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[hawkeye_de]

Hi,

I've watched some Let's play DF videos, read some reviews but what I'd like to know before I get deeper into this game:
Is there the need to do a lot of micromanagement? I've thought the AI of DF would be quite intelligent but on the other hand I read here several complaints about the need to micromanage a lot in DF...

Thanks for your feedback

[Encased in burning magma]

Your dwarves can path, fight, and select equipement by themselves. They also take care of their basic needs.
Everything else you have to order them to.

[UnrealJake]

By intelligent you mean they wall themselves in then slowly starve?

The AI is actualy quite good, pathing can be exploited and it's a little silly at times, but it's quite good. They take care of themselves easily enough, infact the closest to controlling them is telling the military what to do, or telling what jobs they can or can not do. You manage the fort by saying a job needs doing, not telling them "Do this"

[Kvasir]

There are lots of things that require micromanagement in DF, but it is not needed to survive. It all depends on your fortress design and goals.

[Marshall Burns]

You can cut down micromanagement quite a bit by assigning a manager (under the [n]obles screen) and actually using him ([j]obs -> [m]anager). I've started doing this recently rather than manually issuing orders at individual workshops, and it's saved me a lot of time and heartache.

Just make sure that your manager doesn't have any other work to do; when your population gets high enough, the work orders given from the manager screen have to be validated by the manager dwarf before they actually get issued to the workshops. Mine does nothing but managing, brokering, and architecture, and it seems to work out fine. (He's also a legendary organizer now, which is hilarious.)

[MrWiggles]

I would say there is moderate to high level of micromangment for the game. I agree with the other thus far, that it depends on your play style and goal.

I however, wouldn't call DF a micromanagmentless game. If you dont keep on booze, and food, the dorfs will will starve/dehydrate themselves to death. Though thats not that tough, really, once you know what yer doing.

I would say the more micro intensive elements to the game, is equiping the military with the items you want them to have, and supply yer fort with fresh clothes.

Other possibly high micro elements include decorating items with particular things. Trying to get the Gold Mastercraft Throne decorated in bands of platinum and encrusted with diamonds can be a pain in the ass.
--

Farming, I would say is currently the only set and forget industry you can set up currently. The other farming dependent industry will need the occasional eye on.

But yea, DF gets as Micro heavy as you want it to be. It can be moderate or ultra heavy.

[nenjin]

Yeah, there is at least a moderate level of micromanaging in Dwarf Mode. Certain game play features (the manager) and 3rd party tools (Dwarf Therapist) drastically cut down on the amount of micro required. But stopping the action and looking to see what's going in the fort, and making tweaks, is pretty much the definition of game play.

[FearfulJesuit]

Yes, you do.

A friend of mine put it thusly: "If you wanted to design a game for autistic micromanagers, you would create Dwarf Fortress."

[Dakk]

Really? I find DF rather light on micromanagement, maybe because I'm already used to it. I think you're measuring it in an odd way. DF does not require CONSTANT micromanagement like some RTSs do (starcraft, age of empires, etc), but several tasks require micromanagement. Its not constant, but its something you'll have to do to play properly.

[thijser]

I think it requires fairly little micro mangment. Sure if you look carefully at everything you fort will do better but I have had times where I left my fort allone for 2 hours (15-20 fps) and when I came back everything was still going well (ok the traders hadn't been able to enter the fort elfs had declared war because they lost their traders and had activated some auto defenses however no damage was done).

[Roflcopter5000]

The capacity for micro-management is nigh infinite. To have a feature complete, functional fortress though, it doesn't require much.
It depends on what part of micro-management turns you off. If you hate the immediacy and the pressure of trying to cram a great many actions into a small space of time, you don't need to worry about that. Pretty much every order you give pauses the game while it is given. Also you can pause at any time, look around, take your sweet time thinking, alt-tab to the wiki/forums, and come back before you make a decision.
The game has an enormous amount of detail. Worlds beyond anything you've ever seen in any game. The vast majority of these details aren't vital to basic gameplay. You don't -have- to take into account the like/dislikes of every dwarf in your fortress. You -can-, and there are benefits for doing so, but it comes down to what you feel like dealing with. Yeah you can look at a depressed dwarf and make sure to prepare lots of his favorite meals in order to cheer him up... Or you can set up a mist generator in your dining hall and watch his brain explode from happy. Or just lock him in a room and have him starve to death if you don't want to deal with it at all. Most of the other crazy detailed micromanagement stuff that you see people talking about falls into this category. The insanity of learning how to play basically comes from the ridiculous amount of information that you have to assimilate in order to set up your first mostly stable fortress. This is what is daunting about DF. It's not that you need to process large amounts of information all the time, so much as you need to know a large amount of information in order to do anything successfully.

Try it. Really do. Because this is the best game of it's sort, hands down. It's a pain to learn your way around, and it won't come easy, but it is enormously fun.

Basically, if you can put up with learning a great deal of information just to play a game, if you are patient and enjoy planning as much as you enjoy execution, and if you can laugh about losing, this is the game you've been waiting your whole life to play.

[LoSboccacc]

as other said, it depends on what you mean micromanage.

with some effort you can speed up booze production letting dwarves micromanage themselves. I've wood cut delivered near carpenters, barrels produced delivered near breweries, brewable* plants delivered from field near breweries and the product delivered near the meeting all, maximizing production and so on. this requires effort and planning, and may or may not be seen as micromanagement.

but once it is set up and all the stockpiles are ready and haulers pick up their jobs, then it pretty much works all by itself.

I'd say that there are far more of those micro optimizations in game to do, than micro managing each one to do one thing or another.

you can micromanage everything of course, but you can automate almost anything with clever users of managers, restrictions and burrows. specially burrows, which somewhat ease the control of material productions. a clever stockpile and burrow system may let you have all your furniture in marble, for example, without messing with the stone screen or the excruciating pain of managing workshop individually

and then, when most of the fortress is automated, you can actually 'focus' on those tasks that are your power goals. I wouldn't call this micromanagement, but it is actually a bit painful. the good news is that having automated most of the other stuff, it's a very small part that actually needs your focus and only if you have some weird goal, like the royal guard suited with silver plates and star ruby encrusted platinum helmets, or masterworks leather robes studded with steel.

stuff like that require specific piles, manual assigned task and labor and whatever, but are a small part of the game and something you're actively looking for, not a game mechanics requirement.

*actually not a real word

[zwei]

It is very easy to play game with minimal microing and "set up & forget" mentality for most industries with occasional peek to make sure it is working allright.

It is just that people force themselves to do crazy stuff like ensuring that carpenter makes masterpiece tower cap table which is then encrusted by legendary gemsetter with saphire. To do that, you need to breathe instead of your dwarves.

[nenjin]

I consider the first two years of a fort fairly micro intensive. Assigning beds, controlling digging designations so stuff gets dug in an orderly fashion, well construction and cistern flooding, production of critical items on demand....

Once your industries are established though, the micro dies down quite a bit. Combat can be pretty micro intensive, if you want optimal results.

[LoSboccacc]

I consider the first two years of a fort fairly micro intensive. Assigning beds, controlling digging designations so stuff gets dug in an orderly fashion, well construction and cistern flooding, production of critical items on demand....

Once your industries are established though, the micro dies down quite a bit. Combat can be pretty micro intensive, if you want optimal results.

I just provide good booze in high quantities so they are happy enough to produce rock craft and sleep on dirt for the first three years, as I find the first part fairly boring I just run trough the first two immigration waves.