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[cbfog]

I had discovered a huge deposit of platinum and found some lignite to smelt it all away into bars which I was using to make crafts and encrust with cut gems which needless to say was making a good deal of wealth for my fort.

A few minutes ago one of my dwarves was seized by a mood and crafted a pure platinum anvil covered in spikes worth 600,000* which more than doubled the wealth of my fort and took it over a million!

This would make me happy except now there's going to be tons of dwarves beating down my doors and I just don't have enough food or booze saved up! Not to mention now the goblins are skulking around and recently killed almost my entire military.  

[umiman]

No one ever said you can't just lock the migrants in an underground chamber and let them starve to death, taking only those you need. I remember playing a buggy game where migrants would come once a season without fail, each time bringing at least 20 useless bums. Had to construct multiple underground starvation chambers just to hold them all.

[martinuzz]

Or if you have dangerous wildlife, make them all hunters without weapons and armor.

[Wood Gnome]

turn them all into weaponless warriors as soon as they step onto the map and leave them on duty indefinitely wherever you are likely to have invaders.  you can never have too much cannon fodder, after all.

[btmedic]

quote:Originally posted by umiman:
<STRONG>No one ever said you can't just lock the migrants in an underground chamber and let them starve to death, taking only those you need. I remember playing a buggy game where migrants would come once a season without fail, each time bringing at least 20 useless bums. Had to construct multiple underground starvation chambers just to hold them all.</STRONG>

sheesh! did you name your fortress Auschwitz?

[Jusal]

Put them in the military and tell them to hold off the carp invasion (station next to carp-infested river). If one of them manages to survive they're certainly worthy of entering the fortress.

[Slappy Moose]

Make them farmers and fishers.

They can make their own food and a surplus, that is how I never have had a fort starve.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Does anyone know if immigration tries to catch you up to a certain level, or does it just bring in some number of dwarves based on your wealth?

Example: I have a fort of 100,000 monies. I have one dwarf. Does the game say that at 100,000 monies I should have 20 dwarves, and send me 19? Or does it say I should recieve 10 dwarves per wave at that wealth level and thus send me 10?

Example 2: The following year I have 5 dwarves left, and I have not improved my wealth at all. Still 100,000 monies. Would I gain the 15 dwarves to put me at the wealth pop level, or do I get 10 dwarves because that's what the wave should be at 100,000 monies?

Also, regarding what to do with the immigrants, someone on here has a brilliant idea for a dual society. It went something like this:

Your first group of dwarves has good skills, especially once they start building stuff. You have them inside, doing a little of everything, even food production. You have an airlock leading inside, made of raising bridges and trenches to keep even the door-breakers out. All the levers are inside. In the middle of the airlock are a bunch of stockpiles and your trade depot.

When an immigrant wave comes, you set them to gather berries, fish, cut wood, and haul things to the stockpiles in the airlock. They can feed themselves no problem. When the stockpile fills up, you get all the Low Dwarves outside and switch the bridges, and bring in the High Dwarves. They gather all the goodies, like lumber and fish and stuff, and bring them inside. They put all their crafts and stuff in the airlock stockpiles, including more axes and such. Then they clear out, and you change the airlocks again.

When a seige comes, the Low Dwarves probably die. But some are woodcutters, some are hunters, and they might have armor made by the High Dwarves. So they might survive. If they don't more immigrants will come soon.

When a trader comes, they'll go straight to the depot because the outer bridge is down. When they arrive, clear out the Low Dwarves and switch airlocks. The High Dwarves then load up the depot with craft goodies, take what they want in trade goods, pull everything inside, leave more armor and weapons for the Low Dwarves, and pack it in. Get your meeting done. Change airlocks, let the traders out, let the Low Dwarves get their crumbs.

Use a single meeting zone to get animals to move back and forth. People will complain because they can't get to the meeting zone outside if they're inside, but that's cool. It's just to get the little freaks out of the airlock.

It's an incredible idea. Your important dwarves, the ones who need high skills to improve the quality of their goods, are perfectly safe inside. No more babysnatchers (well, they'll take from the people outside). No more cave adaptation problems. No tantrum spirals in the High Dwarves because they never meet the Low Dwarves. No entrance dance. Seiges happen and are fun, but they're not able to devastate your fort. No more dragons spreading fire everywhere and ruining things with bugs. It's beautiful.

[Fedor]

quote:Originally posted by cbfog:
<STRONG>I had discovered a huge deposit of platinum and found some lignite to smelt it all away into bars which I was using to make crafts and encrust with cut gems which needless to say was making a good deal of wealth for my fort.

A few minutes ago one of my dwarves was seized by a mood and crafted a pure platinum anvil covered in spikes worth 600,000* which more than doubled the wealth of my fort and took it over a million!

This would make me happy except now there's going to be tons of dwarves beating down my doors and I just don't have enough food or booze saved up! Not to mention now the goblins are skulking around and recently killed almost my entire military.   </STRONG>

First, the constructive reply:  Try lowering your population cap.  File is "\data\init.txt".  Text is "POPULATION_CAP".

Now for the smart-ass reply:

How can you POSSIBLY be running short on food!?!  So help me Armok, I simply do NOT freaking understand why so many people (not just you) are panicked by the very thought of immigrants eating them out of house and home!  I have NEVER had that problem!  A trio of farmers dedicated to the job - however unskilled - will plant and harvest more foodstocks than 40 dwarves can consume, and two brewers and a cook will satisfy 80 dwarves or more with time to spare.  In order to run short with this kind of productivity, something has to be going REALLY wrong.

[Samyotix]

Fedor's right: Don't worry too much about those immigrants eating your food.

Even without altering the raws, it's not that difficult to build up your reserves.

You know there'll be some new people, so just build a 4x4 farm plot for Plump Helmet, all year round. The stuff grows like mad ... can be eaten raw ... and once you have 400 or so, allow the brewers to use it    

You'll want to store lots of food? You want barrels. Make lots of barrels.

Need more food, right now? Turn off your farmer's hauling jobs. Make sure you have enough farmers, then set options -> "only farmers harvest" - this should increase the yield per farm plot square, I think.

Are you making thread/cloth yet? Like, rope reed farm, farmer's workshop, loom, dyer, the works? If you're that worried about food, use the farm plot for Plump Helmet for a couple of seasons. If you don't have a cloth industry yet ... maybe build it up with those immigrants?

And for extras, build another 4x4 farm plot, two querns, make some bags, and start farming something millable. Cook the flour if you run out of bags.

When they arrive, turn a quarter of the immigrants into farmers/millers, and another quarter into farmers/dyers/weavers ... and turn on "herbalism" for the rest, then designate a large area with [d][p] (harvest plants).

Oh, and: Build some weapon traps, turn on options -> refuse -> gather from outside, build a refuse stockpile outside your fort an a butcher's and a tanner's workshop nearby. That should get you some free meat occasionally.

[ May 28, 2008: Message edited by: Samyotix ]

[cbfog]

Well, it's not the food I'm worried about -- I have more plump helmets than I know what to do with. It's mostly barrels I end up having to deforest the entire map for to have enough hooch for the stumpy little alcoholics. Actually that's not too bad either since I always buy every single barrel of booze the caravans bring my way.

As far as cloth goes, I bought about 5 bins of the stuff for a couple of trinkets.

Now that I think about it I guess I'm less worried about not having enough resources and just more dreading trying to wrangle 100 or so of the guys

[Haven]

Churn out a bunch of copper picks and start... The Great Shoddy Dwarf-Made Chasm and Rickety One Tile Bridge Project. Or something like that.

[MuonDecay]

quote:Originally posted by umiman:
<STRONG>No one ever said you can't just lock the migrants in an underground chamber and let them starve to death, taking only those you need. I remember playing a buggy game where migrants would come once a season without fail, each time bringing at least 20 useless bums. Had to construct multiple underground starvation chambers just to hold them all.</STRONG>

A communal oubliette underneath the entrance would be easier. Immigrants step into large room on the way in, doors seal behind them, bridge slips out from under them, they drop a z-level or two into a smooth, featureless stone room and watch the bridge slide back into place above them.

Plus you can just drop invaders down there to mingle with the immigrants in an impromptu battle royale. In that instance, dump some food and booze down there from time to time, the strongest will live to consume it.

As an added perk they'll likely get cave adapted from sulking around down there in total darkness, so if you get a sadistic urge just retract the bridge for a moment so they all start puking.

There's something wrong with me.

[gurra_geban]

quote: It's mostly barrels

The reason why you dont have enough barrels is probably because you put all your food in the same stockpile.

Try dividing it into a booze stockpile (with max barrels allowed), a raw foods stockpile (some barrels), prepared foods pile (also some barrels) and a miniature seeds pile (close to your kitchen/farm plots. 4-5 barrels is enough)
I also recommend having a furniture stockpile with only barrels allowed (and forbidding barrels in your other stockpile/s) close to your stills.

This way you can regulate how many barrels are used for booze, and makes the deal with keeping dorfs drunk very easy

[umiman]

That's much easier said than done methinks. How are you going to plant it in a place that will get invaders and immigrants to fall in without your own, important dwarves falling in as well? Furthermore, immigrants don't move if they can't reach your fortress (i.e: lock the doors, raise the bridges, etc.) so if you were thinking of locking them out and pulling a lever of some sort, that ain't gonna work well unless you possess superior timing skills and knowledge of mechanism quality vs reaction time while being able to manage door locking to an art form.

In addition, if one were to use pressure plates, again we run into problems where:
1. it's impossible to put pressure plates on constructed buildings like bridges.
2. it's nearly impossible to time pressure plates to activate when you want it. So you'd get the trap-bridge opening 15 seconds after everyone has walked across or something.
3. where are you going to put a pressure plate to make sure everyone falls in? front? back? you're definitely going to get more than a few who stubbornly refuse to fall in and stand on the edge or something.
4. where are you going to position this system that won't affect your important dwarves? Obviously you can't put it at the entrances. If we placed it somewhere outside, we then have to calculate the opportunity cost of building an extended building with cave-in trap outside in the wilderness versus 8 holes in the ground with doors since the original argument is "easier".

Of course, if we completely disregard the "easier" sentiment, then we can adopt the always-awesome dwarven thought process of doing things in extreme in which case, this is a brilliant idea and while difficult to pull off, results in sweet decay.