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[murlocdummy]

You should get used to them. I actually enjoy building massive prisons full of the insane and the awesome:D

I have yet to build any prisons.  My dwarves are sufficiently happy so far, so it doesn't seem necessary to put anybody into a prison, however, my animal stockpile is filling up with various animal people and goblin thieves.  I heard that they die in the cages from hunger, but they haven't been doing that.  I've also heard that you can disarm them by stealing their weapons/clothes, but I don't see any clothes when I select them with k.

I've also seen that my farms seem to lose seeds every now and then.  I bought some dimple cup seeds, and now I have none.  I assume that crop failures occur, causing a crop to be lost after they've been planted?

Anyway, right now I've acquired a few weapons and armor, so I can actually begin equipping my military with them.  To equip stuff, I just go to the military screen, select a unit, then go into the equip menu and select items from the list, right?  And the items that they've already equipped are the items with symbols next to them on the right, if I'm not mistaken.  I also want to equip my civilians with armor.  Is there any way to do that?

Dwarves when farming, only produce the product. When the product has been brewed, eaten or processed, it produces seeds:D
[cooking does not produce seeds]
Also, your civilians are going to have to be in a squad to equip that armour. I hope it's at least decent metal armour

Well, my pig tails can't be cooked, up I ended up losing all of its seeds anyway.  Maybe processing them causes loss of seeds?  I also lost all of my cave wheat seeds and my sweet pod seeds aren't increasing.  I also lost my dimple cup spawn and quarry bush seeds.  The only thing I haven't lost is the plump helmet spawns, which are doing extremely well.

It looks like dimple cup is only used with a mill or its manual equivalent to produce dye.  Since I've never built those before, then It seems that the lack of dimple cup spawn is due to that.

As for the rest, it appears that I do have a few leftover seeds, although not nearly as many as my plump helmets.

Also, a dragon has appeared.  It's just standing around at the edge of the map, not doing anything.  The wiki says that it can be trapped with a cage trap.  Is that true?

Also, my military is refusing orders to kill that goblin that's remaining from the goblin siege.  I've equipped them with crossbows and ammo, but they're still refusing to carry out the order.  Are they just far too tired and unhappy to follow orders?  Their current task shows as Soldier  (cannot follow order).  I figured that since the goblin's stuck on top of a tree and not shooting at my guys, I'd be able to just shoot it down...

[Theifofdreams]

Well, my pig tails can't be cooked, up I ended up losing all of its seeds anyway.  Maybe processing them causes loss of seeds?  I also lost all of my cave wheat seeds and my sweet pod seeds aren't increasing.  I also lost my dimple cup spawn and quarry bush seeds.  The only thing I haven't lost is the plump helmet spawns, which are doing extremely well.

It looks like dimple cup is only used with a mill or its manual equivalent to produce dye.  Since I've never built those before, then It seems that the lack of dimple cup spawn is due to that.

As for the rest, it appears that I do have a few leftover seeds, although not nearly as many as my plump helmets.

As far as I know, cooking or similarly breaking down a plant is the only thing that permanently destroys seeds. When a dwarf eats the plant, or brews it, the seeds are left over to be reused.
Also, I suspect that no matter how large a creature is, if it were stuffed into a cage which were placed under an atom smasher, it would be destroyed. Cages can hold any creature, but all cages are a fixed size, after all.
Not that I know that second fact for sure. I haven't done the !!SCIENCE!! on it, personally.

[murlocdummy]

Well, right now, I've delegated this particular fortress as a training level for myself.  I'm probably going to just restart with a whole new fortress eventually.  The main problem I'm having is really that one goblin sitting in the tree.  I don't know how or why he's just floating there, above a tree, but he's preventing dwarves from passing him and is altogether just an annoyance.

My military units seem to be unwilling to just shoot him down.  I don't want to just leave him alone since he's preventing my stupid dwarves from eating and drinking, as well as the risk of having more goblins in trees popping up with my military completely refusing to kill them.  Then again, I'm pretty sure that the Soldier (cannot follow order) is just due to the soldier being unhappy.

Also, I've just realized what's been causing my crop failures.  Upon season change, all of your planted crops die.  Simultaneously.  It's kind of irritating except in the case of plots that have plant settings that carry over to multiple seasons, like the plump helmets.  They don't seem to have to be replanted on season change.  Dimple cups as well.  The best bet is to try and grow a plant on a particular plot for as many seasons as possible, and the remaining seasons, set it to plump helmet, since it's the most plentiful, and you can easily take the loss in the long run.

[Garath]

Too bad there's no way to get all of your dwarves into a single location, preventing them from running around doing useless tasks.  I tried using burrows and placed all of my dwarves in it, but the dwarves just disregarded it in order to do whatever the hell they wanted.

From this experience, I've realized that pulling a lever doesn't mean that the lever is going to get pulled.  Dwarves seem to completely disregard your commands almost all the time, and there doesn't seem to be a way to change the order at which they do things.

Odd...it seems that for whatever reason, most of the siegers left...leaving a single bowman on top of a tree.  Are my melee units going to be able to reach him up there?  It seems that he ran out of ammo and is just pestering my units trying to pick up items.

a siege force leaves after a while

go to (w) for burrows and paint the whole inside of every floor where you want your population to run and play, and just have it like that. Next time in a siege you want to play with bridges, go to (m)ilitairy, (a)lerts and select the burrow you just created. All your civilians will now stay in the painted area

otherwise they will rush out to collect the items the dead caravan was carrying

[Theifofdreams]

otherwise they will rush out to collect the items the dead caravan was carrying

No dwarf alive can resist the siren song of sock.
The other stuff is just a bonus. Like getting your cake, and finding out that not only is it frosted, but also has jello on the side.

[Garath]

i dont use smashers but other traps, and had a hard time getting my dwarfs NOT to rush in to drag fallen enemy corpses out of traps

[Loud Whispers]

Well mur, I've never seen that happen before:P
So unless you game is bugged, nyeh.

Most likely thing that's happened is you've just not brewed, processed or spun any of your crops!

Or you know, you didn't bring seeds along. Seriously.

[YetAnotherStupidDorf]

Too bad there's no way to get all of your dwarves into a single location, preventing them from running around doing useless tasks.  I tried using burrows and placed all of my dwarves in it, but the dwarves just disregarded it in order to do whatever the hell they wanted.

You must use civilian alert (somewhere in interface maze, military, someone already have better memory than me) on burrow. You don't even have to assign any dwarves to this special burrow.

Also, my military is refusing orders to kill that goblin that's remaining from the goblin siege.  I've equipped them with crossbows and ammo, but they're still refusing to carry out the order.  Are they just far too tired and unhappy to follow orders?

Just try to go through usual list, from begginning:

• Do you have squad with marksdwarf uniform?
• Do you have dorfs assigned to it?
• Are these dorfs equipped with crossbows? Like, in inventory. Yes, you said you equipped, but check for sure. No crossbow = no shooting at all.
• Are these dorfs equipped with quivers? No quiver = no ammo carrying for dorf.
• Do you have ammo? Where? Stockpile, dorfs?
• Do you have assigned ammo for this squad? Do not mess with combat and training ammo, it is bugged. Just allow both and assign a lot of it. Also do not mix arrows and bolts, it is bugged. Just bolts, nothing more.

Probably there is something more that I forgot.

Their current task shows as Soldier  (cannot follow order).

In next version Toady will give more, uh, descriptive reason for why cannot follow order. Supposedly. I still have impression that half of (cannot follow orders) is bugs.

[Newbunkle]

Also, I've just realized what's been causing my crop failures.  Upon season change, all of your planted crops die.  Simultaneously.  It's kind of irritating except in the case of plots that have plant settings that carry over to multiple seasons, like the plump helmets.  They don't seem to have to be replanted on season change.  Dimple cups as well.  The best bet is to try and grow a plant on a particular plot for as many seasons as possible, and the remaining seasons, set it to plump helmet, since it's the most plentiful, and you can easily take the loss in the long run.

You've got it right. I've been playing for a year and had this happen to me just today. Coincidentally, this time I decided to build two 8x8 farms instead of several 4x4's as I normally do. Smaller farms naturally prevent you from planting all of them at once. If you want to go bigger you might consider forbidding half a dozen seeds in case the same thing happens again.

[proxn_punkd]

I didn't even think about that, since I usually only ever plant 1x4 or 1x5 plots and schedule crop rotations so stuff doesn't go out of season while it's still growing.

[murlocdummy]

Also, I've just realized what's been causing my crop failures.  Upon season change, all of your planted crops die.  Simultaneously.  It's kind of irritating except in the case of plots that have plant settings that carry over to multiple seasons, like the plump helmets.  They don't seem to have to be replanted on season change.  Dimple cups as well.  The best bet is to try and grow a plant on a particular plot for as many seasons as possible, and the remaining seasons, set it to plump helmet, since it's the most plentiful, and you can easily take the loss in the long run.

You've got it right. I've been playing for a year and had this happen to me just today. Coincidentally, this time I decided to build two 8x8 farms instead of several 4x4's as I normally do. Smaller farms naturally prevent you from planting all of them at once. If you want to go bigger you might consider forbidding half a dozen seeds in case the same thing happens again.

I make my plots maximum size of 10x10.  I set the thing off fallow for the first time at the start of the plant's growing season and all other seasons I set to plump helmets.  I end up using up all of my plump helmet spawn, but they're all in the ground for most of the year, and I have a ton of it, so it's not an issue.  After losing my last batch of sweet pods, I've learned my lesson, and won't make the same mistake again.  Now I just have to wait until the next Dwarven caravan rolls into town before I can replenish my sweet pod seeds.  I've considered starting an outdoor farm to increase my fort's food variety, but most of my units have been assigned the duty of farmer already, and I'm growing enough food as it is.  I pretty much dedicated most of my top floor to farming, so the only limiting factor is the number of dwarves.

I haven't dabbled in making potash yet.  Is it at all useful?  It uses up trees, which is kind of a waste, so I haven't even bothered with it.

Also, I didn't realize that I needed quivers.  Looking them up on the wiki now...

[Starver]

And the manager can be useless, or your best friend. Basically, you give your manager orders, and your manager gives your dwarves orders.
Oh, and the manager can set workshop profiles.

Many things I wanted to add, as reading this thread, but still a while away from the most recent questions...  But I'll jump in on this one.

I tend to make my manager my trader, and also be the first stonecrafter (eventually may become just one among several, in a small cohort who came with sufficient stonecrafting skills that I felt they not be wasted, then quickly become Legendary).  Because stone crafts are (currently) accepted by all trading races (including elves), can be made in huge quantities (so many that you can get embarrassed by the quantities a year or two into your fortress's lifetime, if not by the first dwarven visit) and often one, two, sometimes even three different types of rock crafts are given a premium price by the outpost liaison/diplomat.

I tend to set up one stockpile for each sub-type of craft (figurines, rings, etc), make wooden bins (or metal ones, if I have a particularly prevalent ore like lead that doesn't have a direct military application of any kind) and if I care to take advantage of the offers that the liaison/diplomat gives (could be 110-210% of their normal value) I've got easily sortable bins-worth of goods (the deal-type ones if it's the dwarf caravan, the non-deal ones if it's another caravan and I want to keep the deal-type goods for the later dwarf caravan) that I can simply send to trade and thus buy out the caravan of everything I find either directly useful, potentially useful in the future, can use for further trading, melt down to give more desired metals or am just taking off of their hands for the sake of it.

This is not necessarily something you'll want to think about in your first fort, but a manager/mayor/trader given stonecraft-only duties can do his/her bit to produce trade goods, prior to the caravan, and then be essentially forced to dedicate time to managing/trading by removing the stonecrafting duties.  And forced to trade by making sure there's no Management duties.  Except for he or she deciding to go to eat/sleep/drink.


There are disadvantages to all of this, but it leaves six dwarves able to do all the other things, with no worries about trading or prepping the stocks ready for the trading.  And soon you'll have more migrants to fill other duties and more than enough other Legendary stonecrafters, anyway, by my experience and you'll be making half of them into haulers, for significant amounts of their time.

[Starver]

[The mayor's] mandates being failed won't affect him at all.

It will however, affect the happiness of your resident dwarves, as they find themselves beaten to a fine paste by your Guard/Sheriff.

Build prisons, and make sure you have dwarves to keep them alive/a good prison system

The way I deal with this is to on embark, prep one dwarf for Mayorship by giving him the social skills (I don't bother with aforementioned stonecrafting, he picks that up straight away).  The dwarf I prep has sensible-looking preferences, already.  Ok, so I might be in a fix if I chose one that liked iron and he's on an iron-free map, but knowing what he wants I can generally make sure I'm haggling for the metal, stone and the like that he likes.  (It's a bonus if he also likes something I'm going to be making, anyway, or wouldn't mind making, like crossbow bolts or axes or bins[1].)

And keep an eye on your other dwarves, as you get to beyond a few dozen, because when you're finally asked to suggest a dwarf for ennobling, you'll already know to exclude Urist McLikesSpoilerMetal and Urist McPrefersNonLocalStoneType and thus either the original Mayor (if you're happy to double him up, and assuming he hasn't been de-elected, but mine rarely do) or another patsy who fits in with the material possibilities of your fortress can be put into that position.

It's been ages since I've ever had to set up a prison of any kind, and not had (knock on glumprong) any punishments meted out to anyone for broken mandates of any kind (exporting a non-export item or non-producing a production item).  But that's just my experience.  YMMV.


In fact, I don't even have a Fortress Guard, only regular military.  I'm sure that when vampism and 'hidden kills' kick in, that'll be an aspect of my playing style that needs to be changed!


[1] This causes minor problems when he mandates against exporting them, or the particular metal your bins are made of, but then you just change away from "cull on mandates" and make sure you don't export the bins, regardless.  Which is easy to do.

[Garath]

your mayor will get unhappy from not getting his mandates and demand someone to be punished for it, and become unhappy if that doesnt happen

huge farm plots are a waste, you dont need that much space to be more than productive
If you leave a field fallow for the next season, the planted things wont disappear, but remain to be harvested.

[Starver]

Burrows: Never used alerts on them, only ever used them in the other mode.

They don't stop your dwarves walking anywhere, but they do keep dwarves from accepting (most[1]) jobs outside them.  Put a burrow over a workshop and a stockpile and they'll take from that stockpile in order to use in the workshop (or take finished goods from that workshop that will go to that stockpile).

Or they'll span "Cannot reach" messages.  Also applies if they've suddenly realised they have a personal sock somewhere, not within the burrow.  But by getting that message, you at least know they've got a need (you can paint a bit more burrow over the item, if you can find it).

However, going between various source and destination points, while doing a job, if they want to take a route that would make them charge right through the invading forces, they will.  The burrows not being defined there makes no difference.  Perhaps creative use of the Traffic Priority feature might help, here, although if dwarves can route through the invaders, the invaders are probably already on their way to routing towards the dwarves.


It sounds like you're learning, BTW.  And "learning to start a new fortress because this one failed" is a pretty common lesson.  (But so can be "learning how to desperately recovering from a massive failure", if you've managed to keep some of your guys safe. )


[1] In the event of starvation/dehydration they will wander out of them, I'm sure.  In event of extreme drowsiness, they'll be sleeping on the ground, so that doesn't matter too much.  Regardless, I tend to include into any "normal" burrow region (not one intended to keep a mason working for as much time as his little dwarven brain can stand, rather than randomly wander off to fulfill various needs) food/drink stocks, dining area and some extent (personal room or entire level within which I tend to put them) a potential bed.