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[Jazzeraint]

I tend to lose track of individual dwarves and find trouble managing them between a count of 20 and 30.

What do put all of these dwarves to in the 40s, 60s, 80s and up? I can create hundreds of meals with just 1 chef, 2 farmers and an assistant, oodles of cloth and clothing items with 3 dwarves, more mining than I ever need with 1 or 2 miners, and all of the crafted goods I can use with 2 - 4 dwarves. And that doesn't even get me up to 20.

HOW DO I DWARF WITH ALL OF THESE EXTRA DWARVES???

I mean, other than drafting 3/4ths of them into a military.
(Or sacrificing them to the blood god)

[bluwolfie]

Yeah, I have the same issue.

[LordUbik]

1- Military! You'll never find youself with too many soldiers.
2- An increase in population brings a bigger need for resources like food, cloth, furniture etc... so the thing balances itself.
3- Simple workforce. You'll eventually need a lot of haulers to keep up with bigger fortresses, and to build in a smaller amount of time things like walls, towers or megaprojects.
4- New industries. You can use them to produce things you maybe don't actually need, but that are fun to use. Tjink about the honey industry,  or clay, or mass produced metal trinkets.
5- Replenish the casyalties. If you're not playing in a turtle-style fortress, you'll lose some dwarf. Well, a good amount of them actually. But losing 10 dwarves of 20  can mean a crippled fortress, losing 10 of 200... only means some coffin!

[SyrusLD]

Violentlash, my latest fortress which has run for 35 years now and I'm thinking about finally retiring, has started with 42 dwarves through migration and had a max population of 135 through births (yes, this means at an early point I had 80+ children/babies around...). I found this number of dwarves and the rather slow way of how they became new working force really good and it allowed me to focus on who can do what, going by personalities etc., if I needed it.

I have 38 (previously 39) military dwarves, 12 of them marksdwarves, 26 (prev. 27, one died of old age) melee. A decent size, I would say. Could use a few more marksdwarves. They are on constant active duty, either training, being stationed at the entrance or fighting.
Jobs all have 2 to 4 dwarves assigned to them, perfectionists do the quality related professions and have several professions enabled while non-quality related professions just have 2-4 dwarves focus on them. I have 4 designated miners, 2 carpenters (who are also bowyers, but I never made wood/bone crossbows), 1 designated woodcutter as well as 2 who also have other professions. I have no need for Masons, instead focussing on Green Glass production via a Magma Glass Furnace. 3 perfectionists are engravers but they also do other professions, these dwarves for example are also glassmakers or weapon/armor/etc-smiths.
3 (prev. 4, one died of old age) are animal trainers. 4 are doctors. They all do nothing else, not even hauling, with the exception of one of the animal trainers also being a butcher and gelder - these less used professions don't really matter.
Then I have a few planters who are also herbalists - not that I need herbalists though, but I like having different plants available. 2 designated dyers, considering the production of cloth I got going on, I need them. 3 who make soap/are woodbuners/potash/lyemakers. 2 cooks, 2 brewers, a few who are threshers, millers, ... I could actually give these professions to one dwarf or two each, but from before I still have a few dwarves who have multiple of these professions enabled at the same time, because they aren't used that often. I have 2 beekeepers who are also pressers since I have quite a sizeable beekeeping industry (I modded bee-related products to be more valuable). No fishers anymore, quite a few furnace operators. Most smiths also do other professions because I picked the best for these quality related jobs. 1 gem cutter/setter. A few designated leatherworkers and clothiers...the rest of the professions is taken up by some dwarves. It's all a bit mixed for whatever jobs aren't required that often.
And then I got 31 dwarves who pretty much do nothing but hauling. I marked them by them being the only ones who have pump operation active. The other non-critical dwarves also got hauling active. I currently only have 3 children/babies left, leaving me with a very good hauling force. If the game would assign jobs properly and quickly still, I could remove the remains of a goblin siege in a very short time for example - sadly more than half the dwarves sit around with "No Job" for an eternity before the game decides to assign the hauling/dumping jobs again. It always happens in waves until a few items are left which then don't get picked up for quite some time...

Anyway. The more dwarves you have the more you can assign one (or better two) dwarf(/ves) per profession while still keeping a massive hauling force and sizeable military.

Then again, I turtled up early until my military was combat ready, the first siege arriving at 50 dwarves (8 births had to happen). I fought off my first siege a few years later, until then I just let them wander outside with the "doors" (bridges) closed. If you have more loss you will need to replenish those casualties as pointed out of course.
There are a lot of professions, so use a lot of dwarves for them, I say. But the main need for that work force will always be the military and hauling. Keep the critical professions manned with a few non-hauler dwarves who are then always safe in the belly of your fortress.

[Graknorke]

Put them on construction duty. They can scurry around and put buildings together while the useful dwarves do useful things.

[RocheLimit]

In my forts, only about 10 dwarfs are needed for core jobs, such as mining, wood cutting, weaving, cooking, etc.  The rest get assigned a blanket profession I named Hauler_Mason that includes all hauling, construction, deconstruction, farming, plant processing, furnace operating, mason, carpentry, etc.  Namely, professions that either have no bearing on strange moods or are done so infrequently by so many different dwarfs skill ups are non-existent.  This setup gives a fort the dwarf power to quickly clean up after a siege/lay down a mass of flooring quickly, while still ensuring the core jobs are always taken care of.

After I get my metal industry going, it takes quite some time to hammer out all the steel one needs for military.  I usually use this time and begin going through the hauler_masons to see which ones would make good armorsmiths and weaponsmiths.  Profile a forge for them to work on, set to repeat copper battle axes, copper buckets, or copper shields, and let them level up.  Quantum stockpiles set to take all non-masterwork output from the forges and dump onto an Auto-Melt stockpile helps greatly in keeping the cycle going.

I then recruit my military 10 at a time from the ranks of the Hauler_Masons, giving them a new custom profession named Mil_Prep.  This makes them easy to locate when creating the squads.  Pick a weapon (Maces are my go-to to start), make 10, and give them a nice place to train year-round (be sure to schedule them 2 max * 5).  As you make more armor, recruit more and more of your hauler masons; by this time, most mass-moving jobs should be about done and the labor is idling.  My current fort, 50/60 adults were in the military: 20 mace lords, 10 pick lords, 10 spear masters, and 10 crossbowmen.

Children growing up to become adults in a well established fort are a breeze to handle.  I check them as they become parents for smithing preferences.  Armor - armorsmithing, furniture - blacksmithing, weapons/nothing - weaponsmithing.  Give them a forge profiled for them and get them leveled up before making them more Hauler_Masons.  Then, when you need more military, dig into that supply again. 

TLDR (I rambled a bit): make most dwarfs into dedicated haulers/grunt work dwarfs, then pull from them when you want to expand your military.  Pretraining them in a worthwhile profession pays back handsomly with a stream of excellent strange moods.

[Niddhoger]

Military.  Many people have 100+ strong military forces.  Naturally, these will all need (preferably) masterwork equipment... so that causes a ton of demand right there.  200 dorfs need clothing replaced as well, so you need a dedicated workforce of growers, threshers, weavers, dyers, and clothiers.  I feel like assigning a cheap leather "uniform" that lasts for the rest of the dorf's natural lifespan is a tad on the exploity side.  Otherwise.. yeah I'll assign a beekeeper just to have one, which gives my new potter something to start with, etc. 

I prefer to have dorf's with only one labor enabled, but then have 2-4 of those, as needed.  Even if a skill doesn't have a quality, It still reduces time needed.  Legendary threshers and millers still blink on the status screen like they are actually important too   So if I see "40" dorfs milling around wth nothing to do, maybe a third are actually haulers doing nothing.  The rest are professionals I consider "on standby."  Its just too infuriating when I order something done, but the only dorf flagged for it is "mining for gold" up his nose for the better part of a month.  Or that all my pressers are busy grinding flour and dye, so I'll have to wait on that rock nut oil (to make into soap, to put in the hospital).  This creates a further cascade of delays, or creates more micromanagement.

I also like to groom through my dorfs and find those with good item/material preferences as strange mood bait.  You often only need a single level.  I do NOT need another wooden mini-forge decorated with coal and dog bones.  An artifact steel axe on the other hand... You can ever have enough of those!

[TheFlame52]

You can never have too many haulers!

Out of Bastiongate's 212 citizens, 132 of them are legendary in some skill. Everyone has their place.

I also like to groom through my dorfs and find those with good item/material preferences as strange mood bait.  You often only need a single level.  I do NOT need another wooden mini-forge decorated with coal and dog bones.  An artifact steel axe on the other hand... You can ever have enough of those!

I've been training everyone without a moodable skill as a mason. Hopefully I'll get some nice artifacts out of the deal - I don't really need any more masons.

[Niddhoger]

In my forts, only about 10 dwarfs are needed for core jobs, such as mining, wood cutting, weaving, cooking, etc.  The rest get assigned a blanket profession I named Hauler_Mason that includes all hauling, construction, deconstruction, farming, plant processing, furnace operating, mason, carpentry, etc.  Namely, professions that either have no bearing on strange moods or are done so infrequently by so many different dwarfs skill ups are non-existent. 

Farming skill level IS important though.  A higher farming skill allows dorfs to reliably grow stacks of food at 5-7 instead of 1-3.  If nothing else, this means your booze stockpile is filled with pots/barrels that have 30 units of dwarven wine inside of them instead of 5.  If you only have 2-3 farmers, they tend to skill up fast enough.  Once the fields are planted you can have them start cooking/brewing until the next planting season (while using your hauler_mason to harvest).  By contrast, cooks are only needed to destroy caravans.  Caravans are rarely important outside maybe the first few, unless the RNG gods dealt you a serious kick to the crotch for metals (my shallow metals/deep metals are bismuth/cassiterite and sphelerite/garnerite!!!!!??)

I'm also curious why you don't have a dedicated mason.  Do you not care about masterwork stone furniture? While you are carving out your base and setting up basic rooms, you can use one mason and easily get semi-quality furniture early on.  If he starts at rank 5, you can quickly build up to masterwork tables just from the loose stone you created mining out living quarters and such.  You can easily have him bsy doing that while you set up the metal/glass industries and train up those professionals to replace the stone stuff... which is a fairly low priority for the first few years anyway.  You can easily set up workshop profiles to keep your grunts making blocks and your skilled mason creating furniture.

[Sanctume]

Stones have low value, can get a bit more from flux, and at most value for obsidian. 
However, metal furnitures from gold and platinum have huge value increase over stone.
Sure in the beginning, it's easy to set aside a mason producing table, chairs, doors, coffer, cabinets, armorstands and weapon racks on repeat.

But once you have magma forges up, metal furnitures would be more lucrative specially now that you can vein mine ores without bothering with stones.

[Niddhoger]

Indeed... the point isn't that stone furniture is superior, its that magma smelters and even basic forges don't set themselves up (both the smelter and forge have to be fed, so you have those logistics to worry about).  What do you really lose having a full time mason churn out a set of quality starter furniture (that generate some happy thoughts NOW) out of junk stone? You create the stone by digging out your fortress and you need furniture from the get-go.  Using wood means less for beds/bins/coal.  Wood also has to be chopped down outside (if it exists) or from the caverns (dangerous) then dragged inside.  Stone is... right there in the middle of your fort.  So why not concentrate this work on just one guy? Once you have equipment forged, and defenses set up, your reservoir/hospital, textile industry going, and food secured you can go back and "upgrade" the stone furniture.  Until then, even non-masterwork stone furniture will generate happy thoughts.

[Arcvasti]

HOW DO I DWARF WITH ALL OF THESE EXTRA DWARVES???

Have one dwarf for each profession, minus the stupid fiddly ones like hunter. Yes, even lye and cheese makers. Even if you never remember to use their profession, they'll still haul and if you ever find yourself with a need for soap or somesuch, you'll have a dwarf to fill that need. Still, this only works until ~150ish dwarves. After that I usually draft all my migrants into an engraving squad and designate all the stone for smoothing. Or do the same with miners and tell them to excavate an entire z-level. Usually in the opposite order. Even just being haulers and such is still useful. Imagine you want to dump several thousand rocks into magma for FPS reasons. Its incredibly satisfying to see half the fort all unite in one concerted act and literally move a mountain.

[IRON_GAUNTLET]

The draft is my favorite method that I employ in these circumstances. The mastery of cheese-making and fish-cleaning will not be achieved in my fortress.

But if you don't want to build up dozens of doomsquads, you can have the peasantry engrave the entire fortress, or clean the surface of any trees, as other possible suggestions. Or have them voluntary work on constructing stone-floors and walls too.

[vjmdhzgr]

Violentlash, my latest fortress which has run for 35 years now and I'm thinking about finally retiring, has started with 42 dwarves through migration and had a max population of 135 through births (yes, this means at an early point I had 80+ children/babies around...). I found this number of dwarves and the rather slow way of how they became new working force really good and it allowed me to focus on who can do what, going by personalities etc., if I needed it.

I have 38 (previously 39) military dwarves, 12 of them marksdwarves, 26 (prev. 27, one died of old age) melee. A decent size, I would say. Could use a few more marksdwarves. They are on constant active duty, either training, being stationed at the entrance or fighting.
Jobs all have 2 to 4 dwarves assigned to them, perfectionists do the quality related professions and have several professions enabled while non-quality related professions just have 2-4 dwarves focus on them. I have 4 designated miners, 2 carpenters (who are also bowyers, but I never made wood/bone crossbows), 1 designated woodcutter as well as 2 who also have other professions. I have no need for Masons, instead focussing on Green Glass production via a Magma Glass Furnace. 3 perfectionists are engravers but they also do other professions, these dwarves for example are also glassmakers or weapon/armor/etc-smiths.
3 (prev. 4, one died of old age) are animal trainers. 4 are doctors. They all do nothing else, not even hauling, with the exception of one of the animal trainers also being a butcher and gelder - these less used professions don't really matter.
Then I have a few planters who are also herbalists - not that I need herbalists though, but I like having different plants available. 2 designated dyers, considering the production of cloth I got going on, I need them. 3 who make soap/are woodbuners/potash/lyemakers. 2 cooks, 2 brewers, a few who are threshers, millers, ... I could actually give these professions to one dwarf or two each, but from before I still have a few dwarves who have multiple of these professions enabled at the same time, because they aren't used that often. I have 2 beekeepers who are also pressers since I have quite a sizeable beekeeping industry (I modded bee-related products to be more valuable). No fishers anymore, quite a few furnace operators. Most smiths also do other professions because I picked the best for these quality related jobs. 1 gem cutter/setter. A few designated leatherworkers and clothiers...the rest of the professions is taken up by some dwarves. It's all a bit mixed for whatever jobs aren't required that often.
And then I got 31 dwarves who pretty much do nothing but hauling. I marked them by them being the only ones who have pump operation active. The other non-critical dwarves also got hauling active. I currently only have 3 children/babies left, leaving me with a very good hauling force. If the game would assign jobs properly and quickly still, I could remove the remains of a goblin siege in a very short time for example - sadly more than half the dwarves sit around with "No Job" for an eternity before the game decides to assign the hauling/dumping jobs again. It always happens in waves until a few items are left which then don't get picked up for quite some time...

Anyway. The more dwarves you have the more you can assign one (or better two) dwarf(/ves) per profession while still keeping a massive hauling force and sizeable military.

Then again, I turtled up early until my military was combat ready, the first siege arriving at 50 dwarves (8 births had to happen). I fought off my first siege a few years later, until then I just let them wander outside with the "doors" (bridges) closed. If you have more loss you will need to replenish those casualties as pointed out of course.
There are a lot of professions, so use a lot of dwarves for them, I say. But the main need for that work force will always be the military and hauling. Keep the critical professions manned with a few non-hauler dwarves who are then always safe in the belly of your fortress.

This sounds like the perfect fortress I've been trying to have for the whole two years I've been playing Dwarf Fortress.

[Dunamisdeos]

In my forts, anyone who is not important gets assigned to either masonry or farming upon arrival at the fort. These people are never thought about ever again, unless I need to screen for military conscription.

This ensures that I will always have food available and a large number of dwarves for things like block production, hauling, or wall building.