Um, yes, anyway...
I'm having trouble deciding on how best to go about setting up the initial fortress.
We're situated along a river valley, right next to the red sand spire on the eastern bank of the stream.
I prefer to situate myself on a hill, and just carve off all the ramps but one narrow entrance to get up the hill, but in this case, we'll have to settle for carving all the ramps to get down into the valley, and just hope nobody brings bows when they invade for right now.
The west bank of the stream has a lot of open grassy areas we can claim, and plenty of trees, as well. The stream is not a brook, so we have to cross it somehow to access that half of the map.
The eastern bank is a very steeply-sloped area with little flat land for trees to grow on, even though it is a forest before it hits the mountains.
The stream has alligators and carp.
- Do we focus upon the eastern end of the stream for now, or split between east and west banks?
- Do we dig under the stream, or bridge over the stream? Digging under may be safer, what with the carp.
- How greedily do I claim an aboveground area for our embark? I can simply dig a trench or cut away ramps fairly quickly, and cordon off a significant chunk of the terrain that can be easily protected.
EDIT:
Oh, and if you guys want to survive, I'm going to need to ask some of you to let me turn on a lot of labors.
Dutchling, doctoring and swordwarfing isn't going to be helpful right now, so can I get you hauling and doing general farming tasks like making charcoal? Maybe also some smithing.
Darvi, I'll need to ask you the same thing - can you do some hauling and generic farming jobs?
I'll take up some of the random jobs like architecture and do the cooking until breadbocks arrives and gather aboveground herbs for aboveground plantings and the other various things that need to be done.