, unless you know a way to get through.
It's like saying dont play DF if you dont know the control.
- Never embark next to someone else.
Why?
- Try to embark next to a river. Chances of fish are high in those areas.
Fishing is overrated. It's even possible to thrive (and have working hospitals) in regions without either ocean, river, muddy pools or aquifer.
- Know your surroundings. Evil areas are more annoying than calm areas.
This is true.
- Strike the earth ASAP. The faster you are underground, the faster you can get your dwarves to sleep in a bed.
False, bed can be built on inside, above ground tiles. You just need some roofing. The no digging challenge depends heavily on this.
- Plan your fortress ahead. Know what you want to design.
Unnecessary. Everything can be rebuilt.
- The less walls, the better.
False, walls are strategic defense that should be built en mass I believe I have ~350 tiles of defensive walls on my 7x7 embark.
- Farms need water, lots of them. Making a pond takes too long.
Overground crop needs absolutely no irrigation.
- Never connect caverns directly to your fortress.
Alternatively, make it easy to disconnect from the cavern.
- The ideal width for a large road is 3, for a medium sized road its 2, and a chokepoints is 1.
There's absolutely no reasons to construct roads.
- Design your trading depot after the traps.
If you trade at all, design your fortress after the depot.
- Cage traps are good, but only useful for survivors. Slaughter the enemy first, and cage any survivors.
With enough cage traps, any bloodshed is unnecessary. Unless of course, the opponent is [TRAPAVOID]
- Never think that caverns are safe. Underground can be worse than up
The only safe place is where nothing can fly into.
- Some animals can swim! Dont think that if you dont see animals, that they are not there!
There's always area map and unit list. Oversight is not a good excuse.
- Always have some traps in the cavern entrance. This makes sure that nobody gets in.
Alternatively, keep the entrance sealed.
- Forgotten beasts have trouble opening doors. Adding a door makes a huge difference between a surprise attack and a long wait for the enemy.
FBs dont open doors, they smash them open and laugh maniacally.
- Always have an army prepared, no matter what the size of your fortress is.
Correction: Always have weapons and amours.
- Forgotten beasts can be attacked with lots of brute force at the same time.
Doesn't mean it'll succeed.
- Give the army weapons, else they will be wrestlers/cannon fodder
Or Misc. object users which are very awesome.
- The ideal size to kill someone with weapon traps is 3, combined with 2 cage traps behind.
Weapon traps are very slow to reload. Upright traps are much more dependable.
- Cage traps are effective if you want to keep monsters alive.
True
- Flooding works best by first making the trap, then making the flood. Not the other way around.
A flood can be manually trigged. Meanwhile, a trap with nothing to do is an useless trap.
- Automated refill of a trap gives a good boost for when under siege.
I have no idea what this mean.