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[Lovechild]

My fortress is going pretty slow at 150 dwarves and I'm thinking about lowering the population cap to prevent more migrants from arriving. But there are two things I'd like to know:

-If the population is higher than the cap, will that prevent my monarch from arriving when I hit the triggers for that?

-If the population is higher than the cap, will that stop new babies from getting born?

[nickdx]

1- The pop cap for a monarch arriving is defaulted to 120 I think, but you should find this (and even edit it) on the raws file. Look around the wiki for more information.

2- Pop cap doesnt make dorfs less horny, the baby cap, on the other hand, asserts how much of your population in % can be non-adult, which means that if you have a pop cap of a hundred, then, when you have 100 dorfs, you can get still get about 10 babies being born. But, if you get to 100 dorfs with 10 babies/children already, then the cap will stay and you wont get any more babies.

Empirically, I don't know if this really works, as I have capped my fort to 100 and sometimes I get a pop of 112...

[expwnent]

I believe monarchs can come even when you are over the limit, but I don't know.

Babies can be BORN, but not conceived, if you're over the limit.

Migrants can arrive only if you're under the limit. However, if you have a cap of 50, and you have 49 dwarves, you can still get a huge wave of 20 migrants.

[Lex Talionias]

one thing im not clear on even after all this time "what is the population cap?"

[NecroRebel]

one thing im not clear on even after all this time "what is the population cap?"

It's a particular setting in your dwarf fortress folder/data/init/d_init.txt file. If you find the line that says [POPULATION_CAP:some number], that's your population cap. If you have fewer dwarves in your fort than the number in the pop cap setting, no new migrants will come (with some limitations; for instance, it seems to only check when the dwarven caravan shows up or leaves).

The various settings in init.txt and d_init.txt in that folder are often collectively called the "init settings." Those in init.txt mostly relate to how the game is displayed or runs, while the d_init.txt settings are mostly related to how the game plays.

[nenjin]

The Pop cap works....it's just rather unreliable sometimes. Sometimes the game just says you're going to have 12 migrants this year even though your pop cap says you should only get 6.

It's best if you set it before you embark. Changing the value after embark and game start basically means your growth will be uncontrolled for the year. You may exceed your pop cap, and get a few tiny migration waves after that. Eventually it stops. But basically changing the pop cap is not instantly recognized by the game, it gradually reduces wave sizes to meet your pop cap, it doesn't just stop them.

[Lex Talionias]

ok... you took my question far to literary there. i mean by default how many dwarves can you get in your fortress?

[Nirreln]

Two hundred is the standard population cap.

[NecroRebel]

ok... you took my question far to literary there. i mean by default how many dwarves can you get in your fortress?

As Nirreln said, the default population cap is 200, but that doesn't really answer your question, either. You can get an arbitrary number of dwarves, since the population cap doesn't have any affect on childbirths, and can be set arbitrarily high. I've heard of people with 300+ dwarves in their fortress. In short, there's no known hard cap on your population, only the soft caps of your POPULATION_CAP setting, your sanity through FPS, and how many dwarves you can house and supply.

[Lex Talionias]

though i don't know exactly how to do it i'm pretty sure it would be easy to raise or lower my pop cap. two questions on the matter,

is pop cap by REGION or the whole game?

can i change the pop cap mid game without crashing or breaking my game?

[NecroRebel]

though i don't know exactly how to do it i'm pretty sure it would be easy to raise or lower my pop cap. two questions on the matter,

is pop cap by REGION or the whole game?

can i change the pop cap mid game without crashing or breaking my game?

All init settings, including population cap, affect the game itself, not the saves, so they don't go by region/world.

All init settings can be changed endlessly without problems, though some take time for changes to take effect (a season or two, usually).

[Lex Talionias]

so i can go nuts but if i want a game with a pop of 50 and another with a pop of 500 i will need to either have 2 copies set up or be vigilant on changing my init's?

[NecroRebel]

so i can go nuts but if i want a game with a pop of 50 and another with a pop of 500 i will need to either have 2 copies set up or be vigilant on changing my init's?

Yes.