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[Taal]

I'd like to once and for all sort out all the silly population cap nonsense once and for all.

After starting with 7 dwarves, you will, even as soon as summer of your first year, recieve immigrants. These immigrants, arriving in waves rarely more then 24 short persons per wave, will continue to bolster numbers until a population cap of 200 dwarfs are met or until your computer commits Harri Karri, having gone insane from processing the minds of so many dwarfs.

The easiest way to curb this inevitable destruction of your computer is to set the Population cap in your DF init file lower, where upon the waves of dwarves (That can range much larger then the previous stated 24 persons) will continue until the limit is met or surpassed, after which the waves will stop.

There for, if you set your population limit to 8, you would recieve one immigration wave, which could be much larger then the one dwarf needed to fill your limit. However after that, unless deaths in your fortress force your population under that limit, you will not recieve any other immigration waves.

There is no way to ensure that you only get the amount of  dwarfs required to fill your limit (1 in the example above for instance) as when the limit is not met immigrants will arrive in waves, which as I stated can, and will be much larger then you want. To this end I suggest any kind of lava/bottemless pit/starvation room/arena based means of population control.

I hope this clears up any of the "ZOMG POPALITION CAP IS BUGGED LOL!1!" and/or "Oh bother! Watson it does appear that I have recieved far to many dwafs in my immaculate, perfectly summetrical fortress, I shall complain about this immediatly to the fine high class gentlemen of the forum!" Shenanigans.

[Hagadorn]

Kitties, Millions and Millions and Millions and Hundreds of Kitties...


Everywhere! KITTIES!

[timmeh]

Addition: The best way to achieve a more precise control over the number of dwarves in your fortress lies in the efficient use of magma.

[Qiu]

it's very strange, since i'm playing 40d10, it seems that the pop cap is not bugged anymore. ie if i have 78 dwarves and my pop cap is at 80, i'll get exactly two dwarves in the next immigration wave. If one of those dies, i'll get exactly one dwarf in the next wave to replace it.
(i didn't try with lower limits such as 7 yet.)

[Hagadorn]

yeh, i gotta admit, i only started playing a version or so ago, and i've always had migrants perfectely filly my pop-cap.

[Exponent]

I was playing 40d9 this past week, and was purposely testing pop cap.  I had it set at 10.  Started with the standard 7 dwarves.  Received 3 more in the autumn, then 4 in the second spring, and 3 in the second summer.  Beyond that point, I didn't receive any more.  So you most definitely can receive multiple immigration waves even when you are already at or above your population cap.  But it seems likely that you will not receive such immigration waves beyond a year from when you first went over the population cap.  (The caravan, or at least the timing of the caravan, probably has something to do with this, as many people already suspect.  But I swear I remember times when I received over-pop immigration waves beyond a year.  Don't know for sure, though, because I wasn't specifically paying attention like I did this time.) 

[BirdoPrey]

I'm still playing 40d and at least in my version the pop. cap doesn't act like the OP describes. I set my pop. cap to 25 and got my expected migrant waves up to 26. I still got one more small migrant wave after that though raising my population to 31. Glad to hear it's been fixed in the later versions though.

[IceShade]

The pop cap works fine, but I havent been able to figure out the child/pregnancy limit. The description is a bit vague ..

Ive got 110 dwarves, I set my pop cap to 100. 41 children, not joking.

[Hectonkhyres]

As long as you are one hell of a patient bastard, children aren't bad at all. They tend to reach adulthood with every social skill plus planting cranked up to legendary levels which, let me tell you, makes them a bit handier than your average soapmaker. The only cost is that they will be friends with everybody and will probably go barking-moonbat insane if too many of their colleagues die horribly... and even your legendary dining room might not be able to stop their outlash. Probably the only way to get a tantrum spiral without actually trying these days.

If we were real dwarves, children would be the only way we would ever expand our fortress. No pansy migrants for us: Just naturally produced reinforcements straight from Mrs. Dwarfer's overused love canal. Thats the dorfy way to do it!


 

[cjet79]

As long as you are one hell of a patient bastard, children aren't bad at all. They tend to reach adulthood with every social skill plus planting cranked up to legendary levels which, let me tell you, makes them a bit handier than your average soapmaker. The only cost is that they will be friends with everybody and will probably go barking-moonbat insane if too many of their colleagues die horribly... and even your legendary dining room might not be able to stop their outlash. Probably the only way to get a tantrum spiral without actually trying these days.

If we were real dwarves, children would be the only way we would ever expand our fortress. No pansy migrants for us: Just naturally produced reinforcements straight from Mrs. Dwarfer's overused love canal. Thats the dorfy way to do it!


 

I was wondering if its common that the baroness is the biggest baby maker in a fort.  I figured she doesn't really have any jobs other then pulling the levers so maybe she has a lot of time on her hands.  Which would explain the 9 children she has.

Does anyone else get a buys baroness?

[IceShade]

As long as you are one hell of a patient bastard, children aren't bad at all. They tend to reach adulthood with every social skill plus planting cranked up to legendary levels which, let me tell you, makes them a bit handier than your average soapmaker. The only cost is that they will be friends with everybody and will probably go barking-moonbat insane if too many of their colleagues die horribly... and even your legendary dining room might not be able to stop their outlash. Probably the only way to get a tantrum spiral without actually trying these days.

If we were real dwarves, children would be the only way we would ever expand our fortress. No pansy migrants for us: Just naturally produced reinforcements straight from Mrs. Dwarfer's overused love canal. Thats the dorfy way to do it!


 

Yeah, 12 years to a child to reach adulthood. I think 5 of em reached adulthood so far, and I had a few kids die off because they couldnt finish their mood. I took care of all that though. Oh, and I lost a few kids because they were mysteriously snatched by goblins. Not to mention the babies lost in battle. They're good battle armor though. I have a Hammerdwarf. This picture will speak for itself:



I don't know how many of her kids are dead though. Her eldest son is dead, as I couldnt find him to draft him into the army after posting this picture 


Most kids are socially so superior, they're all superdwarvenly tough, super agile, and whatever. Freaking kids. They're far better than the immigrants (havent had any in about 10 years, apart from the useless nobles), but it sure takes a while for them to be actually useful.

[Hectonkhyres]

Something I want to do is to turn off immigration and use just my original seven to construct a fortress with all the necessary amenities. An underground fishing area, farms, good breeding populations of several types of animals in walled in rooms, workshops with their ques set to repeat, a good well in the legendary dining room. I would have vast stockpiles of practically everything, including enough prepared food to keep seven dwarves going for decades.

And then I would just leave the game to play itself for half a day. I would come back, straighten out any problems I might have, switch dwarf skills around so they aren't training things that are already legendary, improve the fortress with masterwork statues and the like fashioned by my godlike dwarves, melt or toss into the magma anything that isn't up to par, trade for enough metal and GCS silk/chitin to make Lolth cry, butcher most of my animals, and give my obsidian factory a few more runs to make sure I have enough rock for my next hibernation cycle. Then I would accept precisely one immigrant wave and go to sleep.

Its a dream. The only reason half the crew wouldn't die from failed moods would be that I would have a crate of every type of gem, metal, stone, or anything else any civilization offers just sitting there.

[cjet79]

Something I want to do is to turn off immigration and use just my original seven to construct a fortress with all the necessary amenities. An underground fishing area, farms, good breeding populations of several types of animals in walled in rooms, workshops with their ques set to repeat, a good well in the legendary dining room. I would have vast stockpiles of practically everything, including enough prepared food to keep seven dwarves going for decades.

And then I would just leave the game to play itself for half a day. I would come back, straighten out any problems I might have, switch dwarf skills around so they aren't training things that are already legendary, improve the fortress with masterwork statues and the like fashioned by my godlike dwarves, melt or toss into the magma anything that isn't up to par, trade for enough metal and GCS silk/chitin to make Lolth cry, butcher most of my animals, and give my obsidian factory a few more runs to make sure I have enough rock for my next hibernation cycle. Then I would accept precisely one immigrant wave and go to sleep.

Its a dream. The only reason half the crew wouldn't die from failed moods would be that I would have a crate of every type of gem, metal, stone, or anything else any civilization offers just sitting there.

I don't think this is impossible.  I used an old cheating program called "poke" to edit my starting points in the embark screen.  Basically allows me to take anything I want.  You can bring along just about any type of stone or gem at embark, but it would take a lot of patience to add them I think.

[RAM]

Yea, but if you turned off all professions of an immigrant and left them for twelve years they would probably be about as good as a child, and have cost about the same resources. And they may not even take 12 years to get good...

But yeah, reproduction has it's own section in the configuration files, you basically have to turn off children once you have enough...

But yeah, it is less of a population cap, and more of an immigration cap point at which immigrants stop coming...

[ElChad]

I don't know if this has been said, but I had 10 immigrants for about a year or two, then when I decided to move it to 25 I ended up having 29, I am not sure if I will get any more. But maybe if you change the pop limit it borks the whole pop cap system?