Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Id Utalrisen]

I'm having a bit of an issue. I don't know what I'm doing to cause this, but I'm getting far too many dwarves too fast. I'm talking like.. 100-150 dwarves by my second year. Is this normal? What affect this? I know I can't stop immigrants entirely, but anything I can do/not do to not get like.. giant groups of 30 immigrants twice a year would be super.

[Zio]

Migrants come acording to the wealth of your fortress from the wiki:

The third migrant wave and on are influenced by the created wealth of the fortress, with more wealth attracting more immigrants (more research is needed to determine specifics). Specifically, they're influenced by the fortress wealth as reported by the last outgoing dwarven caravan.

So you could kill the dwarven caravan to prevent migrants from coming, alternately you could put those rascals to clear a path to your fortress in an evil biome, thus reducing the actual number of migrants that you get or drop em from a drawbridge for medical purposes

[askovdk]

The population cap is your friend:
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Population_cap

The nice thing is that you can increase it later, and it will allow more dwarfs to your existing fort.

Also consider to lower the percentage of children in the init files.

[Victor6]

If you're using DFhack, remember to use fix/population-cap after each migrant wave. If you don't they'll ignore the pop-cap until the next dwarf caravan.

Or you could be dwarfy and just find inventive ways to dispose of them. Just make sure to take the socks first.

[3iff]

As a new-returning player, I have a cap of 20 dwarfs and no children. That way I can keep from being swamped. I've probably got room now for another 10 and having just lost a dwarf I'll be getting a new wave soon.

That way I can keep the game manageable as I struggle to learn how to do things.

[Dutchling]

The population cap is your friend:
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Population_cap

The nice thing is that you can increase it later, and it will allow more dwarfs to your existing fort.

Also consider to lower the percentage of children in the init files.

Do note that the population cap is more like a soft cap than a hard cap. Expect 0-40 more dwarves

[Miriage]

What seems to happen to me is that I get the first 2 waves and then BAMN! 30+ dwarves, all before anything has even been attempted to be set up. Seems a bit silly the formulas used to work out migration waves.

[Tarqiup Inua]

That's because you always get first two waves and these are generated in different fashion. I started a fort in heavily forested area. Haven't dug a tile, yet - I didn't have to. I have my base surrounded by wooden pallisade, my bedroom and meeting area have bridge over them instead of roof to save the materials. Due to plant gathering labour enabled on all dwarves I got hold of all the non-aligned aboveground crops and everything is fine so far. My military instructors are sparring to prepare for the bigger waves they will have to train. I sell my bone crafts for animals for more animals. It's year three and I have 15 dwarves total. Mostly I just don't get migrants at all.

When I am ready for more people, I'll start digging.

[DWC]

My suggestion would be to have more miners. I don't embark with skilled miners, I just set up a forge, smelter and bring along coal, cassiterite, copper ore and an anvil. Make about 12 picks, make all starting 7 dwarves miners and you can carve out a 200 dwarf fort within a couple seasons at most.

All unskilled migrants I get I assign almost every labor, including masory, stone engraver, mechanics, butcher, tanner, ect. Then just use workshop profiles to keep them from trying to make furniture or whatever. This keeps them all pretty busy especially if you mass 'smooth stone', making blocks and building an aboveground tower.

[Quietust]

The population cap is your friend:
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Population_cap

The nice thing is that you can increase it later, and it will allow more dwarfs to your existing fort.

Also consider to lower the percentage of children in the init files.

Do note that the population cap is more like a soft cap than a hard cap. Expect 0-40 more dwarves

If you run fix/population-cap, it should limit the size of migrant waves so as to not exceed your configured population cap.

[jez9999]

If you're using DFhack, remember to use fix/population-cap after each migrant wave. If you don't they'll ignore the pop-cap until the next dwarf caravan.

Or you could be dwarfy and just find inventive ways to dispose of them. Just make sure to take the socks first.

Yeah, I tried that tactic.  A euthanasia atom crusher.  I killed about 50 migrants and then making memorial slabs for them to stop ghosts was a full-time job for the fortress.  Started using the population cap instead.

[Azorian]

Would someone mind running me through DFHack's fixpopulation? I dont really use it, but wanting a 40 dwarf fort and getting a 80 one is getting annoying

[Victor6]

Would someone mind running me through DFHack's fixpopulation? I dont really use it, but wanting a 40 dwarf fort and getting a 80 one is getting annoying

Every time you get a wave of migrants:-
Switch to the DFHack window and type:
fix/population-cap (then press enter). It should display 'home civ notified about current population'.

That's it. If you've set [POPULATION_CAP: 40] under d_init.txt the number of migrants won't exceed 40*. You may want to set [BABY_CHILD_CAP:0:0] too, in order to prevent kids clogging the roster.

* If the 40th dwarf has a family it'll override the cap.

[Starver]

Just addressing this question...

Is this normal?

...yes, it often is, when you manage to build up a good "fortress value".  Indications that you're developing well.

I know there are ways to mitigate immigrations (mentioned already) but I just suck up everyone who arrives.  (So far I've only had one identified[1] vampire, who I burrowed out of harms way, which I don't know if is lucky or not, but obviously this is a danger.  And one I was always afraid of when this addition came into the game.)


There's almost always something that needs doing (even if it's just dumping rocks away from areas you're prefer to be tidy).  Take your needs as a clue as to whether to enroll more food-producers (although a legendary farmer can probably easily start off an agrarian chain of edibles enough feed the number of dwarves you currently have, possibly even overproduce) and I tend to concentrate all 'spare' effort on structure-building, which ties everyone up quite nicely.  Actual experts get to mostly stick with their own field of expertise (as possible, when not requiring raw materials that I can't supply quicker by throwing dwarfpower at that issue as well) and anybody with military skills gets enrolled in at least a part-time military structure (and then I end up concentrating on ranged attacks from defensive positions, so most of the mêlée dwarves are unbloodied, but really well trained).  By year three (I think) my currently five-year-old fort (which I've not had time to look at, in the last few weeks) had already reached ~300, including children and babies...  Many babies!


TL;DR; Yes, it's normal.  I work with it, others artificially constrain it (as discussed), some try to make sure rejects are killed off or at least more vulnerable (as also discussed).  Some like it when it kicks off into one or other form of Fortress Collapse Syndrome, in keeping with the unofficial motto of the game, others see an opportunity for setting up a Perpetual Fort.


[1] By me, through the usual game anomolies, not by full in-game revelation.  And so he perpetually sits, comfortable, admiring the local furniture and not wanting for sustenance, or taking it.

[jez9999]

There's almost always something that needs doing (even if it's just dumping rocks away from areas you're prefer to be tidy).  Take your needs as a clue as to whether to enroll more food-producers (although a legendary farmer can probably easily start off an agrarian chain of edibles enough feed the number of dwarves you currently have, possibly even overproduce) and I tend to concentrate all 'spare' effort on structure-building, which ties everyone up quite nicely.  Actual experts get to mostly stick with their own field of expertise (as possible, when not requiring raw materials that I can't supply quicker by throwing dwarfpower at that issue as well) and anybody with military skills gets enrolled in at least a part-time military structure (and then I end up concentrating on ranged attacks from defensive positions, so most of the mêlée dwarves are unbloodied, but really well trained).

I think this is basically saying that the default (high) level of migration can be dealth with as long as you're a veteran of the game, know exactly what you want to do from the start, and design well.  It should probably be off by default though because getting swamped in dwarves if you're not a vet leads to masssive overcrowding of your (now small) dining hall and about 1/4 as many bedrooms as you need to house all of them.  Most end up sleeping on the floor and getting annoyed because of it.