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Author Topic: Military/Civilian Ratio  (Read 678 times)

hemperor

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Military/Civilian Ratio
« on: August 12, 2015, 09:16:05 pm »

I'm very newbie, and i am playing in a fortress with 110 dorfs or more right now, how many dorfs is adequated  to put exclusevely in military squads, when you have 100+ dwarfs? 40? 50?  i know that changes in relation of the embark scenario, but considering a peaceful noob site...
maybe it looks like a lazy question, but i want to know the particular choices of some people to get a good idea of what is the best ,and how you guys handle this.

Thanks a lot for the help.
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Bouchart

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Re: Military/Civilian Ratio
« Reply #1 on: August 12, 2015, 09:28:43 pm »

For a fort of 100+, I use about 20, evenly divided between crossbowdwarves and melee dwarves.  I find that skill levels and the quality of equipment are far more important than numbers.

In a relatively peaceful area your biggest threats will probably be forgotten beasts with a fire attack, forgotten beasts with a disease causing fluid, flooding the fortress due to badly designed pumps or floodgates, or simply forgetting to make enough food and drink for everyone.
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Military/Civilian Ratio
« Reply #2 on: August 13, 2015, 02:23:43 am »

It very much depends on your play style. If any threat is going to be dealt with by sending in the troops you probably need a fair number and a trickle of replacements. If, on the other hand, you mainly rely on defensive measures and use the militia only for mopping up the last remnants of an invading force (such as the buggers that start camping on the cage traps their comrades are in), you need considerably fewer.
I try to go for a full squad of 10, although I set my pop cap to 60, so I don't have that many dorfs. However, I see no need to have more that that with my play style. Some people find crossbowdwarves to be quite useful, while others (myself among those) consider them to be a useless broken pain in the butt.

It can be mentioned that some people want to give all of their dorfs military training by rotating them between militia and civilian jobs. Military training provides some benefits in the form of discipline and armor use training (to allow them to deal with dead sentients and to move at an acceptable rate while armored) and also set up other cross training programs to increase stats (stronger dorfs take less time to haul heavy stuff, for instance, and strength is not trained by hauling). Civilians with some military training also stand a greater chance to survive meetings with hostile critters.
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Niddhoger

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Re: Military/Civilian Ratio
« Reply #3 on: August 13, 2015, 12:21:42 pm »

Seriously though, you really don't have much work to give your dorfs.  So they either sit around doing nothing (60+ idlers), or you give them tons of busy work that you get burried in the FPS load of all those crafts and spare items collecting dust. 

For now... I'd say take half of your idlers and turn them into the military.  You still actually need idlers, as they are your standby/get stuff done now force.  If you have 0 idlers and need to haul a bunch of stuff, have all your dimple cups ground into dye, press those rock nuts, etc (jobs were skill hardly matters), you want that fleet of peasants to jump into action and get it done NOW without having to micromanage your skilled workforce (well, I don't need to make more weapons, so I guess I can turn hauling on for him right now, but I still need to forge more armor...)

Later, you can keep a "core" of artisans (legendary metalworkers, clothiers, jewelers) and support staff (farmers, cooks, brewers) supported by twice/1.5 times that in haulers and other scud labor.  Everyone else goes into the military.  At first you can't really afford much of a military (maybe 2-5 token members to chase off early megabeasts), but later on you'll have ~30-50 civilians compared to 150+ strong military... mainly because there is just nothing else for them to do but train and fight.  Then you get bored and decide to play with the circus, die, then start everything over again :D

Another consideration is that trained, active duty military personal are incapable of having a strange mood.  However, if you release them from training/duty they revert to civilians and count as strange mood bait again.  See this for a more in-depth explanation of strange moods in general (weighting, selection, caveats, etc).  Basically, once all of your artisans have entered a strange mood, you'll have to catch your military off-duty or start grooming your haulers for moods as well.  Dwarf Therapist will also tell you what a dorfs "highest moodable skill" is- it can be soemthing as low as level 1 if no other moodable skills are higher than that.  You... don't need more wood artifact mini-forges, do you?
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Strange_mood

One last point, is that when retiring a fortress it will no longer need to generate food/clothing/wealth, but it'll still be attacked by goblins and such.  During that time, having 110 legendary warriors in masterwork equipment will have it stand a far better chance of repelling invaders while you work on another fort (if that is your thing, I like to "expand" my civilizations).  Basically, when sieges happen all defenses that funnel/break up/kill off invaders and all traps placed (from the trap menus) are ignored.  Instead, the game just calculates an all out brawl between both sides considering the skills/equipment/total numbers of both.  So if you only have 10-20 military professionals when attacked, you'll be swarmed in an open brawl with 100 goblins.  However, if you retire your entire fort as activate duty armored and armored soldiers...  You live in a peaceful area, but you still need soliders to fend off forgotten beasts and dragon attacks.  FB's/MBs are known to clear out sites and claim them as lairs.  I've reclaimed a (world generated) dwarven site, only to find an FB chilling in one of the back bedrooms. 
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Military/Civilian Ratio
« Reply #4 on: August 13, 2015, 12:56:18 pm »

Niddhoger's points are all valid, and I hadn't even considered the retirement aspect (although, to my defense, I don't retire...).

However, it still comes down to play style. If you use a full size fortress (i.e. a standard one), you'll run out of jobs after a few years, unless you're engaged in a mega project. If, on the other hand, you use a reduced size fortress, you won't have too many dorfs to spare. Beware, however, that reduced size fortresses may be good for your FPS, but you miss out on a lot of features if you don't change parameters in files to lower thresholds.
I agree with Niddhoger that you want a workforce somewhere in the 30-50 range, or you'll frequently run into the problem that some jobs won't be done in a timely manner because the single dorf with that job is doing some of his other jobs, or is off on leave. Of course, if the fortress is large, you may need to double up on some jobs to get a sufficient throughput, but that increases the workforce size only marginally.
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