Dwarf Fortress

How fairs your fort?
I have been trying to actually improve myself and learn new things for the first time in years, but this fort really has it out for me.
I have had two migration waves of size 3 and 2, I have no military to speak of, and I only really lucked out so far on an excellent (resource wise) embark and a level 6 armorer. I also had the foresight to make a huge cache of wood, which I am now turning into charcoal to arm my third militia recruit, the expedition leader and original farmer, whose job was stolen by a much better at his job immigrant.

After this mediocre first year (which hasn't actually ended quite yet) a necromancer attacked. My current plan is to wait for the next caravan, then aid them in fighting off the necromancer with two macedwarves and an axedwarf.

Fares

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Damn, I thought that was much older

I'm thinking about building a large hadron collider with minecarts.

The main goal of this fort was to #1 fight off an invasion with a military for the first time and #2 learn minecarts.
Apparently you can fill minecarts with magma, then (slowly) haul them by hand up, then set them up and dump them, for easy forging.

Since minecarts are perfectly elastic, you can bypass the maximum cart speed by colliding two carts with different masses. I'm interested to see what happens if you use this to make a minecart railgun.

Fuck minecarts
Speaking of colliding, I am amused by the fact that a fall against a material is equivalent to it being thrown at you

I vaguely recall a long post explaining why stair stacks were inefficient for main z level travel in forts. Does anyone have anything to say on that matter?
I am planning 5 3x3 stairways, a central one and four at the corners of a square.

Every time I start near any body of water I end up digging out more aquifers than actual soil. I just want a lake or a decent sized river, something pretty to look at

In terms of FPS, I think having decentralized stairs is better since it gives dorfs less pathfinding choices than a central stair does, since dorfs have to pick from which stair they want to go up, if you have 3x3 up/down stairs that's 9 choices per floor which then may have to be recalculated due to other dorfs, whereas having decentralized stairs means a dorf only has to make one decision for pathfinding.

In terms of overall efficiency, both would be almost the same given how you design it. Centralized stuff is usually more aesthetic if that's a factor.

5 in your case. It really depends on how many dwarves you're going to have and your ability to accept FPS death.

I expected a little more from a dorf fort enthusiast like yourself.

Did you miss the very first post

Yes
brb, hitting my head with a stick

Any tips on getting steel industry roaring? I have shittons of raw materials of every sort, but it's slow as fuck.
To be fair my furnace operators are kind of shit, though.
Also, what equipment priority should I give from iron>steel upgrades?
I was thinking something like this;
cutting weapons>breastplates>helmets>greaves>chain mail>shield>gauntlets>boots
It's important I prioritize because of how slowly I make steel and my 15-20 dorf militia.

JESUS CHRIST MINECARTS ARE FINICKY
I had a nice little setup going to haul magma, and then it randomly stopped working. Now I am trying to remake it with floodgates instead of a ramp and for no apparent reason my dwarfs refuse to put a minecart on it.I have a constructed track, I'll try carving one.

If you wanna train up your smiths and furnace operators, make a bunch of crap out of shitty metals that you have a lot of, and then melt all that shit down into ingots again. Make a bunch of copper or iron or whatever weapons and armor before you let your military smiths work with steel, make craftsmen work with tin before silver and gold, etc. Once your smiths and smelters get experienced, you'll outfit your guys in masterwork steel stuff in no time at all.

If it was working before and then stopped, I'd be inclined to think it's something on the hauling route designation, rather than the track itself.

It was from a bug where if you turn temperature off then dorfs refuse to ever set foot anywhere magma used to be. Like, for example, the location of my magma filled minecart.

Recently I've settled in the middle of tropical forest surrounded by elven retreats. The idea is to chop every tree on the surface and burn the wood into charcoal.
The late game objective is to make a tunnel from the circus to aboveground so it will (hopefully) wander off the map and create a history of slaughtering elves in the adventurer mode.
The name costomized for the fort is Burnwoods the vile gate of hell

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mushrooms are delicious

Thou's mother's fish-hole tastes of mushrooms

mama mia

I'm about 2 years in and already on the receiving end of my second siege. Pic related.
Here's the situation:
>cage traps behind said wall because building them while holed up was the most convenient option last siege and never fixed it
>NO TRAINED MILITARY WHATSOEVER=

what do?

Then embark on a river with no aquifer. The embark screen literally tells you if there's an aquifer.

And remember to check each biome on the screen, one can be without aquifer and one with.

stop being such a faggot

What's a good checklist to go down when your FPS is shitting itself
I'll go ahead and cross out CPU, because my Phenom II is shit and it isn't getting any less shit any time soon.

The obvious goal is to reduce the amount of dice rolls and calculations that have to be made per frame. Anything you can come up with to accomplish that will do.
Usually this means killing animals and useless dwarves.

Put some animals in the cages, they are no longer pathfinding.
I do that often for puppies.

Tip : You can put as many pet's as you want in a cage.