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[Kuroda]

Okay, decided to put all future problems I'm confused on in a single topic. And maybe use it just to talk about other things going on in the fort... Anyways..

Right now, I just received the first wave of migrants for the first reclaiming of Rimadablel, but they're more annoying than useful! I can see why so many people drop them in magma. Right as I was preparing for an underground farm, the fuckers refugees ate all my food... and I'm down to 10? drink. It's very annoying, and I figure I'm going to die.. again... from running out of food... again. Two things have come to my mind.

#1: Migrants are annoying. This is obvious to me now. I'm thinking of slaughtering them next time they come when I'm out of food. Thoughts and suggestions would be useful. Kill them or not, and if so, how. If not, what to do with them (seeing as they're all potters and cheese makers... except one who is a Trader, whom I appointed to broker and plan to keep.  He's actually useful, even if all he does is stand around while the trade caravans never come.)

#2: When I reclaimed this fort, everything except the furniture was all over the place. Will that happen if all my stuff is in stockpiles and behind walls and doors? Last time it was all in a dump and there were no doors, except for the dormitory. Will I be picking up the 400 stone scattered across the entire map again...?

[xeivous]

The ways you have of disposing of imigrants depends on what you have access to. If in doubt, lock em out.

Makes for great siege warnings, assuming they don't starve first...

[Karnewarrior]

I don't think walls and doors matter, when the game scatters your stores. What does matter is weight, meaning heavier items don't move as far. Iron bins work well for this purpose, if you can establish yourself well enough to get them.

As for migrants and drinks, try making larger farms, more stills, and make the migrants work in the two areas. Have them provide for themselves. Embarking near a river also provides a last-minute emergency source of water, although your dwarves get moody without alchohol.

[Girlinhat]

Assign your useless migrants to be farmers, and expand your farms.  Above-ground farms, or under-ground on soil, don't need mud, so you can place a good number of small plots all over the place, made to do plump helmets or strawberries.  That solves the migrant AND food problem!  You can also go into DF/data/init/d_init.txt and change your population cap, which helps stop migrants to some extent.  A cap of ~30 should hold you for a while, you can always change it later.

In small experiments, I made two rooms, above-ground with no ceiling.  One had stairs inside and out, the other had only stairs on the outside, which made the inner side untouchable.  When I visited it as an adventurer, both were disturbed.  I've heard the making walls and ceilings and making an underground section -completely- untouchable will stop movement, but it has its own bugs involved and debatable use.  Use the wiki for "reclaim fort".  Lead bins and barrels pretty much never move on abandon, and they keep things inside them, so a lot of players make a steel armor set, dump it in a lead bin, and then go claim the armor as an adventurer so they'll have free, high-quality armor exactly where they want it.

[Kuroda]

The ways you have of disposing of imigrants depends on what you have access to. If in doubt, lock em out.

Makes for great siege warnings, assuming they don't starve first...

Don't have access to anything really. No magma and not even any weapons, lmao. And I had thought about it, until I realised I'd lose access to trade caravans, which might be the only thing to save me at this point unless the stinking farm works out...

I don't think walls and doors matter, when the game scatters your stores. What does matter is weight, meaning heavier items don't move as far. Iron bins work well for this purpose, if you can establish yourself well enough to get them.

That BLOWS. I mean, I can totally get iron bins if I smelt more of the limonite I have stocked. Problem is, my dwarves are already canceling jobs just to hunt for vermin, so it's only a matter of time before they tantrum and kill each other. I wonder... does the game only scatter items on the same Z-level?

As for migrants and drinks, try making larger farms, more stills, and make the migrants work in the two areas. Have them provide for themselves. Embarking near a river also provides a last-minute emergency source of water, although your dwarves get moody without alchohol.

That was my plan... unfortunately, I couldn't dig through the LAST tile to hit the water I had found on my first attempt to dig downward. I have plenty of ponds all over the area, and tried to start a farm next to one, but it seems to have failed. No idea why. The ground was muddy when I plotted it. Cannot remember what I was trying to grow, but I'm pretty sure it was growable in caves, seeing as I recall it having the word cave in the name. Ah well, looks like I'll just have to immediately focus on farms when I reclaim it again. No big deal... picking up all the scattered stuff and burying the corpses will be the annoying part.

[Girlinhat]

You can only bury underground plants underground, so cave wheat (the only cave-name) won't grow on the surface.  You can only plant above-ground plants if you find them first.  d - p to gather plants, using the herbalist skill (you're using Therapist, right?) to gather some shrubbery.  If you can get some strawberries, prickleberries, or fischer berries, you can survive on those pretty well.  Also don't neglect fishing.  Build a fishery, and give some people the fishing skill for quick food.  You can't get booze from fishing, but if you're fishing that means you have water, and that's a fair alternative in a pinch.  If you make a zone with i, and declare it a water source with w, they'll drink from it more quickly, instead of going thirsty.

[Kuroda]

Assign your useless migrants to be farmers, and expand your farms.  Above-ground farms, or under-ground on soil, don't need mud, so you can place a good number of small plots all over the place, made to do plump helmets or strawberries.  That solves the migrant AND food problem!  You can also go into DF/data/init/d_init.txt and change your population cap, which helps stop migrants to some extent.  A cap of ~30 should hold you for a while, you can always change it later.

In small experiments, I made two rooms, above-ground with no ceiling.  One had stairs inside and out, the other had only stairs on the outside, which made the inner side untouchable.  When I visited it as an adventurer, both were disturbed.  I've heard the making walls and ceilings and making an underground section -completely- untouchable will stop movement, but it has its own bugs involved and debatable use.  Use the wiki for "reclaim fort".  Lead bins and barrels pretty much never move on abandon, and they keep things inside them, so a lot of players make a steel armor set, dump it in a lead bin, and then go claim the armor as an adventurer so they'll have free, high-quality armor exactly where they want it.

Hmm... sounds like a good idea. I wish I had access to lead now. As for all the discussion on the farm, it's going to have to wait until I reclaim the fort again, which I might just abandon as to avoid all the bodies that will be left from this attempt. As for editing the population cap, I'd rather not. I try not to cheat until I've absorbed every interesting thing I can without cheating. I don't consider editing the population cap as cheating, but I get carried away fast. Next thing you know, I'll be putting in the Produce Food cheat while flipping off the unfinished farm plots as I slaughter dragons with my Legendary-in-all-skills militia commander. That's... kinda how I ended up quitting Elona.

You can only bury underground plants underground, so cave wheat (the only cave-name) won't grow on the surface.  You can only plant above-ground plants if you find them first.  d - p to gather plants, using the herbalist skill (you're using Therapist, right?) to gather some shrubbery.  If you can get some strawberries, prickleberries, or fischer berries, you can survive on those pretty well.  Also don't neglect fishing.  Build a fishery, and give some people the fishing skill for quick food.  You can't get booze from fishing, but if you're fishing that means you have water, and that's a fair alternative in a pinch.  If you make a zone with i, and declare it a water source with w, they'll drink from it more quickly, instead of going thirsty.

I know that. And I have designated a water source, but it has nothing to catch for fishing.

P.S.: So much for that underground farm I was planning... the tunnel I dug from my second downward staircase to my first one all got flooded with 7/7 water... I ask: How!? I think I hit a water source, cause it's continually producing water from one tile... there's gotta be an underground lake under it or something. Well, it sucks, but I'm gonna have to go with something else. Need to find underground soil if I don't want to be stuck with above-ground farms. Looks like I'll be going back to the ponds.

[RTiger]

When you reclaim, everything you had gets scattered across ALL z levels. I never had much problem with migrants. There are a fair number of things you can do.


First, make sure you embark with enough food and drink. It is sounding like your not bringing nearly enough.

Second, bring a stoneworker, assign him to a craftdwarf shop, and pump out crafts, then take all those crafts and trade with the caravans for all the food they have.

As for your problem, it sounds like you hit an aquifer. If your having enough problems keeping fed, then why did you even embark in a place with an aquifer?

[Girlinhat]

The way I see it, is that d_init is the list of options in the F10 menu that DF doesn't have.  Instead of having a menu in the game, it has a .txt.  I wonder how many people would use the population cap if it were adjustable while running...  Plus, it's really not cheating.  Counties do this A LOT, just tell the motherland "nah, we've got enough people right now, you can keep them."  Since the population cap is 200 by default, you pretty much HAVE to change it, or else you suffer FPS death.  The same applies to the baby cap.  See: China, "We've got enough people, I'm issuing a decree to stop breeding so we won't starve ourselves."

Also, try generating less wealth.  High created wealth means more migrants, so if you work with wood instead of stone, and stone instead of metal, or simply don't produce things, you can do pretty well.  I can run an "under the radar" fort for ~2 years without seeing a babysnatcher, and only get ~40 pop, just by wasting time chopping some wood, building some wooden walls, getting a farm set up, walled off, and farmers trained, and sometimes even plumbing running using wooden pumps.  When you start producing nice stone tables and metal armor, then you attract attention from migrants and goblins, but if you're patient and give yourself time, you can build a thriving agriculture and THEN a metal industry.  Just remember that when you dig out stone, that stone counts towards your wealth, so digging out gems and iron ore can get pricey.

[Kuroda]

Hmm... more reason to focus on agriculture when I reclaim this fort.

Back to a problem I had tried to take care of...

There's a fucking Ghost Fisherdwarf haunting my Fisherdwarf! And I can't find his body. I found an arm and his foot, but that's doesn't help. I'm going to try memorializing him... didn't want to but it looks like he's one important fisherdwarf,

[Kuroda]

And I thought a ghostly fisherdwarf was the lamest that could happen... next a freaking soap maker is going to float into my fortress and laugh at my lack of hygiene.

[Girlinhat]

Actually, ghostly fishers have been awesome.  They still fish, and will collect hundreds of perfectly fresh fish in their ghostly pockets.  Then add a slab, and the fish drop, ripe for harvesting.

Ghostly lye makers.  That's the horrible one.

[Kuroda]

Would be awesome if I actually had fish.

[ral]

Don't be afraid to slaughter ALL of your animals if you get low on food. The thing with animals is, you'll always get more.

I've been embarking with 6-8 turkey hens. Once you build some stone nest boxes for them, they'll produce eggs at a ridiculous rate. Even with gross mismanagement I can't run out of food as long as I have some egg layers.

Also don't forget to go into z Stocks and disable cooking on your booze. No point in wasting perfectly good booze on cooking when you have so much other stuff to cook.

Don't forget plant gathering, and that you can get above ground plant seeds by plant gathering and brewing what you gather.

Migrants never seem useless to me because, the way I see it, I can always draft the legendary cheesemakers and send them on suicide missions, or have them do recon in caverns. Basically every useless dwarf gets assigned to a military unit.

[BlastoiseWarlorf]

You can solve two problems with one mod.

entity_default > [ENTITY:MOUNTAIN] > Replace the last part in all the ethic tags with ACCEPTABLE

Kill the migrants then butcher them. Prepared Dwarf Brain anyone?