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[Ozarck]

Idlers make me itch. Early on, two idlers will be enough to bug me. later (pop 50 - 100 ish), five or more will irritate me. More than ten drive me bananas, no matter how big the fortress (currently at 226 dwarves - 99 military, 80 civilians 1 baroness and 44 ... unfortunate accidents).

How do you respond to idlers? What do they do to your mental state? At what point do you begin assigning circular hauling paths just to get them to move their bearded behinds? Tel me tales of the great dwarven industriousness my friends.

p.s. I am a lot less picky about idleness in reality, but for some reason, those dwarves just get under my soil strata.

[VerdantSF]

I don't mind them at all.  They're my lever pushing, ballista bolt carrying, old clothes dumping crew.  I just let them do their thing.  I have 112 dwarves, and at any given time, 50 are idle outside of siege time.

[ORCACommander]

magma.

[Nobu]

Early in the fortress, it's a race against time to get things set up before enemies attack.  Then I'm more aggressive at keeping the number of idlers low; if I can't support more dwarfs in existing jobs, I start working on new industries.

Once my population doubles from a single migration wave or so, which invariably happens, I fall behind in dealing with it.  Anyone with fighting skills goes into the military, everyone else is basically a hauler until I have a specific job I need done; then I start looking for dwarfs to fill it, instead of the other way around.

And man, I always underestimate the number of coffins I'll need.  Every time!

[Girlinhat]

Your number of idlers is directly proportional to how fast your emergency lever gets pulled.

Personally, I dump all my mooks into a pile.  They get carpentry, masonry, metalcrafting, milling, mining, threshing, tanning, butchery...  All the jobs that have no value modifier on them.  A Legendary +5 Butcher doesn't do anything different from a migrant.  So I usually end up with a decent 20 dedicated skill-workers, and then piles and piles of mooks.

Carpentry Workshop, Masonry Workshop, and Forge all get workshop profile'd to only let dedicated workers on.  Mooks have these enabled as it lets them work construction, and I do a lot of above-ground forts so this is relevant.

In general, idling is short.  Bursts of effort occur, mining, block-making, and brick-laying taking considerable time.

[slothen]

my 200 dwarf fort typically has between 30 and 90 idlers.  It means that stuff gets done fast when I order it.  For example, chopping down half the cavern trees and having them stockpiled quickly.  Or changing cage traps.  Keeping them all busy would be counter productive, as I already have a huge stockpiles of all the major goods I need.

[Hamsmagoo]

I've had too many bosses that hated idleness.  So, I celebrate idleness by building many sculpture gardens to be admired.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Dwarf forts consume food, booze, clothing, and ammunition. Developing forts also need furniture, infrastructure, weapons, and armor. You can make a lot of this stuff yourself, or you can trade for it. It is labor-efficient to make high-value trade goods. A late-game fort has highly skilled workers and a few well-developed industries that take care of all needs, reducing the number of dwarves who actually need to work. As long as you can cap the fort's population (and as long as Toady doesn't bring back the economy), forts tend to end up in a post-scarcity situation. It's easy to end up with more wealth and supplies than you can ever use.

I kind of prefer the 40d migrants who had single-profession skills rather than the random "beekeeper/carpenter" combos that we get now. If you only let a dwarf do one labor in your fort (other than misc hauling), you need more of them to get things done. Your wax carver will still be idle for months, waiting for the honeycombs to be pressed.

[Urist McKoga]

All my haulers are put on military with a wood shield, a weapon, leather armor, low grade metal helmet, high boots, greaves and gauntlets. I set the squad inactive, and always use uniform. This way, every time i don't need all that dwarf hauling job, they go in individual drill combat, and in outside jobs they have some protection. Other good point i don't need to worry about making new clothes, cause that armor don't wear out.

[Kumis]

Now, I must say my largest fort has been about 160 dwarfs, so I've never quite got to the 'late game' so to speak, but I always find the hardest part of the fort to be preparing for the first non-hardcoded immigrant wave - that point in which the population of your fortress more than doubles.

Up until that point I'm constantly looking at who's idling and why, trying to find new industries for them, etc. but once I hit the 50 mark as long as I have a self-sustaining fort with good output I don't really care who's doing what.

[TheDarkStar]

I usually have a few dedicated workers, usually legendary. Then, I have a dozen miners, stoneworkers, woodcutters, and farmers. Everyone else with a useless job like cheese-making or fishing gets drafted, but I still end up with a large hauling force.

[Saraias]

As others already mentioned, a recently founded fortress has a lot of work to do. There are halls to dig and smooth, chambers to furnish, industries to start up, squads to train and equip. At that point in time, idlers can impede progress (sometimes dangerously), and I work assiduously to ensure my dwarves work too; idlers at this time are also rarer in my forts because there's always a job waiting. Most of these idlers are those under enforced extended downtime in the socialization chambers where they get to know and then marry their spouses to ensure robust bloodlines and social ties.

Once the essentials are taken care of, I don't mind the idlers at all - I prefer them. They pick up work when available, but for some industries I assign jobs to make work and avert skill rust instead of from need. I generally have enough dwarves in any profession that somebody grabs a task soon after it's initiated. The rest hang out or train (with military squads periodically taken off duty and removed from barracks assignments), all by design since my tantrum spiral prevention strategy hinges on happy thoughts from admiring furniture; dining well; speaking to a friend, child, lover or spouse (or forming new bonds); and so on. Farmers, cooks, brewers, spinners/weavers/dyers/clothiers, decorating professionals, and a few others work harder than the rest except when the fort expands or I think of a special project.

[Id Utalrisen]

I try to think of it as, things are so comfortable, safe, and wealthy that we're blessed to be able to have so many idlers, drinking and socializing, and not contributing anything to society.

[Tacomagic]

I concur with what others are saying.  For the first year most of my dwarves are running themselves ragged getting all the things done that are needed to set up the fort.  But once food, drink, and industry infrastructure are in place, the only use I have for anything other than legendary crafters is military fodder, haulers, or megaproject labor.  Beyond that, if half my citizens want to hang out in my legendary dining room while staring at all the masterwork furniture and build a decent happiness buffer, well I'm sorta fine with that.

As above, I typically create a custom profession called "grunt" that has all the build labors enabled so that they can be pulled up immediately for megaproject builds or strip mining.

[Kumis]

I have to say, I think I'd prefer DF a little more if food wasn't so easy to come by and more had to (and could be) provided for by trading. I find the abundance of resources and the accompanying abundance of idlers to be somewhat at odds with the idea of industrious creatures striving for their survival.

I suppose there's always the option of playing on a mineral poor world and embarking on a terrifying desert with an aquifer.