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[krisslanza]

Maybe not the hardest part, but certainly one of the more annoying. Limiting your pop cap is the best way, but it still doesn't always stop the game from being like "Here's a small, manageable wave of 6. Did you like that? Have 30 now."

[Matoro]

I see migrants just bonus. I have never had any problems with migrants, new laborers are always welcome. Few decent-sized farm-plots keep hundreds of dwarves well-fed.

[slothen]

But my fortress got wiped out in a siege when mr mysterious mood made a platinum amulet covered in gold and spinel -_-

that's pretty awesome.

[Disreputable_Dog]

yes, it was pretty awesome. even had a cool scene on it and everything, with one of my dwarfs killing a bird man. but not its lost in a goblin infested abandoned fort -_-

[Kestrel]

Migrants?  Meh, no biggie.  I like my fort sizes between 100-150.

Nobles?  Now there's a hassle.  Pretty sure I'll never take a promotion to barony or beyond again.

[talysman]

Definitely the sudden 30+ waves are a major annoyance when I'm still prepping, especially since I usually can't keep 'em all busy, so they fraternize, marry, and have babies. Even worse is the fact that they keep bringing baby herd animals. I wind up with too many herd animals to find pasture for, and the animals are too young to be worth slaughtering (and are usually named pets.) Plus, you have to slaughter day and night to get rid of the excess, anyways.

You can do like I just did and try a survivalist approach. Provisions limited to animals, food, booze, seeds, two copper nuggets, and an anvil. Stone/metalcrafter, doctor,trader, administrator, clerk, and two useless socializers. Everything else has to be learned by doing. It took so long to get to where I could dig bedrooms and workshops that my first migrant wave was only two dwarves. I figure that will keep my numbers down, but I also set my popcap to 80.

[mikelon]

I make the migrants run an obstacle course through the caverns filled with troglodytes, forgotten beasts, deadly pits before they are allowed to enter my fort. This filters out 95% of the fluff usually and is always entertaining

[xeniorn]

POP_CAP:50

Never failed me yet.

It failed me though. With POP_CAP at 100, I currently have 220 dwarves in my fort. And it's not like they all came in the same year before caravan could report my population to the capitol, they came year after year in groups of about 20. Which is not a problem on my main comp whose CPU can handle such numbers, but on my other comp it would completely kill the game with a deathblow to my FPS.

But I wouldn't say handling migrants is the hardest part. Handling huge food surpluses could be it. With about 150 dwarves, you need quite a lot of farms to sustain your dwarves, but if you overshoot only about 10 % in a few years you will have a huge amount of plump helmets rotting away in your fields OR huge stockpiles full of plump helmets OR huge stockiples of dwarven wine.

[King DZA]

Nope, it's just annoying. What is actually hard is when ambushes arrive and you are unprepared.

^This.

I have no problem having the bearded little buggers sleep on the floor and drink from the local ponds while I take my sweet time getting everything set up. It's when I suddenly have two squads of goblins in my fort, hunting down my dwarves like they're a bunch of drunken baby seals that things get a tad difficult.

[Loud Whispers]

I find the calm before the badger storm is highly agonizing.

[Kestrel]

Nope, it's just annoying. What is actually hard is when ambushes arrive and you are unprepared.

^This.

I have no problem having the bearded little buggers sleep on the floor and drink from the local ponds while I take my sweet time getting everything set up. It's when I suddenly have two squads of goblins in my fort, hunting down my dwarves like they're a bunch of drunken baby seals that things get a tad difficult.

Generally I get the burrows set up fairly quickly and remove unnecessary labors (like hauling) from my specialists.  Anyone caught outside during a raid is disposable 90% of the time after this.

[Mushroo]

It might be argued that managing growing population *IS* the game of Dwarf Fortress.

You know they are going  to come, so plan ahead. (Or lower the population cap, if that's more fun for you.)

Personally I love a fortress where I have strong defenses, thousands of stockpiled meals and drinks, and 100 idlers sitting around partying all day. That is my idea of a "win" scenario in DF.

[Psieye]

I find there is little need to 'balance' food/drink production - I just overproduce and let them sort it out. Job assignments and balancing employment used to be a huge hassel for me, but then I made the Drone job in DT. Now all my non-important dwarves do about 40 different labours, everything where skill only affects speed, not quality. Sorting through a migrant wave therefore becomes a quick filter: "drone y/n?" If they're being idle, I make them dump stones or set up a clear glass industry or some other labour intensive industry. Megaprojects are an excellent labour sink, the first of which is "how will I defend against the goblin sieges?"

[xeniorn]

I find there is little need to 'balance' food/drink production - I just overproduce and let them sort it out. Job assignments and balancing employment used to be a huge hassel for me, but then I made the Drone job in DT. Now all my non-important dwarves do about 40 different labours, everything where skill only affects speed, not quality. Sorting through a migrant wave therefore becomes a quick filter: "drone y/n?" If they're being idle, I make them dump stones or set up a clear glass industry or some other labour intensive industry. Megaprojects are an excellent labour sink, the first of which is "how will I defend against the goblin sieges?"

I do a very similar thing - important specialists get only 1 labour and all other dwarves have that labour turned off, and I usually have one dedicated butcher/tanner/other non-important specialist but I don't turn off those labours from others. Most of the dwarves have only hauling turned on, with an extra non-important labour if they do it well.

I found out though that it is at times a prudent move to designate some dwarves to be pure stone haulers. In smaller forts when you have only 10-20 idlers and not 60-100 like in huge forts it can speed up masonry-intensive megaprojects a lot by having them drag the required stone/blocks close to the place where they'll be used, and to guarantee fast supply of stone for the masons churning out blocks. If they have other labours on they might get distracted by harvesting food / burying people / grabbing socks or whatever.

[Disreputable_Dog]

my biggest problem with most of my migrant waves is almost always the first large wave has at least one guy in a strange mood, or goes into a strange mood shortly, and either goes nuts cuz i dont have what he wants or makes something amazing and triggers a goblin siege which i'm woefully unprepared for -_-