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Around 20

16 (11.4%)

Around 40

41 (29.3%)

Around 80

29 (20.7%)

I don't lower the population cap.

54 (38.6%)

Total Members Voted: 140

[WJLIII3]

I would never keep my population below 80, you people are nuts. Without sieges, where's all the fun?

[Grax]

I would never keep my population below 80, you people are nuts. Without seiges, where's all the fun?

With my modded-in orcs, orxzs, enhanced goblins, and now even sciroccos (from somebody's mod found here) i can't even step over 20 dwarves. ;-)

That would be possible only if i seal all the doors and let the fortress evolve for some decades to grow the babies.

[Terbert]

I have my pop cap set to 0 for a project I'm doing, baby cap is default. My population is currently 29.

[Outcast Orange]

I really like micromanaging little perfect communities.
My population cap is at 30, and currently in my only 2 notable worlds, the current fortresses read like this:

RazorQuested - Population: 3 (+ Dying Migrants)

TowerBulb - Population: 2 [5 Dead] (Mostly carp related)

Check out some Visual Fortress maps of my forts over on my blog. (see signature)

[Vattic]

For me it depends. I run themed forts and usually cap the pop based on that and FPS concerns. Usually it's around 30 - 50 though as otherwise it quickly becomes a game of housing the homeless and feeding the hungry, admittedly that has it's fun moments too.

[Shurikane]

I cap at 90 with a 10% child cap, knowing odds and ends will kick up the pop to around 110.  Any further and the FPS begins to suffer.

That is, whenever I'm not already performing one of my usual activities.  Like draining the ocean.  And mountain audits.

[Martin]

Usually popcap is 5, childcap is 10. I like no-immigration fortresses, but I also use orc mod and usually upgraded gobbos for the challenge. Even with the low popcap, a few migrants show up - usually around 3. Holding off a siege with 7-10 dwarves is pretty fun - especially if you draft a marksdwarf to hold them off - they'll be a champion before the siege is over, and then you only have 6 dwarves to play with for the next 15 years. Sure makes cleaning up the mess a hell of a challenge.

For Morul I went with a cap of 50. I wanted to make sure there were enough workers supporting him so his workshops were always empty, that raw materials were always available, etc. With all of those skills to acquire, walking even 10 tiles for each of the 600 actions per skill and 50 skills, that would have added decades to the effort. I chose to not go over 80 since I didn't want any megabeasts until he was done skilling.

For the two challenges, I left the cap open ended. In the most recent challenge I topped out with 48 miners (and needed all of them). For the first challenge it was almost that high - maybe 40 or so (should have gone with more).

[Winterbrass]

[POPULATION_CAP:2000000]
[BABY_CHILD_CAP:1000000:10000000]

[Reese]

Up until my latest fort, I left the population cap at default.  On my latest fort, I set it to 20 with the intent to expand once I have my infrastructure to the point where I'm happy with it and feel I will be able to give the incoming migrants jobs.

My first fortress has a population of about 120, with 60 idlers and 30 partiers because I couldn't manage them very well and just let migrants do whatever they were already trained to do...

In my latest fort, I had set the migration cap at 20... because I'd just learned that you can do that, and I was happy when the first migration wave brought me up to that exactly... then another wave showed up and boosted me to 36.

I think I start losing track somewhere in the 40-60 range, but that's because I always take forever to start up my metal industry and begin making equipment so that I can draft the layabouts into my military

[Kiberkiller]

I cap my fortress to 20-30 or so and the children to unlimited.
MacroLaborManagment is difficult :/ i like taking care of my dwarves personally which is impossible at high population.

[Kittah_Khan]

Having sieges and ambushes every once in a while certainly helps in keeping populations down, just make sure to have all non-hauler dwarves keep inside and have the rest be either haulers or military, don't give dwarves the time to socialize otherwise you're on your way to tantrum-ville.
Don't make elaborate trap networks or unfailing defences, at most have a fort and battleground with some battlements.
Ballista use is encouraged.
Mod ranged weapons to be less death-inducing, 40 gore damage arrows and bolts seem to work fine, trained marksdwarves will still shred opponents, but not quite as easily.
Keep a balanced military and mod in some nasty opponents and tune up existing opponents to be less wimpy.
Suggestions :
Ambush by non-talking beast-like civ the size of horses that has imp fireballs and kickass melee.
Orcs by rysith, tuned down just slightly.
Mod your kobolds to be ambushers with a liking for ranged weapons.
Add lots of powerful evil mounts for the goblins to use, troll mounts can be fun and other such things, make sure they have access to at least one building destroyer.

This will deal with any population problems you might have, well, until you have a full force of steel-clad champion melee weapon users.
To make it even more fun, don't use armor beyond leather.

[Croquantes]

Yeah, I don't limit population either because, well, it feels like cheating to me. I usually abandon once the population surpasses 200 because managing all those dwarves hurts my wrist.

Seriously. I think this game gave me carpal tunnel.

Doesn't help that I give each dwarf a 3x2 room.

I'd kill for macro-economy/industry management. Why can't I change the profession of several dwarves at once? Or at least allow me to designate dwarves as haulers with one keystroke, instead of manually going through their professions and de-selecting every job >____<

DF is still less wrist-intensive than it was when I was manually setting the occupancy of each room. I think my right wrist just shuddered at the memory

[Durin]

I'm taking it as a challenge to get the thing as big as possible.  I have the food production down.  Have a crappy map for water, but I think if I did this right I can get water eternally from the stupid lake that never has water because the well supposedly cleans that. 

We'll see.

Short answer, no.  Long answer -- I'd be more likely to want to raise the cap than to lower it.  Can't wait for the new version.  Free range armies = Export --> CARNAGE!

[Puzzlemaker]

I keep it at 40 for awhile, especially if I am trying to build a project.  I then increase it when I finish whatever it was that I was doing.

[Cody1750]

I cap mine at 20 dwarves so I'll usually get a little more, and the child cap at 5.  Sometimes when I feel like making a large fortress I don't cap it. I don't get fps problems until about 100.