Here's my latest generation fort, a 1x1 area fort that does subsistence rope reed and longland grass farming in a rocky wasteland.
Pluses to reduce lag:
Not a lot of digging
Not a lot of items
No multi-tile trees (or trees of any kind)
No cavern access (and associated pathing lag)
Turned off migrants with LNP (lower population, at least in the beginning)
Turned off temperature and weather with LNP (less constant calculation for every exposed tile)
Production control with DFHack's Workflow (keeps item numbers low)
No tamed animals. No dogs, no cats, nothing (reduces pathing lag)
Dwarves mostly stay in a 1x1 room (reduces pathing lag)
Strategy for long-term survival:
Force dwarves to socialize and eventually have lots of children in a 1x1 meeting area.
Zero-access policy. Those gates will never open, and the walls have unclimbable Fortifications on the second z-level. Protection from flying attackers is still a WIP, however.
The FPS is typically 1400-1600. Caravans or large amounts of animals can spike it down to ~600.
The fortress is sustainable, and generally robust enough to leave running in the background and/or overnight. (you should probably use seasonal autosave if you attempt something like this, and don't be afraid to savescum)
Issues:
Diplomats like to glitch through the walls and forcefully pause the game. DFHack's nopause is easily defeated by yet another "important trade agreement"
Animals like to glitch through the walls and attack dwarves while you're not looking
Misc. other glitches stop workshops from working and lead to eventual starvation (from what I've seen, you have to deconstruct and rebuild the shops to fix this)
DFHack's workflow counts goods in caravans when deciding when to start and stop production. If the traders bring too many cloth bags, then suddenly you have no storage for longland flour, which means no solid component for cooking, which means no food, which means starvation - especially if the caravan dies, and the items stay there permanently
Sometimes on embark you will not get eligible pairs of breeding dwarves. You need at least 2 to keep the population going - if you only have 1, everyone in the next generation is related, and will therefore not breed further. If you have none, then there obviously isn't going to be a next generation in the first place. Fixing this will require reclaiming, or turning on migrants for a little while
The outpost liaison tends to flip out and attack animals after not talking to the mayor/expedition leader for a while, thus causing lag. You should consider shooting him dead from the walls. (go hunting for a bit and use bone bolts and crossbows if you need to)
After a long enough period of time, plants will start to build up. Consider atom-smashing them or dumping them in lava (atom-smashing will cause less lag overall)
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Topic: What's going on in your fort? (Read 6100822 times)