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.
Hmmm... not what I intended, although possibly there's something in there that's true. Generally, in my mind, you have gained sufficient fort-wealth for large immigration waves due to doing something (trade goods production, a lot of built architecture, etc) that shows you as being a veteran of the game (or at least somewhat experienced). At which point you probably have the wherewithal to find something to do with the excess population that comes in.
My dining halls (or, singular) tend to be 11x11 almost from the start of their existence (handy designation) and the limit is the furniture production (which needn't be limited, but these days I'm often waiting for the
masterwork tables and chairs before adding them to the room... again a fortress-wealth modifier, so the cause of my fortress's attractiveness to immigrants). I'm always somewhat behind in the bedroom game (I never use dormitories, but I tend to leave some of the latest unremarkable bedrooms unassigned, until even more are set out, so that everyone can at least find a bed to sleep in), and I know that some of my little guys sleep on floors, but that's mostly at the beginning and never noticeably causes worse problems than not yet having gotten a decent well dug.
My usual strategy is to start with two miners and only immigrating dwarves with
decent mining skills are added to the room-creation cadre. Anyone deemed to be a miner has absolutely every
other task disabled, that is possible, so they're pretty much full-time except for food, drink and 'randomness' breaks. Armok forbid that any one of them decide to moodcraft something, though...
Anyway, this is the big limiter for me in the bedroom/etc-digging process. (Even while surface and over-surface building works proceed apace, using the copious stones mined out from all over the place, even under the latest revamp to stone production.) One miner tends to be "exploratory" (a burrow of his or her own makes sure they dig the tunnels that lead off to find (or expand knowledge of) the caverns/magma sea or look for new minerals and stone-types. The other (later 'others') has the infrastructure and 'in-betweeny' digging to do, again usually with a burrow (or several) to keep them at this task and away from other
planned excavations. This is a self-applied rule, and with 200+ population (as already mentioned) you have the ability to create (and equip) a small army of miners. I actually do quite fine, under that self-imposed geas. And I'm fairly sure I don't do that (even within the limitation I set myself, like "no dormitories" and "small, dedicated mining units") as efficiently as more experienced players do.
What I'm saying is that while it's entirely possible (done it myself, witness my forum name) to forget to get a food industry up and running capable of supporting a whole lot of otherwise busy dwarves, for example, I don't think it's "Veteran level" playing styles that put a lid on the problems. However, an imperfect but
reasonably 'balanced' style should be attainable at any level of skill, except maybe
total n00b. And the chances of getting overpopulation at that stage are less than significant in the light of all the others things a novice in this grand old game of ours might suffer.
As for names (@slothen), agreed. I usually end up with each of my miners being something like "Digger" and generic famers (in the latest iteration, barring those with military sidelines) are all called "Giles", but i try to get unique (themed) names set down for the rest. If only to track people, even if they end up wrong-skilled temporarily. There's always the mental anguish over whether something like "Carver" is a good name for a stonecrafter of merit, when it might equally well be given to an engraver. (Although as I tend not to value engraving, beyond smoothing of walls, most "Engravers" are just dwarves of another possible profession, or two, who just happen to have done enough 'casual smoothing work' to shuffle themselves into that area of the Unit List for the time-being.)
Militarily-inclined dwarves tend to get compound nicknames showing their military
and civilian speciality(/ies), and sometimes gender[1]. In the past I'd make really ugly nicknames (e.g. "Swd10Ma5Mc4" for a high level sword-dwarf with good masonry and mechanics not far behind), but as they were ugly (and really needed reviewing twice every season) I abandoned that. Well, Therapist was available. In my experience, the job-related nickname is currently
most important for using the military menu efficiently (understanding about the vowel-contraction system that this uses, of course). Therapist covers
most of the other things you might care about that this plan was supposed to deal with.
[1] Maybe subtly. "Swordgiles" the female farmer with sword proclivities, but "Slashshiny" for the male jeweller with a similar inclination towards the sword. Females might get "Hammer<foo>" and males "Bash<bar>". I actually make it up as I go along, but like to stay consistent once I
have done. I have been known to go through everyone and apply a
new system, however.
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Topic: Too many dwarves, too fast! (Read 2263 times)