Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[NW_Kohaku]

They'll also end up forming large social networks, prone to tantrums upon the deaths of popular Dwarves.

This is why you want to burrow them into smaller cliques.  That way, they only know a handful of people (besides their own children, which WILL be a good number of them..)

Within 18 years I my dwarves had about 25 children (only a few arrived as migrants), probably even more. My cap was set to 55 and just now I reached 80 dwarves. I'd actually say that this growth was a bit too fast, because there are always about 15 children around...for future fortresses which aim on growing via births I should consider a way to utilize the children for farming a bit more I guess...

I remember in 40d, my children were all legendary growers by the time they hit adulthood, and so were my nobles, because they were the only ones who had the time to actually pick the crops.  (It was before I learned to act in moderation, and I was setting up 4 full-time textile looms with everything that went with it just for the giggles.) Planting is higher priority than picking, so it favors children and idlers doing the picking.

Anyway, to keep children down, I tend to just use the percentage children, which I bump up every game year or so to let a few more in.  That keeps them from slamming into cap quickly.  I start with something like 15% and then up it 3% every year after hitting cap until it's around 45%, where I stop.

[tonnot98]

I personally hate the 2nd spring migrant waves that bring entire generations of a single family along. 14 children under the age of 10?...  I hope you have passports.

But to me, it feels like each dwarf is a living being, all with childhoods, dreams, and goals. Which is what I think toady was going for. There always is the select few that I isolate or assassinate, like trapping a vampire on top of a cavern column, with the only escape being the death that'd result in jumping. I always check the history of the dwarves that die during hunting accidents, ambushes, sieges, and megabeast/FB attacks, unless it's a huge toll with over a quarter of the fortress gone.

I usually play with 80 or so dwarves, as I enjoy boasting a large military to keep the caverns safe for the laborers. It does suck how every migrant is a fisher, farmer, child, or some other useless job that can be done by one or two specialists, like milling, pressing, and threshing. I wish that the migrant applicants would remember that this is a FORTRESS, not a city. My fortresses are always meant to just provide wealth, materials, and arms to the mountain home, and act as forward entrenchments against goblins.

I forgot where I was going with this.

[darkflagrance]

I used to run generational forts of 150-200, back when my computer could still handle DF. I knew the names and history of every champion, and every mayor. I knew which dwarves were the best at their trades, and I knew family ties that linked each of the great fortress dynasties together. I could still probably recall them today.

I think the amount of dwarves we can each characterize is a personal limit, because we have to endow each dwarf we give a personality to a fraction of our very soul to simulate mentally.

[Mushroo]

And... 25 of my 85 dwarves killed by a forest titan's webs. That's going to hurt the fortress morale.

By the way, I usually do (o)rders, only farmers (h)arvest, to work around the "all children are legendary planters" issue.

[Crabs]

Many dwarves are no prob for me. Large migration waves are. Even with DF therapist a hassle.

[NW_Kohaku]

By the way, I usually do (o)rders, only farmers (h)arvest, to work around the "all children are legendary planters" issue.

Who says it's a bad thing?  Trains stats, (agility, endurance, strength, and kinesthetic sense - all useful for soldiers or nearly any craft,) and it's not a moodable skill.

[Loud Whispers]

By the way, I usually do (o)rders, only farmers (h)arvest, to work around the "all children are legendary planters" issue.

Who says it's a bad thing?  Trains stats, (agility, endurance, strength, and kinesthetic sense - all useful for soldiers or nearly any craft,) and it's not a moodable skill.

Also ensures that when they go off duty from military duty they don't get any unhappy thoughts from being a peasant, as they simply revert to being a farmer

[Arcvasti]

Once I've got over ~200 dwarves, I basically run out of useful jobs to give them. That's usually when I either start drowning entire migrant waves or making them engravers and having them smooth ALL THE STONE[Including the caverns]. Before that, I usually just give each dwarf that comes to my fort one job[Preferably one they already have skill in] as soon as they enter the map and then name their profession after that job. Really big waves are still tedious, but afterwards I never have to worry about job organization again.

[Abraxis]

To those of you complaining about being overwhelmed by large numbers of dorfs for the inability to distinguish them, personally.  Your forts are too safe.  I guarantee if your population is being regularily culled by !!FUN!! you will be getting to know those who make a habit of surviving.  Not every dorf can be special, this doesn't make sense, don't expect them to be, there are always background dorfs, there to create a blanket of mediocrity from which those special dorfs can distinguish themselves.

To some others, perhaps you're just not very good at using Dwarf Therapist to organize your dorfs.  I suggest making your own Dwarf Therapist grid views and professions based on how you typically run your forts, the default layout and professions aren't that good.

For example, here is my grid view, which I have organized roughly by class of industry -> industry -> jobs within industry.  The professions on the side are ordered alphabetically in the same order as the professions are displayed along the top, so you get this descending pattern which allows you to easily tell at a glance what everyone is doing.  These are professional dorfs though, they do not haul.  This causes a bit more idling among this professional class when I have given no order than some other people might have, but it also means tasks get done as soon as I give the order.  And as far as I'm concerned, hanging around chatting with other dorfs is their reward for being good at something.
http://imgur.com/7qATPzY
Then you have the basic labor class, these dorfs haul, they haul everything all day.  As soon as I get a migrant wave, I assign them all to laborers, they'll be easy to distinguish, as they'll all be at the bottom of the list without the custom profession tags.
http://imgur.com/FvNtloa
From that pool of laborers, as I expand my fort and its industry's infrastructure, I pull people into professions based on their current skills, or the 'roles' screen, which gives you a sense of how good a dorf will be at something based on their personality and physical traits.  As you can see, there is a good reason for these dorfs to be lowly laborers.  But when you need anything done super quick and don't care about quality, you simply assign the task to the laborers with a single click.
http://imgur.com/BFdrMrG
Then I also check for their military viability in the same way.
http://imgur.com/pYM5dcq

With this system I can easily process hundreds of dorfs in seconds shift/balance my economy for any given situation with ease.  No stress, I spend all my time actually playing the game.  Huge migration waves are great!  More laborers are always useful, if nothing else, there's always going to be plenty of stone to haul (or bodies for... !!Science!!). Of course everyone runs their forts differently, so I suggest you create your own grid view based on however it is you mentally and practically organize your fort.

Or here's mine if you don't want to make your own, just download and import from the DT 'file' drop menu.
Professions:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/d7k4dkzpoz4mnze/Abraxis.dtp?dl=0
Grid views:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/c1vsnfqqha2erha/Abraxis%27gridviews.dtg?dl=0

[NW_Kohaku]

To those of you complaining about being overwhelmed by large numbers of dorfs for the inability to distinguish them, personally.  Your forts are too safe.  I guarantee if your population is being regularily culled by !!FUN!! you will be getting to know those who make a habit of surviving. 

That is exactly the problem.

The giant migrant waves have the direct effect of encouraging pointless suicide charges or mass-"unfortunate accidents", because it's the only way to weed out the useful from the useless. 

DF would be a much better game if you had to actually work to attract your migrants, because it would make you far more invested in the outcomes of battles, since you're actually risking something, instead of seeing the slaughter of your dwarves as a good way to whittle down your surplus.

[NJW2000]

You guys hear about the guy who produced soldiers by making migrants fight through a menagerie of 3 cavern layers past the corpses of the previous waves and the insane dwarves that survived, not to mention the unmemorialised spirits of those who didn't to get into his fort?

Now that's what I call a thunderdome.

[Abraxis]

To those of you complaining about being overwhelmed by large numbers of dorfs for the inability to distinguish them, personally.  Your forts are too safe.  I guarantee if your population is being regularily culled by !!FUN!! you will be getting to know those who make a habit of surviving. 

That is exactly the problem.

The giant migrant waves have the direct effect of encouraging pointless suicide charges or mass-"unfortunate accidents", because it's the only way to weed out the useful from the useless. 

DF would be a much better game if you had to actually work to attract your migrants, because it would make you far more invested in the outcomes of battles, since you're actually risking something, instead of seeing the slaughter of your dwarves as a good way to whittle down your surplus.

Yeah that would be fun too, I don't mind how it is now, but if you had to actually earn your dorfs, that would be a nice challenge, and would definitely add a new (and imo necessary) layer of challenge to the game, and a rewarding sense of progression.  As it stands though, you're already only guaranteed the first two waves, after that reasons start to play a factor on who and how many migrants arrive.  That being the case, there must already be values in place which may be tweaked in order to create the environment you're looking for, I would imagine.

[Alfrodo]

I like that.  This way I don't treat "A wave of migrants have arrived" in the same way as "THE DEAD WALK HIDE WHILE YOU CAN."

And yeah, I like 100+ FPS so I generally run smaller areas and smaller populations. I like a good 2x3 fort.

I generally don't like more than 30 dwarves, though. I can handle 80 fine, but any higher than I start making *<<+Immigrant Bone Helmets+>>*.

This has the unfortunate side effect of no Goblins coming to get blown to pieces. Which is not !!FUN!!.

[TerryDactyl]

To those of you complaining about being overwhelmed by large numbers of dorfs for the inability to distinguish them, personally.  Your forts are too safe.  I guarantee if your population is being regularily culled by !!FUN!! you will be getting to know those who make a habit of surviving. 

That is exactly the problem.

The giant migrant waves have the direct effect of encouraging pointless suicide charges or mass-"unfortunate accidents", because it's the only way to weed out the useful from the useless. 

DF would be a much better game if you had to actually work to attract your migrants, because it would make you far more invested in the outcomes of battles, since you're actually risking something, instead of seeing the slaughter of your dwarves as a good way to whittle down your surplus.

*goddammit*

Quit arguing with everybody who enjoys the game differently than you do. This has already been pointed out.

Why is this topic so polarizing? My strategy is to assign key labours to my starting 7. The first few migrants I am desperate for to fill out my labours, and the big wave that comes in the spring is vital to establishing a construction industry. Architecture and design is a big part of the fun, so I do a lot of surface builds. Every migrant that comes to my fortress is assigned a set of unskilled labours (masonry, farming, processing, etc) and individuals are picked out based on useful talents or propensity toward certain jobs - and nicknamed. I do not need to name every dwarf, but I like to name dwarves of significance. And if you say one word about how I'm playing wrong, I swear...

[Alfrodo]

Play how you like buddy.

I personally like small forts, with the death of a dwarf being relevant and sometimes crippling.

Some people like having 300+ dwarves and throwing them all unarmed at a goblin siege, just to see how it pans out.

Some people like to have a modest amount of dwarves at 80-120.

Some people like to have 1 dwarf.


It doesn't matter, it's dwarf fortress, the most open ended game out there, play how you see fit.