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[aaOzymandias]

My last two forts I have more or less abandoned due to lag. I am note sure what really makes the lag roll in, but I have tried making wide corridors (3 in width) and a large 3x3 central staricase in my forts accessing things straight from them. 4x4 embark.

I even used DF Hack clean once in a while to remove old and uneeded blood stain on the battlefields and such. But non the less, my fort does get laggy.

I even try not to have running water, or pumps at all due to lag. As well as killing off spare kittens and dogs.

Is there any good tips on fortress design for anti-lag? My processor is faitly new and should be OK. Should I try and limit my dwarf count severly?

[Reelyanoob]

4x4 gets pretty hefty on path finding once you open some levels up, try 3x3, 2x2 or even 1x1 (needs Nano Fortress). 200 dwarves on a smaller map runs ok for me, whereas a 4x4 is slow from the start. (Nano Fortresses on my crappy old laptop were starting out at around 500-700 FPS!!)

Maybe you can cut z-levels down a bit in worldgen settings, and temp and weather off in d_init.txt. Also check the lastest additions to DFHack, e.g. the item dumper/obliterator.

A cool thing you can do is to create a small fort, then when you're finished with it, you can abandon, then use "JustEmbark.exe" to reclaim it + a little more land. So small forts can become bigger, but big forts cannot become smaller.

[blizzerd]

there is no lag in this game afaik, technically its not even possible

[foop]

The sheer amount of accumulated cruft can hit FPS in mature forts.  I recently had a mass dump and atom smashing of accumulated goblinite (troll leather thongs, copper caps, etc.) and my FPS went from 70 to 130.

[zilpin]

The sheer amount of accumulated cruft can hit FPS in mature forts.  I recently had a mass dump and atom smashing of accumulated goblinite (troll leather thongs, copper caps, etc.) and my FPS went from 70 to 130.

That's exactly why I mod out clothing, leave only armor and robes.

[Montague]

smaller region sizes seem to help, try to design a smaller region with everything you need.
 
Smaller embark sites.

Also, getting rid of cavern layers in your world gen helps immensely. Go for 1 cavern and a bottom layer, or no bottom layer and magma, this will cut down your z-levels immensely and make everything rather accessable as well. Go for flat embark sites, which includes the entire 16x16 square. If you have a mountain or something 350+ z levels high somewhere in your 16x16 area it will create a big open sky that can hurt your FPS.

Modding out or simplifying clothing might help. Keep in might that clothing does function as a sort of armor and if you leave temperature on, your nekkid humanoids will be hurting, especially in freezing biomes. Robes, shoes, hat and maybe gloves. I just rename them to "headgear" "Clothing" "footwear" ect.

Don't embark on rivers if you use caverns.
Try to "build vertical" meaning keep your workshops, depots, food stores, ect, anyplace your dwarves go often above or below with stairs. It cuts down pathfinding a lot. Build lots of up/down stairs when you can afford to, baring in mind it makes getting around easier for any invaders that get inside your fort as well.

I like to embark with unskilled miners and 7 picks, so there is not so much extra stone littering the fort when I'm just first carving out the basics in my fort and leaving the metal veins, aline untill everything is established. Every worthless item on the map adds up.

[blizzerd]

i must have been stoned last night, i could not see he was talking about fps drops

why would you not embark with a river on a cavern map?

[lazygnome]

why would you not embark with a river on a cavern map?

Moving water in rivers hurts FPS.  Caverns are more likely to contain water than be dry, and the water in cavern lakes (and murky pools) only moves if you remove some of the water (wells, pumping, etc.) 

[LuckyLuigi]

Mark you main corridors with traffic d-o
high traffic for 'highways'
restricted traffic for unused/hardly used areas
Seal of areas that you don't use with walls. Locked door do not stop them pathfinding (I think).
Try to limit the possible number of routes. I generally have just a few staircases.
Avoid building large open spaces. If you do, be sure to use the traffic designation to make straight paths from door to door.
If your dwarves don't have to move very far they won't need to pathfind far.
I usually do a resource and finished product near a factory. If the finished product needs to move further than designate another stockpile and take from the original one. Haulers will sort it while production continues.
Try to get rid of all the trash...sell if or smash it.
Try to keep your dwarves reasonably clean.