Population cap

[Quack]

I'm on my first fortress and going well, so I see population cap is set by default at 200, which can be reached fairly quickly, and I'm wondering why is that? I'd like to reach really big numbers like 600 and more, but what's the catch? will it tank my fps? Right now I am capital with 205 since a few years and while it's not as fast as when I began, it is steady at 40+ fps.
I'd like to hear from anyone who reached high pop, at least >200 but ideally more than 300

[Fel]

200-250 is really the limit, especially if you are accepting visitors.
Of course, if you built your fort in very specific ways to make what would effectively be several completely separate forts you might be able to increase the population a bit further but even that would have its limits.

Pathfinding, everything related to vision and the increase in items needed to run the fort properly mean that it can get tricky to increase the population without tanking the game's speed at a much faster rate.

250 is usually doable, if you really stretch things and stop accepting visitors you could probably reach 300 if you take extra care of your fort's design around pathfinding and vision (no 3x3 central staircase, preferably spacing things so dwarves don't always crowd the same places and so on).

[Quack]

Originally posted by Fel:

200-250 is really the limit, especially if you are accepting visitors.
Of course, if you built your fort in very specific ways to make what would effectively be several completely separate forts you might be able to increase the population a bit further but even that would have its limits.

Pathfinding, everything related to vision and the increase in items needed to run the fort properly mean that it can get tricky to increase the population without tanking the game's speed at a much faster rate.

250 is usually doable, if you really stretch things and stop accepting visitors you could probably reach 300 if you take extra care of your fort's design around pathfinding and vision (no 3x3 central staircase, preferably spacing things so dwarves don't always crowd the same places and so on).

thanks! crystal clear, better I don't touch it then, I have no intentions to design based on performance

[Excellion]

200 Dwaves is a cap most players won't cross, simply because having more dwarves isn't worth the FPS drop they cause.

Even in a large scale fortress only a fraction of the population tends to work on "Important jobs" whereas the rest is free labor for menial work or megaprojects. At some point adding 50 extra dwarves to the labor pool really doesn't change the efficiency of a fortress all that much.

Additionally, losing FPS grows increasingly problematic the less FPS you have left to spend:

- Going from 100 to 50 FPS decreases the game speed by half (What you previously did in 1 hour of playtime now requires 2 hours of playtime).
- Going from 50 to 20 FPS decreases the game speed to a fifth (What you previously did in 1 hour of playtime now requires 5 hours of playtime).

As you can see, the first 50 FPS you "Lose" slows the game by half. Yet each FPS lost will progressively slow down time more and more. As a result having a large fortress with a lot of dwarves can feel - and actually be - slower than a fortress with a smaller population sheerly because time progresses faster in the smaller fort.

Depending on goals it can actually be worth it to lower the population cap to save FPS for other projects that might hog it.

[Quack]

Originally posted by Excellion:

200 Dwaves is a cap most players won't cross, simply because having more dwarves isn't worth the FPS drop they cause.

Even in a large scale fortress only a fraction of the population tends to work on "Important jobs" whereas the rest is free labor for menial work or megaprojects. At some point adding 50 extra dwarves to the labor pool really doesn't change the efficiency of a fortress all that much.

Additionally, losing FPS grows increasingly problematic the less FPS you have left to spend:

- Going from 100 to 50 FPS decreases the game speed by half (What you previously did in 1 hour of playtime now requires 2 hours of playtime).
- Going from 50 to 20 FPS decreases the game speed to a fifth (What you previously did in 1 hour of playtime now requires 5 hours of playtime).

As you can see, the first 50 FPS you "Lose" slows the game by half. Yet each FPS lost will progressively slow down time more and more. As a result having a large fortress with a lot of dwarves can feel - and actually be - slower than a fortress with a smaller population sheerly because time progresses faster in the smaller fort.

Depending on goals it can actually be worth it to lower the population cap to save FPS for other projects that might hog it.

true, but isn't the fps capped at 50? I have it written like this most times 99 (50), and can drop to 40 (40)

[Fel]

What the game calls "FPS" is what other games call "update ticks" or UPS (updates per second), what we usually call FPS is called GFPS or graphical FPS in this game.

The graphical FPS is usually locked like that and goes down when the "FPS" goes lower than that, the "FPS" on the other hand is capped much higher (I believe it is capped at 100 by default but in the early phase of the game most computers can handle quite a bit higher than that, making seasons go by at a quick pace).

[Excellion]

FPS is split in two parts: Graphical FPS and Computational FPS.

- Graphical FPS is how fast the game renders graphics on the screen.
- Computational FPS is what most games would call tick rate, or how fast the game actually progresses.

The notation form is:
- FPS: Computational FPS (Graphical FPS)

So if your game is running at 100 (50) - which are the default caps - the game is progressing at 100 ticks per second, and rendering the interface at 50 frames per second. Graphical FPS is capped by computational FPS - if your "Ticks per second" drop below the rendering speed cap, the game will render slower as well.

At 99 (50) the game is running at max speed, and at 40 (40) it's about half as fast as it was before.

[Quack]

Thank you both guys that's very helpful, I actually assumed it was the reverse, it makes more sense now

[amade]

In my current fortress I'm running 15 FPS with 350 citizens, two dozen or so visitors (didn't change the cap, it's just this site gets fewer visitors than normal for some reason), 500 animals (2/3 of which are caged). Caverns currently kept depopulated by an FB that's been running loose for years.

So yeah, veeeery slow. But I like a bustling fortress even if most of the denizens are redundant.

[Quack]

just want to say that I am around 20 fps now, I don't know what caused the latest hit, but the interesting thing is that after losing a siege to goblins and getting down to 50 pop with only 4 beasts remaining from the enemy army, fps didn't change. I assume there's something else tanking fps, something to do with caves maybe, It's not number of creatures, pathing or fluid dynamics. They are low and stable even if these situations are removed.

[Excellion]

Unfortunately there are quite a few reasons why FPS can be low, and at times they can be a pain to diagnose:

1. I find it's a lot less of an issue these days, but having lots contaminants around (Blood, Vomit and so on) can slow down the game if there's enough of them. Using DFHack to clean them up can save a few FPS. (Eg: "Clean All")

2. Having a lot of items lying around on the ground can also tank FPS surprisingly thanks to - what i believe is - decay calculations and a mass of hauling jobs. After a violent siege there can be body parts and items scattered everywhere which don't (immediately) disappear.If things get really bad in the FPS terms i tend to just make a save and then clean the garbage on the floor to see if it improves. Sometimes it does nothing, sometimes it somehow increases FPS by 20 or more for some reason. Personally i use "Autodump destroy hidden" for that, by first marking garbage as both "dump" and "hidden". (A combination i never use otherwise to prevent things from being deleted i want to keep).

3. I suppose it's not likely to be applicable, but check if anything is still fighting. Combat is a massive drain on FPS in large enough numbers, as are necromancers reanimating corpses endlessly. (Try encasing a necromancer and have it reanimate corpses in the middle of a group of hostiles. If done inside a large group FPS can actually tank to 0).

4. If nothing else helps my last resort tends to be revealing the full map plus all hidden units. It's rather cheaty but having a look around can occasionally be enough to spot a problem.

5. Finally, consider using DFHack "Timesteam" command. When enabled it will try to mimic the game running at 100 FPS (Under default settings) by simply decreasing the amount of ticks each action takes. So if your fortress is running at 20 FPS, it will divide the time each action takes by 5 so that the game "feels" like it's running at 100 FPS.

It's not perfect of course as you'll lose some granularity in the simulation, but at times running it for a while is enough to get a fortress to stabilise out of whatever cause there was for the FPS drops. In worst case scenario's leaving it on permanently is also an option if you want to keep playing in a fort that would otherwise feels too sluggish to continue playing.

[Quack]

Originally posted by Excellion:

Unfortunately there are quite a few reasons why FPS can be low, and at times they can be a pain to diagnose:

1. I find it's a lot less of an issue these days, but having lots contaminants around (Blood, Vomit and so on) can slow down the game if there's enough of them. Using DFHack to clean them up can save a few FPS. (Eg: "Clean All")

2. Having a lot of items lying around on the ground can also tank FPS surprisingly thanks to - what i believe is - decay calculations and a mass of hauling jobs. After a violent siege there can be body parts and items scattered everywhere which don't (immediately) disappear.If things get really bad in the FPS terms i tend to just make a save and then clean the garbage on the floor to see if it improves. Sometimes it does nothing, sometimes it somehow increases FPS by 20 or more for some reason. Personally i use "Autodump destroy hidden" for that, by first marking garbage as both "dump" and "hidden". (A combination i never use otherwise to prevent things from being deleted i want to keep).

3. I suppose it's not likely to be applicable, but check if anything is still fighting. Combat is a massive drain on FPS in large enough numbers, as are necromancers reanimating corpses endlessly. (Try encasing a necromancer and have it reanimate corpses in the middle of a group of hostiles. If done inside a large group FPS can actually tank to 0).

4. If nothing else helps my last resort tends to be revealing the full map plus all hidden units. It's rather cheaty but having a look around can occasionally be enough to spot a problem.

5. Finally, consider using DFHack "Timesteam" command. When enabled it will try to mimic the game running at 100 FPS (Under default settings) by simply decreasing the amount of ticks each action takes. So if your fortress is running at 20 FPS, it will divide the time each action takes by 5 so that the game "feels" like it's running at 100 FPS.

It's not perfect of course as you'll lose some granularity in the simulation, but at times running it for a while is enough to get a fortress to stabilise out of whatever cause there was for the FPS drops. In worst case scenario's leaving it on permanently is also an option if you want to keep playing in a fort that would otherwise feels too sluggish to continue playing.

Thanks! I'm gonna try out your tips

[Tanagram]

i have good custom worldgen settings, and im going very strong with a fort of 450+ dwarves right now

dont listen to the haters, 200 pop is just arbitrary. how you design your fort and the map+world you embark into actually matter ALOT, and if you do things wisely (i dont even use dfhack or anything) you can have a fort like mine someday. its nuts

I dont have FPS turned on but my game is very playable at a pop of 450+ and rising. Ive experienced FPS death in other forts of way lower population and looking back on it, it had to do with the mistakes I was making with worldgen + bad pathfinding options (small holes to nowhere, etc).

keep trying. reducing world clutter and picking a reasonable embark size and not popping 1x1 holes in places that all your cats try to wander through will help you tremendously

[Excellion]

Originally posted by Tanagram:

dont listen to the haters, 200 pop is just arbitrary. how you design your fort and the map+world you embark into actually matter ALOT, and if you do things wisely (i dont even use dfhack or anything) you can have a fort like mine someday. its nuts

Isn't this exactly what pretty much everyone in this thread has been mentioning? And i fail to see where the so called "haters" are?

There are plenty of tricks plus compromises in fortress design one can take to minimise FPS drops. That said: The default setting of 220 tends to be a fairly good balance wise - it's a decently sized workforce that can get anything done just fine without being too heavy on the FPS. This also leaves a safety margin so one can build a decent size fortress without having to compromise on the design for efficiency. Or run into issues that a few hundred goblins arriving on the scene tanks the FPS too badly.

I am curious what your actual FPS is though. Playable is a subjective metric at best, and historically i found forts running at 20 FPS very much playable myself. Eventually you just get used to the game running at a lower speed, with there still being things to do and manage while you watch the "dwarf ant-farm" chug along.

[Quack]

Originally posted by Excellion:

Originally posted by Tanagram:

dont listen to the haters, 200 pop is just arbitrary. how you design your fort and the map+world you embark into actually matter ALOT, and if you do things wisely (i dont even use dfhack or anything) you can have a fort like mine someday. its nuts

Isn't this exactly what pretty much everyone in this thread has been mentioning? And i fail to see where the so called "haters" are?

There are plenty of tricks plus compromises in fortress design one can take to minimise FPS drops. That said: The default setting of 220 tends to be a fairly good balance wise - it's a decently sized workforce that can get anything done just fine without being too heavy on the FPS. This also leaves a safety margin so one can build a decent size fortress without having to compromise on the design for efficiency. Or run into issues that a few hundred goblins arriving on the scene tanks the FPS too badly.

I am curious what your actual FPS is though. Playable is a subjective metric at best, and historically i found forts running at 20 FPS very much playable myself. Eventually you just get used to the game running at a lower speed, with there still being things to do and manage while you watch the "dwarf ant-farm" chug along.

I had some partial success with clean all, and timestream works well but I don't need to use it yet. I was doing 16 fps or lower when I tried clean all, it cleaned several thousand instances and now fps are at least 22, which is like 50% better. But I am pretty sure it could go much faster if I found the main culprit

[EmotionallyBroken]

Originally posted by Excellion:

FPS is split in two parts: Graphical FPS and Computational FPS.

- Graphical FPS is how fast the game renders graphics on the screen.
- Computational FPS is what most games would call tick rate, or how fast the game actually progresses.

The notation form is:
- FPS: Computational FPS (Graphical FPS)

So if your game is running at 100 (50) - which are the default caps - the game is progressing at 100 ticks per second, and rendering the interface at 50 frames per second. Graphical FPS is capped by computational FPS - if your "Ticks per second" drop below the rendering speed cap, the game will render slower as well.

At 99 (50) the game is running at max speed, and at 40 (40) it's about half as fast as it was before.

If the game hasnt updated anything in the state, theres nothing to change in the next frame.
Thats why its done in frames,because its a still "turn based" game, it just runs continuously.