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Author Topic: How do you micromanage your huge populations?  (Read 4334 times)

MisterLich

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How do you micromanage your huge populations?
« on: March 08, 2011, 10:54:20 pm »

Hey, just curious, what do you all do when you start to get waves after waves of migrants?  I've honestly got all the positions I need filled up, at this point it just seems like migrants are mostly causing me to build more beds and food and that's about it.

More than anything I'm guessing I'll just push them all into the military or make them miners.  I honestly don't know what to do with all these dorfs.
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arkhometha

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Re: How do you micromanage your huge populations?
« Reply #1 on: March 08, 2011, 10:57:11 pm »

usually, military. Haulers when I need some intensive hauling, engravers if I need large sections smoothed or miners If I want something unimportant dug fast.
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_DivideByZero_

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Re: How do you micromanage your huge populations?
« Reply #2 on: March 08, 2011, 10:57:55 pm »

Just put them all into magma glassmaking and start making lots of screw pumps, them do something crazy with pump stacks.
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Girlinhat

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Re: How do you micromanage your huge populations?
« Reply #3 on: March 08, 2011, 11:13:07 pm »

Megaprojects.  Right now I'm working on the craziest looking friendship web.  Drawing a line from every friend to another, it's gonna be a shape.

For real though, megaprojects.  Start building stuff.  When you think you're done, make it more stuff!

Khift

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Re: How do you micromanage your huge populations?
« Reply #4 on: March 08, 2011, 11:16:58 pm »

I like to have massive, massive metal industries. 15 smelters going all day every day, 6 forges running nonstop, gem setters and cutters pimping the resulting furniture, etc. I've found it takes about 80 haulers just to feed that large a metal industry (assuming you have the haulers bring the ore to the smelters, so the smelters can focus on smelting).
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Urist Imiknorris

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Re: How do you micromanage your huge populations?
« Reply #5 on: March 08, 2011, 11:18:40 pm »

Military, haulers, masons.
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Greiger

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Re: How do you micromanage your huge populations?
« Reply #6 on: March 08, 2011, 11:25:44 pm »

Build a meeting hall....2 if the first one wasn't big enough.  Ignore the idler count, and focus on only the high skill residents, the nobles, and the 40 some military.

I just keep a mental note of whether I have a resident with a particular labor turned on.  Once I have at least one with each labor I plan on using, I build a military and ignore all the migrants that don't have military skills or abnormally high skill. 

Order a job and it gets done, because there's at least one with the needed labor someplace in that moshpit of a meeting hall that's bored out of their skull.  And as an added bonus you get post greenskin cleanup done in record time, and always have quick reaction time on your levers.
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Fredd

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Re: How do you micromanage your huge populations?
« Reply #7 on: March 08, 2011, 11:29:05 pm »

misterlich, if you are new to the game, you can set a population cap. then instead of worrying about housing, and food, you can get used to the features, and experiment some. Open the DF folder, open the Data forlder, then Dinit, and set a smaller population maximum
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agatharchides

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Re: How do you micromanage your huge populations?
« Reply #8 on: March 08, 2011, 11:32:37 pm »

I usually only play with about 80-90 dwarves to keep FPS up and 10-15 of those are usually children so just running metal, glass, food, cloth and other odd industries usually leave me with just enough for military and moderately sized projects. And I usually use my traps, drowning chambers, cave in traps and other engineering projects to break sieges with only a handful of military dwarves.
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Girlinhat

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Re: How do you micromanage your huge populations?
« Reply #9 on: March 08, 2011, 11:38:47 pm »

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.

Khift

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Re: How do you micromanage your huge populations?
« Reply #10 on: March 08, 2011, 11:39:58 pm »

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!
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Girlinhat

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Re: How do you micromanage your huge populations?
« Reply #11 on: March 08, 2011, 11:44:54 pm »

Granted, mine are rarely actually idle.  I've got lots of hauling to do, but any of them can be redirected into something actually productive at the drop of a hat.

ext0l

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Re: How do you micromanage your huge populations?
« Reply #12 on: March 08, 2011, 11:47:15 pm »

At any given time other than a siege, I usually have ~50% of my dwarfs idling of about 80 dwarfs. That is because 70% of my dwarfs are also part of the military.

I found that when every dwarf has ~20 friends, he cares less if one gets stabbed in the face by a goblin. Also gold dining rooms are pretty nice.
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agatharchides

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Re: How do you micromanage your huge populations?
« Reply #13 on: March 08, 2011, 11:49:24 pm »

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 usually make everything fancy. I make lots of bags with sew images and everything dyed to support a big glass industry that can encrust the bags while putting decorated all-metal furniture in every bedroom, a big team of sand collectors and smelters to fuel them and so on. Then I atom-smash all the low quality stuff to save room and FPS. It adds up. Usually most of my dwarves have a primary profession, though they aren't necessary constantly working at it, so I usually have haulers.
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Brandstone

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Re: How do you micromanage your huge populations?
« Reply #14 on: March 09, 2011, 12:02:12 am »

Hehe, the timing of this is funny. I'm preparing for a project to see how many dwarves I can get with an unreasonably high pop cap and birth rate. To get a good start I'm embarking with 255, and sorting through all the labors to make sure I can keep them busy. Take a look at all the extraneous labors like milling, dyeing, potash making(fertilizer), etcetera. I'm looking at having about 45 unique professions. Of those, 29 professions will only have two dwarves and one labor assigned to maximize quality levels, 15 professions will have 12 dwarves and two labors each, and 17 dwarves will be miners. Also, think bigger with larger farm plots, more mining, more deforestation, more workshops, more animals, more construction projects, and so on.
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