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[ryan4143]

Hey, guys!

I'm a n00b; I'll be the first to admit that. But this has been my first semi-successful fortress (first one flooded, second one ended in starvation). I have a large food stockpile, plenty of booze, and lots of content dwarves. As a matter of fact, I was COMPLETELY satisfied with the 14 dwarves that I had. They were all busy, doing their jobs--no one was left without any work.

Then, I got a migration wave of 25 DWARVES. Suddenly, I'm a bit overwhelmed. Any suggestions for managing this many dwarves?

Cheers!

-------
In Christ, Jesrin

[Edmus]

Bedding is a minor issue, you only need one engraved dorm at first. Farming should be fine if you have enough farmers. Set up a well for something to do and as an emergency water source, booze can be annoying to juggle but with a bookkeeper you should be fine.

[Callista]

Hehe, just wait till you have 200!

That said, do you have Dwarf Therapist? That utility is a real lifesaver when it comes to managing dwarves' work assignments.

If you like small populations, I recommend you put a population cap of 20 or so on the fort. If you're using Lazy Newb Pack that's pretty easy.

[JTTCOTE]

First of all, don't expect your dwarves to be working all the time.
Second, wall off murky pool and make a well over it. As a noob (I'd know) it's easy to forget about booze with a large migration wave, and this will save you in a pinch.
Third, more dwarves means more destructive tantrum spirals. Avoid deaths, have a bridge to wall off your fort and hook it up to a lever.
Fourth, dwarves should be ecstatic, not content. Use Dwarf Therapist to find the unhappiest dwarves and assign a bedroom with a bed and closet to them to cheer them up.
Fifth, if you are farming (I presume you are, the meat industry is not for nubs) then you will actually find yourself getting surplus food as you get more dwarves, as you have disproportionately more farmers to dwarves. By 80 dwarves I have more than 1000 surplus plump helmets typically.
Sixth, it sounds like you don't like having lots of dwarves. Remember you can always set the population cap in the init file.

[M_So]

I got a wave of over 40 dwarfs once, I was not anywhere near ready for that. Think I still have the save laying around here somewhere if you want a pic.

[glopso]

When I get to 200+ dwarves, I just spam bedrooms everywhere and treat the population as a giant blob of random skills that will do anything I tell it to.

[Finn]

Don't forget to make clothes or you will have a serious problem inside of two years.

Pig tail -> thread -> cloth -> shirt, trousers, shoes.

[caddybear]

When I get to 200+ dwarves, I just spam bedrooms everywhere and treat the population as a giant blob of random skills that will do anything I tell it to.

I'm incapable of bothering to check every newcomer and assign them jobs after 70 or so pop. Migrants either become haulers or soldiers. Or both.

[CriticallyAshamed]

I disagree with the meat industry being for noobs. Poultry are a godsend for me. Eggs and the occasional slaughtered rooster are more than enough food to get you through. Plus you get leather for clothes now too. Grow plump helmets and export lavish egg roasts to get enough booze.

You need Therapist for this game. It is not an optional communiuty utility despite what others may tell you. You literally cannot manage 200 dwarves using the ingame interface unless you're one of those gifted autistic people.

[Anathema]

I'm a n00b; I'll be the first to admit that. But this has been my first semi-successful fortress (first one flooded, second one ended in starvation).

Good to hear that new players are carrying on the DF traditions; that's how my first couple forts went down years ago. You just need to lose a fort to goblin ambush to complete the Noob Trifecta™.

..Actually, forget I said that. I'm glad your current fort is doing better than the previous ones, but if you want it to last make sure you focus on making a legendary bedroom for each and every new dwarf, don't worry about defenses.

[Iceflame]

Pig tail -> thread -> cloth Kill hippie caravans and take their cloth -> shirt, trousers, shoes.

[DTF]

I call a 25 dwarf wave lucky. Getting 30 dwarves and their 40 chilrdren in one go... urgh, you just want to close the gate.
For easy food industry (seriously, isnt making big farmplots easy enough? ) I can recommend pigs. They dont graze (a 1x1 pasture will do), they give milk, they give good meat and leather and they breed fairly well while needing NO work or care whatsoever.
Alpacas give everything (milk, meat, leather, yarn), but need 5x5 pastures and managing a larger herd with all its milking, shearing and butchering can be too much for a newbie.

As for what to do with all of them: clear stone. Get rid of all the stone cluttering your hallways by dumping it on a tile near the mason workshop.
Give all of the useless dwarves masonry (make sure to use the mason's workshop profile 'P' to only let your real mason work there) and stone detailing and go about smoothing every last tile of your fort and building walls etc.
Or draft them, give them cheap crossbows (its material only matters in melee), some bolts and an archery target for each of them. They will still be crap, but at least there is a lot of them.

[Niyazov]

a 1x1 pasture will do

if you pasture more than a couple of animals together they will gradually kill one another with crowding attacks.

[DTF]

a 1x1 pasture will do

if you pasture more than a couple of animals together they will gradually kill one another with crowding attacks.

I meant one 1x1 for each pig .
I had my fair share with turkey brawlers when dozens of eggs hatched in a small room... an explosion of blood.
You can probably even cage the pigs without them starving, but that wouldnt create these nice conga lines you can make with a sow in front and several piglets in the back in your hallways.

[Callista]

Yeah. Turkey blood tracked all over the place was when I finally gave up and started cheating to clean up blood. Even if you ignore goblins altogether, you get the problem eventually. There's no way the janitors can keep up with the massive amount of blood getting tracked all over the fortress once the chicksplosion turns into a turkey poult hunger-games arena and the blood gets tracked a few spaces by dwarves caging them or trying to haul the corpse of a loser.

I justify it by remarking that there's no possible way that a few hand-sized turkey poults could possibly have enough blood in them to cover a half-mile-square area, and that prevents any particular feelings of guilt from cheating to get rid of the blood. I'm just trying to get realism. Also, prevent FPS death.