Have the animals vary their rate of reproduction based on how often they eat, have them actually eat things, herbivores will go after plants (some even only a restricted set of plant species), carnivores will chase fight and eventually eat other animals (depending on the species, even attacking as a pack) etc; and perhaps also have them potentially eating stuff that was meant for the dwarfs if it's avaiable, there is no dwarfs currently with the food in direct sight line and if the animals haven't been properly trained to not eat dwarf food, but the propensity to go after dwarf food instead of intended animal food and wild food would vary depending on species, training and hunger level.
Also, have the avaiability of food and the presence and number of other animals of the same species and of other species affect where the animals decide to go, so if there is too many in an area the ones near the edge of the group will move further away looking for somewhere less crowded and with more avaiability of food.
If the ratio of herbivores to plants or the ratio of predator to prey is too high, there will be the risk they'll eat up too much food and eventually kill the ecosystem or at least severely imbalance it, resulting in shortage of food for them, so for species that tend to be too devastating and in areas with too little wild food the player will have to artificially control the animal population, and if desired also try to help the ecosystem grow to a sustainable level, perhaps even reduce the amount of hunting, tree and plant collecting, or depending on the situation, hunting certain species more.
After a bit of tweaking i imagine this should allow for population of animals to become relatively stable and sustainable.
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Topic: Ecology and more complex behavior for a more realistic animal population growth? (Read 1047 times)