What I get anal about is names and appearances. The last names, specifically, since I can wipe the first name off with a nickname.
What does normally take up a vast amount of my time, however, is group/fort names. I like the names to be relevant to whatever it is I'm planning for the fortress, so constructing an acceptable name for both can take quite a while.
I concur, I get touchy about names. My settlement is named "Goldencrowns" because it seemed to have so much gold around that I could literally cast the crenelations of my towers from the stuff. Then I got realistic and decided to simply cede a gold crown back to my home civilization in tribute, every year. I also insist on military squad names that remind me of what they're equipped with--the "Pointy Picks" for miners or "Bearded Lances" for speardwarves. Iton, did you know that the Init file gives you the option to control what the Nickname function can override?
Backups are your friends...
Not really interested in spying out the land before hand, kinda takes away from the sense of adventure.
In this case, my embark site is very close to my home civilization (literally 1 diagonal tile away in the World Map of the Embark screen), so I don't think a good thorough surveying would have been out of order. Besides, arriving at a spot and being physically unable to set up camp at a slightly better spot just a few hundred yards away isn't terribly realistic.
How I Embark:1. I keep on Starting/Aborting until I get a Mayor-type with a really, really nice set of broker/bookkeeper/social attributes.
2. 4 dwarves are Miners (Novice is fine, and yes you're correct daggaz, Miner leveling is determined by quantity dug, and you can tear through dirt
really fast: My Miners get to Talented or so before they even take their first nap), while the other 3 are Growers and also have Woodcutter, Herbalist, and Fisherdwarf, respectively--skills that can be used while they're waiting for the farms to be dug.
3. Nobody gets more than 1 rank in anything--with the exception of the Expedition Leader, these are all basic, multipurpose dwarves, there to cover all the bases until migrants come along who can cover them
better.
4. Each dwarf has skills that are similar or (theoretically at least) complement each other. Miner/Mason/Engraver/Architect. Miner/Wood Burner/Furnance Operator/Metalsmith. Grower/Plant Gatherer/Plant Processor/Brewer. Etc. Make sure the craftsman-types (Carpenter, Mason, etc.) have good creativity.
5. No cheesing the game by building Adequate Ambushers (unless I intend to actually
use them as hunters) or taking just 1 unit of every kind of meat/milk/sand.
6. 4 picks, 1 or 2 axes, 3 sheep. Cat and 2-3 dogs optional (sheep reproduce more slowly, so it's more important to get them started sooner).
7. I don't take any medical or military skills on embark--you'll get military migrants in droves, and I'm wall-happy enough so that any points spent on medical care will be quite rusty by the time I'm likely to need them.
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Topic: Attributes, Traits, and Starting Builds. (Read 8508 times)