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[Urist Imiknorris]

More magma, more caged prisoners, more bodies...

[cdrcjsn]

I draft new immigrants with martial skills into the military.  I usually end up with several squads, separated into male and female groups.  I nickname the males "vikings" and the females "amazons" for ease of reference.  I keep them apart because I don't want them getting married (which happens a lot to soldiers in close proximity with one another).  The female soldiers tend to carry their babies with them into battle with distressing regularity, so I tend to use them only for duty inside the fortress itself.

The non-hunter and non-miner civilians, I also draft into military squads, but for the most part, let them continue on working regular jobs.  With training turned off in the military schedule menu, they train individually in their assigned barracks whenever they have nothing else to do, so I never have any idle dwarves. 

I also enable all jobs for everyone, and let them work on everything.  Once someone hits a high level of skill in a profession (master or better), they get their own workshop/bedroom/dining room unit.  Until then, everyone sleeps in one large room (though each bed is set to be a 1x1 bedroom).

The miners and hunters don't work well with the military for some reason.  I organize the miners into their own squad with no weapon assigned (they'll sometimes use the picks they're carrying if activated, but it's not reliable).  Hunters annoy me because they leave bolts scattered all around the map, so I don't use them.

So other than the few specialized crafters, I don't really pay attention much to what an individual dwarf is up to.  I tend to order all crafting through the manager screen.

[Alkhemia]

Death rooms for when they get over 100 I like my fortress small, I could lower the pop cap put this way more fun it also help train doctors.

[ext0l]

I keep them apart because I don't want them getting married.

The female soldiers tend to carry their babies with them into battle with distressing regularity, so I tend to use them only for duty inside the fortress itself.

How do your female soldiers have babies if they're not married? 

Scandalous 

[Uristocrat]

You've got 80-90 and few idlers?  Shit, I've got like 60 and about 2/3 are useless.  They're just haulers, carpenters, and masons.  Quick construction effort, but otherwise pointless slobs.

I've had a 220 dwarf fort with <5 idlers constant.

Y'all are small time!

Granted, I'm down to 1-2 FPS, but I have something like 330 dwarves right now.  I shouldn't have adopted those tigermen, though.  They're breeding like crazy and slowly taking over the place.

[Poindexterity]

always have quick reaction time on your levers.

THIS more than anything is a HUGE advantage.
nothing says "tighter response time" better than a huge wave of utterly useless migrants.

[Lytha]

I only had to handle more than 90 dwarves once. About 95% of them were idle, because I was doing a complicated megaproject and needed to micromanage the lever pulling dwarf and the channeling dwarf completely.

The population had only increased so badly because I hadn't set a limit for children in the init file.

Anyway, nowadays, I have a reasonable maximum for children. And I prefer to embark with dead dwarven civilizations to avoid the hassle of the diplomat dialogues ("What can we offer you next year? Nothing?? You sure??? You REALLY sure?!?! Well, goodbye for now. Cya next year."). This approach might change if I actually give in and start a new fortress in the metal-sparse newer versions though.

[Tanelorn]

Haulers, mostly to bring stones and the like to my construction sites so that my skilled workers don't have to walk far to get what they need.

I like building big wall and towers and large scale death traps. That would take ages if my masons had to get the stones themselves.

If you use haulers to do it, the haulers are always the limiting factor, no matter how many you have: the quicker they bring stones, the quicker the masons use them, and the masons are very quick indeed to build if the stone stockpile is right next to the construction site.

[Niseg]

In my 31.18 fort  I got about 200 dwaves and about 60-80 idle but I get a lot of sieges,wolves,monkeys, etc which get them busy . I use axe dwarves which create a mess then I do massive dumping to the atom smasher.  I always find something new to dump/melt . due to the fact I got a big fps drop I always find things to do with the dwarves (33~ with OC37.5% 25~ without, I turned of temperature and I'm at low 40s).


I'm not very well organized but there is plenty of action to keep me busy . I'm currently  mainly concentrating on making lots of armor and weapons for new military units. I currently got about 12 archers and about 14 melee .   I'm messing with new versions now but I'm mainly practicing my aquifer breaching skills  .

Actually, I did have some medium project of rain collection facilities due to the hot weather (murky pool ->pump->room->hatch-> underground  reservoir) . I built about 4 such structures and I still need to connect one to wind power.

[Megaman3321]

If you really want to eliminate all idlers, stick them into farming(fields).

[Buttery_Mess]

Every now and then I like to wipe all my assigned labours and reassign them from scratch, taking into account skill development and demand. With about 80 dwarves, you really have only barely enough to cover each industry. You need more than a hundred to make sure everything gets done when you want it done, with enough haulers, cleaners and so on left over to keep the fort tidy. This is aside from having a dedicated military.

I've noticed most people seem to have relatively small forts. I prefer to have multiple workshops for every industry, and large but tight forts. If you think big, you won't have any problem finding jobs for everyone.

[JacenHanLovesLegos]

Currently I have about 30 dwarfs in the military, with migrants taking the dead's place. Other than that I give them useful proffesions. When I run out of those I make them engravers/masons/architects AKA backup draftees. 80 dwarf pop cap with this. I usually don't mess with soap or potash or sand or ash or...

[Another]

Civilian labors on dwarfs are really easier to manage with Dwarf Therapist. Simple spreadsheet, all manner of sorting and finding.

Organizing your 4th or 5th military squad could be a real challenge slightly alleviated by the uniform feature. Choosing 10 dwarfs to go military out of 200, 3/4 of whom are already assigned to different squads to make civilians carry weapons, is not fun.

[xeivous]

You've got 80-90 and few idlers?  Shit, I've got like 60 and about 2/3 are useless.  They're just haulers, carpenters, and masons.  Quick construction effort, but otherwise pointless slobs.

I've had a 220 dwarf fort with <5 idlers constant.

Y'all are small time!

Granted, I'm down to 1-2 FPS, but I have something like 330 dwarves right now.  I shouldn't have adopted those tigermen, though.  They're breeding like crazy and slowly taking over the place.

Start drafting females. (You can do that right?)

[greenskye]

Well Dwarf Therapist goes a long way when assigning jobs to dwarves. I typically assign all of my migrants to a custom Hauler job and turn off hauling on everyone else. Typically 1/3 to 1/2 of my fort end up as haulers as I prefer a few skilled dwarves over a unskilled horde. Then whenever I need a new dwarf for a job I pick the best dwarf from the Hauler pool. Any migrant who shows up with better skills than my current dwarf replaces that dwarf.

I have an obsession with moving all of my stone out of the way so massive amounts of haulers are a must.