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[MiniMacker]

Don't get me wrong, I love this game. After finally getting over the learning curve I refuse to abandon this game. But I keep getting frustrated, removing the region save and starting over.


Because of migrants.


I start off with my specialized seven dwarves and hack away at the mountain that stands before me. A season passes and I get my first batch of migrants with the most useless skills you could ever imagine. But I continue on, carving the new bedrooms for my latest inhabitants. I assign them new jobs and those who are deemed truly crap, I assign them to the military for 24/7 training. My dwarf count is about 14.
Small enough to keep organized and assign new jobs.


Autumn arrives, with the first Dwarf caravan. I sell off all my stone crafts in exchange for extra barrels, bags, booze and some bronze weapons and armour.


Winter arrives! And here is about the time I give up. I get another migrant wave;
of twenty dwarves. My fortress is in chaos, I'm desperately trying to carve out additional bedrooms and assigning jobs to these heaps of Grand Master milkers, animal caretakers or pump operators.

After finally giving everyone new nicknames through Dwarf Therapist, I look at the list in disarray. I can't keep control of all these dwarves, they are too many. What started as a group of settlers has turned into madness.


*Sniff*
I wipe the tear off my cheek and start over.

[Toast024]

You do know that you can lower the max population in the init file, right?

[cog disso]

I like to take this tendency in stride, honestly. I have a fort of 82 and have a regular idle count of 20-30, and as long as the work gets done, I don't care how many layabouts I have. All peasants get shifted to the Fortress Guard and I go off on exploratory mining for jewels/metal, which means mountains of stone to get shuffled, and the do-nothings are always good for moving rock.

Don't take it so personally. There's plenty of rock for everybody.

[MiniMacker]

I know.

But I do want to have a hundred dwarves at one point or another. But not on year one, it's too much. My tiny outpost hasn't grown into a thriving city ready to take on all these USELESS peasants. My miners can only dig so fast.

[Toast024]

Setting the max population cap still allows Dwarfs to reproduce. Set the cap to around 30, and then let them breed the rest.
Or increase the cap when ever your ready to have more dwarfs.

[kaijyuu]

Or just lock migrants out and let them die until you're ready for them.

[Derekristow]

You could simply lock them out, giving you an early warning for ambushes.  If you want a challenge you could gen or find a world with no dwarven civ, meaning 3-4 migrants ever and no dwarven caravan.

Fake edit: Ninja'd about 3 times.  Need to type faster.

[MiniMacker]

Or just lock migrants out and let them die until you're ready for them.

Good point. Now that you mention it, I feel like embarking over a volcano and sacrifice the virgins migrants whose skills are below required.


You're a Grand Master milker, you say? Walk the plank, buddy.

[Medicine Man]

Drop the migrants into a volcano or an altar that you made.

[Chattox]

Do what I do, assign them to hauling duty (though I also have them set to wood burning and furnace operating sometimes) and enjoy your unstoppable tide of haul-crazy dwarves just waiting to carry stuff around and make your fortress run smoother.

Alternatively, like other people have said lower the pop cap until you're ready for more dwarves, then increase it again.

Or volcano sacrifice.

[kaijyuu]

Or just lock migrants out and let them die until you're ready for them.

Good point. Now that you mention it, I feel like embarking over a volcano and sacrifice the virgins migrants whose skills are below required.


You're a Grand Master milker, you say? Walk the plank, buddy.

Now you're playing Dwarf Fortress.

[chewie]

Lock them in the caverns via walls/burrows. ^^ But let them have a carpenter's workshop, a still and the plant gathering, wood cutting (wooden training axes work great for this) and brewing labor enabled, so they can basicly survive. But they have to engage every animal/FB/batman/whatever, that enters the cavern.

[Johuotar]

Is your only problem that your dwarves are in disarray? Or do you run out of food or something?

If Disarray and homeless/idling dwarves are your only problem then all I can say is that is normal. I currently have 50 idlers but i just don't care to change their jobs to something else that I need right now. I mean they dont even have any useful skills for that so why bother. Pump operators can be idling for 2-4 years without any problem IMO. Fish disssectors/cleaners and gem cutters/setters go to military automatically.

The first big waves usually go to plant gathering or stone detailing to smooth newly carved rooms. (my rooms are always smoothed) Their unassigned pets give can be slaughtered to feed them, and works it well with plant gathering. You dont have to worry about rooms, dorfs only need booze and food. Beds can be mass built with 4 carpenter workshops and placed in some big room all next to each other. Let the useless gem setter make his own bed! Mining can be problem though because of amount of picks, but if you have miners constantly assigned some place to dig you will probably have enough room for those beds.

I usually use Dwarf therapist to change jobs of McUselessdwarfs only if I want some REALLY BIG construction done. For example in my road project I put mason job on for almost everyone.

Normally those siege operators are just partying at statue rooms and eating. Chaos is just a thing you have to learn to cope with, just like bedrooms rooms full of stones. It ain't pretty but its better than wasting time worrying about it.

It seems that you want to have organised fortress, but then you must choose between:
Amount of dorfs/organisation of dorfs

You can have 200 dorfs who are all doing something useful, BUT that just takes huge amounts of time and managing. Easy way to make use of 20 milkers is to use them for some big project, like I'm using them to build city in cavern. I have all kinds of dorfs placing rock salt floorpieces together. Some are slower because they aren't masons but they still help.

[Dorf3000]

Set the population limit in the init file to 20.  You can increase it later when you're ready.  Also you have to get used to the idea of a dwarf specialising in one thing only, and being idle when you don't need that task doing.  The starting 7 are practically forced to be multi-skilled and with a small fort it's tempting to do that with all dwarves to keep them all busy.  But later on it's really annoying when your grand master miners are busy making blocks while your immigrant fish dissector/miner goes and mines out that platinum vein and gets maybe 1/3 of it.

You're a Grand Master milker, you say? Walk the plank, buddy.

Now you're playing Dwarf Fortress.

Most guys would give their left arm to meet a female Grand Master Milker...

Urist McForumposter cancels discussion: Thread derailed

[Richard]

Winter arrives! And here is about the time I give up. I get another migrant wave;
of twenty dwarves. My fortress is in chaos, I'm desperately trying to carve out additional bedrooms and assigning jobs to these heaps of Grand Master milkers, animal caretakers or pump operators.

I think you're trying to cater to your dwarfs too much.  I hardly ever worry about individual bed rooms until much later in the game.  In fact my dwarfs are lucky if they get a communal barracks.  As long as you make a nice dining room dwarfs don't seem to care if they are sleeping in mud (may be a bug?). 

As for assigning jobs for everyone, I always use excess dwarfs to clean up all the excess stone lying around via mass dumping into a quantum stockpile.  even with 100+ dwarfs I never have more than a handful idle.