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[Ross Vernal]

So, let's talk about some important and not overly mentioned topic here: efficiency and labor!

You should all know what I mean by efficiency: save FPS, produce more, and less micromanagement.

Questions like: How do you divide your dwarves? What labors do each division have? What is their proportion relative to your total population? Why? Where are your stockpiles? How big? How many? Why do you put them? How many workshops do you build? Where do you build them? What do you give your military for outfits? Reservists? Cannon fodder? Plain dwarves? Militia? How do you train them and why? Where? Do you ever use patrols? How big are your hallways?

Here's my answers.

Pathing: 3 x 3 hallways. People talk a lot about using different Z-levels, but I haven't tried it. Making all the places a dorf has zero buisness being into restricted traffic areas using the 1 1 5 25 traffic formula. Also, I build walls double thick and suspend where I don't want dorfs going.

Labor: 20% are Hauling Bitches/Cannon Fodder. Their only labors are Hauling and half of them are given leather and bone, with iron weapons. 20-30% are Braceros - builders, farmers, hunters, food processors, brewers, etc. 10% are Army dorfs. A further 10% are Reservists, who are builders, pump operators, and engravers. The rest are specialists in their single profession or area - most of my smiths are also furnace operators, for example.

Resource Management: I try to build multiple Dabbling to Competent Mason workshops set to churn out blocks, non-stop. I try to have two more craftdorf workshops than I have craftdorfs. I build at least 8 farm workshops so I can just set each to either Process Plants or Process Animals on repeat and never have to disable it. I have at least 6 stills set up set to constantly brew. I try to have at least one shop per dorf, basically.

Military: Army? Never patrol. Train 3/4 of the year, work pumps and smooth floors 1/4 the year. Full set of armor, multiple mail shirts, steel helm, steel/silver weapons, shields. Squads of 3.

Reserve? Train when Army is off duty, weapon of choice, steel helms, iron armor. Squads of 3.

Cannon Fodder? Bone and leather. Never train. Squads of 4 so I don't get them confused.

Civilian militia? Crossbow, quiver, leather armor. Will sometimes be chain if I have enough iron. I have done Sword and Board, though: wood shields and obsidian swords. It works. Squads of 10.

What do you do?

[hostergaard]

Well I am currently working on a league - guild -chapter system.

Two variants actually, one that that works well with the manager and one that allows more personal control.

For example, in the manager friendly one we have the Metalsmith guild with a Melting and Smiting chapter. The guild have its own dinning hall and rooms and can be closed of from the rest of the fortress if need be (like all the other one).

We divide the smiths into apprentice - journyman - master and let them work with cheap - average and rare metals respectively by restricting access to workshops to appropriate skill levels and placing stockpiles around them where only the relevant metals are allowed.

Larger rooms are given according to rank.

In the personal system its a Metalsmith league that consist of all the different metalsmiting and melting skills as guilds. While the guilds still share a dining halls they all have their own workshops. Here the workshops are assigned personally to a dwarf when he reach journyman/master level and the stockpiles only allowed to stock his or hers favorite metals for him to work with.

Furthermore, extra rooms like private dinning halls and tombs are afforded according to guild rank. Upon reaching master levels they are rewarded with private dining halls with furniture made by themselves, the masterpiece made to prove his mastery of the skill.

Legendaries get their own tomb. The alderman, that is the dwarf that is the absolute best of that skill and thus the leader of that guild is afforded a office. The master of arts, the dwarf who have mastered all the different crafts in the guild/league and is thus the leauge/guild leader, gets the whole shebang, private garden included.

The personal design don't work well with managers put you could potentially add guild chapters inside other guilds/leagues to make things more efficient. Like a Jewelers workshop in the metalsmith guild so you don't have to move the armor around to stud it with jewels. 

Anyway, I am still working on the design and focusing on the manager friendly version, the design is more centered around the workshops rather than the dwarfs in the other designs.   

[rtg593]

Used to do 3 wide halls, this fort took it to 2 wide, not a fan, but doesn't seem to adversely affect them. Shops are grouped in 4's by function, so craft/mason/mason/mechanic, butcher/fisher/kitchen/tanner, etc etc.

Fort organized 2x1 groups, so 8x2 room blocks. Rooms are 5x5, stockpiles 11x11, fits in the grid pattern nicely and makes the shift move highly useful. Center tile between the 4 like rooms removed for diagonal movement, in the stone group there's a stone dump there. Food group, the diagonal is the only access to butcher/fishery to prevent miasma spread. Dining hall start 11x11, expanded to 11x22 as necessary.

Doors to shops staggered, so going down the hall, 2 doors beside each other on left, the a bit further on right, then intersection, the repeat. High traffic lane weaving back and forth avoiding the doorways.

Bedrooms are 2x2 rooms arranged in an 8x2 pattern, stairway in the middle for access. Built above/below main halls on a low traffic side.

4 breweries in an 11x11 plant stockpile across the hall from 9 3x3 farm plots in a 11x11 seed stockpile, 4 plots outside plants. They seem to keep pace with each other nicely, 200 dwarfs fort, currently 3,000 drinks and rising. 1,000 lavish meals and rising.

Dwarves are fairly specialized, 2 of each main skill focused on only that job, currently 10 military in training, will break into 10 squads to train new recruits when they are finished (accidentally embarked with no goblins, all friendly civs; training to do battle in hell). The rest as haulers, all hauling enabled, plus mason/carptenter/plantgatherer/miner. Mason/carpenter shops set to proficient and above so haulers won't interfere, but can still very quickly build... Anything. There's 80 of them :p Architecture, As well.

3 doctors, haulers act as nurses, a few specialized nobles. Everything engraved, all furniture masterwork, so even though I just lost 30 dwarves to mining accidents, I only had 5 tantrums, then 4, then 3, etc, etc. Still need to set up mist generators.

All incoming dwarves are stripped of labors and borrowed into a locked room for the hunger/thirst test. Most become haulers, unless I need something one is good at. I generally run about 30 idlers, all haulers with nothing to do, so they part and have babies.

Most of my haulers are mining out a 146 z-level magma piston, hence the recent deaths. Most will become military once I have enough metal gear, once fully trained, I will lay siege on hell. 100 legendary warriors in all masterwork gear is the goal, plus seige engines and traps, etc, etc. As many as possible with candy, but only the front lines if necessary.

[Loud Whispers]

"Efficiency"
Erm...

Next question.

As for hallways, everything has to be at least 2x or 3x wide, and the main entrance must be 5x wide (absolutely impossible to defend without a large army ).

Everyone is in the military, and 2/3rds of my entire population will be sparring at any given time, with an exception to the bookkeeper, some farmers and miners, for obvious reasons.

Lots of military micromanagement, pretty much always looking for sources of food and booze, industry nonexistent (besides textiles and farming). Love it.

[hostergaard]

Oh, I used to build my fort in a grid with 3 wide hallways on all sides of 9x9 rooms.

It's a very modular and flexible design. You can place a 3x3 stairwell or ramps on all crossroads. You can mine out the room leaving a one tile wide walls and doors in the middle of each side. Then you can place a workshop in each 3x3 corner leaving a one tile wide path in the middle where you can place a small stockpile. You can then place stair in the middle of the cross and mine out the rooms above and below for larger stockpiles.

Or you can mine them out in a very compact room pattern. One 9x9 can allow for up to, say, 8 1x3 rooms for your average dwarf to use (make sleeping halls for the rabble). Or 4 3x3 rooms for your nobles. All without breaching the original design of a 1 tile wide wall with doors in the middle. The strength of the design is that because they all adhere to that basic tenant you can easily move or re-purpose any of the rooms. Want to move your entire fortress a few levels down? Easily done. Move your crafting area closer to the mines? No problem. 

Maybe I should draw it?

[Mitchewawa]

If you want maximum efficiency, you could always make your fortress completely out of up/down stairs (except for the 3x3 areas required for workshops and the like). Stockpile everywhere, even in corridors, bedrooms and hospitals.

And if you're using a fortress militia (as in, an unskilled civilian force) use spears. More likely to get lucky hits and chip bones so your horde can reverse-hedgehog an enemy.

[Veylon]

For labor, I usually have one dwarf (or sometimes two) specializing in a skill and given no other job. So I have a Weaponsmith, a Brewer, a Mason, a Gem Setter etc. When I don't have anything for them to do, I'll set them to haul as well. I like to set up a fortress burrow and assign this batch of dwarves to it so I don't lose someone important to a goblin ambush or whatever. Then I'll have the rest of my dwarves given all jobs I don't have a specialist for. So they'll take care of spinning, tanning, gem cutting, hauling, etc. I generally start with two miners (who specialize) and increase that as I get more picks from traders.

I've taken to using vertical fortresses lately. I'll have a 3x3 central stairway shaft with each floor being 15x15. There will be one floor each for food and non-food stockpiles (two as the fort matures), one for metal bars/ore, magma-based work (I always drill straight for magma right away), other work, a social floor with dorm, dining, hospital, and meeting room, plant farming, poultry, and Noble Quarters. If I'm feeling generous, I'll have a few floors of individual rooms (also connected vertically to eliminate hallways). I used to put a floor or two of tombs, but the introduction of Necromancers is making me a bit paranoid and so now I'm interring the dead on the far side of the defenses.

I generally have little-to-no military. I depend on cage traps, drowning traps, dodge-me traps, and general malevolent architecture. I keep a special drowning chamber to uncage goblins and other undesirables in. Once I get a decent amount of steel or adamantium, I'll grab ten of my haulers and start a squad to deal with Forgotten Beasts and other individual trap-resistant threats.

[Urist Da Vinci]

For large numbers of dwarves, many stand around idling for most of the fort's life. Much CPU time can be saved by minimizing the pathing required between the following rooms that an idler uses:

Bedroom
Booze Stockpile
Food Stockpile
Dining Room
Meeting Hall/Area

Minimum pathing means HIGH traffic designation (or tile cost 1), no bottlenecks, minimized walking distance, minimum dead ends (dorm rather than individual bedrooms), and growing quarry bushes as the food crop rather than plump helmets.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

I just can't get my head wrapped around "efficiency."  Right now, I have 45 idlers, with a ridiculously inefficient fortress.  Why would I make my fortress more efficient?

Well, I guess that's not totally true, it's an ugly fortress, but old habits die hard, and stockpiles are close to workshops, everything's central and reasonably vertical, etc.  But screw wide hallways.

Reducing micromanagement?  That's totally my thing.  Except it's my thing to the extent that it doesn't reduce micromanagement, because I spend all of my time working on things to automate fortress functions.  Automation is like my megaproject, so as soon as I've got something automated, I'm messing with it, trying to improve the design.  Automated stockpiles, automated dump zones, automated silk farm, automated FB treatment, automated migrant entry-- now I'm working on a clock, so I can automate the opening and closing of my main gates, of some undersea chambers full of cage traps so they don't freeze over, of-- well, I guess I don't really know what else.  But of course, setting up the clock is totally going to take more time than any time it ever saves.

FPS?  If it wasn't for FPS concerns, I would have machines spewing water and magma left and right.

[Quarterblue]

I give every job to everyone.

[luppolo]

the same, except works with quality modifiers

anyway i don't ever have much related problems as i kill all migrants i don't need (every wave after the third minus people with odd skill levels)

[Psieye]

Labor: 20% are Hauling Bitches/Cannon Fodder. Their only labors are Hauling and half of them are given leather and bone, with iron weapons. 20-30% are Braceros - builders, farmers, hunters, food processors, brewers, etc. 10% are Army dorfs. A further 10% are Reservists, who are builders, pump operators, and engravers. The rest are specialists in their single profession or area - most of my smiths are also furnace operators, for example.

Around 70% of my dwarves are 'drones' who have 40 labours enabled - all the jobs where skill is unimportant. If bolts are plentiful, they double up as the crossbow mob.

[daggaz]

Limit interconnectivity of the fortress (contrary to what many people think, more pathing options is BAD), limit distances by grouping related industries and required sustenance items across xy and specially z levels, very few large open spaces.   then make liberal use of burrows and traffic designations.

the vast majority of my dwarves are simple haulers.  a few legendary artisans are more than enough to meet production in other fields, and i dont even bother with crafts.  spend most of my time first finishing the fort, then expanding upwards into megastructures. 

[Yaotzin]

I make specialists to do all the jobs where skills matters. Farming and stuff with item quality, basically. I have very few of these specialists as legendary+5 tends to be really fast at almost everything.

I also make several doctors, who have some or all of the medical skills enabled, and nothing else so they're sure to get to it.

I pick both of these based entirely on their attributes/personality traits - I don't care what their skills are.

Everyone else gets all the other labors + hauling. The uneducated masses. I build several of the relevant workshops for these guys, since they're sloooow.

Finally I pick out military guys from the haulers, whoever has good stats for that gets drafted as needed.

[ThtblovesDF]

I dig out a massive z level of sand and make it a stockpile for everything.
I dig out a massive z level of stone and stuff it full with all workshops.

Everything works well and overtime quality will always improve and if any stand out, I take them off hauler labor and only have them do that one thing they are good at.


Power to the people!

Oh and 80 children miners.