Tips for managing your dwarven laborers:
1) Decide what you're doing with each member of each immigrant wave when they arrive. It's easier to re-assign a dwarf or two down the road, than let it get out of hand and discover you have had 75 dwarves doing sweet Fanny Adams for years.
2) Most farming tasks do not require a high level of trained skill. I always assign certain dwarves to a "farmhand" role where they have most or all farming labors enabled. This ensures that there will always be a dwarf standing by to tan a hide before it rots, brew up another pot of booze, etc. Some may disagree with me on this point with respect to brewing and planting; there is a benefit to having those jobs done by experts if you have them.
3) Dwarves that have an important job that they must do right away when needed, should have their hauling labors disabled. "Sure I'll make that door to keep out the invading hordes, Boss -- just as soon as I finish hauling this -pig tail fibre sock- from one end of the map to the other!"
4) As I've played more and more Dwarf Fortress, I've started to pick my starting seven's skills based not on how immediately useful those skills will be, but on how hard it is to acquire/train a dwarf with those skills after the fact. If you bring a doctor (a dwarf with points in every medical skill), you may not use him in the first few years, but once you start to need a hospital you will have an effective one right away; if you relied on training up a doctor from scratch it would take many years before s/he was decently skilled (and Urist McNotExactlyDrHouseYet can only gain skill by practicing on your dwarves, with predictable results...). On the other hand, a dwarf will go from What Am Mining Pick to Legendary Miner in one season of continuous mining.
5) What to do with that useless dwarf? Do you have a bookkeeper and manager yet? You need one if you actually want an inventory record of your forts' belongings. Already got all your noble slots filled? There is always more room in the Dwarven Army.
6) Once you get up around 75 dwarves, you will have to use Dwarf Therapist. It's okay. No shame in it.
7) Now that immigrants are pulled from world-gen dwarves, the bloodier and more strife-filled your world's history, the more badass the dwarves that will migrate to your fort. On worlds where I modded the civilization ethics to put Dwarves into more conflict with the other races, and genned a 150+ year world history, I get a constant stream of pre-trained, battle-ready G.I. Urists. If, on the other hand, your world is full of peace, love, and sunshine, your dwarves will arrive with skill points in Cheesemaker and Fishing.
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Topic: Help!! I suck (Read 2944 times)