User:FangXianfu

GhostDwemer's advice

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=70898.msg1726917;topicseen#msg1726917

Generate a map with more embark points. 1800 is nice, gives you enough for two maxed out skills on each dwarf, extra picks, and plenty of food to see you through to the first caravan even if you don't produce any food yourself right away.

Pick an easy starting location. Maybe there is a place on your map with no access to Goblins? You wouldn't have to worry about ambushes and sieges while you figure out the other parts of the game. Pick an area with a flux layer, like limestone, chalk, or dolomite. Pick a warm starting location, so things won't freeze in winter. Pick one with running water, but no aquifer. It should have at least some trees. And at least one soil layer, so your miners can practice in dirt first and level up their mining quickly.

You want dwarfs skilled in farming, cooking, brewing, mechanics, masonry, and carpentry. I consider those five skills 'must-have' for making a happy and safe fort. Give one dwarf one point in each of judge of intent, appraisal, bookkeeping, organizing, and negotiating. He/she will be the expedition leader. Your farmer should not have another time consuming skill, give him gem cutting or something else quick like leather working. Nice furniture, good meals, and good booze go a long way in making happy dwarfs. You want to bring 50-60 booze and 30-40 meat in many cheap varieties. Bring seeds, too. Picks, an axe, an anvil, some bags, some ropes, maybe a breeding pair of cats and dogs.

Get a storage area hollowed out in the dirt and make a custom stockpile to hold all your stuff from your wagon, and get it inside quickly. Food left outside seems to spoil pretty fast in a warm climate. Start felling about 15-20 trees. Find the nearest murky pool, not too big, and hollow out an area next to it for a farm. Make it four times as big as the pool. Channel down from above to let in the water once you dig it out. Build a three by three farm and set it to growing plump helmets, all seasons. Make a refuse pile by your entrance.

Dig down. Make a place for your workshops, get carpentry, masonry, and mechanics going. Build mechanisms. Build beds, chests or coffers, cabinets, and doors for bedrooms for your first seven, a table and chair for the dining room, and a table and chair for the office. Once done with the furniture, make some bins, barrels and cages.

Make a kitchen and still, build food storage and a dining room. Set a meeting area nearby. Cook all your starting food into lavish meals. Then once plump helmets start coming in, set your still on brew, repeating. Make some more bins, barrels, and cages. Dig down some more, build your bedrooms. Make an extra room for the office. Go to your nobles screen, and assign at least bookkeeper and manager to your leader-type. Set the bookkeeper's priority to at least medium, to highest if he has nothing better to do. Assign the office to the bookkkeeper. Make some more bins and barrels.

Make some more bins and barrels. And doors and hatch covers. And more mechanisms.

Start making cage traps in and around the entrance to your fortress. Did you pick a starting location with goblins listed on the embark screens? If so, go bug berserk building cage traps all around your entrance. Build some ropes in your entrance. Do you have new kittens yet? Kittens make great expendable watch-animals. Rope up some kittens. Build a cage to hold excess animals, put any excess kittens into this cage immediately!

When summer comes, build two more farms and have one set to cave wheat, one to pig tails, with sweet pods in the spring. Your fortress should be basically functional and self sustaining at this point. Read the tutorials. Read the wiki. Build whatever industries interest you. Realize you've done it all wrong, start another fortress, read the wiki and the tutorials some more. Rinse and repeat about five times.

If you do all that, in about 200 hours you will graduate from utter novice to complete beginner. Good luck!

New Fort Checklist

Set-up

Test

• Refuse
• Tunnels

Farm

Food pile

• Trees (and plants!)

Carpenter

• Beds (barracks)
• Furniture pile

• Excavation

Down to stone and a workshop layer, 3+ levels below

Booze

Mason

• Doors

• Cooking and stone menus, while you're thinking about it.
• Indoor piles:

Furniture

Bones

Wood

Finished Goods

Cloth

Leather

Bars/Blocks

• Down to bedrooms (nobles), at least 5 levels
• Dining Room (think room for expansion!)

Tables, chairs

Remember, not a meeting hall, a meeting ZONE.

Once done, disassemble wagon.

• Move the booze and food downstairs

Watch the booze levels with no broker - use two stockpiles. Minimum barrels a plus.

Set up a trade depot upstairs in the space. Think about where the new barracks is going to go.

Expansion

• More workshops:

Crafts

Indoor Carpentry (bins and barrels galore)

Mechanic

Leather Works

Tannery

Farmer’s Workshop

Kitchens

Butcher

Wood Furnace

• Think about outdoor farming

Outdoor meeting area too

• A storage cavern

Block

Gem

Animal

Goods

Cloth

Leather

Furniture

Wood

Ammo

Weapons

Armor

Mechanisms - start thinking traps NOW rather than later. Get a couple of mechanics going from the first immigrant wave.

• Magma!

Glass industry, get it going asap.

Armor and Shields for the coming military. You have a while.

• Flesh out the dining room.
• Trap the living hell out of everything. Cages for now, weapons as soon as OPERATION MAGMA is done

Military

• Treasurer
• After immigrants, you need to get military going

Pump-gym

Get the new barracks built if it's not already

Once they're all pumped, assign shields and armor and get sparring

Remember to make them go outdoors plenty

• Leather works for backpacks, quivers, waterskins

Get some butchers if that's not already going

Remember to put the cage nearby

• Start thinking about a well somewhere
• Animal Training

Chain some dogs by the door to catch snatchers and thieves

Finishing Off

• Start thinking about some REAL defence
• Marksdwarves

They need bolts

Siege Checklist

Mercilessly stolen from 0x517A5D, I'm mirroring it here because no doubt I'll want to tinker with it a bit.

• Turn off the Mechanic skill on all dwarves.

This stops reloading of cage traps and stone traps.

• Turn off animal gathering oa.

This prevents gathering of occupied cages.

• Turn off wood gathering ow.
• Turn off collect outside refuse oro.
• Turn on all Forbid orders oFpcoit.
• Consider turning on only soldiers can go outdoors oi.
• Lock someone in the lever room.

Draft them, station them, relieve them of duty.

• Forbid all traps dbf before enemies trigger them.

This prevents clean trap jobs, and possibly gathering of occupied cages.

Post-Siege Checklist

• Ensure that enemies have left the map.
• Bring some or all squads off-duty.
• Turn on Mechanic on Mechanic units and some legendary units.
• Turn on animal gathering.
• Turn on wood gathering.
• Re-set Forbid orders.
• Allow all dwarves to go outdoors.
• Unlock the lever room.
• Reclaim all dead bodies through stocks menu.
• Reclaim all traps through stocks menu.
• Wait for bodies to be hauled to refuse piles and graveyards.
• Mass-mark enemy equipment for melting.
• Unmark trap components for melting through stocks menu.
• Reclaim equipment.
• (Unknown)
• Profit!