Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Schmaven]

Your dwarves are doing nothing because you've given them nothing to do. If you've given them nothing to do you don't have to worry about what they'e doing, just expand your tavern, give them nice things to look at until you think of something to do.

Spoiler: Remaining Quote (click to show/hide)

Masses of dwarves means you most likely have dwarves with all the labours you need (game ensures the labours you need are enabled in migrants). So you can do anything you want in no time.

Automate food and booze production with your manager and you never have to worry about it again.

Biggest mistakes to make are to think that Dwarves enjoying themselves and not working is a bad thing (the opposite actually) and that you have to micromanage labours (no need with a fortress packed full of dwarves unless you actually want to start optimizing projects).

What's the problem again?

A good sized plump helmet plot, a dormitory, a dining hall, and some dedicated brewers / farmers is all you need for a heck of a lot of dwarves to get by just fine.  Seems like no matter what, some tend toward insanity, so I don't really bother with amenities at first.  Running out of booze and food will cause greater unhappiness anyway.  If you have these basics, then you can pursue other aspects of the fort at your leisure. 

I sometimes will put everyone in the fort on food & booze production for a couple years to build up a massive stockpile and then not have to worry about it at all for several more years afterward.  Also, with a massive stockpile of food and drinks on hand, it doesn't matter how many migrants arrive, and they can be put straight to work on the current project.

Having dwarves idle in the meeting area gives them a chance to meditate, socialize, sing, dance, etc. which keeps them happy.  But it's also a sign that you have untapped potential to get things done.  If I have a bunch of idlers, they can almost all be put straight to work by giving them some common labors:

Stone Detailing: And smooth a bunch of rooms, engrave the dining hall rooms, etc. 
Weaving / Tailoring: Once you start growing pig tails, you can keep 5 dwarves fairly occupied constantly making fresh clothing to replace old tattered rags
Miners: Why not make some exploratory tunnels all over?  (Just make sure to wall off the caverns when you find them)
Construction / Masonry: Surface constructions take a lot of blocks and a lot of construction dwarves.  Even a simple walled courtyard with covered fortifications along the walls takes a lot of dwarf power
If you have a lot of stones, enable stone hauling on everyone and make a few big stone stockpiles.  Then crank out rock pots for days.  Doors too.  I always manage to run out of food storage and doors multiple times in every fort. 

That's all just basic stuff though.  If you have a particular goal or project in mind, just start it.  Then when it's not done instantaneously, look to what isn't getting done?  What needs to be done in order to get to the next part of it?  Then give a handful of dwarves that particular labor and nothing else.  Rinse and repeat until your tavern is empty.   

Edit: a Suggestion - Perhaps the first big project could be digging out the rooms for a large population fort.  It will take some planning, but if you have a big plan, and that plan is simple and clear, then you will not feel like you have enough dwarves.

[muldrake]

I'm not sure how to combat this. I honestly would really much not have to play with the default settings in LNP, as I don't use LNP. It's just very hard to keep track of what dwarves do what and how to make sure most people are doing jobs. Any advice for how to combat this would be appreciated.

If you make a practice of giving every dwarf smoothed, engraved quarters with high quality furnishings, maybe even made of things in their preferences, you'll be able to keep busy doing that for some time.  There are also megaprojects.  One of my first is usually channeling out something like a 15x15 underground farm, then building a roof over it, so that you can grow all the aboveground plants without actually going outside again.  I usually get flooded with guild requests at some point too, and between those and temple complexes, the arrival of new dwarves actually keeps me busy.  My objection is all the things you can do for them distract me from other projects I'd like to do.  There's also always just busywork like making trade goods to buy out the entire caravan, training troops (I put everyone qualified into a squad and stagger training monthly or seasonally for the part-timers).

[Starver]

One of my first is usually channeling out something like a 15x15 underground farm, then building a roof over it, so that you can grow all the aboveground plants without actually going outside again.

This is actually one of my defaults go-tos. Not 15x15 in one go[1], and sometimes I dig the Z-1 soil-room out first then later peel back the soil roof (cave-in avoiding - designation priorities makes this quicker to do-and-forget safely) and re-cover, if I'm not reserving for dwarven crops.

But the roof there isn't as necessary (I tend to just cross with a gantry, at minimum, and set hives up on that 'stone block ground') because I've been building at least 2Z of walls around the area (with ditches and drawbridgen) and then entirely roof over the whole area. Sunken farms, overground grazing areas, orchards and as-yet-unassigned space. Easily absorbs my potential workforce. Also teaches you how to order and prioritise construction jobs!

[1] I overwhelmingly plan with 11x11 superblocks, between criss-cross corridoors, and farm plots are either striped 1x11s in one of those rooms or quartered into 5x5s with walls.

[Orange-of-Cthulhu]

My method to keep population manageable for me (150-160) is to conquer some site, and then simply expel all the migrants to the conquered place immediately when they arive.

That way you can also always call back some dwarves if you happen to for some reason have too few dwarves.

[Chief10]

In terms of keeping interest, I always set the pop cap to ~50 and then name every single dwarf as they come on the map. That way they keep some personality, and I'm more interested in doing good for things for them and avoiding danger. It really ups the role-playing aspect imo.

[MC]

In terms of keeping interest, I always set the pop cap to ~50 and then name every single dwarf as they come on the map. That way they keep some personality, and I'm more interested in doing good for things for them and avoiding danger. It really ups the role-playing aspect imo.

I cannot second this enough. One of the forts I remember the most was the one where I named all the dwarves after members of my guild in an online game and tried to match their personalities up as well as letting them choose what their dwarves did for a living. In general tho naming dwarves is really underratted. It's a great way to grow attached to them and actually care about them other than "oh that guy was my best engraver, guess I gotta add a new one".