Oh damn, I love Dwarf Fortress. With the new version being worked on, I've been looking for an excuse to play without getting too involved, and a year of a bloodline game sounds perfect.

Can I get in on this?

After a shitloade of training, a small halfling comes into the room.

"Count me in" he says as he notices a mandrill slowly approaching him from the behind...

TO NOT BE CONTUVRED

This is actually a pretty fun game, but it is an incredible pain to learn all the things. I've been playing this for the last week or so and haven't lost once. Maybe I'm just that good, I don't know, but if you don't mind me potentially screwing up the entire fortress, you can count me in.

Also, I got a few questions:
- How do I get my Trader to go do her job at the depot? Sometimes when the liaison comes she spends the whole time 'Conducting Meetings' with him and then the caravan leaves. I do the normal required things, but sometimes she just doesn't bother.
- Is there any way to remove zones, because pressing x on them does nothing.
- How do I get the rest of my animals in the pit? As far as I know I've selected all of them to be thrown in, but when about half are in the pit the dwarfs just ignore the rest (and the pit still says 'Not Full').
- What is the purpose of fortress guards? So far all they've done is as soon as enemy appears, no matter where they are they drop what they're doing and rush single file into battle. Being no more then civilians, they were met with a swift death and managed to depress most of my military to the point where a few went insane/melancholy and others threw tantrums.

It's generally a good idea to disable all your Trader's jobs temporarily until you're finished dealing with the merchants. That'll let them finish their meetings more quickly. You might want to assign a new trader, to make sure they don't have any other administrative responsibilities (manager, record keeper, stuff like that). If you're worried about not getting the values of what you're trading, just make a shitton of stone crafts and estimate. Be very generous just in case you're wrong. That'll give them the experience to figure out what stuff is worth again.

To remove zones, press x, then use Enter to draw a square as you would making to make the zones. Press x again when you're done.

I've never dealt much with animals beyond butchering and training them, sorry.

Fortress guards are just like your police, basically. They'll beat dwarves who don't appease the nobles, and are generally useless. You want them to be as underequipped as possible just so your "criminal" dwarves who are getting a beating for missing a production deadline aren't killed. They're just there to make nobles happy. What I do is conscript any dwarf with a major injury they're not likely to recover from into the fortress guard, as no one cares whether they're able bodied or not. As long as they fill the ranks, the nobles will be satisfied.

Well yea, but my problem is them stupidly rushing into combat from great distances, and then only making things worse. Anyway I can prevent that?

I haven't bothered with armour much in my current fortress as I don't have any magma, and I just cut down all my trees. I managed to find an underground river, though, so I started a massive tree farm that'll pay off in a few years. Once I get my charcoal supplies running, I'll have plenty of good steel.

Until then, my 20 or so champion wrestlers have been strangling the goblins just fine.

Still, it'd be nicer to watch them swing hammers proper dwarf-like.