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[em1LL]

Hi all!

What value of POP_CAP option do you recommend to have a balance between FPS and optimal dwarves in the fortress?

Thanks in advance.

[quarague]

It depends. :-)

How much computing power do you have? How patient are you, ie what fps do you still consider playable? How many game years do you usually play your fortresses?
Some features only occur after you hit certain population thresholds, mostly:
artifacts - 20 dwarfs excluding babies
barons and other nobles - 20
mayor - 50 dwarfs
king, ie become mountain home - 140? but can arrive much earlier if you are the only remaining site of your civilization
invasions - relevant in 0.34 versions, but not relevant in 0.40 anymore I think

You can also adjust the number of children to improve the ration of useful dwarfs to total dwarfs.

[Rafatio]

You also don't have to decide for a pop cap beforehand, start smallish and if things work well increase it.

[Aerth]

I am fine with 50 Dps so I run my forts with a 300 cap, 20 of that being children/babies. Huge factor to take in account also:  The amount of items/corpses after several sieges around your place. Great decorum value but has an impact on the FPS.
My main concern though is the animal/pet business: I keep the animal pop below 250 nowadays else. I slaughter every male but one for each specie.

[Aristion]

You might want to increase your DPS if you are fine with that. If you mean FPS, that is preferable to most forts.

[Tacomagic]

Typically I use a hard cap of 100 dorfs for a medium-range computer.

This gives a nice mixture of decent labor force, modest military, while still perserving FPS.  Typically I'll split it into 60-70 worker dorfs with the rest drafted into military.  If I'm cruising along fine FPS wise, I'll bump it up 20 at a time, most of those going into military.

[mobucks]

I do the minimum pop required to become the mountainhome. I think it's the highest needed to get all possible game features.

On FPS - I've been loving embarking on tundras and other featureless biomes. I really do think the lack of trees/plants has a significant impact on FPS right from embark. I used to never play 5x5 embarks but I can on a desert or glacier.

[PillarsOfSalt]

I really enjoy big embarks, 8x8 or 10x10, and I'm using a half decent laptop so I stay around 120 with maybe 10-20 children tops. I keep my pets under 50 too. I get about 50 fps.

[Saiko Kila]

Hi all!

What value of POP_CAP option do you recommend to have a balance between FPS and optimal dwarves in the fortress?

Thanks in advance.

Well, I have lots of animals and stockpiles, which doesn't help, but for me (based on 0.40.06, newer versions may be better but have to measure that yet)
20 dwarves = 100 fps (or more, but I cap it at 100)
80 dwarves = 60 fps
200 dwarves = 15 fps, with occasional dip to 10

So I recommend 140 dwarves (including juveniles) to get capital and not many more. Still, even with 200 dwarves, I sometimes lack dwarfpower... It depends on machine and biome (water) and your aims more than on any hard science, but I agree on the capital requirements limit as the best one.

[Melting Sky]

140 is a good place to set the bar since below that number you can't explore all the features in the game. If your computer can't run 140 dwarves in a medium world with a couple hundred years history then you might want to drop the cap until its smooth sailing.

Smaller worlds with shorter histories tend to have balance problems but if becoming a mountain home mean more to you than the world in which they live then you can decrease the history length and world size further. As others pointed out, animals put a heavy load on the CPU as well so avoid creating big roaming populations of cats and dogs.

I don't know how things have changed in the new version but in the old version you needed a minimum of 80 dwarves to trigger attacks by the the strongest enemies such as Titans and other mega beasts so that would probably be the lowest you want to set the cap if you want to experience the core gameplay. I think at 80 you will still get to see the vast majority of what the game has to offer so its another good bar to aim for if your machine just won't do 140 smoothly.