i would draft them all, but having a gigantic military seems sort of useless when faced with only a few goblins and kobolds.
also most of the migrants are totally useless like soap makers or animal dissectors and they bring along their useless children too
i don't know what to do with these jerks besides turn them into hauling mules or conscript them
that way i could kill all the useless leeches and only save the guys who actually work
a) Fortress guard
(20 dwarves, or 10% of the population). If you set them to unarmed, they'll be legendary wrestlers soonish; you won't be able to assign them back to civilian duties once they're champions.
b) Royal Guard
(8 dwarves?). Only after you get nobles.
c) More workshops, more labor-intensive industry.
(Don't grow Plump Helmet ... grow all the plants, run querns, farmers' workshops. Grow Dimple Cup, run querns, auto-mill dyed thread only, set "Use only dyed cloth", add dyeries and cloth workshops (or just churn out cloth crafts at your craftsdwarves' workshops)...
d) Standing (well, sparring) army.
When there's not a lot to do: Draft some. To get the hauling done once the siege is over, undraft them ... :)
(http://images.despair.com/products/demotivators/achievement.jpg)
Churn out some picks and turn them all into miners, and just mine the shit out of everything.
I normally put Idlers on plant collection, Brewing, or Engraving.
Generally I find that my forts end up with a handful of legendary dwarves - three miners, a smith, a farmer/brewer, a few engravers, et cetera - a bunch of variably-skilled grunts for things like furnace operating, and a crapton of haulers trying to keep up with the rest of 'em. A single brewing job can generate six hauling tasks (one for the barrel of booze, five for each of the seeds). An armorsmith working full-tilt on nothing but gauntlets and boots will rapidly clutter up his workshop, too. And of course, I have ore stockpiles that need continual replenishment so that my furnace operators don't have to walk across half the map to get their ore. This tends to keep a good 80% of my fort busy, and the rest get drafted into my army.
quote:
Originally posted by cbfog:
<STRONG>these guys are mostly useless for the operation of my fort and i generally only use about 1/4 of the available dwarves at any time to create an excess of goods for everyone else while all the others mill around doing nothing.</STRONG>
Clearly you aren't generating nearly enough excess.
I keep up a good sized military, but mostly what I do is assign immigrants to nonstop work in various luxury trades (clothesmaking, glassmaking, etc.) When they hit legendary, I turn them back into haulers to keep up with the giant mounds of junk that everyone else is generating. Keeps everyone busy with relatively little fuss, and you end up with a lot of wealth and legendary dwarves.
...then I'm going to try and drive a few handpicked individuals insane and watch the fun.
quote:
Originally posted by Solara:
<STRONG>...then I'm going to try and drive a few handpicked individuals insane and watch the fun.</STRONG>
Why wait for them to go insane? Just build a very high, very narrow platform without any kind of guard walls. Install a weapons rack and declare it a barracks. Have the Fortress Guard go on a recruitment spree (give them hammers for added effect). Hilarity ensues!
[ May 25, 2008: Message edited by: RPB ]
Watch as they drown off and on for hours while simultaneously getting more and more thirsty.
Craftsdwarves, textiles, masonry.
Engrave every square inch of your fortres that isn't a bedroom for a commoner (for tax purposes)
Military, Fortress Gaurd, Royal Guard.
Pump out a 10x10 area in your aquifer (if you have one) manually and wall it off. Granted, you'll need to watch them for cancelations, but it's satisfying to do.
Mechanics, melting goblin junk, glassworks.
Strip-mine the lowest four levels of your map with the vertical shaft method. After it's clear (of metal ore. Not neccecarily dwarves) flood it with magma.
Build a legendary Tomb for each and every one of your dwarves. Just because you can.
Build a massive death-trap in all of your tombs.
Teach your dwarves to fly! (with a drawbridge, 15 z-levels into the sky).
The list is endless.
[ May 26, 2008: Message edited by: Jamini ]
Typically, an 80-dwarf fortress run by me will have something like the following mix of work:
3 growers/brewers/cooks,
2-5 dwarves that do something else with food (threshers, millers, backup farmers, hunters, fishers, herbalists, or dedicated food haulers),
1 carpenter, 2-6 masons (I've become quite fond of building things and need lots of blocks), 1 blacksmith, 1 metalsmith, 1 weaponsmith, 1 armorsmith, 1 bowyer, 1 bone-carver (for arrows), 1 tailor, 1 weaver, 1 dyer, 1-2 glassmakers, 1-2 mechanics, about 2-5 miscellaneous skilled craftsdwarves (interesting preferences, lucky strange moods, backups, or I just wanted to crank out more stuff of a particular kind), and 2-4 smelters, 0-1 wood burner/potash-maker, and 0-2 woodchoppers to keep the forges burning and the metal bars coming,
2-6 miners and 2-4 active engravers, with many retirees with these skills serving in the military,
15-25 military dwarves, of which maybe half are part-timers who rotate between training, boosting attributes, and haulage as needed,
a few injured dwarves, some nobles, some babies and chidren, ...
... and a whole bunch of haulers, averaging perhaps a third of the population. Most non-hauler dwarves occasionally have to help with moving stuff, because I always want more done, and done faster, than the available haulers can do alone.
Not a whole lot of time for partying in my forts.