Dwarf Fortress

[Maerok]

I just got hooked on this game recently. It's a lot of fun and the learning curve hasn't been too bad (I usually add a new major concept to every new instance I play). The highest number of dwarves I've gotten so far is 30, but they all arrived so quickly that - had the game not crashed - they probably would have burned through my food reserves.

Today I started working with military actions. My starting build included an Axedwarf which I sent out to train on wild animals after a troglodyte murdered my blacksmith. Once I got the hang of leading around a lone soldier I sent her down into the cavern where the beast had come from. There was a Cave Alligator there and I thought it would be an interesting fight. My axedwarf, wielding steel battle axe and iron armor, started fighting the croc. First round in - it bit onto her left arm and she started to beat it down with the axe in her right hand.

I come back, after overseeing a memorial waterfall to the entrance of the graveyard for my fallen blacksmith (where two of my best miners fell, suffered broken limbs and brain trauma - one later succumbing to infection), to find the nearby pool of water covered in croc and dwarf blood. The monster ended up taking off her arm, leaving the iron glove on the ground. She still managed to get a few swings in afterward. However cool a one-armed axedwarf would be, she never recovered. :smallfrown:

Her successor is a Professional wrestler/fighter who isn't wearing any clothes since I seem to be having some trouble with squad uniforms. :smalleek:

So, all in all my efforts yielded two dead dwarfs and two more in a permanent coma.

Next game, I'm going to have all the starting dwarfs set as warriors with the intention of getting food by butchering. Farming seems to be going rather slow for me.

[Shpadoinkle]

Firstly, there's already a thread. http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148553&page=14 I don't blame you for missing it since it's become rather slow lately.

Second, farming's simple and you should be able to feed your entire fort easily from that alone. How exactly do you have your farms set up?

[Cubey]

Didn't we already have a thread about Dwarf Fortress? You should try posting there.

Anyway: if you want to hunt animals, you need a hunter, not a soldier. Give a starting dorf ranks in Ambusher and Crossbowdwarf and they will have a free set of hunting equipment, weapon and ammo included. Of course, you can do it the military way too, just remember to turn the option "gather refuse from outside" on. Otherwise slain creatures won't be put in the butcher's shop for processing.

But overall, I found hunting inferior to farming in terms of food production. It may change now, since each animal produces a lot of body parts which you can cook and eat, but you should still be able to sustain a moderately large (up to 50 dorfs) fort with only a single, tiny farming plot.

[Maerok]

Well for farming I usually set up the plots and go through a/b/c/d to set up the different crops for the seasons. I'll set one or two dwarf's labors to only worry about farming (some of the others will have it too for whenever they are free) but it never gets done until the food supply is empty.

[Shpadoinkle]

Well for farming I usually set up the plots and go through a/b/c/d to set up the different crops for the seasons. I'll set one or two dwarf's labors to only worry about farming (some of the others will have it too for whenever they are free) but it never gets done until the food supply is empty.

That... shouldn't be happening. You DO have food stockpiles with plenty of room for new stuff, and you're not cooking the seeds, right?

[Maerok]

They food stockpile is large enough and there's containers to spare. And I usually don't build a kitchen until after the farmers get in gear.

[Shpadoinkle]

Okay... for the most part, farming is basically "set it and forget it." It really shouldn't take until everyone's practically dead of starvation for the lazy planters to get off thier asses and actually plant something. So, let's check this step by step:

1: Do you have farm plots?
1a: How many, and how large are they?
2: Have you ordered things planted in the plots? You have to designate what you want planted for each season, and you have to do it for each plot.
2a: Do you have seeds for the stuff you want planted?
3: Are you actually planting edible foods? Of all the underground crops, only plump helmets are edible raw, so they're a staple of dwarves' diets for the first couple years, usually. Quarry bushes have to processed to a bag first (at a farmer's workshop), then cooked before they're edible. Sweet Pods and Cave Wheat are also edible, but they have to be processed at a millstone or quern first. Also, Fisher Berries, Strawberries, Sun Berries, and Prickle berries are edible raw, but they can only be grown above ground. To get seeds for them you have to either gather plants from above ground or trade for them from humans or elves.

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: One active thread per topic, please.