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[JimboOmega]

Simple question.  My population is well above the cap - mine is the default, 200, while my population is 215, and has been over 220, but dwarves keep getting born anyway. 

Does population cap not cap the population...? 

[Sphalerite]

Population cap only controls immigration, not births.

[Marthnn]

There's a different setting for birth limitation. The default setting is really a no-limit.

[Khift]

Population cap only controls immigration, not births.

Doesn't it only determine when you stop getting immigrants? I'm fairly certain I've fallen to 199 dwarves once and then got a migration of 20 more. In fact, I am certain that happened once, in .31.12 though. Can't say if it's any different now.

[Makigall]

It's my understanding that the population cap is a hard cap on the number of adults your fort can have.  And once you reach that point births and migrants both stop.

[MarcAFK]

I've heard that once you hit the cap you can still get any migrations that have been triggered anyway, also the first 2 (or 3?) waves should come anyway even if your cap is very low.

[rephikul]

I've heard that once you hit the cap you can still get any migrations that have been triggered anyway this only occur when the migrants are coming into your fort as they are all spawned at the same time and only get in one at a time., also the first 2 (or 3?) waves should come anyway even if your cap is very low. This is true, the first 2 waves are hard coded.

[JimboOmega]

For my population to get as high as it got, it had to be immigrants pushing it over, I didn't have 15 births since then.

I wonder if the births I have now are only the result of old pregnancies?

One of my goals was to have a population-self-sufficient fort, so I hope it can still get births, but not immigrants.  Is there an init setting to make that possible?

[Vercingetorix]

Yes,I've had my current fort with a population cap of 30 regularly hit 60....I think it's because the first migration waves are fixed.  Regardless, if you are lower than your cap you can easily exceed it by twenty or thirty all other things equal.

[MarcAFK]

You can always erm... export your unneeded dwarves, draft them and send them to explore the caverns, ignore any messages about deaths or combat they're just fooling around while taking the scenic route back to the !!mountainhomes!!

[Marthnn]

It's my understanding that the population cap is a hard cap on the number of adults your fort can have.  And once you reach that point births and migrants both stop.

Please don't spread false information.

In my current fort, the pop cap is set to 50. The last migrant wave I got, at year 2 or something, increased my pop from something like 40 to 60. Now my fort reached 12-13 years old, with 113 pop and about half of them babies/children. I still have births from time to time, there's 6 couples with up to 13 kids each. This is very exciting, because kids are starting to become peasants and FINALLY WORK! Or party, since each child is friend or acquaintance with every other child and many adults, and has social skills at professionnal level.


Look into the d_init.txt file. There's the population cap :

You can set the maximum population of your fortress here.  Keep in mind that your population must be at least 80 to get a king and 100 to obtain the current game features.

[POPULATION_CAP:50]

Note that the comment isn't true anymore, a king needs 140 population.

And there's the birth cap :

This allows you to control the number of babies+children in your fortress.  The first number is an absolute cap on the number of babies+children.  The second is a percentage of the current number of adults in your fortress (the default is the essentially meaningless 1000% here).  The lower number is used as the cap.  The cap only prevents further pregancies, so migrant children, multiple births and existing pregnancies from old saves can still push you over the cap.  Setting either number to zero will disallow pregnancies in the fortress.

[BABY_CHILD_CAP:100:2000]

Also, this is with v.31.18

[JimboOmega]

Ahh, Marthnn, that makes a lot more sense... and is what I'm shooting for.

BTW, speaking of required pop, how do I get a dungeon master?  I have a Duke noble, but no dungeon master or hammerer... is there something I'm missing or messed up?

[MarcAFK]

Dungeon master is broken in the current version

[wuphonsreach]

If you change POPULATION_CAP and BABY_CHILD_CAP mid-game, does it take effect the next time you load your save file (and/or restart DF)?

Or does that only apply to future fortresses?

(Trying to set my magic numbers to stay closer to a top-end population of 150 dwarves, give or take.)

[Urist Imiknorris]

It takes effect the next time you start DF.