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[SnowWhite]

Topic inspired by the "Hot or Not" fortress critique thread in which it sounds like many people have many idlers in their fortresses.

I try to keep below two uninjured idlers.

One squad of wrestlers are also dedicated food haulers.  I deactivate them when needed for hauling (such as when trade caravans arrive) and the rest of the time they practice wrestling.  My hope was that they'd wrestle enough to get agile and strong so they'd haul faster but still show in the U(nits) list as peasants when they were out of the military, but the few that wrestled their way to an attribute only manged "tough".

When winter hits, I watch my farmers.  When one goes idle I turn on stone hauling.  Many of my farmers don't just farm in the fields; the ones with other skills can generally keep themselves busy all winter.  In past fortresses most of my farmers practiced wrestling in the winter.

I let my masons' and carpenters' workshops get a bit cluttered, and when my furniture haulers start showing idle I queue up bedrooms, nobles bedrooms, coffins, and statues to keep them busy and out of trouble.  If we run out of furniture to rearrange, they'll form a squad of wrestlers like my food haulers.

All my legendary dwarves are also siege operators and I have several practice catapults.  So they have something to do if we run out of bones to turn into bolts or need time to decide where to mine next.

All my metalsmiths are also smelters; when they don't need to make armor, weapons, furniture, or crafts, they make bars.

My current fortress has just over 190 dwarves right now.  I believe it is in year 8.  http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-1125-helmringed

[Sowelu]

For one thing, I don't tend to mind idleness.  I don't like micro-managing, and my smiths train slowly, so when there's nothing to do my high skilled dwarves tend to just sit around waiting for a job.  That's okay with me.  This is especially true with my smiths:  I don't let them smelt bars, because they invariably get moods that turn them into legendary smelters.  I prefer to keep them as smiths only, so they can get weapon or armor moods.

Otherwise, whenever I have more dwarves than I know what to do with, I make them swordsdwarves and have them practice with silver swords.  I only teach them to wrestle once they hit Master.  I used to have civilian teams that trained in the military at winter, but I don't do that so much any more.  My reasoning with swords is that when I've got well over a hundred trained swordsdwarves, I'll swap out all their silver for obsidian.  I'd rather have them train their sword skill when they have low stats, too, instead of cutting each others' heads off when they get around to learning a weapon.

I usually don't have much for my dwarves to do, which surprises me.  So, 75% conscription, hooray!

[RPB]

Who says you have to micro-manage? Just set up a couple of repeat jobs in a workshop and you can leave its worker(s) alone for a couple of years.

[BurnedToast]

Errr... no offense but why bother managing dwarves so none are idle? I can't imagine coming up with 200 jobs so everyone has something to do without clogging your fort up so bad with crafts the hauling becomes unmanageable.

Usually I just let 90% of my dwarves be idle, unskilled haulers and the other 10% specialized legendary crafters. who cares if they stand around doing nothing? all they need to do is carry stuff when I need it carried.

I don't bother training unskilled labor in military skills - a 'real' military of 10 - 20 dwarves is enough to counter any threat, and the skills the half trained dwarves have won't matter at all without armor or weapons. If you are going to make them armor and weapons, why not just keep them in the military full time? the stat gains for faster hauling are nice, I guess, but it's not worth the bother of micromanaging them into and out of the military when needed IMO.

I like to think dwarves are happier with lots of time to hang out and have a smoke outside rather then doing mindless busywork all day  :p

[Novocain]

I try to have a lot of workshops set up, especially for crafting and food production.

Food production, military, guards, and crafters take up 1/10th of my fortress each, easily.

Crafters build bolts for my military and guards to train, while my military and guards....sit around and waste 1/5th of my population.

Food production is busy, though. Many many farmers planting and processing crops, while nobles, children, and the occasional idler harvest the goods. My fort has a lot of wasted space due to excess food, though. >>

The rest of my fort is comprised of a few skilled laborers, haulers, and the occasional dwarf stuck on top of a statue. It may be the inefficiency of my stockpiles, but I've never had more than 1% of my fort(with current, unsucky forts) idle unless I've royally screwed something up.

[RPB]

quote:Originally posted by BurnedToast:
<STRONG>Errr... no offense but why bother managing dwarves so none are idle?</STRONG>

Equally no offense intended, but why bother having dwarves around if they're not going to do anything? I wouldn't let my population get up to 200 in the first place if I didn't have jobs for all of them. If I only wanted 10 dwarves' worth of production I'd train a couple dozen highly strong/agile haulers instead of having 150+ unskilled haulers that are idle most of the time anyhow.

[Pacho]

Idleness is not a problem unless you play with the economy.  I prevent idleness simply by preventing my dwarves from gaining skill too fast.  My miners are also masons, my farmers help with the hauling, and my craftdwarves are always pumping out lots of trinkets, toys, and mugs to sell in the stores.  The only profession that doesn't have an average balance of 1k in credit are my mechanics, but that's only because I don't need as many traps with half of all my dwarves being in the military.  Oh, one last thing, I don't let my dwarves specialize unless absolutely necessary, but the only specialization I've had to do so far is have two cooks to feed my fortress (they just have farming duties turned off; they still haul).

After that, you just have to make sure to prevent your legendary dwarves from taking too many jobs.  They complete things far too quickly, and most of what they make turns out to be too expensive for your dwarves to buy with frequency.

[RPB]

quote:Originally posted by Pacho:
<STRONG>After that, you just have to make sure to prevent your legendary dwarves from taking too many jobs.  They complete things far too quickly, and most of what they make turns out to be too expensive for your dwarves to buy with frequency.</STRONG>

Actually I find as far as the economy goes this is basically the fix. I specialize heavily and have most of my dwarves build skill as fast as they're able, then once they hit legendary they stop working and just haul nonstop until I need them.

[Savok]

While having a hundred idling dwarves seems pointless, what do you do when you suddenly have a couple thousand rock mugs to haul from one end of the fortress to the other and need to complete it in under seven weeks?

(yes, that might actually happen; a legendary stone carver is needed for good obsidian short swords and when trained from dabbling to legendary outputs 1800 rock mugs)

[Endiqua]

That's basically how I look at it (at least for now).  I'm sure keeping everyone busy will be one of my goals in the future.  I don't mind having a bunch of idlers because I can always turn on stone hauling and reorganize piles when need be, or I can recruit military or workers from the pool if I have a need that's not getting handled fast enough.  Detailing stone is always handy, too.  EVERYONE gets a chance to do some smoothing and engraving since they seem to love it so much.  Sometimes I just send them out hunting and see if they can get an animal before they get stomped.  

[Lightning4]

I've never had too much trouble keeping 100+ non-military dwarves from being idle. In fact, I have a hard time getting them to be idle. I always have one massive task after another that takes at least a month.

Like I'll mass-haul items to the trade depot for the human caravan. (treeless map, still a slight shortage of bins)
But then a goblin siege comes. So I have to stop the trade depot hauling. It's replaced by hauling all the crap dropped by dead goblins and the mauled caravan.
This takes so long that by the time it's finished, the dwarf caravan comes by, requiring another smaller haul.
And I've had large mining operations and there's several hundred tons of rock to move outside when the chance arrives. That's definitely a year-long project.

[ October 11, 2007: Message edited by: Lightning4 ]

[Hypcso]

I as well have a difficult time GETTING dwarves to be idle. My fortress is capped out at 70 ATM and i've got probably 4 years of hauling jobs waiting to be done. I haven't had an idle dwarf in many years unless they're resting an injury.

[Pitchblack]

I usualy cap my population at around 50 for a while until it seems i can handle immigration waves then i start adding to it until i get enough.

[Fedor]

Idleness?  I wish I had some.  Like Lightning4, I find there's always more than enough hauling to do, even five or six years in.  An important reason for this is that my legendary producers stay hard at work.

My current fortress population is 147.  Of these:

* 27 are children or nobles.
* about 13 (less during winter) handle everything to do with food (grow it, butcher/gather/fish it, process it, brew it, cook it, and haul it).  Of these, perhaps 5 are pure Food Haulers (they also generally handle refuse, except when I allow dwarves to haul refuse from outside).  The stronger foodies sometimes practice with catapults in winter.
* about 30 are in the military (this is unusually high for me, but it's a dangerous neighborhood).  Of these, perhaps 60% are legendary-level in either mining or engraving.  Dwarves swap in and out of the military to balance between heavy haulage, stat-boosting, and training.  Most dwarves who come armed shuck off their encumbering ironmongery near the magma smelters and join the haulers or engravers.
* none are in either the Fortress or Royal Guards, and none will be until I start seeing some negative consequences for keeping 21 dwarves under my own command.
* about 25 make everything from mechanisms to steel armor, but, of these, about 5-10 will have run out of supplies or useful work and be helping with hauling.
* about 5-10 are doing engraving or mining to boost stats.  The military is centered on legendary dwarves (there are some others but they are mostly garrison/trainees), and I need as many strong and agile haulers as I can get.
* perhaps 2-4 are training with catapults.
* about 3-5 are bedridden or in jail.

The rest - and we're now down to (on a very rough average) 40% of the total population - haul.  They almost never do anything else.  They are divided by strength:  "Very Strong" and stronger dwarves (mostly Legendary miners and engravers) are "Hauler Heavy"s.  The rest are "Haulers".  I use the extremely useful program Dwarf Foreman, available in the Utilities section of the DF Wiki, to task entire categories of dwarves between job assignments.  I want to shift 12 Hauler Heavies from stone to wood haulage?  5 seconds.

The current fortress has the economy on, so haulers sleep in the barracks ... on the Masterpiece beds.  They don't have a lot of money but nobody gets a better night's rest.  They need their beauty sleep too, because Armok knows they work harder than anyone!

[ October 12, 2007: Message edited by: Fedor ]

[RPB]

quote:Originally posted by Savok:
<STRONG>While having a hundred idling dwarves seems pointless, what do you do when you suddenly have a couple thousand rock mugs to haul from one end of the fortress to the other and need to complete it in under seven weeks?

(yes, that might actually happen; a legendary stone carver is needed for good obsidian short swords and when trained from dabbling to legendary outputs 1800 rock mugs)</STRONG>

First off, I don't make rock mugs to begin with. Rock is so cheap that extra rock junk pretty much isn't worth the haul time. To train up stone crafters I make instruments/toys for a 1:1 ratio of rocks:finished goods.

Secondly, even if you're cross-training a perfectly agile dwarf, they don't "suddenly" output 600 jobs' worth of junk.

Thirdly, why on earth do you care about carting several hundred pieces of stone junk around anyway? What, the human caravan just arrived and you need to buy it out in a hurry (not as if you really need any of their junk)? Here, here's a platinum goblet. One. One goblet. Keep the change.

Fourthly, even if the expenditure of one-third of a bar of platinum weighs more in your eyes than 1799 extra haul jobs and you really must use your stone goods to buy out caravan junk, why do you have your stone crafters at the other end of the fortress? Since I do ocassionally dump stone junk on caravans just to get rid of it, I have my stone crafters near the entrance. I save the stone on the other side of the fortress for my masons and mechanics, since the stuff they make will mostly get used over there.

Lastly, and most importantly, if I didn't leave 100+ dwarves idling all the time in the first place I'd have enough uber strong/agile dwarves to get it done with a quarter as many haulers.

[ October 13, 2007: Message edited by: RPB ]