Training troops

So in my current fort, I decided to not use a danger room.  I made three squads of 10 soldiers, one of axes, one of mixed maces/hammers, and one of crossbows based on the skills the dwarves I drafted had. While I managed to get the marksdwarves up thanks to a nigh-invulnerable forgotten beast I trapped behind some fortifications (it now has over 500 bolts stuck in it!) the melee squads were training very s l o  w   l     y with most troops around skill levels 1-4.

Reading the wiki and forums, there was a suggestion that squads of 2 soldiers trained the fastest.

Levers weren't long enough...

...but I had places to put them.

The entry floor of the fortress:

When the moatworks bridges are raised they deny access to the interior of the map (but not the abbatoir).  (I guess its possible they could enter from the brook, too, which would get them inside the moatworks.)  You need to close the inside bridge using the lever on 135, to seal the fortress itself.  The bridge outside was just to shorten a route over the brook, and is not linked to a lever.  You can see the two barracks in this shot as well.  But sending guys outside to harvest wood or gather plants should be relatively secure, inside the bridges at least.

The danger room is inside the inner barracks.  Just station troops inside it and have someone pull the lever on repeat.  I only used it a little - maybe 10 strokes or so - to get troops out of the totally green skill zone, since it skills them up very rapidly.  If you "accidentally" let pets or children (including babe-in-arms for female soldiers) in the room while it is active, they will be killed. Feel free to ignore it and let natural training take place, or assign troops in there for hours and hours and turn them into Cave Seal Team Six.

One level below:

The unmarked lever shortcuts the trap corridor, not shown.  It should probably never be pulled.  You may want to create another bridge to block the entrance to the trap corridor, and link it to this lever, so dwarves can safely go in and reset the weapon traps if they get jammed.

You have over 300 coke already made (along with another almost 200 lignite dug out waiting to be processed, and plenty more unmined veins on levels in the northeast). The miners had finished digging everything I designated.  We have gold nuggets that haven't been smelted too, so you can start crafting some serious bling if you want.

You can craft stuff to trade in just about any industry you want.  We have:

3 legendary miners
1 legendary carpenter
5 legendary masons
1 legendary weaponsmith
2 very close to legendary armorsmiths
1 legendary gem setter
1 legendary woodcrafter
1 legendary stonecrafter
1 very close to legendary weaver
1 very close to legendary clothesmaker

The skill that we need to improve the most is stone detailing.  There are lots of designations from Miranda that haven't been completed yet, so they've been working all year, and our best engravers are still only level 6-7.

You have 1500 drinks, 500 prepared meals, and plenty of food coming in.  You can keep cooking Lavish Meals to improve morale.

The caverns are currently sealed.  I did no exploration, except near the top for coal, and for grabbing some wood early on. Feel free to send some soldiers out exploring (or just throw some of our excess kittens in there and wall the entrance back up, they'll go exploring for us.)

The storehouses for trade goods are filled, so the stuff in the depot is not getting hauled.  (I wonder if thats why the caravan didn't unload more things.)  If you care about that you might dig and designate some new stockpiles.

If you want to craft new, more expensive furniture for everyone, there are whole layers of obsidian (starts around Z=109).  You could dig out a big area and make mason's workshops down there, then refurnish everything.

Well Josh, here's the keys.  Don't wreck it!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/36782583/PlaidSlacks%20141.zip

25th Timber


The liason from the mountainhomes has offered to make us a barony!  The mayor nominates herself to be the first baroness.  While this isn't surprising, she is also our broker.  The meeting with the liason continues to drag on, and I hope she can get to the depot before the traders depart.

I see our engravers have been set to smooth a huge amount of the hall, which explains why the fortifications have not been carved into the outdoor barracks.  I do wonder why our dining hall is built on clay, which cannot be smoothed or engraved to improve morale.

The trenches I dig to try and seal the eastern edge of our river area have breached the mining tunnels.  I quickly order the breach sealed.

Justice

8th Sandstone

I receive a letter addressed to me in my medical capacity, a letter filled with hurtful, vile words. Words like, Malpractice, Criminal Negligence, and Legal Retribution.  Having treated a few broken and bloody recipients of dwarven "justice", a cold sweat breaks out under my beard. Fortunately, we have grown thus far without a justice system in place which gives me a way to minimize any damage preemptively.

I ask Christopher Rithlutunib to be our Captain of the Guard, as he is one of our founding dwarves.  He starts to protest, claiming that he is weak and very quick to tire.  I point out that with the constant training a law officer can engage in, those attributes will improve.  I also point out that as a noble, he will be assigned a larger room with his own office, dining room and furniture. I further point out that since there have been zero violations of the law so far, he will likely have very little work to do except sit in the dining hall and drink.  This gets his attention.  He asks if we could have the plant processors mill some dwarven flour, and get the cook to come up with some sort of... circular... fried... dough... things, glazed with Dwarven Sugar, to eat while he drinks his Sewer Brew.  Since we already have three querns, I agree.

He accepts the position.

You will respect my authoritah!

Out of Context

So, I was wondering what starting skills and resources people usually choose. Lately I've been taking no picks and no axes, instead taking coal, iron ore, flux and some bauxite and making my tools on site as a challenge. Often I take a goodly supply of sand for the free bags.

Mason 5 / Architect 5
Carpenter 5
Hunter (various)
Weaponsmith 5
Armorsmith 5
Blacksmith 5 / Metal Crafter 5
Leader / Doctor

How many dwarves is too many for you? I usually set my pop cap at 80 to avoid slowing things down. Bill apparently prefers a quantity over quality approach, judging by his posts.

In other news, I was thinking of putting together a care package for the Toady One and Three Toe. A check for sure, and maybe some fudge or cookies or peanut brittle? Do you think it would be weird to receive candy from a fan?

Waiting for the worst

16th Galena


The traders have brought plenty of good things.  For some reason, they are interested in all the bloody clothing that the invaders and wrecked caravans dropped. I am glad to be rid of it, as it is clogging the warehouses, although I hope they don't notice that some of the clothing was from the last human traders who came by.  I also trade more instruments for all their logs, food, booze, foreign seeds (building a greenhouse to raise surface plants safely below ground will bring a welcome addition to our diet), metal, as well as cages and weapons to fill the trap hallway.  Oh, and four more anvils.

Back to normal

21st Felsite: 

I lower the front gate, and the elven traders blithely stroll in and start unloading their goods.  They brought plenty of logs with them, adding to the irony of this whole affair.  They also have a tame tigerman bowyer in a cage, who I buy out of sheer curiosity. I buy another tame tiger as well, maybe we can get a breeding pair. I also clean them out of logs (for creatures who claim to care so much about the trees, they sure do sell them for cheap), food, booze and barrels.  Only a handful of our vast musical instrument collection is needed to pay for all of it.

With the doors open, our dwarves rush out to collect the remains of our comrades and some of the goods of the fallen traders.  Rather than risk prolonged exposure to the outdoors, I designate tunnels to be dug to bring the goods from the fallen traders inside, to be followed by resealing the entrances.

Laying a trap

26th Slate


With our excess of vast storehouses, I am stunned to see that there isn't one set to accept only lignite near the smelters.  This means our furnace operators are marching hundreds of steps to get each piece of lignite they process, while our haulers sit idle.  I build a new stockpile, which rapidly fills.

Our steel supplies have been exhausted temporarily by outfitting our squad.  I relieve one smelter from coke duty so the worker can make steel.  But our warriors are nearly fully protected now.

I order the traps by the trading depot removed.  We need the parts elsewhere, and our front door will not be used for a very long time.

The waiting is the hardest part.

5th Granite

The weaponsmith finished his artifact -- a copper crossbow.  Nodding with satisfaction at getting something genuinely useful, I assign it to our Professional Marksdwarf.  I also build an archery target in the barracks, so he may truly master it.  With the workshop cleared, I order another four steel battle axes made with our dwindling fuel supply, to finish outfitting our squad. A pity he did not gain any skill, or even shake off the rust on his skill.

Second step: The Military

With production and digging orders set, I turned my attention to the army.  Three more dwarves were drafted to fill out the squad, and the squad was set to train year round, with a minimum of 8 dwarves at a time training. I try and sort through the roster of dwarves for those with either useful military skills, or no useful skills at all. Without enough armor, I cannot outfit a second squad. Marksdwarves are tempting, as they would not need steel armor, but against Goblin Elite Archers, even fortifications are no protection.

It pains me to see that our most skilled Fighter and Armor user is also a Legendary Stonecrafter. That explains the marvelous flute assortment, at least.  I hate to risk his skills in the military, but it won't matter if he crafts trade goods if we don't break this siege to get the caravans in here. Hopefully his knowledge will train the other soldiers more quickly as well, and I resolve to relieve him from duty before actually letting the goblins in.

I can't craft anything until the moody dwarf finishes his artifact.  The door to the stairs is installed, but I leave it unlocked. Hopefully the screams of our dying livestock will let me know it needs to be locked before the goblins can get inside.

And with that, I wait, and watch the dwarves begin their duties.

First steps towards recovery

1 Granite 140, Continued

Like any good doctor, I know that triage requires dealing with the most pressing matters as quickly as possible, to prevent further damage.  Right now the front of the fortress is relatively secure, except for the possibility that fliers could come through the roof.  As none of their building-destroying trolls can fly, a simple locked door will suffice to protect that.  Thankfully, amid the thousands of items the masons have churned out, two doors can be found.  I would have torn the one off my own bedroom if necessary.

Returning to command

1 Granite 140

As I am dealing with paperwork in my small but efficient hospital ("As I told your client, I would have removed that copper bolt before discharging him from the hospital, however he insisted it was an 'ampallang' and refused its removal, as he thought it made him look 'hip'"), a nervous looking Dwarven Child came in to inform me that he had been told to tell me that I must reclaim the scepter of leadership.  I sigh, but know that when duty calls, one must answer.  As I have been preoccupied with medical matters for the last two years, I ask the child to give me an update on the state of the fortress since I last was in charge.

Spring 140

Okay, I've switched it so that we're giving up the reins on the first day of spring. That's the start of the dwarven calendar and it lets the governor get some idea of what's going on before having to deal with the liaison. If the traders had made it off the map, I think we'd be a lock for becoming a barony in 140, but most of them didn't, so it's a tough call.

I've made extensive use of the hotkey menu. Hit 'h' to access the notes for important locations.

The siege continues. We are badly outnumbered and they have a huge array of flying archers. I think we wait this one out. This is the one of the largest sieges I've ever seen in the third year.

[F1] [Shift-F1] The main gate and pasturage are well fortified against goblins. The gate is up at the moment. I moved the access to the surface keep behind the bridge, but still past the traps, so that should be safe from anything but a flying building destroyer (who would not have been stopped by a drawbridge anyway).

[F2] The new farms. We're short on wood and therefore on barrels, so I've got several large stockpiles for food which don't use them. Now that we're into the caverns, that can change. Switch barrels back on for them when you have some. As it is though, we need them for the booze production.

[F3] Masonry operations. I have four full time masons making blocks. There are stockpiles for separating Exceptional and Masterwork from the crap and a dumping area nearby to dispose of the lesser works. The upper left stockpile gets the junk.

[F5] Furnaces and forge. I've stockpiled some metal and a little coke. The military is set for now, though we got a new and highly skilled weaponsmith at some point. You might want to order up some new arms.

[F7] [F8] [F8>] The new lodgings. Still needs some attention. They're all dug out, but some need to be fitted with furniture. The posh one is for Adie and her family. She slowly took over most managerial duties during my term. She seems to be one of the friendliest dwarves we have. She came out of the huge idle stage with the best social skills, so I let her have a go at running things.

The endless stair will need some attention. We cracked open a real cavern just a day or two ago, and that's going to need some attention. Traps. Walls. Bridges. That kind of thing. Probably should send someone exploring too. I'm hoping it'll be a good source of wood for you too.

I've encountered a wealth of ore. Copper, silver, iron and gold are all present. We need fuel.

All the haulers still have Masonry active to help with the walls for the pasturage (complete now). They can't use the workshops though (I locked those to the real masons).

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/36768248/Dwarf%20Fortress/PlaidSlacks%20140.zip

Siegetown

139, 19 Felsite
Fer Shorast was hunting close to where the goblins arrived. He was killed almost instantly.

The above ground fortifications for the animals are still incomplete. I expect we'll lose our herds. If so, it will be a painful blow, but one from which we can recover. Underground agriculture is flourishing, and in we're in no danger of starving.

The goblins are just sitting at the edge of our scouting range, waiting. They are mostly bowman and I dare not send the infantry against them. They've also got a mounted pikeman -- mounted on a cave swallow! He's going to be a problem.

139, 28 Limestone
The human traders left and were attacked by the goblins. No survivors.

139, 13 Timber
The goblins have left without ever approaching the fortress. Who can explain these creatures?

139, 15 Timber
Our outpost liaison has arrived with a trade caravan.

139, 19 Timber
I had just given the all clear to go out and begin gathering some needed wood when another, much larger force arrived. Four full squads, all mounted on cave swallows! Also seven trolls. If this group is smarter than the last (not saying much), we could be in some peril. (There are just over five full pages of invaders.)

139, 27 Timber
The trolls have moved in, but the goblins are hanging back. I'm going to chance a sortie against the trolls, who have gone after our herds.

139, 28 Timber
Success! Eight dead trolls (I miscounted earlier) and no injuries to any dwarf. I had spent most of our remaining fuel on full plate armor for every member of the military. It has paid off handsomely today! The walls of our entryway are painted turquoise with troll blood!

The traders and liaison made it into the fortress easily. Adie is downstairs speaking with him now. I missed the election, but Adie has become mayor. I never had a head for politics and honestly I spend most of my time mining. She's a good choice though, and I wish her and her (growing) family well.

139, First Moonstone
All of our livestock is starving and I do not know why. They have ample pasturage...

139, 27 Moonstone
The liaison left the way he came and is fine. The caravan, however, tried to continue to the north. 30 goblin bowman mounted on cave swallows rained death on them. What is most amazing is that some of them seem to have survived the volleys. Most are dead, but a few have left.

139, 5 Opal
Upon further inspection, it seems to be mainly the water buffalo which are starving. I'm going to slaughter them while I can. (It looks like the buffalo appetite is still set too high from what I'm reading.)

139, Sixth Obsidian
With the goblins showing no sign of leaving, I've decided to dig deeper in search of either subterranean wood or magma. We'll be digging down a full 100 fathoms from the surface. Well, that's the plan at least. In the meantime the new stone and metal works are both coming together nicely.

139, 16 Obsidian
More goblins have arrived. There are over 150 of them, including mounts. That's almost double the entire population of our fortress. Spring will be here soon and my term as governor comes to a close. Domestically we are well situated, but this constant state of siege presents problems. We must find wood or magma underground, or we'll have no chance of reclaiming the surface.

139, 17 Obsidian
We've discovered an underground cavern 65 fathoms below the surface. It has vegetation, but it's a tiny space. (It's the smallest one I've ever seen -- seven spaces! I've assigned it the hotkey of shift-F7.)

Goblins and Elves

139, 19 Felsite
Deb Fath, one of our threshers, has had a boy, Udib.

139, Seventh Hematite
The goblins went for livestock as I expected. Mostly macemen, but one bowman. Our seven-strong squad rushed out to meet them and won handily. We lost a couple of the dogs, but no serious injuries to any dwarf. We've got a few scrapes to patch up, but I'm quite pleased with my first military conflict.

The work on the external keep we started before the elves arrived will continue now. I hope to have a more fortified position soon.

139, Eighth Hematite
With the goblins gone, we've turned our attention to the elves. They brought a tame giant tiger with them. It's enormous. We traded for it, along with a tame jaguar. We also took a great deal of their substandard cloth. For some reason, we have few pig tail seeds on hand. I'm working to remedy that situation, but we'll want some more cloth in the mean time.

139, Fourth Malachite
Adie has had a son, Catten.

139, Eighth Malachite
Another hauler, Likot Muzishnish, has had a daughter, Ablel. That's the fifth child born in the last eight months. I guess we know what was happening with so many idle.

139, 15 Malachite
Ikal Bill has released the last of the injured dwarves from his care. Bizarrely, he had elected to leave the copper bolt lodged in Ezar Lokum. I question this decision, but he insists.

Our military is back to 100% strength, though this is still only seven dwarves.

139, 19 Malachite
More migrants have arrived. The new lodgings are being filled as fast as we can dig and furnish them. There's a highly skilled doctor in the group. I've made him our new chief medical dwarf, with Ikal Bill reporting to him.

139, 23 Malachite
Ivom As has given birth to a boy, Vabok.

139, 15 Galena
A human caravan has arrived. We have few true needs now, though more coal is always welcome.

139, 17 Galena
A vile force of darkness has arrived!

Organizing

138, 26th Timber

A goblin kidnapper was spotted by our carpenter, Um Ezum, today. Ezum and Ezar Sarvesh are the dwarves of the hour after the latter put several bolts into the fleeing creature. The dogs overtook and killed the creature handily.

138, First Moonstone
The other miners and I have dug out a new and much larger meeting area. It's close to the surface and should prevent further fisticuffs, as we've been seeing in the woefully inadequate dining hall deeper in the fortress. We're also carving out large storerooms on the upper levels to hold the multitude of trade goods we'll be making.

After these are done (probably in a month or so), we'll begin work on new food preparation and storage areas.

138, Eleventh Opal
We've begun to set up wood burning facilities to supplement our supply of coke. I requested as much coke, lignite and coal as I could from the caravan, but it will never be enough without burning some trees.

138, 21 Opal
Two births on the same day! One of our haulers, Udil, has given birth to a boy, Stakud. Kastar Sarvesh also had a boy, which she named after herself.

138, 26 Opal
Zero unemployment. Praise Armok!

138, 21 Obsidian
New mother Udil was ambushed by a goblin thief, who snatched her baby right out of her arms! The alarm went up and Ezar Kenneth charged after the thief. Our fearless champion caught the would-be kidnapper and chopped him into goblin cutlets! Five cheers for Ezar Kenneth!

139, Third Granite
Spring is here at last. One of our herbalists, Totmon Doren has been possessed by the gods. He took nearly all the bones from our recent wolf killing and has begun some making... something. Adie is organizing a small betting pool on what it turns out to be. Doren is a bit thick. My money's on Animal Trap.

139, Eleventh Granite
I won the pool! No idea what we'll do with a wolf bone animal trap. We have a tetrahedrite coffer too. Perhaps we should install them in the meeting hall.

139, 16 Slate
Migrants arrived today. Almost twenty of them. Adie and I are going through them this afternoon to see what their skills are.

Four of them have some military experience. I've instructed them to report to Ezar Kenneth. We will need more weapons.

139, 15 Felsite
Elven traders have arrived. The goblins won't be far behind. I've ordered civilians indoors and the military to high alert. The goblins will probably go for the livestock topside. We'll be waiting. If they try the main door, they'll meet our upgraded defenses. Serrated steel discs, made by Josh and installed recently.

Trader Josh

Our trading team, Adie and Josh, asked me what to request for next year's caravan. I gave them a lengthy list of useful supplies and told them to amend at their discretion. Josh came back several hours later and showed me a page from the preliminary agreement. Josh and I share an affinity for cheese, especially mozzarella di bufala and pecorino romano. My mouth is already watering!

Order from Chaos

138, 19th Timber
Unemployment is over 50% and I have assumed command of the fort by popular demand. 34 of 53 dwarves were idle when I took the key to the fortress. It's not hard to find the reason why. There were no fewer than eleven dwarves competing for a handful of spinning jobs. Similar situations exist in most 'industries'.

Rampant unemployment might be the solution to some other problems. The living spaces are what my grandfather used to call coffin lodges. Barely large enough to hold a bed and a chest of drawers, they're not proper accommodations for hard-working dwarves. Of course, we're also short of hard-working dwarves, so maybe that's deliberate.

As I take over the drink supplies are almost nonexistent. There is exactly one alcoholic beverage left in the fort. Food is somewhat better, with almost four hundred total rations remaining, but is still untenable in the long term.

The military situation is little better. Only three active duty soldiers, one of them my predecessor. They have some steel arms, but are insufficiently armored. Front line defenses are sufficient to keep an enemy from easily breaching the complex, but we have almost no ability to repel a siege. Hell, the military is insufficient to even allow proper fishing and hunting in the surrounding hills.

The large amount of free time has caused a remarkably large number of friendships to form. Several dwarves have also demonstrated leadership and counselor abilities. Foremost among these is Adil 'Adie' Eralolor. She's been toiling as a woodcrafter, but I think her talents are better used elsewhere. She will be my right hand as I reorganize this outpost.

Military discipline is lax. I have ordered that all soldiers now be addressed by their proper title, 'ezar'. ('Ezar' is dwarven for 'soldier'.) I have also relieved them of all civilian duties so that they are able to train whenever they are not active. We will need to more to ensure proper security though.

My priors also seem to have had a love of staircases with no railings (up/down [i] stairs instead of up [u] and down [j] stairs) I find this to be a dangerous state of affairs. New construction will be to higher standards and we will replace the old stairs as we are able. (Dwarves can fall through multiple z-levels through up/down stairs, which makes involuntary movement in the fortress especially dangerous, whether through flows or combat.)

I give my dwarves nicknames based on their profession. Fer means beast, so Fer Kubuk and Fer Shorast are the new nicknames of our trappers/animal trainers. We probably don't need two of those, but hey.

Still viable!

So my feeble reign ends... One death to enraged badger, a plethora of migrants, one wedding, and the first use of the hospital (another badger incident, but this time, the victim got away albeit now on crutches).

Some things for the next overlord:

• I've started a fairly massive dry moat and cliff project to claim some surface area. I may have been a little over-zealous in my reach...
• The lever in the hall near the river source controls the floodgate and a bridge over the water supply for the hospitals well. The levers near the doors (top and bottom of the supply line) control the floodgates right there at the doors.
• We had both elven and human caravans, but I didn't micromanage well enough to have anything for the humans. Hopefully, they'll return.
• We have axes. Some iron, silver and steel ones were made for the arriving caravan.
• Other than designating the barracks, nothing has been done with the military. You might want to look into that...

PlaidSlacks.zip

It's Spring! That means migrants!

Yay?

20 new victims stout-hearted colonists! Big talents include: 1 miner, 1 wood crafter, a high master grower, a couple of folks who know their way around an anvil, and one rowdy fellow who knows how to use his fists feet.

And while checking for livestock (they did bring meat, leather and bones!), I see a clan of Badger-folk wandering through... double yay?

Plumbing is installed and working. There is a hospital on the residental level, including a functional well.

Wait!  What's that!  Arg! I should never have let that poor sod head out with a fishing pole. A giant badger got him. That's too bad, thankfully he was a recent immigrant, and nobody really knew him anyway.  Maybe it's time to work on some of those external defenses and claim some sunshine...

Trader Fikod

The trader Fikod Moruldum arrived, and most of the mugs were traded for leather, cloth, some fancy meats and cheeses, some iron bolts, a boar, a llama and a goat. Maybe we can get a bacon enconomy going to complement the beef production...

A couple of bags of sand were bought (no need to have a moody glassmaker go mad), but no gypsum was for sale; that will be part of the trade agreement.

Designations have been laid out for some plumbing, and floodgates, grates and mechanisms ordered for flood control.

We have a trade agreement with Istbarsibrek! We've asked for gypsum and sand, and they want battle axes, drinks, large gems and legwear.

File

I don't have an account on any file sharing services, so I just uploaded the save file to my work machine... if you know a more elegant/easy solution, set it up.

http://chem-101-146.chem-2.depaul.edu/~william/files/region1.zip

Preparing for the caravan

With autumn halfway over, I set about trying to get as much done before the caravan arrived.  More mugs were ordered up ("#1 Miner!"), and the first two bars of steel coming out of the forges were turned into battle axes for the military.  Smelting is going slowly, even with three smelters, so it will be a while before we have full tin cans to defend us.

In Mid Autumn, a wholly unexpected message arrived...

But it was a whopping *two* dwarves.  Admittedly, one was a high master furnace operator, who is sorely needed, but still I was hoping for a lot more.  I had started digging a second set of bedrooms, which turned out to not be necessary.  Ten of em did start to be dug out, though, so if you have a little time you can furnish the rooms to be ready for the next wave of migrants.

Three puppies were born; one was assigned to guard the front hallway, and the other war dog was assigned to the hunter.   Who is getting better with his crossbow, and even managed to bring back a couple buck rabbits to the pantry.  But with all the meat from the useless animals that came with the second wave of immigrants, I think we should disable hunting on him so as not to risk losing him.

On 17th Timber, my tenure as Chief Noble comes to an end:

Some things the next ruler may want to make sure they do or change:

1) I had just designated a 11x11 area in the clay near the front door traps.  This was going to be the barracks.  Feel free to change this.

2) We are short on some critical skills.  We could really use more masons (of the two we have, Kenneth is our only woodcutter and in the military, and Miranda is a miner. Both are often busy.) and nobody has stone detailing at all.  Other crafters are burdened with other duties.

3) For our 18 dwarves, we have over 100 drinks and 200 prepared meals. I like Quarry Bushes as a  food source for making meals, but you do have to remember to micromanage them (do Process Plants (To Bags) at the Farmer's Workshop) to actually use them, otherwise they just clog up your food storage.

4) I queued up two steel shields, a steel breastplate and a steel helmet in the blacksmith.  Smelting coke is the limiting factor, especially with only lignite around. I designated areas for another four smelters.

5) The next person should get the leatherworker's workshop built, and trade for bins of leather (since they're really cheap, and you get the bins) and crank out leather cloaks, hoods, backpacks, waterskins, and armor for the military.  There are 81 mugs ready to trade, which should get you a few thousand schmuckers in trading value.

6) I haven't gotten any perimeter defense built yet.  I would have dug a moat (claiming as much of the plateau the entrance is on as possible) but the miners were more urgently needed for CoalQuest.  Hopefully the ambush that comes with the caravan will just be a couple thieves.  Remember, the lever to close up the fort is in the dining room.

7) We are going to need to keep digging for coal.  The eastern side of the map looks like it has the deposits.

8) I haven't made a well yet, but it should be easy with the river sources right there.  This should get done soon though, since we may have our first gobbos arriving shortly after the caravan.

9) I haven't made a hospital yet; this should probably have a well inside it too.  Trade for gypsum powder.

On to Autumn...

One thing I hadn't noticed -- we lucked out with our draft animals, and got a breeding pair of cattle.  They gave birth to a male calf (which I slaughtered for food) but we could have a beef industry if we can keep them pastured and safe from goblin archers.  

The Giant Badgers moved on without pestering everyone, but the outdoors are definitely going to be dangerous, with a Giant Eagle circling overhead and a herd of Yaks moving through. (Miranda, is there anything that can be done to make the war goggies breed faster?)

Strike the earth!

Rather than trundling way over to the cliff face, or go down the nearby hillface towards the river sources (both looked like they would be difficult to fully wall off), I elected to dig a channel down into the flat area next to the wagon.  From there, a short tunnel was dug, and an underground trading depot was built.  Then, a central staircase was dug down several levels. We have two soil levels, so I dug out some farms (and set up a nearby farmer's workshop) in the loam just below the entrance level.  While the diggers dug, a wood stockpile was marked, and the woodcutter was issued a war dog and ordered to start murdering those evil, evil trees (get them before they get you!).  The farms were finished early on, so the two farmers made plots and got plump helmets into the ground as soon as possible.

And the company embarks...

Drinking games in the mountainhomes are deadly serious business.  Not only because dwarves are such legendary drinkers (its probably more accurate for a dwarf to measure their alcohol blood content, rather than their blood alcohol content) but because if a dwarf actually does pass out, they are quite often "volunteered" to be part of the King's suicidal colonization expeditions.

And with that in mind, seven terrifiedintrepid dwarves wake up together in a strange wilderness, with bad hangovers, fuzzy memories of exactly how they got there, and the dwarven equivalent of a "kick me" sign engraved on the side of the wagon:

Searching for embark site...

Coming soon: Dwarf Fortress Succession Game

This blog was set up to host game reports for a DF succession game... coming soon.