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[Sir Iryn]

Bloody useless gold. At least silver is useful for cracking skulls.

BTW, never noticed that on the embark screen before. Shallow Metal vs Shallow Metals. That would explain why I have tons of hematite but not much else. Not complaining there though.

[kotekzot]

Gold is super great for artifact blunt weapons. Have all your farmers and haulers make a weapon each, enjoy useful artifacts.

[rawrcakes]

I noticed you picked an embark spot with "Shallow metal" not "Shallow metals".

Just "Metal" means it is only 1 type of metal, and yours seems to be gold.

Gold is not shallow metal, though, but a deep metal. At least I think so - shallow metals consist of sedimentary layers only, and that leaves only iron ores and coal for the shallow metals. So it seems your embark has missed the entire shallow metals-layer altogether, which seems to be a part of the crossing biomes-bug.

Anyhow yea, it seems the OP's run into the common problem the recoding of the metal variety with 31.19 brought. To quote myself from an earlier post (from http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=87212.msg2371519#msg2371519):

Metal scarcity is one thing, yes, and jesus does the lack of reliable coal annoy me - tetrahedrite is cool, because copper and silver is at least usuable for something, but without coal, I feel the dependancy on magma forges is too big, which limits "good" embark sites.

Anyhow, it also seems intersecting biomes do not affect the type of rock at the embark site like it used to do anymore. From 31.18 and previous, the generator would somewhat correctly apply the various stone types of the different biomes inside the embark, but from what I've seen, the current generator seems to pick a biome at random from the overlapping biomes, then applying its type of stone for the entire embark site instead of doing a split. This, of course, reduces the ammount of metals and stone you'll get, compared to earlier versions.

That said, I usually play on 2x2 and 3x3 due to cpu limitations, so the problem might not be existing in larger biomes. Anyone want to check?

[Z1000000m]

Remember that unlike the previous versions, you can't see the stone layers (and therefore, can't say what metals will be availible)
If you want as many metals as possible, look for embarks with shallow metalS and deep metalS. Even with that you cant tell what metals will be availible.
The fastest way is to embark, and use dfprospector to see what metals are availible.

Also remember to avoid embarks that have a big aq area, most likely all your precious iron ore and coal are sunk deep in that fking conglomerate.

[rawrcakes]

Actually, after having embarked on various shallow metal-sites to check out various things, I've come to realise shallow metal does not equal sedimentary layer, but rather how close to the surface any type of metal layer is. Have had single-biome embarks start straight on metamorphic a few times.

[Werdna]

For the op, use gold to make trade products to sell to caravans to get metal... Otherwise, just take advantage of caravans and play as usual, half the fun is in making do with what you can find

Quick warning - be careful how many goods you start pumping out with gold because once your fort worth hits a certain point (and you can hit it really quick if you go whole hog producing stuff with gold) you're going to start getting sieges and that will be painful if you haven't had enough caravans to get a military decently equipped.   

You might want to lay low and produce only enough to get what you need from as many caravans as you can until you think you're ready; personally I'd look into military-less solutions (drowning chambers, bridges over deep pits, magma sprinkler systems, etc).

[K7avenger]

Relying on the caravans for your metal never goes well. They just don't bring enough to matter (Seriously, 4 bars of iron. Really!?) I know that caravans are supposed to be improved sometime in the future, but that doesn't matter now, does it? Probably best to use cage traps on goblins and strip them for metal unless you feel like abandoning that site. Or you can somehow bring magma up to the surface and use that as an effective, if somewhat crude, weapon. Or if you're in a somewhat adventurous mood, go find the adamantine spires and try your luck at those. You can bet that there are at least two or three of those on any embark.

[Sutremaine]

Turkeys are the best animal on embark. Seriously. So. Many. Eggs. And Fat birds.

Looking at the raws, I think peafowl might be better despite their smaller clutches. Turkeys start at size 85, grow to 2000 at one year, and then 5000 at two years. Problem is, they're mature after a year, so you can't easily keep track of how big a particular adult is. Peafowl start at size 100, grow to 2000 at six months, and reach size 4000 and maturity at one year.

Peafowl sometimes don't give out very much at the butcher's. I butchered three different adults with the 'isn't very muscular, gigantic build' description and got a skull only / 6 meat, 6 fat, 4 bone / 8 meat, 8 fat, 6 bone. I didn't count the intestines, which I got at least once. I have had a chick produce 2 meat, 2 fat, and a skin.

I don't know about turkeys, but a grown adult might always give meat and skin. Never kept them.

[Theifofdreams]

Thanks for the tips guys.
I've got a rough idea where I'm going with this fortress, and now I know how to find better embark points, as well as a better animal for food and goods.
What's the difference in depth between deep and shallow metals though? Maybe my deep metal is something more useful. Like copper.
As to the hammers, that means I'll need to start growing wood inside to keep the elves from getting pissed about over-cutting the forest down for coal. Any tips for that, since I need the coal anyway?

[K7avenger]

I think once you hit the caves, your in "deep metal" territory. I know that many of my embarks have had the tetrahedrite/galena upper layer, and once I would hit the first or second cave I would find something else (more than likely tetrahedrite/galena with gold or tin, MAYBE nickle). And don't worry about the elves. While the caravans are far from perfect, they often bring a fair amount of wood. And lets just say the elves combat prowess is...lacking. They use wooden gear, you should have some metal assuming you were using all that charcoal from cutting those trees. Metal beats wood any day of the week.

[Theifofdreams]

Again though, this leads back to the subject of this thread; IE: My lack of any metal besides gold. Which I begin to suspect I have nearly a literal mountain of.
Compound this with a lack of military, and I'm pretty sure right now a group of elves could kick the collective asses of every one of my dwarves.

[K7avenger]

Ah! But you DO have metal other than gold. Adamantine.

I guess what you're not getting is that you can seal off all contact with the outside world with walls/bridges. You can seal off all unwanted cave access with walls/floors. Plenty of time to find the spires, mine them SAFELY, and make your gear/train dwarves. And then, when you are ready to fight, just lower the bridges.

[Theifofdreams]

Yes, but I haven't dug deep enough to find Adamantine. Or magma. Oh well.

And I was actually thinking about doing that earlier, but wasn't certain if enemies could create paths over the walls. Is one Z-level of wall enough to hold back all my non-flying enemies?

[K7avenger]

Yep.

[Theifofdreams]

Swifty. If I can get the shops up, I think I'm going to make the walls out of solid gold. Just because nothing says "Haha" like having indestructible solid gold walls, while the dorfs behind them haven't a scrap of any useful metal at all.
Of course, to make sure nothing goes wrong before that, I'll make temporary ones out of chalk. Armok knows I've got enough of that as well.