User:Cheepicus

I am a player of moderate experience. I've been trying to branch out more lately.

Starting Build

For a long time my starting build has been pretty stable.

Dwarfs

• Miner 5 / Armorer 5
• Miner 5 / Weaponsmith 5
• Miner 5 / Cook 5
  • These miners dig out the basic structure of the framework (stockpile space, stink room, central shaft, barracks, entryway, magma supply, dining hall), then have hauling turned off to do the main exploratory mining, which is usually 2x2 shafts down the middle of each 48x48 map region, joined to the central shaft on the z-level closest to the metal stockpiles. Once I have a good backlog of ore (i.e. low-hanging fruit all plucked) they drop the Mining career as by that time I will be getting more serious about the military and getting oodles of food in trade. A new generation of miners usually does the living pods and starts the more extensive phase of exploratory mining and tree farm rooms or other big dumb projects.
  • Having tried it with 2-5 starting miners, 3 seems to be the right number for me.
  • However, mining as a starting skill seems a bit dubious. I could give these guys other skills that will be valuable later on, or important backups (broker, brewer, carpenter). Backups sound better. Enough migrants are worthless as it is.
• Metalsmith 5 / Metal Crafter 5 / Miner 0 / Mason 0 / Architect 0
  • This guy gets a pick to help hollow out the initial space to get everything inside. Then he drops Mining. When magma is up he does a bit of Furnace Operator, which is reassigned to the first two worthless migrants. When crafting starts he loses Mason and Architect.
• Carpenter 5 / Mason 5
  • IKEA dwarf. Ideally, makes every single piece of furniture in the fort. I like to set the wood stockpile to wood + beds.
  • I love/hate having these on the same dwarf. It's rare that I really need to parallelize bed making with furniture making, but sometimes I forget and load them both up.
  • If magma/glassmaking is an option, this guy becomes Carpenter/Glassmaker and I don't need skilled masonry. But then I'm less sure I want them on the same dwarf, since glassmaking will be running more.
• Grower 5 / Brewer 5 Can't see this guy changing.
• Mechanic 4 / Brokerstuff 6 / Architect 0
  • This guy becomes the Record Keeper, and usually Mayor. Lots of toggling Record Keeping on/off when caravans arrive.
  • Maybe I should assign an early peasant to Record Keeper instead. Slightly less annoying, on the other hand do I need another useless purple dwarf?

Equipment

• 1 anvil, 0 axes, 0 cats, 4 picks.
• 2 dogs. Lately, 4.
• 0 plump helmets.
• 12ish plump helmet spawn, 1 of each other seed. I've never done dying or outdoor farming.
• 1 of each food costing 2 or 4. Not 6 ... rather have 2 wood.
• Scads of wood.
• I don't start with bauxite and don't really see the use of it for standard dealing with magma.

Current Fortress Idea

Something more like Reignlens, with differentiated work/sleep/eat areas. Grid arrangement to be a sort of underground city. Long term goal: rain.

Previous Fortresses

Systembooks and Plaitbust, Underground Cities

Had some fun with underground cities with buildings laid out on a grid, avoiding the use of z-levels as much as possible.

Systembooks at DFMA

Plaitbust at DFMA

Plaitbust got up to 289 dorfs, my largest fortress so far.

Reignlens, Guild Outpost

Here I wanted to make a fortress centered on ONE universal stockpile. (With no dump reclaim, bin max 0, but separate stinky-item stockpiles allowed.) Around the stockpile would be a ring of guild structures where each dwarf has quarters and dining facilities personally assigned (except peasants).

This is in some sense the opposite of my usual fortress design, where there's a big undifferentiated apartment block, then a big open room for workshops and stockpiles with a lot of time spent worrying about stockpile size and placement.

Reignlens at Map Archive

I didn't know the maximum stockpile size is 31x31, which meant that after THE stockpile filled up, it was like having no stockpile. Organizing by guild was annoying by first but quickly became fun.

Not really an inspiring fortress but a fun little mini-challenge for me.

Targetarch, Sand Fortress

On embark.

Oops.

A sand/magma/aquifer fortress, was amusingly saved from flooding (embarrassingly noobish mistake) but then became boring. Really if I want to play a no stone-layer fortress, I'll probably have to forgo magma, or do it as a conduct.

Centering the fortress around the top room of a magma pipe is still interesting to me. Or maybe it's that flooding them is such fun.