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[ParrotPatrol]

I have no problem managing forts up to about 30-40 dwarves, but beyond that I lose a sense of direction. I no longer have any idea what jobs to assign dwarves to because all the necessary jobs are taken. I try drafting them, but eventually my army becomes so large they three stooge themselves on their way out the front door to meet any threat. What the hell do I do with those extra layabouts? I can't even imagine how the hell you guys manage 200 dwarf forts.

[Torak]

Once you just stop caring about each and every one of them as a single entity, it becomes alot easier to manage things.

[numerobis]

Like any good banana republic despot, I pick a gargantuan and stupidly expensive project, and I don't care much about the long-term unemployment, low wages, and poor living conditions that my dwarves suffer.  When riots break out, the fortress guard brutally represses the rabble.

Free booze, lavish parties, and a constant state of war helps dwarves keep their minds off the serious societal problems.

[Slappy Moose]

I just assign lots of woodcutters for large metal projects, LOTS of masons or stone-detailers for gargantuan "beautification and safety" projects (more engravings, more walls and defences) or just make them part of my army.

Large groups of crafters is good too, if you really need to trade for stuff.

[Torak]

quote:Originally posted by benoit.hudson:
<STRONG>Like any good banana republic despot, I pick a gargantuan and stupidly expensive project, and I don't care much about the long-term unemployment, low wages, and poor living conditions that my dwarves suffer.  When riots break out, the fortress guard brutally represses the rabble.

Free booze, lavish parties, and a constant state of war helps dwarves keep their minds off the serious societal problems.</STRONG>

You should change your name to El Presidente, move to an island, and setup a Cigar making industry.

[Anti-Paragon]

I keep 'head' workers for each work function. (Head cook, head Armorsmith, head siege engineer etc.) and allow each person to 'take on' two lackies, depending on who comes in migrations (exception; farmers, cooks, and brewers). The head 'whatever' has no hauling jobs, and the two lackies have hauling jobs related to their field. Anyone of a chosen field (except peasents) that exceeds that is put into my 'system acceleration/response team', is given masonary, architecture, carpentry, mining(when needed) and is drafted into the military. They train until I need some mass construction/excavation. This means if I, say, wanted to build a structure, my regular masons would mass spam blocks while my mass construction team took care of moving all building materials to the sight, then subsequently making the structure.

The peasents, however, are a different matter. I keep my peasents for all my major hauling jobs, which, in any large fort, feels like 90% of the work...
Peasents are usually just general haulers, but I always keep some food haulers, spanning out about 3 per 50 dwarves. You can also keep lots of food haulers and make your food industry lackies as dedicated as the mains.

This system seems to work fine for up to 300 dwarves, though at that point, you usually take on two mains per industry with four lackies. I haven't tested anything over that, though.

Have fun!

[Khosan]

quote:Originally posted by Anti-Paragon:
<STRONG>I keep 'head' workers for each work function. (Head cook, head Armorsmith, head siege engineer etc.) and allow each person to 'take on' two lackies, depending on who comes in migrations (exception; farmers, cooks, and brewers). The head 'whatever' has no hauling jobs, and the two lackies have hauling jobs related to their field. Anyone of a chosen field (except peasents) that exceeds that is put into my 'system acceleration/response team', is given masonary, architecture, carpentry, mining(when needed) and is drafted into the military. They train until I need some mass construction/excavation. This means if I, say, wanted to build a structure, my regular masons would mass spam blocks while my mass construction team took care of moving all building materials to the sight, then subsequently making the structure.

The peasents, however, are a different matter. I keep my peasents for all my major hauling jobs, which, in any large fort, feels like 90% of the work...
Peasents are usually just general haulers, but I always keep some food haulers, spanning out about 3 per 50 dwarves. You can also keep lots of food haulers and make your food industry lackies as dedicated as the mains.

This system seems to work fine for up to 300 dwarves, though at that point, you usually take on two mains per industry with four lackies. I haven't tested anything over that, though.

Have fun!</STRONG>

I find this system intriguing, and I would like to adopt it in my next fortress.

[numerobis]

quote:Originally posted by Torak:
<STRONG>You should change your name to El Presidente, move to an island, and setup a Cigar making industry.</STRONG>

I could never quite get to $2 million.

[numerobis]

I keep thinking I should have a regular rotation with a quarter of my civilians training in the military each season, and regular swimming lessons also.  But then I never get around to it.  The only thing I do actually go for is to give every single peasant the 'pump operator' job and set a small (two or four) number of pumps up to dry-pump.

I mostly just go for a steady state.  Given an efficient fortress layout, you actually can do quite a lot with 50 dwarves, half of them usually idle, because there's so little hauling going on.  Hence the megaprojects.

[celestial_okami]

Well I am still on my first fort with a population of 138 so I for some of the time I was still figuring out what everything did.  When I found I started having excess dwarves and there wasn't anything I really needed to build I put all my idlers (usually useless things like Milkers or Trappers or Peasants) onto mining and expanded every relevant room a bit to make room for expansion in the future.  I then started making economical living spaces at Z-1, with each room being a 2x1 with a bed, cabinet, and door on the outside to a corridor.  I made spaces for about 60 dwarves, and then started strip mining on lower Z levels by making lanes  on every 3rd vertical line so the most rock possible would be exposed.  Then I set a bunch of these excess dwarves to Stone detail and told them to smooth every wall, walked pathway, and used room in the fortress, and get the best engravers to engrave the walls of the noble's quarters to improve their value.  So by now I have a lot of pretty good miners and stone detailers with some good stat improvements.  Over time I keep mining but less smoothing and engraving, so now I have four legendary engravers and seven legendary miners.  Every so often as I get new immigrants and lose military in fights I retire one of the good-stat miners or non-legendary engravers into the military.

[BurnedToast]

I usually let the extra dwarves sit in there rooms until something needs hauling. One dwarf per job is plenty for most jobs, because once they become highly skilled they work so fast you don't need more.

It's not like food is hard to get, so it's easy to feed all the slackers. I don't even bother drafting them because a single champion can take on whole armies alone so 10 - 15 soldiers is all you ever need.

It makes me wonder why people keep suggesting slaves... I don't need slaves, I have so much extra dwarf labor to go around it's not even funny.

[Donkringel]

I have a tendency of massive trap projects. Not the 100 stone traps in 4 rows sort of deal, but stone/cage traps throughout all of the wild. Stone traps closer to the fortress, and cage traps furtherout/near creature spawns, for the taming of the wildlife. This usually nets me 8 mechanics of varying levels. By the time they finish up using the 300 mechanisms or so i have them produce, I send em out the make denser traps layers, and then send em back to making mechanisms. Every so often i have a grand scale waterworks project.

Of course, that's 8 dwarves of 150, but every bit helps.

[ParrotPatrol]

Once the tax collector shows up, if you have idle dwarves, they get poorer and pooerer, and eventually go insane, don't they? Thats my problem. While I have never had a fort pop up long enough for the tax man to actually show up...it really shuffles around the game.

[greggbert]

I just create guard stations.  All my dwarves are in their own squads so I just create archers towers, guard stations and station my dwarves in strategic locations in case of a seige.  

Since I rotate my soldiers on/off duty every other season and I station three dwarves from each group in any one spot (gauranteeing that one or two will always be there if the others are sleeping/on break) that means that at any one spot where I want to have military I need to assign six military dwarves, three at any one time.  So If I set up two spear stations

                xxx
      SprStation1^

      SprStation2v
                xxx

That would require 12 speardwarves
  *  Three speardwaves who are on duty on Winter/Summer (Train spring/fall) and stationed at zone 1
  *  Three speardwarves who are on duty Spring/Fall (Train winter/summer) and stationed at zone 1
  *  Three speardwaves who are on duty on Winter/Summer (Train spring/fall) and stationed at zone 2
  *  Three speardwarves who are on duty Spring/Fall (Train winter/summer) and stationed at zone 2

So those two positions just ate up 12 dwarves.  That's what I do when I start to get a lot of dwarves.  It creates a very high level of military readiness.  Setting up 5 or 6 positions like that eats up 30-36 military dwarves, making it so that it is pretty easy to find a use for immigrants.

[ March 28, 2008: Message edited by: greggbert ]

[lizard]

Keeping them busy is easy, create hauling nightmares with legendary stoneworkers on opposite sides of the fort.  Each hauler will do a job on one side and alternate.  It's hilarious.  The Army arc will be a nice way to dispose of dwarves.  Presumably soon it won't be so easy to feed everyone, and more ag work will be needed.  You can always make n billion trade goods and donate them to the cause of Dwarf Empire.

[ March 29, 2008: Message edited by: lizard ]