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[insanity99]

this is my first fortress, i did not want to do a tutorial that told me everything so i learned the basics then kinda jumped in, should be fun anyway


this is my first floor.



this is my second floor



this is my burial area, many of these men and women died during a giant badger problem, where i had to draft people i deemed unimportant to the military. a hard choice but necessary.



this is my stocks overview.

any advice is welcome

[nanomage]

Oh armok it is HUGE!
on the advice, i'd suggest some building-destroyer-proof entrance like a bridge or something. Also , your farm is not really safe from outside because the rightmost pillar has no access and can not be completed.

[Naryar]

Get a bookkeeper and make him work.

Go on the nobles screen "n", take a preferentially intellectual dwarf, make him bookkeeper, select settings, put to medium or high precision. Or even highest.

You will need a chair designated especially for this bookkeeper.

[insanity99]

Oh armok it is HUGE!
on the advice, i'd suggest some building-destroyer-proof entrance like a bridge or something. Also , your farm is not really safe from outside because the rightmost pillar has no access and can not be completed.

a bridge at the entrance? what will that do?

Get a bookkeeper and make him work.

Go on the nobles screen "n", take a preferentially intellectual dwarf, make him bookkeeper, select settings, put to medium or high precision. Or even highest.

You will need a chair designated especially for this bookkeeper.

i have a bookkeeper and he has an office on second floor with a chair, table and two cabinets. though i haven't done any settings yet.

thanks.

[crossmr]

you've gone very long with your bedrooms. What I tend to do is go wide and deep. I build a long hallway, 2 wide. and I put branches 7 rooms wide on each side. If you also put stairs at the front of this area, you can house all your dwarves in rooms, and keep them very close to the production area, so they don't need to travel so far to sleep.

Usually on my first level, I'll only go back about 3 rows, which is around 84 rooms, and makes sure most dwarves don't have to travel very far.
You can duplicate this above and below, but you'll likely only ever have to pick one as 168 rooms should more than suffice.
you can see a large overhead here, now in this one I decided to extend, rather than go up or down, but I just felt like being different this time

a bridge at the entrance? what will that do?

You can set it to a lever to retract. Make sure to dig a channel under it, this way building destroyers can't get through. Just pull the bridge and wait it out if there are too many.

[nanomage]

a bridge at the entrance? what will that do?

If you have a moat at the entrance with a bridge extended over it, you can then link the bridge to a lever and it will either be retracted (disappear completely) or raise (form a solid undestructible wall on one of the ends) when the lever is pulled. The action should be specified with {asdfwx} keys when you build the bridge.

No creature can path over a dry moat, and no creature can beat down a raised bridge. Doors are not safe because they can be destroyed by certain invaders.

EDIT: hatches! hatches, too, are completely undestructible from below, so you can have upstairs with a hatch cover above it as your main entrance.

[insanity99]

ok thanks guys, is there a way to call all dwarfs to the fortress in case of an attack and many are outside, gathering wood/plants?

[nanomage]

ok thanks guys, is there a way to call all dwarfs to the fortress in case of an attack and many are outside, gathering wood/plants?

no easy and reliable way i know about.
You can declare a burrow (through 'w' -> 'a') then stuff all your dwarves there and make this burrow encompass the entire map.
When invaders appear, carve the dangerous outside area away from that burrow and your dwarves will generally tend to try to escape that area.
However, when there are goblins shooting bows everywhere scaring everyone, this is not going to work.

[JacenHanLovesLegos]

When you define a burrow to to the military alerts (m-a), create a new alert (c), and add a burrow to it. When a siege/ambush comes, activate the alert.

[boyhowdy]

ok thanks guys, is there a way to call all dwarfs to the fortress in case of an attack and many are outside, gathering wood/plants?

no easy and reliable way i know about.
You can declare a burrow (through 'w' -> 'a') then stuff all your dwarves there and make this burrow encompass the entire map.
When invaders appear, carve the dangerous outside area away from that burrow and your dwarves will generally tend to try to escape that area.
However, when there are goblins shooting bows everywhere scaring everyone, this is not going to work.

Burrows are easy and reliable if you know how to use them.  The wiki entry is fairly comprehensive and the finer points have been hashed out here on the forums.

[insanity99]

lol, what happened to this poor guy.

[Tahlin]

I love it when people post their fortresses. It's the most wonderful sight, better than drugs.

[Diamond]

I love it when people post their fortresses. It's the most wonderful sight, better than drugs.

http://mkv25.net/dfma/browseby.php

[Marthnn]

lol, what happened to this poor guy.

Yeah. Badger strikes again. A fistfight between an enraged badger and a civilian dwarf. Somehow both dodged in a murky pool at the same time, or something... Never happened to me, badgers on my map become enraged, but never get to bite anything.

Enjoy!

[ledgekindred]

you've gone very long with your bedrooms. What I tend to do is go wide and deep. I build a long hallway, 2 wide. and I put branches 7 rooms wide on each side. If you also put stairs at the front of this area, you can house all your dwarves in rooms, and keep them very close to the production area, so they don't need to travel so far to sleep.

Keep in mind though that if they are within 20 tiles (IIRC) of workshops they will be "bothered by noise" when they sleep, which will give them a negative thought.  If they all have masterwork bedrooms that can offset it, but I still tend to dig in the opposite direction of the workshops and a level above or below to keep them from getting negative thoughts at all.  Also give everyone a cabinet to put their claimed items in along with their bed or you will wind up with claimed crap all over the ground.  You don't need very large rooms, since they will be happy with a nice bed and cabinet and size of bedroom doesn't really matter.  (Except for nobles - make 'em big and put expensive crap in 'em.)

http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-10310-diamondrelic

I'm a couple years past this export, but haven't done much construction since.  You can see where I've built my bedrooms. (on level 36 - the map viewer seems to drop you in random places all the time.)  Workshops are on levels 39 and 41.  Travel is still fast and convenient via the central ramp system.

I use ramps rather than stairways - a ramp counts as one step to go between levels but stairs require 3, I think.  One to step on the stairs, one to move up/down the stairs and one to step off the stairs.  They can also lead to congestion since only one dwarf can use it at a time so they have to wait while another dwarf is on them.

I make my dorfs walk through an "outside" area if they go to or leave from their meeting area.  And I station my military dorfs outside on station one season a year for the same reason.  So far I've pretty much avoided cave adaptation on anyone by doing this.  It keeps them from getting pissed off if they have to go outside.

Use burrows - use the link boyhowdy posted and learn it well.  Burrows are a necessity for both military action and keeping your civilian dorfs inside when there is an ambush or siege.

Set up traps.  Stonefall traps are fine for the first year or two.  Once you get metals, set up weapon traps.  A masterwork mechanism with a handful of captured weapons will turn invaders into kibble quickly and easily.  You could also set up cage traps so you have prisoners for your military to practice against.

All of those refuse piles consist solely of the skeletons and skulls of dispatched enemies.  My military is pretty badass.