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[Hyndis]

I tend to go overboard with the metal industry. My entire fortress is focused on it, and I'll have 3-4 master smiths working at the forges, while 75+ other dwarves keep feeding the furnaces, producing the raw materials the master smiths work with.

I use custom reactions to let me get metal and gems from ordinary useless stone, so this eats up all of the stone as well as keeps my dwarves busy and productive.

[Asra]

I like having redundancy to my backup plans. 

Two squads of marksdwarves are stationed overlooking the entrance, with a squad of sword dwarves guarding the main gate to prevent anything sneaking in or getting by the marksdwarves.

I then have a squad on search and destroy for each cavern layer, ordered to defend the burrow defined to be the full cavern, so they take care of those zombie cave crocodiles for me.

I try not to use weapon/cage traps except in places that make sense. In a remote, never used access corridor I'll have traps. In heavily trafficked areas there are no traps.

The only traps I do use are lever operated ones.

Are you using a mod to make the markdwarves viable for this version? I haven't gotten them able to do any decent damage at all.

[Hyndis]

I like having redundancy to my backup plans. 

Two squads of marksdwarves are stationed overlooking the entrance, with a squad of sword dwarves guarding the main gate to prevent anything sneaking in or getting by the marksdwarves.

I then have a squad on search and destroy for each cavern layer, ordered to defend the burrow defined to be the full cavern, so they take care of those zombie cave crocodiles for me.

I try not to use weapon/cage traps except in places that make sense. In a remote, never used access corridor I'll have traps. In heavily trafficked areas there are no traps.

The only traps I do use are lever operated ones.

Are you using a mod to make the markdwarves viable for this version? I haven't gotten them able to do any decent damage at all.

I make up for it by just having more marksdwarves.

When in doubt, shoot more bullets. 


But yeah, its mostly the swordsdwarves who do the heavy lifting. I just like the hail of crossbow bolts. It looks pretty.

[Danjen]

I set my cap to 0, and I still get a few migrants. From there, I let my fort grow naturally via childbirth. This usually means one pregnant dwarf dropping a baby per year. However, after the first 15-year stretch, getting a guaranteed adult dwarf every year is very reassuring.

I tend to play with invaders off, because of framerate issues, and not wanting to train a military. Mostly, I get just get a strong stone industry going, and abandon a few years after. I do however, want to make a fantastic fort with water/magma running below grates in the floor, and have a running sewer/magmaworks intertwined into it.

[Geti]

Hey, look, it's Geti!
At any rate, I just set it to 200 and release HFS if I get too much lag. A ton of dwarves helps keep megaprojects going.

You and your megaprojects

I set my cap to 0, and I still get a few migrants. From there, I let my fort grow naturally via childbirth. This usually means one pregnant dwarf dropping a baby per year. However, after the first 15-year stretch, getting a guaranteed adult dwarf every year is very reassuring.

I might try this idea. I've had fun keeping a fort afloat on a haunted beach with my starting 7, but the new undead might cause me some horrible horrible problems. Cheers for the idea.

[Retro]

I generally have a full time gem cutter, two master masons, a blacksmith/weaponsmith/armoursmith/metalsmith, three-ish mechanics/pump operators/architects, a carpenter, two engravers (though you only really need one), a brewer, a cook, four active miners and maybe three or four farmers. Plus the various nobles to handle the paperwork and furnace operating. Throw in a small military of seven-ish dwarves and everyone else - everyone else - gets tasked with all hauling labours and masonry (popcap's generally around 100). When I order a 10x10 floor built, nobody's allowed to make more than one trip back to the quarry. I like to have dwarves ready to build whatever I tell them and it getting done within a day or two regardless of size. But that's a more construction-centric POV.

[Kza]

110. Access to all features (and all nobles.  ) and enough workers to build a lot of stuff WHILE still having a semidecent FPS.

[tastypaste]

When working on megaprojects I like to have 100+ masons, so I usually leave the cap at 200. But in the new version I'm getting a lot more slow down so I'm either going to have to reduce that number significantly or embark on a smaller map.

[(name here)]

Leave the cap at 200. I find that having a ton of idlers seems like a terrible idea until one suddenly needs a ton of dorfs for whatever reason.

[AtomicPaperclip]

You can cover everything with about 40 but I like to have around 120 around for megaprojects and such.

[darthbob88]

Cap is 80-100, preferred size is second or third year around 40-60. At 20 dwarves, I can keep most things going well enough to feed and supply a healthy fortress, primarily in the farming/agribusiness side of things, and beyond that I start throwing in non-essential duties, like non-stone-crafting and anything using metal or glass. With 100 dwarfs, I can get enough dwarfpower going to start on megaconstructions, like my giant steel pyramids made out of the armour of defeated invaders.
Side note: I have enough skulls in my collections that I'm going to start turning them all into totems, so I can cram all 1000 or so into a single stockpile around my noble's throne. The intimidation factor really should come into play.