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[DonerKebab]

I put the peasants in the military and have foregone traps.  This keeps a large part of the fortress training for war, churning out bone bolts, hauling goblin loot, and cleaning up bodies.

Additionally, I find it useful to think of industries as "food chains".  So you get your woodcutters going, charcoal burners on R, your smelters next to them going, then your smiths.  When the chain breaks down, it's easy to identify what to do.

[Istrian]

In practice, even in very large fortresses you only need one dwarf for each 'important' job (except mining, masonry, growing, furnace operating). The secret to good management is to give custom professions/nicknames to EVERY SINGLE DWARF. That's why my fortress usually counts about 50 "Haulers" and 20-30 'specialists'. The remainder is my military (including siege ops).

The reason to having so many haulers is simple : in the late stages of the game you get sieged so often you just NEED those haulers to deal with the clutter as well as do the priority hauling jobs (i.e food hauling).

Of course the worst problem a large fort has is lag, that's why I suggest you limit your pop cap to 70 and let the fort grow through procreation (half my dwarves are children right now).

[AlienChickenPie]

My recent fort uses a simple system- I note labor shortages while the fortress rolls. New immigrants are allocated to the needed professions and any remaining dwarves are drafted into axe, unarmed or crossbow squads. Axe squads are occasionally deactivated to assist in large scale woodcutting, unarmed squads (equipped with real weapons once I get sick of waiting for them to hit legendary) are deactivated to assist in large scale construction and crossbowdwarves are always activated, but rotated between sparring and guard tower duty. Also, they are all given informative profession names to separate processed dwarves from new arrivals and make their actual jobs more apparent.

If you have too many dwarves, try try to fend off a siege or two using no traps and siege equipment, or build a large above-ground building.

[Kogan Loloklam]

My advice is simply more royal guards, fortress guards, military, and people to convert your stones to blocks
Alternatively, I believe you can remove the jobs from spouses, since they already have someone working to support the room rent. I never tried that with an economy though...

[Frelock]

I enjoy starting "outposts" with my extra dwarves.  Build a tower and channel around its base, and below that, have about 10 bedrooms, a decent dining room, a training barracks (designated from a weapon rack), an archery range, a small farm, a kitchen, a still, a well, and a couple of relevant stockpiles. 8 of the dwarves are military, the other two take care of the farming, cooking, healing, and hauling.  Then seal it off from the rest of your fort, with an airlock (underground, obviously) for bolts, new weapons, and new armor to come through.  

Build 10 of those around the outskirts, and you have occupied 100 dwarves, not to mention the labor that goes in to building all these things and getting them running.  This may go under the "crazy projects" category, but it keeps the dwarves occupied even after it's done.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

I rarely have large fortresses. However, when the big immigration waves hit, I have the following thoughts:

* Unskilled peasants are not even replacement labour. So, I make sure that each peasant gets some proper job where they can quickly get experience to improve both their professional skill (in case they are needed to replace a dead dwarf) as well as their stats (if I do decide I need to draft them). I never draft unskilled dwarves (except for when an unskilled dwarf discovers a kobold thief on the tile she is standing ).

* Engrave a lot. I usually do a lot of engraving. Usually, all workshop rooms are completely engraved. Community burial chambers are completely engraved, meeting halls are completely engraved. Over time, finished corridors get engraved (finished in the sense that no new digging will take place there).

* Remove legendaries from their favorite jobs. Especially with legendary engravers, I tend to remove the job they are legendary in so as to heighten their chance for increasing other skills. This also prevents them from taking away the work for unskilled workers.

* Traps. In my fortresses, a really complete room also has a stone fall trap at its front door. This can add quite a lot of work for your dwarves.

* Statues and decorations. Statues look nice in meeting halls, but they also add to community burial chambers. Even corridors can be improved with a few statues.  Besides keeping your dwarves busy, it also raises the morale.

* Encrust/decorate. You can put a lot of decoration on statues and the like. Have them decorated until at least one interesting image is on an item. Then replace a non-decorated item with the newly decorated item. Repeat. Besides statues, doors are also good condidates for this.

* And the all-time favorite - complex building projects, like constructed guard towers with barracks on top and the like. If you really have more dwarves than you need, make all constructions with blocks only - this can keep mason's workshops and masons quite busy.

Well, I hope some may find these thoughts useful.

Deathworks

[jester]

How I manage the buggers.  pick the dwarves who are going to be doing the important jobs (fishing, herbalist, cook, engineer, armoursmith etc) and change their profession name.  limit the hauling that they are doing to furniture and food or something like that.  miners dig and haul refuse.  A few dedicated furnace operators are a good idea, double the number with woodburning.  crafts the same, 1 weaver and one gem worker are all you really need unless something big is going on.  Now for the rest, as soon as immigrants turn up all haulers get stone detailing, animal caretaking, butchery, tanning, fishcleaning and pump operating.  keep the detailing up and have a gym with about 20 pumps to buff the skills a bit.  This keeps the dwarves a bit busy and naming the professions of all tradesman dwarves so you dont loose them on the unit screen makes it possible to keep track of the important ones.  Renaming dwarves is the only way that I can keep track of them when I have three engravers called Urist.

[Tulthix]

Its a fair amount of work, but I keep an excel sheet with all my dwarves and jobs/notes on each.  Its no so bad as long as you update it as new dwarves arrive, rather than trying to do it in big batches.

I like the idea of the head <job> with 2 assistants listed above.  I'm going to try that out.

I'm currently playing around with an idea for a new dwarf roster layout.  Its something like:
<firstname> <lastname> <current> <top3> ... <notes> <datearrived> <date> <injuries>

Edit, Added:  I put spare dwarves in the military, and for fun I rotate dwarves through the fortress guard for training (and some nice spinal injuries   ).  

I have realized lately that dwarves are very very skilled loafers.  It may say idlers: 0, but they are sneaklazy, and fooling you and laughing secretly when your back is turned.  It is hard to see a snickering, mocking dwarven grin when its obsured by a huge stein of lager and a thick beard.  

You don't really need that many haulers.  They only are looking busy while not accomplishing much.  You'll be surprised at how few haulers you need in a well laid out fortress.  Put them in the military.

[ April 01, 2008: Message edited by: Tulthix ]

[KikkyMonk]

You guys crack me up.

-Dave

[DonerKebab]

quote:Originally posted by Deathworks:
<STRONG>Hi!

I rarely have large fortresses. However, when the big immigration waves hit, I have the following thoughts:

* Unskilled peasants are not even replacement labour. So, I make sure that each peasant gets some proper job where they can quickly get experience to improve both their professional skill (in case they are needed to replace a dead dwarf) as well as their stats (if I do decide I need to draft them). I never draft unskilled dwarves (except for when an unskilled dwarf discovers a kobold thief on the tile she is standing           ).

* Engrave a lot. I usually do a lot of engraving. Usually, all workshop rooms are completely engraved. Community burial chambers are completely engraved, meeting halls are completely engraved. Over time, finished corridors get engraved (finished in the sense that no new digging will take place there).

* Remove legendaries from their favorite jobs. Especially with legendary engravers, I tend to remove the job they are legendary in so as to heighten their chance for increasing other skills. This also prevents them from taking away the work for unskilled workers.

* Traps. In my fortresses, a really complete room also has a stone fall trap at its front door. This can add quite a lot of work for your dwarves.

* Statues and decorations. Statues look nice in meeting halls, but they also add to community burial chambers. Even corridors can be improved with a few statues.  Besides keeping your dwarves busy, it also raises the morale.

* Encrust/decorate. You can put a lot of decoration on statues and the like. Have them decorated until at least one interesting image is on an item. Then replace a non-decorated item with the newly decorated item. Repeat. Besides statues, doors are also good condidates for this.

* And the all-time favorite - complex building projects, like constructed guard towers with barracks on top and the like. If you really have more dwarves than you need, make all constructions with blocks only - this can keep mason's workshops and masons quite busy.

Well, I hope some may find these thoughts useful.

Deathworks</STRONG>

Yes best advice is to reward Legendaries with service as haulers or military.  This allows other dwarves to train up when your fort gets big.

Engraving is excellent way to occupy dwarves, train up their stats, and improve the fort all at the same time.

And seriously, try running the game without traps, you'll find dwarves to be a scarcer commodity!

[Othob Rithol]

You guys just need to build an arena.

I have an endless procession of Miners->Engravers->Wrestlers->Entertainment->Dwarf Bones (6)

My new favorite event: 6 Dwarves get dropped into the "entry area" (which is suspended above the arena). Now that they can not move around at all, they are set to sword and shield. Then they get dropped into a pit filled with 3 swords, 3 shields, and one hydra.

Great Fun.

And I have a chained up Elite Hammergoblin (he killed 3 dwarves getting him into that chain). He lives on a little ledge on the mountain side, that I can drop dwarves on to. Whack....and there goes mr-likes-adamantine.

[random51]

I've taken to building catapults all over my fortress in areas I eventually want cleared of stone.  The catapults are facing a wall right next to them.

Set all your migrants to siege operators and the catapults to fire at will.  You'll clear the stone out without using stockpiles are even worse, designating it for dumpage you'll train up all those migrants so they become faster and stronger, in other words: useful, and you'll have a fort full of legendary siege operators next time you get sieged.

All that said, I've got masterwork catapults and legendary siege operators and they still can't hit anything.  I have to trap the enemy between two drawbridges.  In a year or two the siege operators will have killed them.

[Crafty Barnardo]

Using catapults for defense is about as useful as crossing your fingers and hoping your enemies get struck by lightning.

[random51]

They're not really for defense, they are for entertainment value.  Raise the drawbridges then try to "talk" the rounds into the enemy.

go...go...little to the right...right there...yes!...or, no, you went over his head.  try again.

It did point out a nasty issue with pathfinding, though.  There can be stone 4 steps away from the catapult and instead the dwarf will go 50 units to the east, down a ladder, 50 units back to the west, pick up the stone one level down from the catapult and then cart it all the way back up.  Plays havoc with your catapult rate of fire.  Now I build 4 level ammo bunkers around the catapults with an up/down ladder right next to the catapult.

[Proteus]

quote:Originally posted by Crafty Barnardo:
<STRONG>Using catapults for defense is about as useful as crossing your fingers and hoping your enemies get struck by lightning.</STRONG>

Ballistas however can make a lot of damage if used correctly  
I use the catapults in a similar way like Random51,
to clear areas of stone while at the same time training my siege operators,
so that they are proficient enoguh when, in the case of a siege I order them to man my Balistas which sit behind fortifications at srategic locations