Reso Community Fortress Thread

[Nylm]

For that I would go with the standard worldgen settings, which is 250 years, I believe.
That way you get a nice amount of history, without too many of the civilizations getting wiped out.

I made a couple of strawpolls to keep track of everything:

Things we definitely want

Things that would be nice to have

Things we do NOT want

Good, Evil, Neutral

[Arianamue]

Thanks for your hints, but keep in mind that I am totally new to DF, so all my previously mentioned problems actually came from me being a total noob and completely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of menus and options. It took me some time to find the most important things, but after trying it out for a bit, I think I start to get the hang of it.
As for the doors, I simply failed to realize that on my preferred zoom level you need to scroll the list of constructable doors in the manager menu. This is because I actually have a rather capable manager and didn't bother too much with the tasks given to workshops directly. Having such a proficient manager helps a big deal as I found out because once your fortress gets nicely populated, it can become a pain to distribute tasks in real time.
Having made the "mistake" to customize my party on my first try, turned out to be a rather fortunate decision, because I was smart enough to save that party profile so that I could re-use it on my next tries. So I got a trader, a manager, a bookkeeper, a doctor and some miners with a few crafting skills, while the doctor is also a cook and a butcher (might be helpful for a surgeon I figured ). On my most recent try I finally got a very peaceful area so I got enough time to try out the building/crafting stuff without interruptions. It's still hard to keep up with the speed of those sturdy little guys and I keep wondering how with their apparent lifespan they manage to reproduce like rabbits and not fill the world within 100 years

[Nylm]

Oh : D Well that explains the door issue.
I'm amazed. It took me about half a dozen fortresses to really get into using the manager. I still almost only use him for making steel and weapons.

So I got a trader, a manager, a bookkeeper, a doctor and some miners with a few crafting skills, while the doctor is also a cook and a butcher (might be helpful for a surgeon I figured )

Obviously you can do that however you like, but I tend to merge doctor, bookkeeper, manager and broker into one generic scholar position, as these jobs tend to have a lot of down-time and as such can easily be done by a single dwarf. At least until you start getting sieges and your doctors start getting busier. You can appoint different positions in the n-menu to the same dwarf

[Naxos]

Oh : D Well that explains the door issue.
I'm amazed. It took me about half a dozen fortresses to really get into using the manager. I still almost only use him for making steel and weapons.

Ari is mad 1337 hardcore like that , I'm expecting her to dig up adamantine and train enough wardogs to swarm hell with puppies and tamed bears in a few days

[Nylm]

Honestly, anybody who doesn't immideately give up upon seeing the UI in it's utter ascii glory for the first time is already doing batter than I did back in the day
it took me 3 attempts to even start playing the game.
But then, I was 15,

Also, completely unrelated, but I just remembered the Elves of Amanereli adventure, which is one of those DF things that is really worth a read

[Arianamue]

Well, although the past week was hell for me (work wise), I managed to experiment a bit with my little guys each day.
So I found out the hard way that Elves don't like when you offer wooden art for trade, that channeling swampy water holes doesn't really increase the amount of available freshwater but dries them out rather, that workshop dwarves love to cancel their jobs for the silliest reasons unless you assign tasks through the manager and that terrifying Werelizards are actually just human adventurers who try to scare Dwarves to steal their treasures.

I know that stockpiles are actually cluttering the stocks even more than leaving stuff where it is but I tend to use them to provide easy access to resources for workshops and as a visible indicator of available resource amounts. Also making a bigger stockpile now and then and designating it for certain items reduces the number of idlers for some time and it seems to put those idlers in a mood to pick up other work once they are done hauling. Moreover it keeps them from brawling and hurting the working population.

I started using the manager, because I found it hard to keep track of all the workshops and whether they are actually doing what needs to be done, yet the manager is not easy to use since he doesn't tell you beforehand whether a task is possible at all. Hamsters and rats seem to be strange critters. After I finally got hold of Tetrahedrite and made copper traps instead of wooden ones, it took them only one year to learn how to gnaw their way out of metal.

I had my first famine last winter and the children were the ones to keep the nation alive by hunting vermin for food. Some of my initial embark party members died and started to wander as ghostly Dwarves until I finally placed coffins for them.

To keep track of the actual stocks I found the hardest thing to do, because the list is so endless that you miss the important items easily. I'm still not sure whether my butcher actually slaughters the pastured animals or only those I set up as ready to be slaughtered because he keeps telling me he can't find enough butcherable animals nearby. I have to be careful though, that I don't let him process someones pets to steaks and sausages. Also I can't seem to get enough useable seeds for my farms, nor do I have a clue about the right size of farming spots.

I think so far I just got lucky to see my fortress prosper, because I feel I still don't know exactly what I'm doing. But I guess that's just part of the fun.

[Naxos]

In general, things dont start going downhill until nobles are involved.


I've recently taken back my save, where I was still building a wall around my entrance, to provide a protected way to access the outside, with woods and garbage disposal area. I remember what made me stop checking into it xD my dwarves keep trying to build walls from Under themselves, which they obviously cant, leading construction to be undefinitely delayed. I've set 3 entrances all protected by a gate and 2 surrounded by walls (pasture+wood and the other garbage area+caravan pathway).

I'm still rather at an early stage, where I dont have many dwarves, and they're not very good at what they're doing, but one of my dwarf have been possessed for some time now, and my best efforts to provide him with bones have failed utterly, despite having plenty dead animals and butchering them frequently. I plan on making some sort of Atrium somwhere in the fortress, as a form of experiment, so my dwarves dont acclimate themselves to the cavern.

Edit : I remembered too late how to set an animal for slaughter, and now he went insane =w= Berserk no less. I think this fortress will reach a very early end, considering I dont even have an hospital set up

Yeeeeep, he killed 5 of my dwarves, on my remaining 10, 2 of those who're left are children... He on the other hand is still very much alive, despite being virtually blind.

[Nylm]

So I found out the hard way that Elves don't like when you offer wooden art for trade

Not only that, but they'll reject anything that was produced using wood too. So don't try to offer them charcoal, lye, ash, potash, pearlash or anything made from those things, like soap (uses lye), clear glass or crystal glass (uses potash).
Also things that are decorated with wood. : D
Things that you made suing charcoal as a fuel are fine though, since they won't know whether you used charcoal or normal coal for it.

that channeling swampy water holes doesn't really increase the amount of available freshwater but dries them out rather

This is why rivers and aquifers are useful. Although even murky pools will eventually replenish due to rainwater :3

and that terrifying Werelizards are actually just human adventurers who try to scare Dwarves to steal their treasures

Werecreatures are a bit odd in Fortress mode, due to the fact that they'll be in their normal harmless form unless there's a full moon, and time passes so quickly that this will only be the case for a few minutes at most. It also means that most of the time when a werebeast attacks you, it'll be in its normal form.
They're a lot more problematic when one of your inhabitants is the werebeast in question. If that happens you'll occasionally find mysteriously murdered dwarves lying around. c:

I know that stockpiles are actually cluttering the stocks even more than leaving stuff where it is but I tend to use them to provide easy access to resources for workshops and as a visible indicator of available resource amounts

That's their main purpose. You can also reduce the amount of space that is necessary by making bins. Dwarves will place small items inside the bin. That way your metal bars and dolomite toy boats will only take up one tile every dozen or so, rather than one tile each. The same is true for food which can be stored in barrels or pots and seeds which can be stored in bags. And I think multiple seed bags can be stored in barrels too...

I had my first famine last winter and the children were the ones to keep the nation alive by hunting vermin for food

The "hunting vermin for food" message refers to individual dwarves getting so desperate that they start eating rats or worms or other small critters from the floor. They won't actually be able to sustain anybody other than themselves that way. If even.

I'm still not sure whether my butcher actually slaughters the pastured animals or only those I set up as ready to be slaughtered because he keeps telling me he can't find enough butcherable animals nearby

If your butcher can't find any animals to slaughter, then there aren't any animals that have been designated for slaughter. They'll only ever slaughter those that you specifically tell them to. So there's also no risk of someone's pet accidentally getting butchered (it's not possible to set a pet slaughterable). You don't even have to specifically give the order to "butcher animal" just mark the cattle you want to have slaughtered, and your butcher will do the rest. It's helpful to build a tannery next to the butchery and enable tanning on your butcher as well. That way he'll immediately and automatically proceed to tan the resulting hide, and you don't have to worry about the hide rotting and filling up your slaughterhouse with miasma.

Also I can't seem to get enough useable seeds for my farms, nor do I have a clue about the right size of farming spots.

The size of farms doesn't terribly matter. I usually go with something like 3*5 and have a couple of those, where I plant different things.
Take note what kind of seeds you have available. Different crops need different conditions. There a subterranean crops which can only be grown underground, and above-ground crops which have to be grown... above ground. Most crops can also only be grown during certain seasons. Except plump helmets, which can basically be grown all year round. But only below the surface.

To keep track of the actual stocks I found the hardest thing to do, because the list is so endless that you miss the important items easily

If you press t, you get a building stock menu, which displays every item present in the workshop you hover over (including the materials that have been used to construct the building). This is often an easier way to take stock than looking over the Fortress wide items list (Which lists literally EVERYTHING present on the map, even if it doesn't belong to you). If you press k, you can also have a look at what's lying around on the tile you hover over. That way you can have a look around your stockpile.

[Nylm]

It's probably about time to bring this to its conclusion.

Here are the poll results in order of Need, Want and Plz No:


It looks like we want a very safe Fortress that is basically entirely self sustaining. We especially want access to trees.
There's a slight bias towards having Flux stone. Clay is the least interesting of all the natural resources. We don't want an aquifer. We have one against ocean access and one who favours ocean access (Which I'm gonna interpret as "if the site is otherwise perfect, we'll take the ocean).
The fourth poll was a 100% vote for a neutral region, so I didn't include it in the image.

I'm gonna start generating a world now, then it's time to get this thing started

[Arianamue]

We would prefer a safe fortress because the unsafe ones tend to last not very long. But even the safe ones will encounter some fun eventually.
I wen for mostly calm places so far and still had to deal with Goblin invasions and Elves getting mad at me for tree felling. The lack of fresh water and my inability to get some to the inside without draining the pool completely led to vampirism in the end and after a hard winter 75% of my population died dehydrated, just after I solved the recurring famine problem. The cavers didn't provide any water either and since they were so deep, most of my miners refused to actually dig there. I would have needed like 10 food depots and a lot of alcohol to get anyone to work there.

I decided to suspend that otherwise flourishing fortress and embarked for a new one in the plains with a brook. Wood is not so abundant there but stable stone is just 4 layers deep, containing diverse iron ores and native gold. My food stocks are overflowing just from plant gathering and 2 hunters. I even had to restrict the fishing to one single fisherdwarf to avoid my refuse stock pile from getting filled with rotten salmon and steelhead trouts.
Occasional Ettin visits are easily fended off and werebeasts barely make it to my fortress before being re-transformed and leaving me alone.
My dwarves seem to have mostly happy thoughts so crime is not a big topic yet. I even ignore the frequent caravans most of the time, because my fortress is more than self sufficient.
I think I will concentrate on mining and crafting for the exports and granting my nobles the highest standards of comfort, because I can apparently afford to build a personal home for every dwarf. I figured that's even a good thing, since it reduces tantrums dramatically and if they happen, I don't have the dwarves hammered, but shackled at what you could call a 5 star hotel. I'll have to watch out that they don't start to want to get to the fetters.
They also love to visit the zoo, but they are a bit careless near the cistern, so I had to build a bridge over it. Since it is 12 layers deep, falling into it is not advised.