Cavern Broke the Game

[死烏]

So I embarked on a waterfall swamp at the edge of a mountain and dug down from level 48 to -115 and found a massive cavern. Before so I started getting a lot of petitions from Human Monster Hunters to join my fortress, to the point I had more humans than dwarves. When I found the cavern I took no performance hit but as soon as the humans started exploring the cavern the game got slower and slower. It's not using many resources, just about 10% of the CPU and little over 1GB of RAM. I also set the process to Real-Time priority to see if it helped but not really. Does anyone else have this issue? If so did you fix it and how?

Update:
I walled off the cave and the game immediately started running at a playable pace again. Though still really slow in comparison to my other forts, even the ones with 150 Dwarves, I can play it.

[xBocT1k]

it's not a cavern, you just cross a line of population, the game starts to lose a performance after certain number of people in your fortress

[Erei]

Cavern can be complicated to navigate. They are not an empty flat area. it's corridor of stone with trees and random up and down that will block some ways and open others.
Each unit that go there will need to do pathfinding, which is made a lot more complex by the terrain nature.

I would suggest to close the cavern, and limit the number the monster hunter.

Also, do note cavern are dangerous, and seemingly buggy with steam (I noticed near endless "animal people" invasion). Monster hunter are, more often than not, crap. They won't protect you for long. If at all.

[db48x]

It can help to wall off a portion of the cavern, making the majority of it inaccessible. This limits the need to find long paths, and protects you from dangerous cavern monsters, while still allowing you some space to collect resources, pasture some animals, etc.

[Erei]

Indeed, that's what I do. Eventually, the "best" is probably to not have the entirety of the cavern open, basically.

[chronosphaenon]

And don't set priority to realtime: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Maximizing_framerate#Game_Settings

[chronosphaenon]

Originally posted by db48x:

It can help to wall off a portion of the cavern, making the majority of it inaccessible. This limits the need to find long paths, and protects you from dangerous cavern monsters, while still allowing you some space to collect resources, pasture some animals, etc.

Just take care to "baby sit" the process of building the walls, so no dorf get stranded on the wrong side.

[db48x]

Yes, build the corner tiles first too :)

[Erei]

Originally posted by chronosphaenon:

Originally posted by db48x:

It can help to wall off a portion of the cavern, making the majority of it inaccessible. This limits the need to find long paths, and protects you from dangerous cavern monsters, while still allowing you some space to collect resources, pasture some animals, etc.

Just take care to "baby sit" the process of building the walls, so no dorf get stranded on the wrong side.

It's called a suicide in dwarf civilization. Like when an elf come, complain about your wood craft, then ask you not to cut tree. When he dies from the sharp axes of your militia, it was a suicide per dwarf laws.

[jeetrix]

maze-like cavern pathfinding can be a strain on fps
lock portions off with walls and/or limit the amount of entities allowed to explore it with burrows.

[死烏]

Originally posted by xBocT1k:

it's not a cavern, you just cross a line of population, the game starts to lose a performance after certain number of people in your fortress

I only have 30 dwarves it's really not population

[死烏]

Originally posted by Erei:

Cavern can be complicated to navigate. They are not an empty flat area. it's corridor of stone with trees and random up and down that will block some ways and open others.
Each unit that go there will need to do pathfinding, which is made a lot more complex by the terrain nature.

I would suggest to close the cavern, and limit the number the monster hunter.

Also, do note cavern are dangerous, and seemingly buggy with steam (I noticed near endless "animal people" invasion). Monster hunter are, more often than not, crap. They won't protect you for long. If at all.

Yes thank you, might expel/throw them into magma for exploring the darned cave. Gotta wall it off. Never had a cave this massive in the classic but never got Dwarves going at stone hauling pace while carrying nothing in the classic either.