No problems setting up the initial base, food supply, etc... I survive the initial winter with tons of food to spare.
As I increase the number of bedrooms, water barrels, kitchen areas, farm land, etc... porportional to growth once I hit a certain population level people start to go insane, die of dehydration despite 5 or more full water barrels in the base and so on.
Unless each additional dwarf means I need more food and water per dwarf I'm not running out of supplies something else is happening.
The first wave of new dwarves was no problem, I still had plenty to spare and I continued to build more in preparation for the next wave.
I prebuilt everything for the next wave but things fell apart after the next wave appeared.
The problem looks like scaling issues.
It's the third wave of people or year 4 or 5 where you start getting so and so died of starvation with 50 rations in their inventory.
Variant Scaling Issue Example - I had a giant cave open at the start in my game. I turned the entire thing into a Mushroom farm because I'm not aware of any reason not to.
I built 4 shock tanks and placed 50 mushroom logs. (This only used about 20% of the farm's space)
Of the 50 logs, 19 were used. 31 spots are waiting. They have been allocated but the Dwarves never get around to it. Seasons passed and they never got around to it.
My farm fields are constantly being planted or harvested season after season, so I have farmers. At least 5 that I count
I have logs scattered around my wood cutting benches that aren't in use, so resources exist and trees have been cut down.
I checked and I have 5+ carpenters and 5+ woocutters. Plenty of trees and logs.