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[+!!scientist!!+]

I've played Dwarf Fortress quite a bit over the past two years. I've made several powerful fortresses which were fully functional in almost every way. There are still a couple things I don't understand however. One thing I've never been able to do was create an efficient fortress. There are always 30+ idlers, except when a large amount of dumping is required. It hasn't caused many problems, and there's never a shortage of food or production. The main problem is the extreme susceptibility to tantrum spirals. I want to make a fortress which can recover from crisis, not immediately fall apart.

Another thing I need to figure out is how to get a steady supply of booze. I can never manage to have the barrel/pot generation and booze production equal the demand, especially when the pots and barrels are constantly being filled with fish, meat, and plants.

Any help in either these areas would be great!

[VerdantSF]

I don't mind lots of inactive dwarves, since I always need levers pulled asap.  Re: the booze, you can set food stockpiles to use no pots or barrels.  If you have busy cooks, it doesn't get too full and it also takes advantage of dwarven syrup if you have it.  I have so many barrels available that I use the workflow plugin to SLOW my booze production down .

[Rogue Yun]

Urist McNewbie here...

Another thing I need to figure out is how to get a steady supply of booze. I can never manage to have the barrel/pot generation and booze production equal the demand, especially when the pots and barrels are constantly being filled with fish, meat, and plants.

What I generally do is I use the stocks menu to dump all the extra food I have or I sell it to traders.  (My frame rate stinks so I do that often). I make sure I have a few dedicated farmers and multiple farms (strawberries, sunberries if I can get them, and of course plump helmets [along with anything else that can  be brewed]) I make sure I have separate stock piles dedicated to plants, barrels/pots, and drink so I can monitor what I have. I have a a few dedicated brewers who do pretty much nothing else. I make sure I have a manager and I go to the u-m menu often to make sure I'm constantly brewing something.

[Drazinononda]

There are always 30+ idlers, except when a large amount of dumping is required.

Sounds like a military waiting to happen. Have you ever had an Elite Wrestler? Now's your chance.

Honestly though, more idlers means a more efficient fortress, in general. You have [n] dwarves doing the work of [n+30] dwarves. If your fort was less efficient, you'd have more people hauling and dumping things, and thus fewer idlers.

Another thing I need to figure out is how to get a steady supply of booze. I can never manage to have the barrel/pot generation and booze production equal the demand, especially when the pots and barrels are constantly being filled with fish, meat, and plants.

First thing I'd say is stop producing so much. Reassign some of your butchers/fishers/farmers to stonecrafting or woodcrafting until you have enough pots*, then assign them one or two at a time to the military until your supplies balance out.

Second thing I'd say is figure out the 'workflow' plugin of DFHack and use it profusely. I think I say that in every production-related thread, but seriously: the plugin allows you to tell your dwarves "when the supply of [insert object/supply here] drops below a certain level, begin producing it until it reaches the maximum I give you." Which means you can set a workflow order on your Brew Drink job to keep the number of available drinks reasonable for the number of dwarves you have; e.g. if you have 100 dwarves and want drinks available for a third to half of them at a time, you can set workflow to keep between 35-50 stacks of beverage available. When the drink stack count drops to 34 available stacks, the plugin starts up your Brew Drinks until you have 50 again. That way you only ever have a maximum of 50 barrels/pots tied up with drinks, (plus the negligible number in use at the time the available ones reach your limit) leaving the rest for your other foods. Likewise you can put a workflow order on your Make Barrel or Make Rock Pot jobs and your dwarves can keep 10-15 pots (or whatever number you like) available, without flooding your fort with empty containers.

[Rogue Yun]

I've tried looking for information on this workflow plugin and I'm stumped. All I know is that it can be installed with dfhack and can set min max of what you would like to produce. Any ideas on where I can find more information on it? I would like to know how a newbie like myself could learn to use it.

[Bumber]

I've tried looking for information on this workflow plugin and I'm stumped. All I know is that it can be installed with dfhack and can set min max of what you would like to produce. Any ideas on where I can find more information on it? I would like to know how a newbie like myself could learn to use it.

Here's the documentation for it:
https://github.com/peterix/dfhack#workflow

A bit difficult to learn, but well worth it. I use it to regulate my charcoal and booze.

[Laserhead]

One thing I like to do, which both utilizes a few useless dwarfs and helps fortress wellbeing, is to create manually operated fountains in common areas. Two pumps, one on top of the other and facing opposite directions, with a channel dug out and grated over on one side and a walled in area on the other. Set them to manual and dump some water in the channel. As a bonus all your useless dwarfs turn red.

[slothen]

if you have 30+ idlers, that means your fortress is more efficient, not less.

[Victor6]

if you have 30+ idlers, that means your fortress is more efficient, not less.

Very true. Overproduction is not efficiency, it's waste. It's better to have them lounging around the dining hall than filling yet another stockpile with goods you'll never sell\consume.

[MrSparky]

if you have 30+ idlers, that means your fortress is more efficient, not less.

Very true. Overproduction is not efficiency, it's waste. It's better to have them lounging around the dining hall than filling yet another stockpile with goods you'll never sell\consume.

And that's when you start megaprojects.

[Psieye]

For a "Low Idlers = Efficiency" definition, you just need to expand your industry to do more simultaneously. However, this quickly grinds you down to an FPS death. If you don't mind, then design for mass-production: my forts dig down to the magma on first Spring of embark and by the end of the year I have 15+ magma workshops ready for the big migrant wave in Year 2. Some kind of architectural project also helps keep idlers low, as everyone is pumping out stone blocks, moving them, then constructing with them.

[Oaktree]

I am in the dilemma of having efficient (or better) production for an established fort only needing 15-20 dwarves.  That means the rest get drafted into military squads where they train and carry out hauling and masonry work in their non-training months.  So I figured that a good fort size is about 50-60 dwarves since that would allow a diverse military with a trained core and a number of squads training up along with the ability to have a workforce on hand doing improvements.  And that should be a small enough number that this older machine can maintain a decent (60+) FPS.

That seems to work out.  However, since the pop is under 80 I don't get sieges.

If I push the population up to the 80-90 level I can effectively feed them with the same 15-20 dwarf cadre.  I now have a military twice as big to arm, armor, and train.  Which I really don't need given my fortification schemes.  I guess I can just plan on taking on the goblins in the open field or courtyards when I feel like it.

[BoredVirulence]

However, since the pop is under 80 I don't get sieges.

You can change that, in advanced world gen I think.

[Starver]

I don't like idlers, myself[1], and my "soak" jobs for those that would otherwise idle are usually construction builders[2] or stone haulers[3].  I start off by making my (usually, straight from embark) two miners dig-only in the job department, everyone else having hauling side-lines, but very quickly get to the status that other professionals are haulage-less in the job market (whatever other secondary jobs they might share with their primary).

It's not unknown that I find myself with two miners mining, one stone crafter crafting, one farmer farming, one architect designing, one mechanic tinkering and a partridge in a pear tree the only otherwise free dwarf (usually this is the designated noble[4]) being the hauler...  and then along comes the first immigration wave.

<hypothetical>Woohoo!  Well, that one's a decent gem-cutter, so maybe I'll set him to get more trade-stuff by creating cut gems.  That one's got better mechanics than my mechanic, so I can set the other back to just be mason again (and extend the compound walls, maybe) and get the new one to make better mechanisms.  Those two are half-hearted farmers... I'll actually not bother with them being that.  These three have come with archery skills, so that's the start of my military, along with the speardwarf-wannabee, and as soon as the ex-mechanic mason gets a rack or stand created and the architect gets a target placed at the end of my range I'll get them training, but those other five I'll leave to hauling and dumping and wall-building.  Now perhaps my accounts can be looked at more closely, and the new "make a bed" jobs can be more assured to be processed, by taking the hauling jobs away from the Designated Noble.</hypothetical>

And so it continues.  The more dwarves there are to do the work, the more work I give them.  In fact I always find myself with more things needing doing than are being done (in the hauling department, and in constructing from convenient hauled-to stockpiles).  When I want my magmaduct walls smoothed (prior to letting the magma in!) or the wood brought in from where it's been chopped down outside, or the butcher's shop emptied of the non-edible remains, or the new water-cistern's rubble dumping, or beds placed in the newly-dug areas of the accommodation block or would like a new gantry (with fortifications lining it) built out over my main entrance I have to decide what other thing doesn't need hauling/constructing and either remove the furniture/whatever hauling job(s) from a select few or make use of the LIFO nature of the construction queue to re-prioritise the newer development in the fabric of my surface structure.

Efficient?  Well, everyone's working, but my main battle is in not having jobs being unserviced, not in making work for idlers.  So I'm over the top of the curve of optimality and probably inefficient in the other direction.  But I normally only notice it at the individual dwarf level when my one and only expert armourer is being rather reluctant to make those copper breastplates (or whatever) that he really should have completed by now.


[1] I design my defences so that lever-pulling is not a "do now...  Now...  Now damnit!" job.

[2] I'm always extending or adding to my surface compound.

[3] But, even more than footnote-2, I'm always digging out far more caverns and tunnels underground.  These either need cleaning of rubble for my aesthetic or practical needs, or are the source of the rock and ore being used elsewhere, and so I set up stockpiles chains to move everything closer to the appropriate building/crafting/smelting sites.

[4] Manager (still to get accounts up to full spec), Broker-in-waiting, Expedition Leader (hopefully with nobody to console, yet).

[wierd]

One way is to isolate many discrete dwarf populatons within a fortress, as a means of truncating the max length of any one dwarf's friendship list.

Have a fortress of 200? Isolate it into 4 insular fortresses at the corners of the map, and restrict contact, with 50 dwarves each in them.  Send shipments of goods between them with minecarts.

That way when gobbos attack or plauge breaks out, or some other !FUN! Happens, it doesn't kill the whole site, and the impacted node can be repopulated with a migrant wave, or with children.