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[hapes]

This may be a 'facepalm' moment.

Haven't played DF in a while, picked up 31.19 to get back into it.  Load my usual setup, modified to include a doctor.  Mine out a space to put my food stockpiles in so they don't rot, then start putzing around with other stuff, but no military or defense.  Went on like this for about a year, and then the dwarves started hunting vermin.  Oops, forgot to set up farming.  Do a quick farm set-up using floor hatches from above and a drainage ditch, get farming working, get my dwarves up to like 1000 food, 1000 booze after another year or two.  Notice I still haven't bothered to do military.  I say to myself, "Self, you haven't set up a military...but you also haven't seen any snatchers or thieves.  Well, whatever."  Self still does not bother setting up military.

And then the seige comes. 

I draft 21 random dwarves (since I still don't quite get the DF2010 military system, despite reading the wiki), send them against the seige, and hope that it's enough.  Well, 4 dwarves die, 6 go to hospital and eventually recover, and the seige is broken.  Hot damn, I say!  And then I return to my normally scheduled ignoring of the military system.  Break through to the first cavern, pit a llama baby to do some exploring for me (he's wandering around with red injuries coz pitting him led to a 9 z-layer fall).  Start doing the dining room and offices for nobles, and...AMBUSH...I say to myself again, "Self, this time, let's figure out what we're doing!"  So, I pause the game, use Dwarf Therapist to figure out who has essential skills and who can go in the military, set up custom professions, then assign them all to squads, then assign the squads to go kill the goblins.  You can predict what happens next.  I sent 3 squads of 9 out to meet the goblins.  They came back with 1 or 2 in each squad...or should I say, those guys were probably eating and didn't even go out.  Tantrums started erupting.  I hadn't set up burrows to keep the civvies indoors, so they were all pathing out to get the dead bodies and dropped crap, and getting killed by goblins. 

Another fortress killed by overconfidence and laziness.

I don't like how rare metals are in 31.19.  I had plenty of wood to smelt metal and make stuff out of it, but no ore to do so with.  Oh, I could have bought it, but where's the fun in that?

Anyway, I'll try again, I'm sure.  And this time, I'll build farms and a military infrastructure much sooner.

[bluelang]

And use the "find" command before embark to locate ye some "shallow metalS."

[noob]

you dont need to make your farms muddy as long as they are on soil.

[Girlinhat]

Oh, I could have bought it, but where's the fun in that?

Yes, clearly, you seem to have enjoyed losing.  Granted, Losing is Fun, but after a certain point you have to either say "I'm a masochist and I enjoy sucking" or say "I think I'll swallow my pride and build a cage trap."

Also, expect to start buying stuff.  Caravan Arc is all about improving trade, both the method that traders operate and the necessity that resource scarcity places on you.

[JimboOmega]

Oh, I could have bought it, but where's the fun in that?

Yes, clearly, you seem to have enjoyed losing.  Granted, Losing is Fun, but after a certain point you have to either say "I'm a masochist and I enjoy sucking" or say "I think I'll swallow my pride and build a cage trap."

Also, expect to start buying stuff.  Caravan Arc is all about improving trade, both the method that traders operate and the necessity that resource scarcity places on you.

Cage traps are the only thing that don't require metal.  Regular metal though, via caravan, is too hard to get a handle on.  You can set steel bars and bronze and copper and etc to highest priority and get a small handful... enough to maybe partially equip a dwarf.  Not enough to raise an army, even after several years. 

The only ore worth getting from my caravan was tetrahedrite, but my civ didn't have access to iron, apparently.  Pig iron and steel though, at least.

[Skivverus]

This is because you're restricting yourself to bars, rather than bars-plus-instruments-plus-crafts-plus-... you get the idea. Meltable items are your friends.

[Dutchling]

You can also use glass and wood for weapon traps and pumps and floodgates for drowning traps

[JimboOmega]

This is because you're restricting yourself to bars, rather than bars-plus-instruments-plus-crafts-plus-... you get the idea. Meltable items are your friends.

That's - maybe - a couple bars more.  Maybe 4 if you ask for all of those things on high priority.  What are you going to do with a rose gold amulet besides melt it?  But still, that's no good for making weapons out of.

By the way, how relatively effective are glass weapon traps?

I also forgot about stone traps... but for good reason, as they are even less effective than ballistae.

[plisskin]

What version are you used to? Materials have gotten more important from 40d: iron destroys copper, bronze and iron are about equal match, steel destroys all.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Except for adamantium, naturally.

You might still be able to get by using other materials next time. As in, maybe a couple of fewer deaths.

Stonefall traps combined with pits to either side are one way to help with fortress defense when you're metal-less.

[wuphonsreach]

By the way, how relatively effective are glass weapon traps?

I think the concept there is "get your opponent to dodge into a pit"?  The weapon effectiveness doesn't matter so much as it forces the enemy to dodge and possibly fall?

[Uristocrat]

By the way, how relatively effective are glass weapon traps?

I also forgot about stone traps... but for good reason, as they are even less effective than ballistae.

Stone traps are only for early defense vs. goblin snatchers and the like.  But they're so damn cheap that you should just set up a few of them and replace them later anyhow.

Glass in weapon traps?  They won't kill anything, but that's not the point.  Make a twisty path (so it's longer).  Get a magma glass furnace.  Crank out spiked green glass balls until you're sick of them.  Set up a stockpile for these suckers near the path (as well as one for mechanisms, because the mechanicS are going to be *busy*).  Make a nice, long drop (preferably 4z or more) for anyone dodging off of the path.  Use a drawbridge to force bad guys to go over the twisty path instead of the main entrance way (I use two drawbridges to lock them into the middle part, which is in turn connected to the twisty path that leads outside).

With 10 of those balls in a trap, even the least skilled goblins will fall down the hole.  And no matter *how* much armor they have, dodging down enough z levels *will* hurt them.  And if you're smart, the only stairway out of that hole leads them back to the middle of the path, so they have to do the whole damn thing again until they dodge themselves to death.

You can mix in a few deadly traps with the good weapons if you want to.  If you do, put them at the bottom near the stairs that lead them back up to try again.  That way, everyone will get whacked by the few deadly ones.  Heck, you can mix in a cage trap or two if you want to (put those near the fortress, just in case some goblin manages to get past the traps).

And don't forget war dogs to catch the trapavoid critters.

[Valkyrie]

With the current "everything only requires 1 bar" forge bug, outfitting via imported metals is much more practical than in versions where you need 2x-3x as many bars per outfit.  And it doesn't need to be all-steel right from the start - steel weapons, and maybe a couple key slots (chest, legs, maybe hands or head), and then fill in with Bronze, Bismuth Bronze, and Iron for what you can, with copper or silver for the remainder.

Though I tend toward small forts (for fps reasons), I've had surprisingly good success with importing metals in 31.19.  A bunch of max and one-less-than-max requests in metal bars, maxed out wood, and restricting myself to a couple 1- or 2-tick requests elsewhere, the dwarf caravans have slowly been bringing larger and larger shipments of metal.  What started as ~2 bars for a maxed out metal is now usually around 10 bars.

Combined with buying out every metal item they bring (I don't request toys, cages, etc, but I certainly do buy them and melt them down; after all, I'm drowning in roasts, so buying a 2000 dwarfbuck steel toy for 1/10th of a steel bar is a worthwhile trade) and 1-tick requesting they bring the armor slots I'm hoping for in steel (breastplate, mail shirt, greaves, gauntlets, helms, caps, high boots), it got my fort outfitted in mostly-steel armor in just a couple years.  Now I'm slowly melting down the lower quality steel pieces, and either using it to make nicer mainslot items with my now-more-experienced armorsmith, or to fill in the gaps (ie more steel helms, and such).  I had the semi-good fortune to be at a tetrahedrite site, so I have loads of copper, meaning requests for Tin bars yield two quality armor/weapon bars per caravan'd tin - and tin cages are a welcome bonus.

I considered asking for the metal ores as well, since it seems like it'd be a way to get more metal per caravan, but caravans seem to be weight-limited in general, and ores are much, much heavier than the bars.  There was a sizable jump in metal bars when I stopped requesting heavy stuff (mostly fire clay, since I was experimenting with the new features), though I can't disentangle that change from what else may have happened that year.

[Babylon]

Oh, I could have bought it, but where's the fun in that?

Yes, clearly, you seem to have enjoyed losing.  Granted, Losing is Fun, but after a certain point you have to either say "I'm a masochist and I enjoy sucking" or say "I think I'll swallow my pride and build a cage trap."

Also, expect to start buying stuff.  Caravan Arc is all about improving trade, both the method that traders operate and the necessity that resource scarcity places on you.

Cage traps are the only thing that don't require metal.  Regular metal though, via caravan, is too hard to get a handle on.  You can set steel bars and bronze and copper and etc to highest priority and get a small handful... enough to maybe partially equip a dwarf.  Not enough to raise an army, even after several years. 

The only ore worth getting from my caravan was tetrahedrite, but my civ didn't have access to iron, apparently.  Pig iron and steel though, at least.

Rockfall traps also do not require metal.

[hapes]

So, in response to a couple of posts here:

1>  I had tried a "f" for shallow metals "multiple", but it didn't find a site with that.  I don't know what "Multiple" means, even after looking on the Wiki.

2>  I needed to muddy the floors for farming, there was no soil on the map. 

Anyway, it's good to hear other opinions about what I did "wrong".

[Girlinhat]

If you're complaining about people on forums criticizing your method, then we're all doing our jobs right.