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Difference between revisions of "v0.34:Sample Starting Builds"

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Remember, you can make adjustments to this before you embark, if you feel inclined to. I added a few animals here, which you can change before embarking.
 
Remember, you can make adjustments to this before you embark, if you feel inclined to. I added a few animals here, which you can change before embarking.
  
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===Challenges===
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====Challenges====
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While 7 miners are useful for building a fort quickly, it definitely isn't a good idea for every fortress. This profile doesn't include any crafting labors, which are usually helpful as an initial source of income. Brewing is '''highly''' recommended, unless you have a source of fresh water.  
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While 7 miners are useful for building a fort quickly, it definitely isn't a good idea for every fortress. This profile doesn't include any crafting labors, which are usually helpful as an initial source of income. Brewing is '''highly''' recommended, unless you have a source of fresh water.
  
 
===Hop in the minmax-y taxi===
 
===Hop in the minmax-y taxi===

Revision as of 20:15, 4 April 2013

v50.14 · v0.47 · v0.34.11 · v0.31 · v0.28 · v0.23
This article is about an older version of DF.

This is a collection of starting builds (or embark setups) which individual players find useful and generally worth trying.

These can be found in embark_profiles.txt. Each one begins with a [PROFILE] tag. To use a raw starting build, just copy the text and paste it at the end of the file.

Nagidal's Allrounder

Recommended for newbies who want to play a defensive embark on sites with mild conditions (warm or temperate climate, easy access to drinking water, trees and stone).

Dwarves

According to the dwarves' attributes you assign:

Make one of five non-miners at least an adequate Appraiser (the one with good memory or intuition).

Items

Keep all the standard stuff, sell some splints, crutches and quivers to buy a couple of cats and a dog or two. (The cats will eat the vermin trying to eat your food supplies.) You can also sell one of the battle axes or the anvil to buy even more stock or some more drinks and food if you wish.

Some dwarven civilizations start with a steel anvil rather than an iron one which will reduce the amount of points you can use for the dwarves' skills and items. In this case, sell the anvil and rely on merchants bringing you one.

First year roadmap

We deliberately did't take any cooks or brewers. You can pick both from one of the first migration waves. Also, we don't have any military to start with. The idea is that our mechanic and carpenter will build us many wooden cage traps which will easily deal with the first ambushes, maybe even the first siege. Any useless migrants of the later waves will become our military.

Your aims for the first year are: farming, traps, trade, healthcare (ordered by importance)

Farming

Start farming as soon as possible. Try to harvest the spring crop of your first year. Be careful not to produce too much food. Be sure to have some barrels or large pots reserved for drinks rather than stuffed with plump helmets. Thirty tiles of farm plots are more than enough to start with. If you really want to farm more, try pig tails and get the textile industry up and running once you have more dwarves.

Traps

Build a mechanic's workshop soon and let him churn out about 2–3 dozens of mechanisms. Your carpenter should produce roughly as much wooden cages before autumn. When you build traps, build them in a one tile wide meandring corridor—preferably outdoors. There should be no way around this corridor for the enemies. Use raising bridges to direct the flow of all enemies heading for your fort's entrance through this trap corridor. Lower the bridges to allow your dwarves fast access to the fort's entrance bypassing the trap corridor. You should have at least ten traps up and ready by autumn. To deal with a siege in the later years without fighting you better have 40 of these traps ready.

Trade

Make one of your first immigrants a stone crafter and let him make stone crafts 24/7. You will need them as trade goods. Textile industry is also a good starter. If your farms produce enough pig tails, go for it and ship some fine socks to your mountain homes.

Healthcare

Before you start thinking of having some military, build a well and a hospital.


Specialized builds

These builds are good for starting megaprojects with minimal planning.

All Miners


Each dwarf also has some other vital skill as well. Remember, you can make adjustments to this before you embark, if you feel inclined to. I added a few animals here, which you can change before embarking.

Challenges

While 7 miners are useful for building a fort quickly, it definitely isn't a good idea for every fortress. This profile doesn't include any crafting labors, which are usually helpful as an initial source of income. Brewing is highly recommended, unless you have a source of fresh water.

Hop in the minmax-y taxi

By eliminating the battle axes, picks, and other equipment from the starting build, and replacing them with the raw goods to make your own weapons on the spot, massive point savings can be had. To illustrate, a steel battle axe is like 300 points or 500 points or something huge like that. Iron's more affordable but still up there. But all that steel gets you over silver or copper for a battle axe or pick is combat effectiveness, not wood chopping or mining. Bring along a copper ore and some fuel and you've just replaced that 300-point axe with like 16 points of stuff.

Taking this to the logical extreme of removing picks and all the fancy default embark stuff, the below build brings along one copper and one tin ore (enough for 8 bronze tools), some magma-safe rock to build your forge and furnaces with (remember - no mining before you have a pick!), some plump helmets for immediate brewing for seeds+drinks far cheaper than the embark screen will give them to you.

But what to do with all those extra points you ask? Well you could bring along a few pieces of iron ore to equip a basic guard just in case, or some cheaper zinc to at least ensure you can probably make bronze, but I find by far the best use of the points to be a SHITLOAD OF COAL. Bituminous coal is only 3pts each at embark as basic 'economic stone' rather than ore. Bring along some 90 or so coal and not only are you set for early production, squad equipping, and buying out the first two years of caravans with metal goods without ever burning a piece of charcoal beyond your first, but with some care you'll have literally hundreds of coke when you set up your magma forge. Mass steel production without any reliance on lucky sediments in your map, AT ALL! Well worth the trouble.

The dwarfs' skills are sort of an afterthought and just follow my old personal preferences of Miner/Mayor/Prof Armorsmith, Miner/Doctor/Prof Weaponsmith, Carpenter/Cutter, Grower/Cook, Grower/Brewer, Furnace op/Prof Metalcrafter, and a Mason. One neat trick on there is novice training in armorsmith on both growers - avoid having them do any other jobs but their planting/cooking, and if they should ever go fey, you've got a guaranteed legendary armorsmith on your hands. It happens more than you might think.


When you embark, immediately use some bauxite to build a wood burner, smelter, and forge. Burn a piece of wood to charcoal, then use the charcoal to process a few units of coal. Smith your axe and two picks, build a brewery and brew all your plump helmets. Plant seeds and proceed as normal embark, plus some 80-100 coal in the wagon :)

Note: This is actually still a bit suboptimal because I never saved the last version. You can replace the bags with some thread and save the points for ~more coal booya~ Also the 16 turtles are brought along so there's something to eat after brewing all the helmets but while waiting on the first crop. 7 would probably do just fine.

Warning: good chances of your starting civ having neither coal, nor lignite, and you have to restart the embark and try another civ. An entire world of coal-less dwarfs is pretty rare though, in my experience. Added burrowing/starting time may prove fatal on inhospitable maps

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