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[Malvo]

Hello everyone!!

Althou i've been playing dwarf fortress for a few months now, this is my first post here on the forums.

I started playing dwarf fortress out slowly with some small atempts and slowly i have been contructing bigger and bolder fortresses as i feel more confident on my dwarf managing skills, but its starting to get dificult managing all those dwarfs.

I mean managing,15, 20, its all good, but after 30 dwarfs it starts to get messy for me. So i end up usually with alot of idlers which is not good!

So i was wondering what do you guys do to help you keep you dwarfs in check?

[Shades]

One of, if not the, major failing of the game is the micromanaging imo.

However thanks to the wonderful chmod we have Dwarf Therapist which is an external tool that allows you to manage your dwarfs in a much nicer way.

It is still not perfect of course but makes life massively easier.

[RedWick]

At above 30 or 40+ dwarves, it gets harder and harder to micromanage.  That said, I've run a 200+ dwarf fort, yet at any given time, I only had 5-15 idlers (and I even dipped into long stretches where everybody was busy doing something).  The trick is to trust that eventually, your dwarves will get done whatever you want to get done.  If there's a job I want done that isn't getting done, I look at the pool of ilders, pick one at random and activate the appropriate job.  I don't even bother untasking the job when the dwarf finishes up.  I've honestly never felt the drag of micromanagement and I've never used any external programs to help out.

Once I've reached the point of having a sizable population that runs itself, my focus shifts onto building up my fortress.  The stocks screen is indispensable for making sure my fortress is maintained.  Starting to run low on booze?  Queue up some brewing jobs at the stills.  Running low on barrels?  Queue up some new ones.  Running low on wood?  Designate a section of the forest to be chopped down.  Everybody who isn't busy doing a different job ends up hauling stuff.  If I've done my job while the fortress is growing (making sure there are enough stockpiles to hold everything, adding dwarves to jobs that need doing as they come up, etc), I can practically sit back and just watch the fortress work without any intervention.

[dwarfham]

When I first started playing I had the same issue, larger forts became really unwieldy. I discovered the main issue was migrants, specifically being unable to tell apart my properly "labor"-ed dwarves from the newly arrived cheesemakers.

Now, as soon as I get the notice that migrants have arrived, I zoom to where they are coming from and, one by one as they enter the map, I assign each and every one of them a "future". Usually about 40% end up in the military, generally all in one squad, so they can train together. The ones with useful skills I generally leave as-is (except for turning off hauling for some, to let them concentrate on what they are good at, and become more skilled, more quickly). The ones with non-useful skills (or peasants) are assigned jobs that I need (often mining, stone detailing or woodcutting, which i like to have a lot of dwarves assigned to) or are just left to be professional haulers. After that, except in an emergency, I rarely ever touch their labor settings again.

[moki]

I like to give every immigrant some basic no-skill jobs as soon as they enter the map: masonry, furnace operating, glassmaking and sometimes stone detailing. Whenever I see too many idlers (about 10-15 in a fort of 100-120), I know I have to designate new aboveground constructions (for the masons) or queue up some more "collect sand, make green glass (blocks) x30". When there's a big delivery of goblinite, everyone's occupied with hauling and melting for a few months anyway.
Also, military, military and more military. All the peasants, lye makers, soapmakers, dyers and other Urist McUselesses get recruited immediately.

I prefer the beginning of a fort, when I know every dorf by name and personality and can easily micromanage everyone. It's not easy to let go of that, but with 50, 100 or more dwarves, there's no other way. It's like to different games for me, each with it's own rules.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

I manage 200 dwarves by making everyone who isn't working into a full time builder and hauler.
No workshops accept anyone below normal now, since I have plenty of good crafters, and all the useless dross left over can work as general dogsbodies. Their fault for coming as soapmakers and threshers.

[Soadreqm]

I just ignore the idlers. If the dwarves aren't starving to death, everything is going fine. And I like having extra workers for when I have to dump some rocks or whatever. I turn off hauling for the more important or prestigious jobs, to make sure there's someone there to do it, but I don't really see having thirty cheesemakers lounging in the statue garden as a problem.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

I just ignore the idlers. If the dwarves aren't starving to death, everything is going fine. And I like having extra workers for when I have to dump some rocks or whatever. I turn off hauling for the more important or prestigious jobs, to make sure there's someone there to do it, but I don't really see having thirty cheesemakers lounging in the statue garden as a problem.

It's work or die in my fortress now. 200 plus dwarves does not a speedy game make.

[Malvo]

Thanks Shades. i have already tried out Dwarf Therapist and it does indeed help out alot with managing the Dorfs!

And thanks everyone else for posting and for the tips. I actually tried to avoid changing the dwarfs skills the best that i could because i though that would only complicate their managing, but its alot better to change what they can do and make them far more usefull!!

Even last night i had started a brand new fortress, everything was going smooth, the first migration wave i got my fortress went from 7 dwarfs to 22 (wich is alot more that i exepted) but everything ran smooth, made the changes that were necessary to some dwarfs...unfortunatly i was struck by bad luck, wen i just made my first wrestlers we were ambushed by at least 8 goblins, and even though my recruits weren't that experienced one of them entered a martial trance at took 3 down with him before he was dead. End resuslt, i went from around 22 dorfs to like 14...

Oh well.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

When I first started playing I had the same issue, larger forts became really unwieldy. I discovered the main issue was migrants, specifically being unable to tell apart my properly "labor"-ed dwarves from the newly arrived cheesemakers.

Now, as soon as I get the notice that migrants have arrived, I zoom to where they are coming from and, one by one as they enter the map, I assign each and every one of them a "future". Usually about 40% end up in the military, generally all in one squad, so they can train together. The ones with useful skills I generally leave as-is (except for turning off hauling for some, to let them concentrate on what they are good at, and become more skilled, more quickly). The ones with non-useful skills (or peasants) are assigned jobs that I need (often mining, stone detailing or woodcutting, which i like to have a lot of dwarves assigned to) or are just left to be professional haulers. After that, except in an emergency, I rarely ever touch their labor settings again.

This. Also, I have new migrants go out and fish and pick plants and chop trees and hunt. I name their profession "X" and let them work on that. When the next migrant wave appears, I go through all the existing "X" migrants and take them off the outdoor jobs. I put them on hauling / weaving /screw pump duty and name them "Trainee". The new migrants get outdoor jobs and the "X" profession.

Once the military trainees are legendary pumpers and weavers I drop all their jobs except engraving, so they run around smoothing everything. At legendary engraver I recruit them and stick them in the swimming pool until legendary swimmer. Then they get chain + plate + shield and start wrestling.

Survivors move on to marksmanship and then hammer.

Really you don't need many dwarves to support industry. One grower, two threshers, two cooks, and one brewer (all legendary) can pretty much sustain 200 dwarves. Then one dwarf in each of ten crafts and you're all set. You don't need more than 10-20% military if you're vanilla, so the rest can be haulers or in process to military. Or working on your mega-project.

[Keizo]

At above 30 or 40+ dwarves, it gets harder and harder to micromanage.  That said, I've run a 200+ dwarf fort, yet at any given time, I only had 5-15 idlers (and I even dipped into long stretches where everybody was busy doing something).  The trick is to trust that eventually, your dwarves will get done whatever you want to get done.  If there's a job I want done that isn't getting done, I look at the pool of ilders, pick one at random and activate the appropriate job.  I don't even bother untasking the job when the dwarf finishes up.  I've honestly never felt the drag of micromanagement and I've never used any external programs to help out.

Redwick's approach is exactly mine.

I'll add some detail to the labor settings part.

On average I feel happy with a fort of about 80 or so dorfs. I group dorfs into four major categories. I have military dorfs of course and think about them from time to time. That's usually about 40 dorfs. Those guys take a lot of micro in the current version (in the next release this will apparently change a LOT. as it is now training a military is a challenge.)

Then I have the "core dorfs." I have ONE master crafter for every craft type; makes about 10-15 dorfs. That's all they do, and I put lots of repeat jobs on workshops so they never stop working. None of them do any hauling. Also, I make sure once they get good, my workshops are limited to only skilled dorfs. (this should be done in any fort)

Then I have the "workers." This is about 20+ unskilled-ish laborers. They do hauling and crappy jobs. I train them all by giving them ALL the stone detailing job, or some other job that I use for training (sometimes, pump operating). I do huge swathes of detailing usually. They all get pretty buff that way. I do detailing work in chunks so they spend about 50% of time detailing, 50% of the time hauling and other menial work. I try to make sure none of them get TOO skilled at detailing (digging through masterpiece engraved walls is a problem). If they do get to that level I retire them as workers and move em into crafting/military work.

Then I have the "flexidorfs." I give 5 dorfs EVERY work activity EXCEPT the ones above (important crafting, hauling, etc.) So these guys do cleaning, cheese making, hunting, etc. I randomly draft 1 dorf an immigrant wave to do this, and they usually die horrible deaths at the hands of carp. But they're usually working, and if not I don't care. Sometimes they surprise me and become good at something, usually they're just expendable.