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[MOK]

Since starting my current fortress, I've been treading water the whole time.  Each facet of needs and infrastructure take time and dedicated attention on pause, and time to play out.  You can multi-task these items, but that can get messy, and it's sorta taxing depending on what you're doing.  This would all be manageable, and even fun(classic definition), except that despite my skill at the game so far, the care, and the foresight I try to use, I feel that I'm taking on water faster than I can bail it out of the boat.  Or more accurately, I'm gaining migrants and babies faster than I can accommodate them + pre-existing needs. 

Meanwhile, I check the wiki for some infos, and come across an interesting entry: Sheriff.  Hey, look at that, it's possible to have a simple law-enforcement mechanism for the early game.  Neat.  But assigning someone that role, let alone addressing justice and order at all, went immediately by the wayside as I focused on more critical needs, like gaining access to safe water, basic fortification, industry establishment, and keeping nobles happy.  Fast forward a day's play, and there's no sheriff on my nobles screen; below Baron is the Captain of the Guard. 

I describe this because I think it's emblematic of something unfortunate, where the "early-game" phase flashes away quite quickly.  Instead of a steady progression, where I have an opportunity to sit back for a couple minutes and just let the dwarves run their business before getting the next wave of migrants and chaos, I go from 7 dwarves to 250 before I feel I can deal with a siege, let alone their clothing needs.  I feel like I'm missing out on an entire phase of the game.

I want to know if this is just a 'problem' with how I run a fortress(too perfectionistic, perhaps?  Create too much wealth?), or if others are having this experience?

Next time around, I'm gonna look for ways of extending the early game... Thoughts on courting that goal would also be welcome.

[Lyrax]

I have experienced something similar. I think this is a good thing and a bad thing, at the same time. It makes me more willing to start over a fortress, but makes the game harder in a frustrating way. Of course, no matter which way you look at it, this does produce more Fun.

[Zale]

It is possible to limit your population cap using the d_init.txt file.

Or, if you'd rather not do that, you could simply murder new migrants as soon as they arrive.

[TeleDwarf]

There is a way to mitigate this or to get used to it.
First some ground rules: you will get the first two waves of migrants no matter what. you can do nothing to stop them from coming (except murder, but I frown upon killing dwarves). These waves will come at summer and at autumn. according to my observations they will bring you 2-5 families each. after that a cravan will come and your next immigration wave will come if you have not reached the popcap and liason talked to your leader and left alive and will be as large as liason thinks you can manage. this one can be very large in fact. even more then 50 dwarves. so here are what you can do about all of it:
1. mitigation plan: Immigration: settings:
you can set popcap to ridiculously small value before playing the game. set it to 7 and you will not get the third migration wave (unless you lose a lot of dwarves early). Whenever you feel like having more dwarves - save, update popcap to new value and load the game again. Then wait for liason and he will send more dwarves for you.
2. mitigation plan: Immigration: gameplay:
you can also try gameplay immigration control by not talking to the liason. this way he will not be able to evaluate your fortress. Just lock up your leader somewhere deep until liason leaves.
3. mitigation plan: Children: settings:
you can also cap allowed children in your fort in settings. setting it to 30% of your fort population is good. but beware th. at it could be hard to make a dynasty of dwarves because some useless fisherdwarf can pop-up too many of his useless children, forbidding pregnancy of your more noble fedwarves.

4. getting used to it plan: Chaos:
you can change the attitude to your game. if you want it to be neat and clean - maybe you would be better off playing minecraft in creative mode. Dwarf Fortress on the other hand is a mad house. a place where sanity is always in short supply. your dwarves swarm any place with any ammount of proper management.
Imagine how they live in their mountainhomes: they do not have homes. they do not have industry. they do not have farming. You do not belive me? then start an adventure mode and venture to the nearest mountainhome. All you will find is wilderness.
No surprise dwarves will gather up in a place like your fortress in hope for better life and a sock. and they will breed like rabbiits in such a blessed place.
so basically what you call an "early game" is just a tutorial: you get a 7 dwarves and you need to prove that you are the Armok.
Then begins the real "early game": migrants hear of how cool you are and swarm you bringing a lot of troubles along. You do not have to feed them all or shelter them all or give them all clothes. You do not need to make them all happy. Just try not to abandon the place in disgust and keep at least part of sanity in your fort.
Then goes the "mid-game": you start to satisfy basic needs of your dwarves and more and more of them become happy citizens instead of angry mob of constantly revolting rabble. At the end of this stage you get pretty halls, zoos, professional military, good healthcare, justice system, clean water and clothes for all.
And then you are ready for an "end-game": you can now try to breed dragons (raw editing needed), build megaproject, conquire circus, go to war with humans and elves and capture their leaders, create elaborate magma traps and a maze with live minotaur....

[Finn]

Similar to some of these suggestions, I'm having a blast right now playing a two-dwarf fort.  After many hours of play the fort is 12 years old, has a population of 7 (five children), and a value of just over 50,000*.   I have learned a lot about the game this way that I never would have by playing normally, because I've had a lot more time to pay attention to what is happening.  For example, my "military" is a single marksdwarf who practices at the archery range constantly.  I've never been able to figure out how to get marksdwarves to practice regularly before, but now I understand the military screens well.  (By the way, you can put marksdwarves in a squad, set their alert status to "inactive", and they will go about all their normal duties as if they were a civilian and still practice at the archery range every day.). I have also learned how often a dwarf eats and drinks, how long they sleep, how often they go on break, how long their clothes last and a million other things that I never learned in 2 years playing this game because I was too busy fighting one fire or another to pay attention to any single dwarf.

So if you want a longer early game, I highly suggest turning off your migrants and letting your fort grow by reproduction instead.  It's a different experience.

[SpiralDimentia]

you could simply murder new migrants as soon as they arrive.

Welcome to Dwarf Fortress. Where things like this are not only normal, but encouraged.

[Haytrid]

Can you completely disable migrants?  I thought you could only limit them some-what using the dfinit popcap trick which is loose at best at limiting pop (I've had it set to 25 and still ended up with about 60 dwarves in my fort).  I'd love to disable it completely.  I'd also love to completely disable caravans.

Similar to some of these suggestions, I'm having a blast right now playing a two-dwarf fort.  After many hours of play the fort is 12 years old, has a population of 7 (five children), and a value of just over 50,000*.   I have learned a lot about the game this way that I never would have by playing normally, because I've had a lot more time to pay attention to what is happening.  For example, my "military" is a single marksdwarf who practices at the archery range constantly.  I've never been able to figure out how to get marksdwarves to practice regularly before, but now I understand the military screens well.  (By the way, you can put marksdwarves in a squad, set their alert status to "inactive", and they will go about all their normal duties as if they were a civilian and still practice at the archery range every day.). I have also learned how often a dwarf eats and drinks, how long they sleep, how often they go on break, how long their clothes last and a million other things that I never learned in 2 years playing this game because I was too busy fighting one fire or another to pay attention to any single dwarf.

So if you want a longer early game, I highly suggest turning off your migrants and letting your fort grow by reproduction instead.  It's a different experience.

[Finn]

Can you completely disable migrants?  I thought you could only limit them some-what using the dfinit popcap trick which is loose at best at limiting pop (I've had it set to 25 and still ended up with about 60 dwarves in my fort).  I'd love to disable it completely.  I'd also love to completely disable caravans.

I was using POPULATION_CAP, however, since you want to disable the caravans as well you can try this little trick that vjek discovered:

Some further testing I've done in the past week with 34.10 on this topic.

I've removed the [ACTIVE:SEASON] entry for dwarves in entity_default.txt in the raws.  This prevents caravans and the outpost liaison/diplomat from ever visiting the fort.  Not even once.  Never ever. Never.

With that, I've generated three completely new worlds, and three completely new forts, one per world.  One with a population cap of zero, one with a population cap of 7, and one with a population cap of 90.

I've then run the fort for 3 years, post embark, to see what the migrant waves will do, and what the resulting population will be.

The results are:  Two waves of migrants came to the fort, and then all migration waves stopped.  This resulted in 17, 22, and 18 total populations, respectively, after three seasons passed, post-embark.  For the remaining 9 seasons, each season displayed "The fortress attracted no migrants this season" and everything else worked as usual/normal/expected.

So while it is true you will always get two migrant waves after embarking, I have not observed that the migration waves will continue after that, if the outpost liaison/diplomat never visits the fortress.

Similarly, in an earlier fort, I had a population cap of 60.  I let the outpost liaison visit once, during the first year, disabled him, and I received migrants up to a population of exactly 60, and then the migration waves stopped.  No further visit was required to stop the migration waves.

I look forward to confirmation or denial of these results in 34.10, if anyone is inclined.

Note:  You will still get two waves of migrants.

[magicwalker]

  I'd also love to completely disable caravans.

Errr, don't build a trade depot??

[Garath]

go to the raws and, as mentioned before, remove the tags in the raws from humans and elves too?

[CodexDraco]

  I'd also love to completely disable caravans.

Errr, don't build a trade depot??

You still get the liaison and so you still get migrants.

As for the thread title question, yeah population grows way too fast.

[caddybear]

I hate the third and fourth waves. Not because I don't have the room or anything, I just hate browsing through 30 useless profession people to give them jobs at once. I liked it when the waves were small, I can handle looking at 10 profiles and figuring out what they can be good for but 20+ is too much even with therapist. When a big wave hits, I just quit the game for 10+ hours while I gather the mental strength to do it. I prefer dead civs for a reason, but then my starting guys take too long to marry.

Don't even start with creating wealth or trading, I missed the first caravan because I was too busy trying to set up a living space. By the time the outpost liaison left, I didn't even have any bedrooms or beds. What happened was, I started digging a hall into this hill, and after a few tiles of delicious sand, I hit bauxite. And rubies. Lots of rubies. Then I dig down a level because I'm fully aware of what is going to happen when the liaison tells the queen about the riches. Right on top of another ruby cluster. So I dig a hall to decorate later and to lead to first meeting hall, hitting a sapphire cluster on the way. I'm disgusted at how incredibly lucky I am while cursing loudly because I'll have bazillions of people crowding the unfinished corridors while standing idle because only industries I have is masonry,food and carpentry. It is the spring of year 2. My population is at 48.

Yeah I know this is a mixed rage/whine post, but this is how I feel every time I get a large migrant wave. Does anyone know how to get the starting seven to start... you know. So I can go back to having a pop cap of 7.

[WealthyRadish]

Eh, I kind of feel it grows too slowly. The first half year before megawaves of migrants start coming seems boring and unproductive, and I usually just have to burn labor mass producing stuff for the magma/cavern pumps. Controlling the population is an omnipresent challenge, though, and sometimes it is difficult to find work for all the idlers before major industries are running.

[Maxmurder]

Easy solution:

1. Conscript all useless dwarves into military.
2. Equip them poorly.
3. Take on the next seige head on.

After a few massacures happen in your fort, migrants will be less inclined to show up. I recently ran a fort that was ffalling apart due to over population. After a couple seiges my pop was down to a workable level, unskilled workers had been culled and my migration waves are now much more managable.

[caddybear]

I care for my people and will not kill them if I can help it.