EXTREME early game difficulty

[DragonDai]

It's not entirely clear to me from your description how you split the workload between your gnomes, but in my opinion the key is to let each gnome specialize into 1-2 jobs, except in the first few days when you want to run 3-4 crude workshops to kickstart your industry. Once the proper workshops are up you want to assign specialists to concentrate all the skillups from a certain job onto single gnome, or as few gnomes as possible for the more laborious tasks. Pairing related jobs makes sense since the respective workshops should be paired as well. I'm still learning the optimal setup, but I think the following is a good idea after the first week:

1 dedicated miner. Add another dedicated miner early in the first year as gnomads arrive or mining iron will be too slow. Gnomads often have decent mining skill.
1 dedicated weaver/tailor. One of the gnomes initially set to the farmer profession will have high skill in both.
1 dedicated cook and butcher. The gnome initially set to the rancher profession will have high skill in both.
1 dedicated farmer for wheat and cotton fields. He does nothing else.
2 guys running the metal industry full time. Usually one has everything except weapon crafting enabled, the other everything but armor crafting. Later on add a third dedicated smelter.
2 dedicated foresters with wood cutting + horticulturism jobs. Add a third to increase wood production and make a large grove (300+ trees, I believe pine may grow fastest). The game where I ran out of wood, one of my dedicated foresters died early on plus I underestimated the demand for coal.
1 dedicated carpenter that does odd jobs when he's not busy making furniture and torches.

Hauling is done when any of them has nothing to do. Construction work is manually enabled when necessary on the gnomes currently not doing high priority work.

Setting priorities is important. Beds and beautification can wait. It's all about functionality. Try to build compact. Copper armor/weapon are a waste of time.

I just wanted to address a couple of points.

I do no beautification. No walls where they don't absolutely need to be, no statues, nothing in the great hall (absolutely nothing, although I do make one so that if someone is actually idle I know immediately), etc.

I only make copper armor out of the armor plates that the goblins drop, and then I only make breastplates out of them (just as a stop gap, since a lot of the crafting jobs to make armor are already done for me). Usually, the first 2-3 gnomes will have a copper breastplate (you start with one, no reason not to use it) and copper helmets (the just drop on the ground, no reason not to use them) and then all the rest of the armor is bronze/ogre leather. And yeah, I salvage copper weapons, but usually make bronze weapons right away, for all my guys.

As for super specialization, after the first day or two, I generally specialize my guys into just a couple of jobs, but I tried experimenting with super specilization (2 metal works, for instance, one, Gnome A, who does nothing but smelt, forge, and make coal, the other, Gnome B, who uses the armor/weapon/blacksmith) but I ran into issues were A was sleeping, B ran out of mats, and then I either had to manually switch him to A's job (and then manually switch him back so A isn't idling once he wakes), or just let him haul stuff while he waits for A to wake up. Same thing goes for farming (as in, if the guy who harvests the cotton is sleeping, the guy who makes the bandages either gets switched to harvesting the cotton or idles) and, really, any other tasks. So I generally specialize by the material they are working with. AKA any gnome that mines the stone also works with the stone. Anyone who harvests the food also works with the food, etc. This means that I generally have 2-3 people with identical profession sets, who tackle projects (say, making bandages, with all the steps required to make them) in priority order via the priority system (this has it's own problems of workbenches seeming to ALWAYS take priority over non-workbench jobs, like harvesting, dealing with animals, etc. But I just work around that via suspending things a lot).

Finally, I enjoy playing on tiny maps. This means that I have less "free" resources and have to get things like tree farms set up quicker. I am pretty sure that a smaller map does increase the difficulty early on (because you start with less "free" resources), but I really dislike the massive maps. And tiny maps do have some advantages (less area to mine thru to find the good stuff).

As far as mining goes, I don't "clear the whole level" but I do probably "explore" a bit more than I actually need to. It's something I am gana work on in the new game I am gana start right after I finish this post (I am abandoning my old game).

Thanks for the advice. If I could ask you (or anyone) to go a bit more into what they mean exactly by "specializing," I'd love to hear some more details.

[Evil Fluffy]

Set all of your gnomes to be completely unarmed and unarmored and set them to way of the gnome.  Unless you have some crazy worth on summer day 1 your gnomes will just beat them to death because Martial Artist gnomes attack fast as hell.  This also results in stats going up faster when training and higher dodge/fitness is always nice for when you start giving them weapons and armor.

I'd set 4 dedicated soldiers (rest were militia, but also using the unarmed setup) and only gave weapons/armor to two of the soldiers.  The unarmed guys were still killing the semi-armored goblins without issue when year 2 rolled around and I put them in to copper/bronze for when mants started coming to play.

So if nothing else, do this:

- Set all but 1-2 gnomes in to militia units, have them be completely unequipped and setup with the unarmed traits.
- Have your 1-2 armored gnomes standing near your entrance (if you don't have walls, you should).
- setup a training spot for these guys, that way they're always there.
- Once enemies are en route, have all the unarmed way of the gnome militia join in the fight.
- Whatever drops that isn't immediately useful to your pair, such as armor or a weapon/shield that matches their skills and setup, should be smelted.
- Make armor you need from the bars via smelting and armor that pair up.  Once you have 2 fully-armored copper gnomes they can handle pretty much whatever comes at you in year 1 unless you're extremely efficient in building up your kingdom/value.
- Make extra sets of copper armor for however many soldiers you plan to have when year 2 rolls around.
- Don't forget to have a crate or 2 of bandages close to where the fighting is.  Every step matters when you've got a gnome bleeding out and unable to move at normal speed.
- Butcher the fallen goblins and snack on delicious goblin sausages and sandwiches.

The only reason to have iron (or even bronze) by summer 1 is either playing on a high difficulty or go completely overboard on gear.  Martial Artist gnomes murder enemies that aren't fully clad in armor.  Even in full copper armor a goblin can get dropped by these gnomes when their fighting skill is high enough but the odds are somewhat against them.  By the time bronze-suited goblins come around you should have them geared up because even with high skills you're still going to lose a limb (or head) pretty easily to a solid hit; especially considering how much goblins love 2handers despite them being kind of terrible.  A Highlander gnome might also be good early on but I've never tried that setup.


By the time bronze enemies show up you'll want to have some hammer dual-wielders trained up ideally.  Even well-trained gnomes with copper hammers can break bronze armor on goblins.  Once that armor's broken the enemy's as good as dead.  This is true for your gnomes too, especially later on where losing your breastplate is almost always followed immediately by that gnome getting killed by a iron/steel goblin or 2handed ogre hitting them and suddenly your 150+ hammer/dodge gnome with 200+ fitness that's been around for 5 years is dead.