ok so I'm playing a slightly older version atm so I can use the graphics pack. makes things a bit easier for a nearsighted bastard like me. figured I'd share my experience starting out. day 1: got a nice red sand home going for my boys and girls. started underground garden. communal dining room and bedroom set up. figured out up and down stairs. my fort has river access witch is a blessing and a curse. A carp just ate my carpenter 'jebus'. happy easter.
well quick update the carp pretty much ate everyone. I should have taken a screen there was blood everywhere. I'll start making screens on my next go. winterfell has been taken by watery foes. that's what I get for naming it that I suppose.
try two the fortress of monkey blood. rhysus monkeys keep stealing my shit and interrupting drinks right off the bat. after they stole my only cross bow (obviously planing to use it against me latter) it was on. I drafted my dwarves into a deadly monkey killing group.
Dude, sandstone is teh shits. Until you find out you can't do much except spam cabinets and chests with it, but who cares? That's what about 50% of your first year is doing anyways! Turn the rest into stone crafts for the caravan visit. I kept one crafter working on staone constantly and was able to buy out the entire caravan.
Too bad mature forts usually are like bad cities and have designs withing designs within more designs that can't be efficent with space or prevent vermin spread or creat effective defensive areas, fortress format does help with that though. Also when it gets late game I want to see a kitty-pult that shoots the millions of prepared "ammuntions" that breed crazily.
thats not true at all, i once had a fortress that was basically a stack of "square ring" like pathways no more then 15 on 15 per ring, with stair pillars in each corner, and at least 10 stacked on top of each, with the outside walls having different lodgings attached to them inside the ring was the actual fortress, even numbered rings held workshops with input/output stockpiles, uneven rings held stockpiles directly connected to the workshops by 1 level up/down stairs the topmost ring held the barracks, and the pathway was connected to a 3 wide walkway going north, with a bridge at first, a marksmen pillbox, then a trade depot, then the long passage out the mountain it was efficient because it was built next to a underground river, so i could get water and tower cap it was the most efficient fortress i ever built, i started with 1 ring, and just added rings downwards as the fortress grew, lodgings could hold up to 300 people (although a lot more could be added, since only like 5 rings had any lodgings) and ring outer walkways where 3 tiles wide red is economical being workshops or giant storage rooms, both connected with small stairs where appropriate, the squares in the bottom is how the lodging was done, the corners are up/down stairs
my new fort seems to be on top of a aquafiler. I still have it going since it's good practice for me but sadly I'm gonna have to abandon this one if I can't get any stone.
dig out a big square just above the aquifer, then let the roof collapse on top of the aquifer, it will crush the aquiferness out of it
Using dorf companion in order to designate arrived nobles for slaughter is fun~, it also gives a few units of dwarf skin and dwarf meat . I'm running the old 40d on my laptop, because it has a non-laggy version. The normal version lags like hell so i use an opengl version. Currently running a ~100 dorf fortress at 20-40 fps. Also, how does a flying pheasant trigger stone fall traps?
If you want to do it the hard way, or don't have a thick enough roof above where you want to pierce the aquifer, you can use the fact that an aquifer tile wont produce water if it is next to open air (ie. there is no floor next to it). Just dig out a 3x3 square with a down stair in the middle, then dig a 2 square wide ring about 2 squares away from the main hole. Use 4 screw pumps to keep it drained then channel one layer deeper, leaving the middle for stair construction. If you don't build any floors (or stairs i think, haven't tested it though) next to the wall then it wont flood your fort. Obviously, if its multiple layers you would have to increase the size of the square but the principle is the same. This takes a lot more work and time to do than the cave in method but it makes for some interesting moat defenses if you make the hole big enough :D Also, I did this in the 40d version so it should work in DF2010 unless how aquified tiles work was changed.