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[Genuine]

I've found that running DF under high population conditions causes the game to run extremely slow on my computer due to the amount of characters the processor has to update every 'step'. This can be as low as less than 1 step per second at a max population of ~200,  making the game nearly unplayable (and no, turning off temperature and weather effects do not affect this number at this point very much). Because of this, people with slower computers are forced to keep their populations low (in my case at less than 120 dwarves or so). Now I love each and every one of my dwarves (except maybe the nobles that demand star ruby items), and generally feel bad about having to send an entire immigration wave into the farm and flood it just to keep the game playing at a tolerable speed. To avoid this, I was wondering if you might be able to add an option to the init file to limit the max population that is allowed before immigration is cut off. This would allow players to set the max to a lower number (like around 120 in my case, maybe lower for others) without having to resort to dwarficide every few seasons.

[ December 22, 2006: Message edited by: Genuine ]

[Mechanoid]

As a note, population caps arn't entirely limited; natural births are able to boost the population into practically limitless numbers.
[Thus, the same should still be true even if this idea is implemented (which i hope it is) so that the player can play LIKE he was in tundra without dwarven trade, but be in a wooded area with access to dwarven trade -- the dwarves just dont send any migrants.]

[ December 22, 2006: Message edited by: Mechanoid ]

[Genuine]

Originally posted by Mechanoid:
<STRONG>As a note, population caps arn't entirely limited; natural births are able to boost the population into practically limitless numbers.</STRONG>

Yeah, births can still cause the population to jump, but in most forts I have the birth rate is usually about equal to the rate that dwarves die due to chance/random stupidity/sieges or what have you. Low/no immigration would simply allow for this to be controlled more easily.

[ December 23, 2006: Message edited by: Genuine ]

[Toady One]

Yeah, I'd been thinking about doing this since the FPS complaints have increased, and it'll probably be in the next version.  I think there were some arguments on these forums about this kind of thing, but the technical issues override those concerns.  On the other hand, people with super computers that want to run larger forts can increase the cap, I guess, at their own risk.

[DeepQantas]

Hm. Maybe you could tie it to one (or several) of the now useless nobles?

Something like... the soft cap is 100 until Governor arrives. After that it's 150 (but you can force it lower).

Count allows a cap of 200, Duke 250 and King 300... or whatever.

[scjohnno]

An adjustable pop-cap setting in the init would be nice. It'd let people who want to run a fortress with only the initial 7 dwarves not have to choose a glacier map and be cut off from all trade.

[ctrlfrk]

How about an option to increase the 200 seed limit too? and the number of pets... i only ever tame giant tigers. (i really should make them trainable)