How many dwarfs is too many?

[wombatvvv]

I'm new to this game, but I have played a lot of Rimworld before, so I'm kinda-familiar with it.

My fortress has "exploded" to 50+ dwarfs (I have exploded in inverted commas as I have no idea if that's a lot or not in this game, it would be huge in Rimworld) and I'm having trouble managing and keeping track of them all.

I feel like starting a new fort and actually making an effort to keep it small and manageable. I actually tried that with this one but it still somehow exploded out of control.

I suspect that maybe that's really not so many, and my problem is I'm still in "Rimworld" mentality. It has just occurred to me that I probably don't need to actually manage them all. Just the very best ones. The others can all be haulers & construction workers and sleep in a dormitory, right?

How do you guys play this? What's too many dwarfs for you?

Also ... can you select a group from your current fortress and do a "new embark", leaving the AI to manage your current fortress in the same world?

[McFuzz]

Once you get past about 50-80, you start to lose a personal connection to them. Apart from a specific handful, you won't care about losing them by the dozen. Of course, from a framerate perspective, past about 120 you will start to notice some bigger dips.

You should get bedrooms for all. 3x3 is pretty luxurious for common worker dwarves, so nobody will blame you if the bedrooms for the bulk of your migrant force shrinks to 2x2 by the last game haha.

You can't do a new embark, but you can retire or abandon. If you pick the same civ, old dwarfs from old forts MAY show up in migrant waves.

[High Lord Denix]

You are very much suffering from a Rimworld mentality, 50 isnt that much, it's usually the go to for when people want to do "small" forts, big is like 200+ but most people usually aim for around 150 for FPS reasons.

You're pretty much correct that most of your dwarves will be haulers, constructors or other misc low skill tasks but you should at the least give every dwarf their own bedroom, you have more than enough space on an embark.

You cant take people from your current fort with you on a new embark but you can retire a fort and the AI will run it by itself, if you create a new fort in the same world people from your old for can and probably will migrate to your new fort at some point.

[Helios]

Originally posted by wombatvvv:

I'm new to this game, but I have played a lot of Rimworld before, so I'm kinda-familiar with it.

My fortress has "exploded" to 50+ dwarfs (I have exploded in inverted commas as I have no idea if that's a lot or not in this game, it would be huge in Rimworld) and I'm having trouble managing and keeping track of them all.

I feel like starting a new fort and actually making an effort to keep it small and manageable. I actually tried that with this one but it still somehow exploded out of control.

I suspect that maybe that's really not so many, and my problem is I'm still in "Rimworld" mentality. It has just occurred to me that I probably don't need to actually manage them all. Just the very best ones. The others can all be haulers & construction workers and sleep in a dormitory, right?

How do you guys play this? What's too many dwarfs for you?

Also ... can you select a group from your current fortress and do a "new embark", leaving the AI to manage your current fortress in the same world?

in settings under game you can set maximum population and child ratio i controlled migrants with that setting because i also had trouble with exploding numbers at start.

[Helios]

Originally posted by High Lord Denix:

You are very much suffering from a Rimworld mentality, 50 isnt that much, it's usually the go to for when people want to do "small" forts, big is like 200+ but most people usually aim for around 150 for FPS reasons.

You're pretty much correct that most of your dwarves will be haulers, constructors or other misc low skill tasks but you should at the least give every dwarf their own bedroom, you have more than enough space on an embark.

You cant take people from your current fort with you on a new embark but you can retire a fort and the AI will run it by itself, if you create a new fort in the same world people from your old for can and probably will migrate to your new fort at some point.

if you have not build rooms for your starting dwarfs , not build all workshops yet 50 are alot what can happen fast at start even a full fortres would have trouble if you suddenly have 150 dwarfs more with only 100.

[High Lord Denix]

Originally posted by Helios:

Originally posted by High Lord Denix:

You are very much suffering from a Rimworld mentality, 50 isnt that much, it's usually the go to for when people want to do "small" forts, big is like 200+ but most people usually aim for around 150 for FPS reasons.

You're pretty much correct that most of your dwarves will be haulers, constructors or other misc low skill tasks but you should at the least give every dwarf their own bedroom, you have more than enough space on an embark.

You cant take people from your current fort with you on a new embark but you can retire a fort and the AI will run it by itself, if you create a new fort in the same world people from your old for can and probably will migrate to your new fort at some point.

if you have not build rooms for your starting dwarfs , not build all workshops yet 50 are alot what can happen fast at start even a full fortres would have trouble if you suddenly have 150 dwarfs more with only 100.

The amount of migrants you get is based off fortress wealth, if you've somehow managed to get 50+ dwarves while not even having rooms for your first 7 you have done something very very wrong while simultaneously doing something (probably accidentally) very right.

[Muted Kobold]

In dorf fortress steam, you can have up to 350 dorfs. There's ways to manage your framerate in the game. An overlooked feature is route control.

A small fortress will generally ecplode out of control pretty easily if you did not limit the number of dorfs. But I should also warn you that the game doesn't give a darn about you. And it will continue on with dishing out the BS that larger populations deal with on the same scale to you.

My embarks are usually two different trains of thought depending on mood. I usually dig down. But you can build up.

The first is I use blueprints to plan out my builds. I make use of multiple floors and paths. Usually I will have the Main Public floor. This houses the tavern. This is close to the surface. Where my trading depot, barracks are.
Below that is the hospital, Library, Temple. and cistern. And usually I'll try putting some distance down into the ground. This is to build up pressure in the cistern for some fun.

Below that will be residential floors. Each floor holds 80 dorfs. The layer below that is a cistern layer. And this repeats for roughly four floors. Below that is the dungeons. And Finally my manufacturing. Floors.

I generally try to use minecarts to transfer ♥♥♥♥ quickly. So dwarves are not hauling stones everywhere.

This is because the deeper you go. The longer it takes. And your dorf likes to grab the FURTHEST ♥♥♥♥♥♥ STONE THEY CAN FIND.

The second is I have no plan once I land on the map. And wing it

[Robert]

50 isn't that much, really. You have to consider the number of different workshops and skills, usually you want 1 (or maybe even 2) dwarves who don't do anything else and focus on getting that skill to legendary because skilled dwarves are insanely more efficient than noobs. You'll need an increasing number of nobles/administrators. Then there is hospital staff, tavern staff, priests. You'll need a certain number of haulers. You'll want a military, too.

My personal sweet spot is around 100 dwarves (not including kids), but mostly for fps reasons. If the game had better performance, you could easily use 200+ dwarves. But many of them will just be expendable grunts for hauling and military.

[VoiD]

I'm running a fort with over 200 dwarves and a bunch of visitors, haven't noticed any slowdown at all.

But the surface isn't heavily forested, I heard fruit calculations can really tank your FPS.

I'm also using an unreasonable CPU (i9 13900k), a few months ago I had a more normal CPU (i7 8700k) and I don't know how if that would handle the game as well, it didn't handle some paradox' games late game stages or Total War with more than 2 full armies in combat either.

[AlP]

You need at least 80 dwarves for the normal difficulty siege trigger (which you can customize in settings).

Normally, 120-150 dwarves will destroy your computer. You can get more if your pc can afford it, but it's usually not necessary.

You need maybe 20-30 dwarves for your main production needs, the rest for the military and hauling tasks, however many you want.

[Erei]

I keep it at 200. People comment about the lack of connections, but in any fort you don't have EVERYONE who is important. Lots of hands around I don't really know. You get to know them they need to do something that I'll notice to begin with. Using nicknames helps to remember who's who.
In my current fort I know a dead cat (Shorast Tinkol) because my dwarves are obsessed by it (he died to a unicorn years ago). They make statues, engraving, artifacts and even tell the tale to visitors (so it will propagate to other civ). I know a kid who killed a bunch of ravens alone. There is the first squad militia captain who killed many but always end up in jail because he hate the laws and keep trying to steal stuff. My captain of the guard, always busy interogating. Grumpy, the always moody dwarf (one of the original 7) because he is very anger prone and always get into argument. Then he is sad because of that. I have a miner who was wounded years ago in a fight. And another who's first fight as military ended up with permanent injuries (she is moody now, don't know what to do with her).
And many others, like my mayor/countess who "disdain power" (lol).
Oh and I have a hamster man bard who look funny.

200dwarves, still connections. Not with everyone OFC.

[malthenielsen]

IDK it depends what you want to do.

You can set a pop cap in the game settings to whichever number you like as the max.

Small forts become more cosy and you know the dwarves. Bigger forts are more chatic with you being unable to figure out why some stuff happened, as so much is going on - which is entertaining in a different way.

I guess though as you play the game more you get used to it.

Like you plan the fort for expansion. My burial chamber for instance is a 3 tile wide hallway with coffins on either side and a path in the middle. So I just make it longer as the fort becomes bigger. And when I create it first, I make sure it can extend a long way.

Same goes for bedroom floors. You start with like 10 or 20 bedrooms and then have places set out to make more bedrooms later on if needed.

But yeah first couple of forts I did was total chaos, and it ended up looking like a total maze with random bedroom hallways build in panic where there was some space :)

[Daunt]

Originally posted by Erei:

I keep it at 200. People comment about the lack of connections, but in any fort you don't have EVERYONE who is important. Lots of hands around I don't really know. You get to know them they need to do something that I'll notice to begin with. Using nicknames helps to remember who's who.
In my current fort I know a dead cat (Shorast Tinkol) because my dwarves are obsessed by it (he died to a unicorn years ago). They make statues, engraving, artifacts and even tell the tale to visitors (so it will propagate to other civ). I know a kid who killed a bunch of ravens alone. There is the first squad militia captain who killed many but always end up in jail because he hate the laws and keep trying to steal stuff. My captain of the guard, always busy interogating. Grumpy, the always moody dwarf (one of the original 7) because he is very anger prone and always get into argument. Then he is sad because of that. I have a miner who was wounded years ago in a fight. And another who's first fight as military ended up with permanent injuries (she is moody now, don't know what to do with her).
And many others, like my mayor/countess who "disdain power" (lol).
Oh and I have a hamster man bard who look funny.

200dwarves, still connections. Not with everyone OFC.

I don't think anyone's arguing you can't have connections with that many. But I get that some people want to know all of their dwarves and it gets to be overwheleming past a point.

To what others have said, if you don't want migrants (beyond the two migrant waves that are preprogrammed) then do not trade with the caravans. As you generate wealth and then trade it, that is what attracts migrants. My last fort I didn't trade until at least year 2 or 3 and was getting the "Didn't attract migrants this season" until I started trading.

[kheftel]

I currently have my population cap set to 100, down from the default of 200, both for framerate and manageability reasons. Some people play small forts and limit it to 40-50 dwarves to maintain more of a personal connection to each one. There are certain triggers that happen at certain populations but you can play how you want.

[Onyx Wake]

The game will try to "adjust" your population if it's over 100 dwarves by producing dangerous creature encounters. Prepare to make a lot of coffins. Luckily young forgotten beasts are easy to kill (so far).

[BonPadre]

Originally posted by Daunt:

To what others have said, if you don't want migrants (beyond the two migrant waves that are preprogrammed) then do not trade with the caravans. As you generate wealth and then trade it, that is what attracts migrants. My last fort I didn't trade until at least year 2 or 3 and was getting the "Didn't attract migrants this season" until I started trading.

Well In my first few forts (3-4 for that matter) I read all I could to know how to limit the fort attractiveness. By that I meant do all the opposite of any tips I saw on comments as such as "how do I attract migrants ?"
I never traded over the 500 figures, I was trying to not over produce, never was producing anything to sell initially, and I was literally bombarded with migrants anyway, probably due to my dorfs strange moods and their insanely valuable objects, and also to a few first migrants that came with some insane valuables anyway, increasing artificially my fort's wealth way beyond any "controllable" decisions.

So my final call was to resort to use the settings and put a hard cap limit on my fort to 30. That's for a start. then I increase it. I like to start slow, and then crank up the difficulty. so I start with almost no difficulty at first, because I like to have time to set up the way I want initially, but the game was always forcing me into rushing to do things.

So yeah I really tried my best to not have migrants, while I saw that many complaining not having any, that I had to resort to hard cap limit them.

The good thing is, this game has settings to let you enjoy the game the way you want.

So if OP feels having fun with max 50, then he should do it by using the settings.

Also I had those few forts where migrants waves sent me like 1/3 of my fort population with childrens. Yeah right. Used the settings to limit those little annoying critters as well.

So OP, play few games with standard settings, just to learn the ropes, but don't get attached to a fort.
Then when you start understanding the mechanics, learn how to use the settings to manipulate the game to play it to your likings. That's the very beauty of DF. You can make it "somewhat" how you like it to play out.

You like boring forts where nothing happens but where you can build great fort layouts ? fine you can.
You want your fort to be a huge chaos and keeping you on your toes every full moon ? sure you can have that too. Want to train your hospital crew for harsher times ? yeah sure, make sure to have enough dofrs drunk at tavern. The tavern keeper is great at making your guys drink "one too many"

Use the tavern to start a huge brawl with some crazy death chains ? Sure. Want to have a guest that can create havoc in your fort ? sure again. Want to have a quiet tavern ? don't accept any strangers, and no tavern keeper, etc etc.

Some peeps say this game is "shallow" and to some extend I can hear that, but also, it's as shallow as you allow it to be. There are crazy loads of game mechanics that can turn your fort into a -FUN- fort 🤩
But you can also do all you need to avoid said fun, and trigger it when you feel you are ready for it.