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[SiliconMagician]

So I have this really cool scenario going. I  genned a low civ world where one of two dwarven civs was wiped out in 103 by a brutal goblin invasion. I started in the year 302 and I took the dead civ. I found a perfect, iron rich, secondary peak on a mountain spur about 5 z levels above a wooded valley and seriously lucked out when one of my best dwarfs was made Queen. So basically my fort started as a Queen, her two "ladies in waiting" and four proficient spear dwarves along with the necessary secondary skills like smithing, growing, etc. some weapons and food and 80 barrels of booze, some thread and cloth and that was about it.

So I did my usual scheme. Fortify the highest peak and carve an entrance, build a trade depot somewhere separate from my fortress, etc. I am now into my second year and the basic core of my fortress is complete and I just got a wave of immigrants boosting my population to 52. Here is my problem. After 50 dwarves, I have a hard time micromanaging all of them. I use Dwarf Therapist, but my problem is lacking a general organization strategy for my dwarves once the core workshop/storage areas and living quarters are built. After the smoothing and engraving jobs are done I now have 25-30 dwarves at one time with not much to do. A few times now I have gotten to this point only to start seeing cascades develop. Fights, depression from boredom leading to murders. Once I lost an entire squad when I sent them into a locked workshop to take care of a rampaging smith who couldn't get what he needed because the wagon hadn't shown up yet. After killing him they turned on each other and a mass battle broke out ending in my entire first squad either dead or badly wounded in the hospital unable to fight again. I learned after that it is better to just lock them up and let them starve to death when I can't procure what they need in time.

But anyway, what I need is a general overage strategy for dividing up and organizing my dwarves into work teams or crews. I'm not sure.

Is this a common sticking point in the game? I would imagine so as I have a hard time keeping track of 50-75 dwarves. Let alone 200 dwarf metropolises.

[Urist McVoyager]

1. Use the manager's workorders to avoid micromanaging your supplies. That'll help you through the problem.

2. Use the world map to find the bastard gobs who did your people in the first time and start sending raiders out in squads to perform missions against them. With luck, you'll keep your people occupied and continue getting enough migrants in to replace losses.

[Madrigal]

You could always limit your fort's population by editing the population cap in d_init.txt.

I know high population was a sticking point for me, early on. I stopped being able to cope at 100+ dwarves, and even stopped playing for a while because of it. After learning how to change the pop caps, though, I've been happily playing forts of 80ish dwarves.

[Bumber]

I make most of my dwarves haulers and scholars. With the new raiding feature, military is also an option.

[SiliconMagician]

1. Use the manager's workorders to avoid micromanaging your supplies. That'll help you through the problem.

2. Use the world map to find the bastard gobs who did your people in the first time and start sending raiders out in squads to perform missions against them. With luck, you'll keep your people occupied and continue getting enough migrants in to replace losses.

lol.. That was the entire reason for taking the civ. The gobbos live in a cursed swamp biome at the foot of the mountains my dwarves had made their home in originally. The civ was quite powerful for the first 50 years but then I guess they "dug too deeply" and unleashed a series of unfortunate incidents with forgotten beasts that weakened them greatly. Then in 59, the goblin raids started and every 10 years like clockwork the scum boiled out of the swamps to take another fortress of my civ. The worst being the slaughter of the capital in 85-92 during "The Conflict of Eviscerating". A fitting name as the gobbos killed 209 dwarves for only 45 losses. Sheer genocidal butchery! My people were scattered to the four corners of the continent. I took up residence on the far side of the homeland of my people opposite the fetid swamps the goblin butchers call home. The haunted ruins of my people's fortresses scattered through the mountains between us. My plan is to reclaim each of those forts over time and rebuild my legacy before the Queen dies.

So I have that nasty goblin society in my sights for sure but one problem. It is one of the most powerful civs on the continent with over 20,000 goblins in residence in that swamp!! I'd be sending dwarfs into a meat grinder at this point.

[anewaname]

I organize using DT, by putting all my dwarfs into three types of squads: military, crafters, and civ-laborers.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The military squads:
- have a barracks to 't'rain at, 8/12 months.
- Have the best uniforms.
- have labors that produce no-quality product, such as plant gathering, shearing, milling, web collecting, etc.
The crafter squads:
- have a barracks to 't'rain at, 0/12 months. (They do individual combat drills when there is no job, if they are not lazy).
- have the lousy uniforms (usually bone and leather, with a shield and maybe a wood weapon).
- have labors that produce products with quality levels.
The civ-laborers:
- have no barracks to 't'rain at (hunter/woodcutter/miner jobs will not be completed if these dwarfs put on military uniforms).
- have no uniforms.
- may have other labors of any sort, and often include the broker and medical dwarfs.

So, when migrants arrive, they are sorted into squads using DT's squad grouping. Also, no squads carry food or booze except the primary 'emergency response' teams of military squads. 

Jobs are heavily automated using the job manager, except "it is spring-time, so queue a 's'hear animal (r) job" and "out of logs/ore, designate more". This means if the empty barrel count is too low, another 10 are queued automatically.

For were creatures, it is very important to view the entire combat report (view the were's report) and find all instances where it did non-bruise damage to the muscle (and fat?) layers of a dwarf, because that dwarf will be infected.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Try turning off Dwarf Therapist and not micromanaging your dwarves. I understand that a certain type of player goes insane if they can't micromanage, and that's fine. But it can be done and it can be a lot of fun. I play with a pop cap of 250, hasn't effected my state of mind at all. Probably.

[SiliconMagician]

I organize using DT, by putting all my dwarfs into three types of squads: military, crafters, and civ-laborers.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The military squads:
- have a barracks to 't'rain at, 8/12 months.
- Have the best uniforms.
- have labors that produce no-quality product, such as plant gathering, shearing, milling, web collecting, etc.
The crafter squads:
- have a barracks to 't'rain at, 0/12 months. (They do individual combat drills when there is no job, if they are not lazy).
- have the lousy uniforms (usually bone and leather, with a shield and maybe a wood weapon).
- have labors that produce products with quality levels.
The civ-laborers:
- have no barracks to 't'rain at (hunter/woodcutter/miner jobs will not be completed if these dwarfs put on military uniforms).
- have no uniforms.
- may have other labors of any sort, and often include the broker and medical dwarfs.

So, when migrants arrive, they are sorted into squads using DT's squad grouping. Also, no squads carry food or booze except the primary 'emergency response' teams of military squads. 

Jobs are heavily automated using the job manager, except "it is spring-time, so queue a 's'hear animal (r) job" and "out of logs/ore, designate more". This means if the empty barrel count is too low, another 10 are queued automatically.

For were creatures, it is very important to view the entire combat report (view the were's report) and find all instances where it did non-bruise damage to the muscle (and fat?) layers of a dwarf, because that dwarf will be infected.

Thank you so much! That is just what I was trying to do. I sat for hours staring at my squad screen trying to figure out how I wanted to do that and you just unlocked it.

Yeah, I learned the hard way about were creatures when a were saladmander came along and left 4 dwarfs writhing on the ground in pain where they were dragged to the hospital where they suffered on the edge of death for a month before suddenly turning into were salamanders and rampaging through the fort slaughtering all before them. It was horrifically "fun".

UPDATE: A civ of filthy human squatters has set up camp inside the ruins of my ancestors! All that knowledge and any artfiacts of my people are now in the hands of humans.. this cannot stand...

[scourge728]

Try turning off Dwarf Therapist and not micromanaging your dwarves. I understand that a certain type of player goes insane if they can't micromanage, and that's fine. But it can be done and it can be a lot of fun. I play with a pop cap of 250, hasn't effected my state of mind at all. Probably.

And then there's just me, with nearly 400 dwarves and counting, ranging from 5-15 fps somehow, and that's with 369 pets/livestock, 96 other, and 459 dead/missing 

[Inarius]

400 dwarves and still 5-15 FPS ! You must have a very good computer

[scourge728]

I honestly don't, I have a multiple year old laptop (as in, when windows 10 was new) and I have no idea how I have such an fps, as before a cyclops showed up I was averaging 1-5 fps after dfhacking the map clean and turning weather off

EDIT: It's back to 1-5

[Bradders]

I use a strategy ver similar to anewaname's.  I use a few types of squads to organize my fort -

• Craftsdwarves of any moodable nature or quality-producing goods
• Iron Fathers - husbands and fathers of fortress children, these guys double as final line of worthwhile armed defense
• Stone Mothers - wives and mothers of fortress children, aka. the babyfactory
• Training Squad - I try to always embark with a Wrestler/Teacher to train recruits in a special squad
  
• True Military - all trained family-less non-craft-worthy dwarves get put into one of these squads

I try to keep families out of combat to mitigate bad thoughts from family dying/etc

[Rowanas]

Wow, you guys have very different requirements for ordering your Dwarves.

I assess each Dwarf the moment they enter the map. Those with only positive or neutral physical traits become warriors - no exceptions. Everyone else is assessed for their highest useful craft and assigned to it, where they will remain for the rest of their natural lives. Once a Dwarf is inducted into the colony, I never touch them again, unless something has gone wrong. It makes managing any number of dwarves a cinch, since they will find jobs to perform and beds to sleep in by themselves, according to the Glorious and Most Serene Bureaucratic Systems of the Colony (May It Eclipse the Capital!).

I still don't like having forts of more than 80-100 though. The GMSBSC (MIEC!) has jobs and room for approximately 80 dwarves, and I can't be bothered to scale it up.

[Baffler]

Therapist helps, but really work orders are your best friend. You can just put in standing orders for "make 20 rock crafts per month" or the like and they'll just do it without further input so long as they have the resources they need. In previous versions it took a lot of micromanagement to run an industry and so most people didn't bother to have more than a few and just dumped the excess into the army or made them dedicated haulers, but in the last few you don't really need labor sinks like that anymore. The system is a bit obtuse, but once you get the hang of it it's very versatile.

[tussock]

Yea, just be less fussy. Dorfs look after themselves, watch for mandates, check justice now and then, and get stuff automated as you notice a need for it. Mind your latest mood isn't stuck, atom smash anyone who got bit by a werecreature, kids that grow up need jobs or drafted, little things, while you're doing whatever the fort is really doing.

Get a tavern. If it's full all the time with visitors the keeper is way too busy to get anyone badly drunk, often, and it's funny when they do anyway. But seriously, it trains all those consoling skills and lets them help each other feel better after a while, even produces the odd marriage.

Get one of each Temple, and a general Temple. That's a lot of Temples, but the wee dears go a bit nuts if they can't pray to their favourite or just dwell on stuff now and then. They basically eliminate a bunch of stress, and are a nice place to display your artifacts.

Get a library, a couple scribes, and dorfs do quite like a bit of a read. Chief Medical Dorf and Mechanics make good scholars if you want more books, and just keep expanding it as you notice the tables are full again. You'll need as much space for reading as you do for anything else pretty quickly once you have enough copies of books done up. Books currently hold value better without binding, and don't seem to decay, so only bind the originals if you can.

With that, all of your dorfs have stuff to do all the time, even the military with a barracks but free of orders will take time out as they need it to eat, drink, socialise, pray, and do some light reading, or even haul stuff until they're weaponmasters.

Main trick I've found is turn off outdoor labours (cutting, hunting, fishing, gathering, milking, animal hauling, garbage hauling) for anyone who hates rain, and most dorfs hate rain. That saves a lot of stress, check them as they arrive.

Other than that, dorfs with high Willpower can ignore and recover from the current "saw a dead body once" issues and Willpower trains in the barracks, with a pick, or on a screw pump, so get on that for all your red arrows.

Then if you notice there's something not being done that should be, assign a couple of idle/greenstuff peasants to do it. They'll eventually train up to be decent at it. When you run out of idle peasants, assign your fisherdorfs, your rangers, and so on, there's a lot of over-subscribed jobs usually. You don't need four beekeepers, just spot someone who likes bees on the way in and turn all the others off.

I mostly limit pop to 140 for framerate purposes, but because I let the visitors take up shop all the time for lack of a care about them being worth it, the fort has reached 213 Citizens/visitors, 166 livestock, 37 others that are mostly bugged out merchants at the moment, with the wagons stuck off map somewhere. Which reminds me, I need to make a whole lot of rock blocks and build a nice road around the map edge before these trees get any worse. About 3/4 of my adult dorfs are working at any one time, and I couldn't tell you what most of them do, it's not even gathering season any more.

Though I still haven't finished the king's rooms. Hmm. Maybe just a whole lot bigger, with more gold-bar walls. Gotta be quicker than trying to carry those gold statues up from the basement. I should really mod gold so it's not so plentiful for my next world gen, like, cluster-small appearing in quartz veins or cluster-1 in alluvial. Hmm.