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[rtg593]

2 for each major industry, small military in training, everything else haulers as they arrive. Usually end up with 80 haulers, when mega time comes I give them a picks, lol. Nothing like 80 disposable miners digging out... Whatever

[geail]

I keep mine set at 70 (with a child percentage cap at 50) until I get all my industries set up properly.  Then, I return it to 200 with most of the new, faceless mooks being put as haulers with all downtime spent training in the barracks as future soldiers.

[acetech09]

I have a 200 pop cap and running at about 50fps with 210 dwarves 205 dwarves (frakking elite archers).

about 40 of them are actual artisans and staff, brewers, smelters, crafters, farmers, etc. Another 50 are babies and children, and the remaining 120 are manual Laborers with no tasks but masonry and hauling enabled.

[schismatise]

Once again i find myself agreeing with Girlinhat.

@telamon

Obviously it totally depends on what kind of fort you're building, but a typical breakdown for me would be something like:

1-2 woodworkers, hauling off, doing nothing but cutting trees, making bins, barrels and beds. If they go idle it's because i forgot to designate more trees or order more bins. Only really need 1 but they can die if you're not careful so i like to have a couple - not that i simply let them die though, i protect them obsessively. If they do die, carpentry takes a while to train up.

5-10 stoneworkers, hauling off, doing nothing but mining, smoothing, and building rock furniture. For large scale building i'll turn masonry on for the haulers, and more rarely engraving also for mass smoothing, but otherwise it's all these guys. They are always busy, i like to dig grand (large) halls. I could use more, but i prefer the quality > quantity idea, especially when it comes to mining ores or engraving. Mining gets to legendary pretty fast.

2-20 farmers, hauling off. Usually ~6 farmers is enough for most forts, but once your pop hits around 200 you'll really notice how fast they go through alcohol. Last fort almost starved, i went from 6 farmers to 20, then eventually back to 16 once things were under control. I don't use animals, so i have to grow alot of quarry bushes, which creates jobs for processing the plants, milling nuts, pressing paste, using oil for soap, etc. If they're idle too often, i'll designate the map for plant gathering. If i ever have a surplus of food/drink (over 1000), i'll turn food hauling on.

2-4 craftworkers, hauling off. Leather armor for marksdwarves, and rock pots now and then, but mostly my crafters are making bone bolts. Lots and lots of bone bolts. Again, these guys are always busy (and usually pretty good at bonecrafting), and if there is ever a shortage of bones, i'll make wood bolts or rock crafts if i'm short on trade supplies goblinite elfinite.

2-6 smelters, hauling off. Depends on the biome and what metals i have, but last fort i had iron/flux/lignite, so i had 6 magma smelters constantly smelting for the entire forts duration. Obviously they were all legendary furnace ops. These guys also cover wood burning, which i need for soap making.

2-4 metalworkers, hauling off unless i'm out of metal - if i have plenty of metal, they might spend most their life making bolts, studding with metal, and making armor and furniture for melting, to train their skills. If i lack metals then i'll have less, and turn on their hauling until i need specific armor/weaponry. Takes a while but i usually get a legendary or 2 eventually.

That covers my main industries. If my idle dwarves ever goes over 5, i check who it is, and if it's one of the above, i give them work to do. Generally they are always busy, and most of them become highly skilled. By the end of the fort, certain jobs start to slow down, like crafting/cooking/brewing, but i figure they've earned the break by then. Because i focus on small groups of highly skilled workers, i have plenty of dwarves leftover for hauling, which is necessary with the amount of produce created.

@nenjin

I totally agree with you. I guess the difference for me is that i'm happy to pick which dwarves to focus on from the crowd of faceless mooks. I'll always know my militia by name, as well as my nobles, and the more skilled of my select few workers - basically, i reward the interesting dwarves with attention. I let the game tell me which dwarves are interesting, rather than stopping at 40 and forcing them all to be interesting. If i get a migrant wave of 30, i don't go "oh god another 30 faceless mooks", i go "oh cool, i wonder if any of them are interesting". This game has an amazing way of creating stories out of the most trivial procedural content, and i find the more dwarves you have, the more opportunity you have for interesting gameplay. Your mileage may vary, of course

Edit: Oh, and i forgot to mention, one of the best parts about having a large population is the fact that migrants are now historical figures. The more dwarves you play with, the more dwarves you modify - ie. the more interesting dwarves you start to create. By the time you're creating your 10th fort from the same civilization, you've probably got a pool of ~500 dwarves that you might actually recognise, which is very awesome. So in a way, having a larger population sort of reduces the number of faceless mooks

Edit again: Legendary bonecarver / artifact creator in the first migrant wave!

[Captain Goatse]

One of the best uses for the mass of unskilled or useless-skilled dwarves is waiting for a strange mood. Nothing beats getting a legendary stonecrafter or woodcrafter from nothing!

[Grax]

Unless you want a King?

...to make a *masterful Dwarven King skull totem*...

[Captain Goatse]

I have a 200 pop cap and running at about 50fps with 210 dwarves 205 dwarves (frakking elite archers).

NASA called, they want their computer back.

[Flying Fortress]

My cap is set at 60 (which means I end up with around 70)  and pregnancy is turned off (*starts singing "oh happy day"*)  I run at around 80 FPS and have just enough dwarves for all the jobs I need done.  I've also taken to hidding (d-b-h) all the loose stone in my bedrooms/dining rooms so that I don't spend year upon year dumping stone, this really helps me not need 100+ dwarves for hauling duty.

[zilpin]

I cap at 20 until they have a nice, self sufficient burrow.
Then I increase cap to 50, and make another burrow.
I continue increasing the cap, making self-feeding and boozing burrows, stockpile chains supplying them all, each with an industrial specialty, and dedicated haulers who move between them.

This continues until I hit FPS death.  Highest pop I've ever gotten to was around 280.
In that fort, I'd set designations, building instructions, work orders, then go to bed.  It gave DF a play-by-mail feel.

[nenjin]

See, to me, even the peasants are worth knowing, because it makes their plight that much more believable. No one cares when Hauler #14 gets attacked by something in the caverns. But you'll care when Usuli Scumfeet, Garbage Hauler Extraordinaire, has to drag their crippled body up from the caverns. Familiarity makes their lives tragically interesting instead of inevitably underwhelming.

[schismatise]

True that.

[martinuzz]

I like forts with population 200. Last time I had one was in 2007 or 2008 I think. Early 3d versions, when dwarves were still made of arms, legs, hands, feet, upper and lower body and a head. The update that introduced more complex anatomy made 200 dwarf forts impossible for me, due to FPS issues.
Back then, I could have 200 dwarves at about 15-20 FPS. Now I can have 60 dwarves at 15-20 FPS. If I get to 200 dwarves now, I get 0-1 FPS

[zilpin]

I like forts with population 200. Last time I had one was in 2007 or 2008 I think. Early 3d versions, when dwarves were still made of arms, legs, hands, feet, upper and lower body and a head. The update that introduced more complex anatomy made 200 dwarf forts impossible for me, due to FPS issues.
Back then, I could have 200 dwarves at about 15-20 FPS. Now I can have 60 dwarves at 15-20 FPS. If I get to 200 dwarves now, I get 0-1 FPS

Manipulating the body recipes to get rid of the unused parts does help FPS, if you're willing to give up the flavor it adds to the game.
Once Toady releases the next big bugfix (there are some game killers he's working on) I'm going to make a FPS mod, specifically to remove only the cruft and add nothing to vanilla.

[King DZA]

There are plenty of things I absolutely adore about having grand amounts of dwarves. Here's a few:

For one, having legions of the little bastards is just plain awesome. Seeing the fortress sprawling with life, as hundreds of dwarves go about their business like ants in a bustling colony is something everyone should get to experience at least once. And there's little else cooler than having a militia large enough to charge out of the safety of the fort and head on into an invading force, and actually expect to win.

Makes for great tales. With a large fort, I can pick any dwarf out from the masses, and see what story they tell:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Turns out that random, unremarkable glassmaker had her child stolen when she first arrived several years ago, she is very fit, but antisocial and not fond of helping others. Other than a pet peahen she's owned for several years, she's never bonded with anyone else. She worships the goddess of fire, metals, volcanoes war and fortresses. Despite having no real weapon skills, her attributes are promising, and she becomes a militia captain. She decides her weapon of choice will be the sword, and equips a steel one once used by one of the fortress' past champions. Her first fight is against a few parties of ambushers. It goes well, and she earns her first couple kills, but she loses one of her comrades in the process. She still refuses to get close to anyone, and currently spends much of her time doing individual combat drills in the barracks.

That information alone is enough to weave a fine story about said dwarf. And the fact that migrants are now historical figures adds even more flavor to them.

There's always plenty of dwarves to get stuff done at a decent pace, and other dwarves ready to refill the positions of those that suffer from an unfortunate fate. "Oh no, they killed my legendary weaponsmith! Now I only have two left!"

My pop. cap's at the default 200 right now, but the newer versions seem to run a bit faster for me, so if I reach 200 and still have decent FPS, I'll probably raise it another hundred or so.

[Naryar]

I play generally with 50 to 80 dwarves.

1 woodworker, 4-6 metalworkers, a dozen farmers (i don't need more than four), 4-6 stoneworkers/engravers, same for miners. Most often I get legendary leatherworkers and clothiers so they get the monopole of industry, 2 military squads, 2 to 8 mechanics, any dwarf with healthcare labor gets his healthcare enabled unless some other dwarves are really much better, and the rest are the faceless masses and haulers, ready to be sacrified if necessary. And the baron and mayor are generally included in the faceless masses - the three only nobles that I care for are my militia commander (best military dwarf), administrator (original expedition leader: broker, manager, bookkeeper), and the chief medical dwarf. No need for justice, cause I am justice within the fort, also mandates ? fancy rooms for useless dwarves ? Fuck you, useless nobles !

For me a dwarf earns things in the fortress according to it's usefulness. Best rooms and tombs go to the original seven, or legendary warriors, or useful legendary crafters. Other dwarves generally get a bed (maybe a decent room), a good communal dining table, good quality food and drink, and that is all

Baron or mayor (which has generally done nothing apart for stuffing itself, a bit of hauling, maybe one useless artifact, and chatting and has lots of friends) is being uppity about a lesser pretentious's arrangements ? I couldn't care less. Goes mad ? Well, one useless dwarf isn't going to be missed. Goes berserk ? Excellent, a reason to kill him and bury him away from trouble.