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[mineforce]

I see idlers as neutral. I never get why everyone hates them.

Anyways to me, they're ready to go workers. But most of the time I don't need them, and they fill up my meeting halls and and socialize a lot. Whenever I need another worker, I just grab one of the idlers. I don't need a 100%  of my fortress working. Anyways are spiral tantrums still in the game? I never had a single one, and I really want to experience one.

[AMTiger]

 Spiral Tantrums were cool, Civil Wars were cooler though.

[Skullsploder]

The woodchips-doused-in-petrol style, one guy dies and the entire fortress turns into a explosion of anarchy type tantrum *shudders* spiral are indeed gone. Be happy you never had to abandon one hundred dwarves to death by starvation and debauchery in order to save the other fifty. It makes a cool story but it feels like murder. But you do still get a sort of slow, powerful, difficult to stop tantrum spiral. If your dwarves reach a critical point of unhappiness, which is much less likely now, the old tantrum spiral can kick in: urist 1 punches urist 2, one of them ends up dead, urists 3, 4, and 5 are upset by this, and if unhappy enough already may begin throwing tantrums. And so on. But individual tantrums are less destructive, they just recur much more for individual dwarves.

[NomeQueEuLembro]

Too many Idlers are bad because it means you could be doing more.
Too few Idlers are bad because it means you need more dwarves.

[GhostDwemer]

Too many Idlers are bad because it means you could be doing more.
Too few Idlers are bad because it means you need more dwarves.

Sums up how I feel about idlers perfectly.

[Naryar]

Yeah, tantrum spirals are gone. Well, as said as before, you can probably trigger one, but it'll probably take some effort from your part.

Also not every dwarf tantrums. Only the high anger ones.

[Skullsploder]

Yeah, tantrum spirals are gone. Well, as said as before, you can probably trigger one, but it'll probably take some effort from your part.

Also not every dwarf tantrums. Only the high anger ones.

Nah, my (late) baroness disliked physical confrontation and was slow to anger, but had the worst possible cracks under pressure trait, and she spent her last seasons throwing tantrums. She never did anything much more destructive than punch a pig, but deconstructing the main bridge while standing on it did get her dead.

[Naryar]

Yeah, tantrum spirals are gone. Well, as said as before, you can probably trigger one, but it'll probably take some effort from your part.

Also not every dwarf tantrums. Only the high anger ones.

Nah, my (late) baroness disliked physical confrontation and was slow to anger, but had the worst possible cracks under pressure trait, and she spent her last seasons throwing tantrums. She never did anything much more destructive than punch a pig, but deconstructing the main bridge while standing on it did get her dead.

Best nobles are the Wile E. Coyote ones.

Unless you were cool with this particular noble, of course.

[Skullsploder]

I chose her because she was the only dwarf who had no material preferences... but she was still more of a pain in the ass tha  most because of her unending depression. "Oh no I saw a goblin werekangaroo die 2 years ago and I cant possibly enjoy all this masterwork platinum furniture." I'm amazed she lived long enough to commit suicide; she once refused to come inside when the undead arrived because she was "too depressed" to move.

[Methadone]

I dislike idlers, although it's probably due to fear of the now-nerfed tantrum spiral. In my latest fort I have a glut of labor, so I have created several large levy squads of dwarves practicing constantly. If any manage to become decently skilled, they are moved to a line squadron. If I need help with large-scale construction, I can deactivate the squads for some easy coolie labor.

[Thisfox]

I just have a large scale construction plan in operation at all times. It often involves a new level of feasting and bathing halls, or some serious waterfall plumbing. More recently, it's been for magma transportation.

[Burts]

Tantrum spirals are not "gone" , they can still happen, although they will happen a bit differently than usually.


First, the thing with stress and general dwarf unhapinness is that it takes quite a long time for it to kick in, months, maybe even years. It even says that "over the long term urist mcurist has been really stressed" or something like that. Which means that tantrums need considerably more time to kick in, but when they do kick in, the process is almost irreversible, because it takes just as long for a dwarf to get unstressed as it takes for him to get stressed.

[Sadrice]

There's a very easy way to keep your dwarves from socializing.  Give everyone bedrooms (sometimes a problem when migrants show up in too large of numbers) and don't designate any meeting areas.  They will spend their free time in their bedrooms.  I believe dwarves have to be adjacent to socialize, if not it might help to make sure everyone has doors.  I don't know if dwarves will socialize while eating and drinking.  Spacing your tables further apart would help, or in extreme cases give everyone an office to eat in. Do they chat when walking past each other in a hallway?

One advantage of this is if you place bedrooms next to the relevant workshops (yeah, noise, whatever), the dwarf will usually start a job almost immediately.

I usually have a fair number of idlers, because I tend to have pretty strict division of labor, with craftsdwarves and other important dwarves having everything else disabled, and a large rabble of haulers with only hauling enabled.  With the job priorities update, this is less helpful, so I'm back to trying to reduce idlers.

[Kestrel]

Idlers means your military is too small.

[FukkenSaved]

I'm surprised nobody's responded yet, but I've addressed dwarf macroeconomics here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=147726.0

Of a fortress currently with 126 dwarves total and about 80 of them adult I consistently have had near-zero unemployment. DF is similar to Tropico in a lot of ways.