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Author Topic: Big Populations + Happiness  (Read 905 times)

StubbornAlcoholic

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Big Populations + Happiness
« on: October 10, 2012, 02:48:36 pm »

Just a brief question - my fortresses always seem to implode when they hit about 120 or so Dwarves. Unfortunately, since migrants seem to arrive insanely fast at times, this means I've never managed to embark on any fancy construction or dig down to HFS/Forgotten Beasts.

In fact, the "Dwarfsplosion" seems to happen so fast I've never even seen siege gameplay before my fortress sort of caves from the inside!

I don't really understand why. My last fort, I had a pop. of 130 Dwarves. Basically when I had 50 only, about 35 of those were "Ecstatic" and the rest were happy. It was great.

I continued treating them all the same as the pop. grew, giving them all nice engraved bedrooms, keeping the booze and meals up, building furniture, giving the pompous Nobles huge luxurious offices...but then weird things happened:

1. Loads of Dwarves (about 20-30) suddenly became V. Unhappy/Miserable and started going insane. I had 10 or so deaths total from failed Moods and useless soldiers, but I buried the bodies or memorialised them pretty much instantly. Regardless, practically half of the Fort's population got upset about "dead friends" or the like and started mass-tantruming.

Their thoughts were filled with "Slept in a great bed" and other good stuff, but for some reason the one or two negative things really dominated their happiness.

2. My whole military started getting "enraged due to long patrol duty". This didn't make any sense, because I actually took them all off duty and they basically milled around still complaining about their "duty". I then put them back on again and they continued to be upset. Is this a bug or something?

Either way, I sort of get this happiness collapse for no discernible reason when I start getting to the big pop. numbers. Is there anything you can do about this, or is it just a natural aspect of fun that one has to live with? :P
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Damiac

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Re: Big Populations + Happiness
« Reply #1 on: October 10, 2012, 02:56:36 pm »

2. My whole military started getting "enraged due to long patrol duty". This didn't make any sense, because I actually took them all off duty and they basically milled around still complaining about their "duty". I then put them back on again and they continued to be upset. Is this a bug or something?

Either way, I sort of get this happiness collapse for no discernible reason when I start getting to the big pop. numbers. Is there anything you can do about this, or is it just a natural aspect of fun that one has to live with? :P

This is indeed a bug.  Get the binary patched EXE, and that goes away.  You're only supposed to get long patrol thoughts from, get this, long patrol duty. 
So maybe that's your issue, but also, are you producing clothes? At some point they wear out, and you tend to need a lot of clothes suddenly when they all wear out, or babies grow up.
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greycat

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Re: Big Populations + Happiness
« Reply #2 on: October 10, 2012, 03:45:53 pm »

Their thoughts were filled with "Slept in a great bed" and other good stuff, but for some reason the one or two negative things really dominated their happiness.

Since you don't say what the bad thoughts were, I am also going to guess "lack of clothing".  Unless you had a bunch of dwarves die by vampiric blood loss or something to kickstart a tantrum spiral.

Really, it's quite difficult to keep up with the demand for clothing in a mature fortress.
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Hell, if nobody's suffocated because of it, it hardly counts as a bug! -- StLeibowitz

MasterShizzle

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Re: Big Populations + Happiness
« Reply #3 on: October 10, 2012, 03:47:37 pm »

Yeah, sounds like a clothing issue. Lack of clothes is one big factor, and it tends to hit a bunch of dwarves all at once. Just buy all the cloth from every caravan that comes, then pick out your best clothier from the waves of migrants you're getting and have him make trousers/socks/shirts/cloaks/bags on repeat. Sell back the x old x and xX tattered Xx clothing for profit. Just one dwarf doing it will make him Legendary in no time, and one Legendary clothier can most definitely keep up with a 200+ population's demands if you start early.

Keeping your dwarves busy as much as possible will help as well. Busy dwarves don't hang around in the dining hall all day, don't make nearly as many friends, and therefore don't cause fifty dwarves to go berserk when they die. My goal for most of my fortresses is to have "Idlers:0" for as long as possible. Ten dwarves dying in one fell swoop, especially if they all have the same circle of friends, will definitely cause some serious bad thoughts.

To keep miners busy, I designate an entire z-level to be cleared for future use as a tree farm. Then I usually keep dwarves busy by turning all the worthless ones into haulers and mass-designating the entire floor of stone to be dumped next to my Mason's shop or (better yet) all the way up to the surface. Groups of dwarves can be given the Masonry labor, then told to build walls all around the fort entrance or start building towers with my new quantum stockpile of rocks.

The nice thing is that none of this increases your wealth overly much. It seems weird, but focusing on keeping your dwarves busy WITHOUT producing a lot of wealth can make migrant waves a lot more manageable. By reducing your fort's overall created wealth you can cut down on those waves of e.g. 45 dwarves, 28 of which are children (this happened to me). Wait until you've got 60-80 dwarves before you start sprucing up bedrooms or engraving everything in sight.
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Blue_Dwarf

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Re: Big Populations + Happiness
« Reply #4 on: October 10, 2012, 04:51:16 pm »

To keep miners busy, I designate an entire z-level to be cleared for future use as a tree farm.
That tends to cause an fps nightmare. As the trees grow abysmally slowly, I stopped doing that after the first time...

I'm thinking about making a pump-operating gym instead.
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Blue Dwarf has been happy lately. He did some !!science!! recently. He admired a fine forum post lately. He was enraged by a forum troll recently. He was upset by the delayed release of the new version of Dwarf Fortress lately. He took joy in planning a noble's death recently.