Yar, so just need to irrigate it, few buckets and that's about it.

What I personally plan is to have above ground farming for the first few months until i get irrigation done (either through buckets/pond or through channeling/floodgate/river), it still works apparently.
From what I read picking up some bushes then planting above ground still works, just that's a little more dangerous for your dwarfs since it's outside

Apparently also some of the new underground caves already have muddy soil in them, just that depending of what is inside these caves it might be dangerous to go there

I agree it's a bit harder now but I always found it was a bit too easy to produce food for your big fortress.

Like a 5X5 farm plot could feed a huge fortress without much issue, including the booze

This post has been edited by Gormaz: Apr 7 2010, 06:49 PM

Dwarfs and water can be pretty stupid (like with everything really), I know having some tiles in water can screw up the pathfinding so just be careful with where you put the water

Yar, looks like Toady working on some of the most show-stopping bugs right now such as the pathfinding issues and crashes.

Can't wait to try out all the new stuff, hospital and new undeground things sounds really good stuff

Yar, that fort was really awesome.

Personally I usually go for very "functional" forts with more or less the same floor design each time

- Ground / tradepost / barracks (could be on a cliff though)
- Some piles (wood mostly, this is also a "temporary" level when I start up, to bring stuff underground quickly before I dig the rest below), I usually put kennels/animals - handling stuff here
- empty (to avoid cave ins if I start building towers or channeling like a mofo on surface)
- housing
- dining hall / food and booze industry
- few levels empty to avoid noise to housing
- huge piles level (for the industries below)
- "industry" level with most of my workshops like crafting, masons, carpenter etc.

Metalworking is usually located somewhere else depending of magma.

Overall it works well but it does get a bit "boring", just that I am usually not the most artistic or creative person when it comes to design

I really can't wait to have the bugs in the latest version fixed, I have not been able to make the military really work so I never really managed to explore the new caverns too much.

This post has been edited by Gormaz: May 4 2010, 09:34 AM

Yar, it's getting pretty good for this version, I am only waiting on some major military fix to start a new fort.

In my last tried with that version I was not really able to get my dorfs to train, the new military menu is pretty hard to get around.
I might try again soon and make sure they do individual training and not group one (group seems to be totally bugged right now)

Didnt see that one in the changelog yet.

I think Toady said he will soon focus on doing a whole bunch of bug fix on the whole military system.

Lots of stuff to be done on some critical stuff like crossbows, training, equipment (some bug fixes on equipping your military were done in previous version though), weapon damage and armour balancing etc.

I will wait for this to get myself really started, not fun to rely only on traps for fighting in my opinion

0.31.12 is out, seems to have fixed majority of bugs in the military.

I will give it a try as soon as there are updated versions of MayDay pack and Dwarf Therapist

I like kittens, they make good food... >_>

I am trying to find out why my dwarfs train military very very slowly now, after 6 years of training they are still at maximum "Skilled"...
New military system is still kinda hard to get used to really.

This post has been edited by Gormaz: Aug 4 2010, 06:02 PM

How so?

You mean having to irrigate underground soil first now?

Personally it's either the bucket way to get a 4X4 field down or the whole irrigation channel involving brook/channels/floodgate stuff for whatever size I want.
Getting a farm started is usually the first thing I dig once I have dug a few rooms for my initial piles/meeting hall.

I usually play around with PerfectWorld mod though to get a map with a brook/river, a Volcano AND a sedimentary layer for Iron/Steel/Flux, I highly recommend it

Still having lots of trouble with my military though, the damn Urists gain skills wayyyy too slow

- For bucket you first dig your future farm to whatever size you want.
like (x = normal floor, . = channel, I = designation)
XXXX
XXXX
XXXX
XXXX

for a 4X4 room

Then on the level ABOVE the farm, you need to channel a hole to the farm level.

XXXX
X.XX
XXXX
XXXX

The designate the "hole" as pond from the upper floor

XXXX
XIIX
XXX
XXX

i -> designate
then on the zone do p for "pit/pond"
Then P to transform the pit (by default it's animal Pit and not Pond) and then f to order the dwarf to fill it up

so i -> designation -> p -> P -> f

Then the dwarf will start taking buckets, going to nearest water source and throw the water in the hole, which will irrigate the below tiles slowly.

Works well when you end up somewhere were murky pools/brooks arent very well located

If you want some bigger farm plots though you are better making multiple channels above it and designate each as a pit, to make it faster for the water to spread.


- For Perfect World I personally do not know much of the advanced feature but there is the trick on the DW forums to have volcanoes with possibilities to have a sedimentary layer next to them.
Still takes me a bit of world generating to have exactly the type of biomes I want though.

This post has been edited by Gormaz: Aug 7 2010, 01:13 PM

I have never played around with pressure plates yet so I cannot really help with that.

Wiki seems to show that you can setup which weight you want to trigger the plate though, you could try to put it at a lower settings to make sure it gets triggered.

Babies, children and adults seems to all have different weights (ie babies are lighter than children who are lighter than adults), but all members of the same category seems to have the same weight (ie all adults have the same weight)

I know in 31 release Toady redid lots of calculation on weight/mass of almost all materials, it could have somehow messed up with some dwarf weight, not sure

This post has been edited by Gormaz: Aug 7 2010, 11:14 PM

There is always magma on the maps now but its very very very deep and there are a lots of "surprises" on the way, which means you need already to have a big military and fortress ongoing to be able to reach it.

Personally what I do is use PerfectWorld to jack up the number of Volcano on the map and embark somewhere where I have:

- Volcano
- River/brook
- Sedimentary layer (for iron, bautimous coal etc.)
- Flux (for Steel)
- Gobelins - for Fun

Takes a while to find a map with all the above but makes for some good play
And you need to tune PerfectWorld a bit to be able to have Volcano AND sedimentary layer on the same map, because by default it's pretty much impossible.

Volcano are all the way to the surface (and usually goes above the surface actually) and are an unlimited source of magma, just careful to tap them

For tutorial, the one that REALLY helped me get started was this one:
Total Noobs tutorial to DF

Lots of stuff covered in it, including farming, magma, irrigation, digging, housing, military etc.

Was made for previous version though so some stuff changed but it can still help get started.

This post has been edited by Gormaz: Aug 11 2010, 11:29 AM

It's really very deep, like maybe 80 or 100 levels.

But I really do not recommend it much as there are 3 layers of caverns in between and there is a lot of Fun inside them (Fun as in the DF sense: mega beasts, monsters, even demons...)
So you need to go very careful and already have an equipped military (so already have smelted stuff) since some of the stuff in there is immune to traps and destroy doors/floors etc.

You used to be able to find a location with a magma pipe or magma cistern before but the new version has changed all of these and you cannot search for them for now.
Which is why I personally go for a Volcano, unlimited magma that goes up to the surface.

Anyway you do not absolutely "need" magma, you can do all without by using wood or coal to power your industry but it's quite more troublesome.

A challenger appears!!

Goblincamp

Open source small project based on DF kind of gameplay, with a UI where you can use the MOUSE (unbelievable I know)!

It's far from DF complexity for now, but I will be keeping an eye on it myself

This post has been edited by Gormaz: Aug 17 2010, 09:30 AM

Yar, I am also having super slow training speed, from what people say on the forum, some arent getting that issue, some do.

Kinda of weird that after 2-3 years of training most of my dwarfs are still on Dabbling or slightly above skills level...

Indeed it does ^^

Water can works well too but cleaning up refuse after is a pain.

I recently managed to find an embark with a volcano that isnt rising out in a big mountains above the map, ie the volcano top is at the same level as the ground level of my map.

So I built my entrance through few retractable bridges above the volcano, when gobos arrive... I let them come on the bridges, then pull the level.
Didnt know you can build bridges above Walls

Works pretty well and no cleaning to do after this, I don't need goblinite since the map has pretty much any kind of resource I need.

For very early defense I personally use stone fall trap, they arent great but they can usually stop the first few gobo snatchers.
I also always embark with a couple of dog that I chain near my entrance to make snatchers pop.

Ha yes, the almost all-mighty towercap cage ^^

I actually didnt manage to move gobos from inbetween cages, is it still possible?
In previous versions I used to be able to do this but like you said, now whatever I do they get scared by the gobo and run away leaving the gobo run amok in the pilestock...
And with my forever dabbling military it can really be an issue...

So I used to use lots of cages too but since that issue make it just too complicated to clean up (have to construct the cage with gobo, link it to a level, etc), I just ended up dropping the cage into magma....
Then I started to wonder why the hell I was bothering with cages actually if it was to dump them into magma.

Thus my volcano-bridges stuff....

I also think Toady increased sieges strength in newer versions, I never used to see troll or mounted goblins, now at like the 2nd or 3rd sieges I see 2 squads of trolls and all my gobos are mounted on Jabberer or other crazy stuff like this

I tried the "make the gobo drop in the magma" by defining an Animal Pit on top of the magma but it wasnt working fine for me since the dwarf get scared,

So I made a "burn baby burn" room with pumps, floodgate and all near my volcano.
Then construct the cage in the room,

Pull the levers and the room get flooded with magma.
Pull other levers and pumps get the magma out.

Yar, I played 0.31.25, kinda like it, some good new stuff in it.

Training military is still broken but can use danger room semi-exploit instead.

I like caverns and co

Just Toady seems to be working for a long time on the current development (that Undead crap) while, as usual, imo there is lots of others things he should work on but well...

DF is a game I go back once in a while, play like hell for few days then go away on other games ^^

It tooks mine like 3-4 years to become "dabbling" or some other very low level in any military stuff.

Tried with having a teacher dwarf, embarking with military dwarfs etc, nothing I could do really made a difference, tried in 3-4 different forts too and for few last versions of DF

Danger room = takes time to setup but once done in couple of seasons I have experts/grand master in whatever weapons and armor I give them.

Way easier than the planning interface too.

As for early siege, I usually embark in a place with sand (or I hack one soil to become sand if don't have sand).
One of the first industry I set up is glassmaking one, then makes buttloads of "green glass serrated disk" and makes traps with them.
Infinite sand = infinite amount of trap components, I keep a few dwarfs making them in auto-mode and once in a while make my mechanics plant more.
And Green glass is almost as deadly as steel traps components if I am not wrong, it cuts early sieges in small small small pieces.

My entry is always a long 3 wide corridor of traps that leads to the stairs going to my fortress proper, add a bridge/moat if needed.
2 dogs/cats/whatever pet that you won't miss at the entry make sure to spot sneaking enemies or ambushes so they get pwned by traps.

In the later years I do a circle of "watchtowers" with animal between glass windows to spot ambushes.

For later years defense, magma solves everything and no cleanup after.
I always embark near volcanos (more fun) so I dig a long long corridor as alternative entry to my fortress, block it in normal time with bridges.
At the Z level under that corridor I build a magma reserve that matches the corridor above.
Then on the entry level I remove the floor (so it goes into the magma)
Then replace the floor with retractable bridges that I all link to one lever in my dinning room

When siege arrive, I tell dworfs to go in, block the normal entrance with a bridge, open up my "corridor of magma doom".
AI see normal entry is blocked, goes to corridor of doom.
Once they are in, I pull the lever, all the floor/bridges suddendly disappear and the whole lot dive into magma under.
If needed, pull lever again, bridges come up, AI re-calculate path to entry, leftover go into the corridor of doom again.
Rinse and repeat.

Only stuff I can't kill this way is demons, flying monsters.
Megabeast are usually immune to magma but once in it I drop water in it, making it into obsidian, that kills anything

This post has been edited by Gormaz: Sep 1 2011, 10:33 PM