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[FearfulJesuit]

Up until about 30 dwarves, everybody's got their job. Miners mine, woodcutters cut wood, engravers make the dining hall pretty.

The problem is that after that I've got quite a few dwarves milling about with no evident occupation. I can create megaprojects, of course, and sometimes I give them all mechanics and masonry to work on the fortress defenses; but I find that really giving everybody a stake in the fortress's economy is simply too great a task. A skeletal crew of maybe 30 or 40 (for large forts) makes sure there's booze, food and bedrooms for everybody, and attends to exports and defense; but everybody else mills about around the well because I simply can't get the logistics done for giving everybody a job!

What do I do?

[Corneria]

1. Play with a lower population. Gets rid of the excess dwarves, delays any FPS issues.
2. Hauling jobs. Everybody with actual relevant jobs gets hauling turned off, let all the others haul things. If you set up some stockpiles and such, you'll be surprised at how easy it is to get an entire fort hauling.
3. Capture beasts, goblins, elves, whatever. Drop them into an arena and send excess dwarves there. Those who survive for whatever you deem an adequate amount of time unarmed are added to the military.
4. dat megaproject

[Kromgar]

Making them engraves works for me i make them smooth everything... even the caverns then they become legendary. They then engrave the walls but leave openings as to allow expansion. They are then fed to the magma. The fort then does not fall to a tantrum as they look at masterpiece engravings of the Queen of Demons Ciba the Boulder of Thundering strikes down humans and elves. She acquired 4,000 kills in her life of 666 years. (Her history kind of dropped she either eradicated the competition or went to peace with them as a ploy.

[Lectorog]

I find a population cap of 20 is very good for making sure everyone's useful. Even the useless ones; they can be trained and converted into useful jobs.

Alternatively, find a reason to make more jobs. Megaproject. Two separate fortresses. Really big military. Stuff like that.

[malroth]

Make a clothing industry.  Making sure there's enough dyed cloth for all your dwarves to own complete outfits can employ dozens of dwarves.  As a bonus you can annoy the elven caravans by selling them all your excess clothes

[peterix]

Stick them in the military. Prepare for the inevitable doomsday event.

[Carnes]

You need a much bigger military   At least 60 dwarves.  Have them rotate between training and guarding.  I usually place guards (via burrows) at the fort entrance, intersections, meeting halls, and cavern entrances.  You can also make pillboxes in remote areas (in choke points) for your XbowDwarves.  This will employ your population and raise the stability of your fort a lot.  There will always be armed dwarves on hand to deal with any problem.  Unless your problem is armed dwarves..

[Rushmik]

With a bigger military you'll need more smiths to support them, so that seems like a fun route.

One of my latest forts had everyone fully equipped in metal armor, civilians and 'military' alike, because I'd accidentally pumped the mineral frequency up during worldgen. It made for a very Fun time when I decided to let the goblins inside!

[Tevish Szat]

With a bigger military you'll need more smiths to support them, so that seems like a fun route.

One of my latest forts had everyone fully equipped in metal armor, civilians and 'military' alike, because I'd accidentally pumped the mineral frequency up during worldgen. It made for a very Fun time when I decided to let the goblins inside!

Traditional military will require more smiths on setup, but eventually they'll become obsolete.  Go for a crossbow squadron and you can *permanently* employ crafters making bolts.  Choosing bone crossbows/bolts will also have a renewable industry running from hunting/fishing/butchery and will provide food as well (and leather if you're using land animals rather than fish).  You can also busy a few more dwarves by training up siege engineers and operators, then cranking out ballista bolts for your masterwork-components-only ballista batteries at every choke point.

To never fall into idleness from being "finished" or out of materials, your industry needs to use renewable resources at a sustainable pace, for either disposable results or an effectively bottomless resource pit (aka, a megaproject).  Or stone, because there's basically always more stone.

[wrwr]

Maybe this post goes a bit astray, but while on the individual level the dwarfs are automated fine, the group level behavior needs lots of micromanagement.

A real economy needs a dynamic value for everything. Even land. And it needs transactions of value. The dwarfs have needs and consume, they are product sinks, this part is fine. But the offer side has potential for improvement. For example when the dwarfs need mugs and one of them can produce mugs, he should be eager to chop down a tree or two and build a workshop (or let a builder dwarf do it) and start delivering mugs. Without any order from the player. On his own bill and for his own profit. When half the population loves cows for their haunting moos, someone should deliver masses of cow statues. Also, every individual dwarf should be able to trade with outside traders. On a best bet wins basis. Yes, there would be disorder, free surface land would look like a ragtag wild west colonial town after a few migrant waves, there would be beggars and frauds and property based tantrum spirals and the poor would join the army for free food and booze. And still it were much more efficient than the military command economy we have now. And more hillarious, when the dwarfs eff it up once again. But implementing this would take a helload of work.


On base of the current system, I mostly concentrate on heavy industries. Miners, smelters and forges. As many as possible. Turning the colony into a legendary death trap fortress takes a lot of steel.

[Corneria]

Maybe this post goes a bit astray, but while on the individual level the dwarfs are automated fine, the group level behavior needs lots of micromanagement.

A real economy needs a dynamic value for everything. Even land. And it needs transactions of value. The dwarfs have needs and consume, they are product sinks, this part is fine. But the offer side has potential for improvement. For example when the dwarfs need mugs and one of them can produce mugs, he should be eager to chop down a tree or two and build a workshop (or let a builder dwarf do it) and start delivering mugs. Without any order from the player. On his own bill and for his own profit. When half the population loves cows for their haunting moos, someone should deliver masses of cow statues. Also, every individual dwarf should be able to trade with outside traders. On a best bet wins basis. Yes, there would be disorder, free surface land would look like a ragtag wild west colonial town after a few migrant waves, there would be beggars and frauds and property based tantrum spirals and the poor would join the army for free food and booze. And still it were much more efficient than the military command economy we have now. And more hillarious, when the dwarfs eff it up once again. But implementing this would take a helload of work.


On base of the current system, I mostly concentrate on heavy industries. Miners, smelters and forges. As many as possible. Turning the colony into a legendary death trap fortress takes a lot of steel.

You just described a way to automate the game. Or, more specifically, make it so that it is no longer a game, but simply a video with a couple fun procedurally generated bits of difference.

[wrwr]

You just described a way to automate the game. Or, more specifically, make it so that it is no longer a game, but simply a video with a couple fun procedurally generated bits of difference.

I see it as a way to reduce the boring grind parts of the micromanagement. There's not much fun in investing half an hour into the repetitive task of reassigning and optimizing jobs just to keep the waste of workforce reasonably low. Or to filter the three most suitable dwarfs for a certain skill training out of the faceless horde. I want to play, not work. Most players just designate every migrant as hauler or mason after a while. Because worker management gets hopelessly confusing. Except for an autistic bureaucrat maybe. I don't want a game that plays itself, they get boring fast. I want a game that does the unfunny parts in the background and lets me do the rest. A simulated economy brings in a lot of completely new problems, so there would be no lack of fun.