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[Thisfox]

Hi. I'm a long-time player who has had a sabbatical from the game for a couple years, so I'm just getting to know the Tavern/Library/etc stuff.

Seeing as http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Petitions is marked for deletion and has zero information, and doesn't answer my questions, I'll ask here: I've got a whole lot of non-dwarfs who keep coming to my tavern, and Petitioning to stay.

Question 1: How do I know if my dwarfs like their non-dwarf music and poetry and accept the Petitions of performers they like, and leave off the Petitions of performers they don't? Dorfs do occasionally say they enjoyed a performance, but so far as far as I could tell they've been nonspecific as to what they enjoyed, so I don't know if it was the goblin, the elf, the human, or even their incompetant dorf companion who performed the music they most liked.

Question 2: Am I making a mistake accepting every petition? I noticed that the soldiers who come and Petition to defend my fort can be put in a squad and will start work just like a dorf will, but I have far more performers than I do soldiers, and should I impose some sort of limit on the performers?

I must say I do enjoy when everyone in the tavern suddenly flashes a blue musical note symbol. Presumably that's all of them enjoying a performance, but I'm seeing it more as if they have turned into the DF Orchestra, and are actually all playing music, which I don't think they are. Boy it cuts into the booze supply though. I've now got two brewers working full time, and a stoneworker making another 50 stone pots, just to keep up. This one is a rich fort, digging out several levels of gold supplies, so everyone is drinking from a decorated gold goblet.

[PatrikLundell]

Basics:
Mercs who petition can be put in squads led by a citizen, but they can not lead squads (no foreign legion death squads without sacrificing at least one citizen!), nor will they ever petition again to become citizens. I don't accept mercs. but it's a matter of how you want to play.
Performers and scholars petition once to become residents. Scholars mostly research during that time (research is currently basically useless from a technical point of view, although written books can add some introspection satisfaction). Performers are almost completely useless during this period, as they'll only enjoy themselves in the tavern and soak up relation points from your dorfs so they STILL don't recognize each other after a scant few decades together. "Almost" in that they do occasionally harvest.
After two years (I think) residents will petition again for citizenship, and at that time they will become full citizens, and can thus be assigned any labor (ironically performer/poisoner in the tavern wasn't available until a very recent bug fix), including squad leader (potentially of mercs).

Q1: No idea, and I don't care! They petition to perform, but after two years of playing around they're MINE!!!!
Q2: Probably, as you're eventually going to get weighted down by an enormous number of FPS soakers.

There are various strategies for application acceptance, so you'll have to find your style. Mine is to use Legends Viewer to check up the spouse of each performer/scholar to find ones that are likely to come to the fortress as well and become citizens, with the goal of eventually getting a fully multi racial fortress, with a limit to the number I accept. Another strategy is to look for exceptional skill or fighting prowess. Humans can be equipped with weapons too large for dorfs (although those have to be acquired as goblinite/visitite or via trade: unfortunately human smiths don't bring human weapon smithing skills with them).

If you examine the partying dorfs you can see exactly what they're doing, and sometimes they're actually acting as an orchestra. Unfortunately, there's a significant disconnect between the instruments the dorfs can make (or buy) and the ones the music they know uses, so a lot of the time they're simulating instruments.

A potential risk of naturalized citizens is loyalty cascades as relatives of naturalized citizens come as attackers, although the worst of those probably as been dealt with (a gobbo siege arrives, and one visitor, who's a vigilante out to smite evil, recognized another visitor as a grandchild of a bandit leader, and thus a smitee target, if I remember it correctly. The siege somehow triggered an over sensitive enemy check resulting in total tavern mayhem).

[feelotraveller]

Question 1: How do I know if my dwarfs like their non-dwarf music and poetry and accept the Petitions of performers they like, and leave off the Petitions of performers they don't? Dorfs do occasionally say they enjoyed a performance, but so far as far as I could tell they've been nonspecific as to what they enjoyed, so I don't know if it was the goblin, the elf, the human, or even their incompetant dorf companion who performed the music they most liked.

Dwarfs have preferences for certain performances (songs etc.).  I use Dwarf Therapist (preferences) to find them with a decent overview.  In vanilla you would have to labouriously go through the 'thoughts' screen of each dwarf... I think.

[mikekchar]

You can only make instruments for your civilisation.  Songs use instruments from the civilisation where the song originated.  Each song also describes which instruments it uses.

If you want to have the instruments used, you 2 choices (both fairly difficult).  The first is to try to train performers in your civilisation's songs.  I haven't actually tried to do this extensively, but I have noticed that dwarfs tend to perform the songs/poems that they are most adept at.  By encouraging dwarfs who are good at the songs/poems you want to be in the tavern (by making them a performer or tavern keeper), they are more likely to practice and get good at those songs/poems.  In turn, people who watch or partake in the performance will learn about the song/poem and they will start to perform it at the tavern too.  In this way, I think you can encourage your civ's culture to flourish.  Again, I haven't tried it to this extent, but maybe that should be my next challenge.

One possible way to make this easier would be to have a civilian only tavern and have your performers train there.  That way you don't get the diluting influence of the visitors.

The other choice is to have a huge stockpile of foreign instruments.  You can acquire these from merchants.  For instruments from civs that you don't trade with, you can probably spin up some adventurers to go and bring them back.  Actually it would make a nice quests that wasn't hack and slash.

[PatrikLundell]

My complaint about music is that even in fortresses without any visitors (which describes most of mine), the dorfs keep simulating unknown instruments, so they must have been given songs and music from other civs when they were created out of the void (dead civs => both migration waves have to consist of void dorfs).

In addition to local manufacture/trade, you can also resort to robbing visiting performers of their instruments, either directly or indirectly (such as killing them with booze, brawls, and invaders). That would be in addition to using adventure mode.
The problem with trading for instruments is that you have access to at most two additional sets of instruments, i.e. those of the trading partner civs, while other civs are out of reach.

[mikekchar]

It's so weird that your fortresses have no visitors.  I can't keep them away from mine.  I usually have over 100 visitors for my relatively small fortresses of 80 or so.  I wonder what the difference is.

But I agree that having migrants with mostly foreign culture skills sucks.  I wonder if it's just random, or whether there's some algorithm deciding what they are getting exposed to.

[PatrikLundell]

My lack of visitors is partially explainable, and partially not. I've mostly played in pocket worlds, and it seems their civs somehow have failed to generate a sufficient number of members to send out visitors. However, even when I've increased pop sizes and moved to the second smallest world size I've still had trouble. Another potential factor, which I'm not certain of, is world activation decay, i.e. civs gradually falling apart by the loss of their sites so these become owner less. I've had worlds where I've gotten something like 6 visitors early on, and then no more after that.

[Thisfox]

It's more that I get a couple of Petitions, and don't know if I should say "Yeah, everyone likes it when you sing the Camel Song, you're a talented Nebél player, you can stay" or "You tone deaf drunk, everyone hates the Camel Song, you don't know how to play an instrument to save your life, I'm saying yes to the other fellow."

I'm saying yes to all the "soldiering" ones now though, thanks.

(The Nebél is a ceramic triangle, far as I can work out. Our fortress makes them. We make a LOT of them. We haven't exported much other than Nebéls and used clothing in a long time, as those little ceramic triangles sell for a scary amount of cash, and seeing as the fort is full of them, I don't doubt someone is playing the goddamn things in the tavern).

[mikekchar]

In adventure mode, in order to join a fortress you have to audition for the mayor.  In fortress mode, I've never noticed the audition.  They performers show up in the fort, make a bee-line to the mayor, then I get a petition.  So by the time you get the petition, they haven't done anything you can observe.  Performers who show up to your pub and don't petition right away, don't ever petition in my experience.

And unfortunately, IIRC you can't see the skills of the performers when they are petitioning.  You only find out afterwards.  So you have no idea how talented (or not) the petitioner is.  To compound the problem, the petitioner may be part of a troupe and if you accept the petitioner, you accept the whole troupe.  Just pay attention to the alerts when you get visitors and cast an eye to see if 10 guys have all shown up at once (if you 'v' over them, they will identify themselves as part of a troupe, I think).

Personally, I don't tend to accept performers unless they are some interesting race.  You can manufacture performers yourself.  Most of the time I'm dreading the next migrant wave anyway.  I don't want more people.  I'll take mercenaries if they are a type that are interesting, though.  They tend to be cannon fodder...  How tough are those goblins outside?  I'll send a few mercs and find out... Mercs also come with their own equipment, so it is useful for themed fortresses where you don't want to manufacture arms, etc.

[PatrikLundell]

mikechar is correct, of course, in that petitioners haven't been observed to perform unless you have a very good memory, have studied the tavern intently, and the petitioners have been there before to perform (I fail the overseer criteria...). You can distinguish a performance troop petition from a regular one given the name and description, but on map entry, only the troupe is announced, not the members, so the only way to know how many they are is to check the "other units" screen and cross check that with announcements to see which visitors have gone unannounced, and cross check THAT with mikechar's 'v' proposal.
Legends mode can be used to see skill levels, and it can also be used to see who the members of troupes are, but usually only a subset of the living members of a troupe show up on the map (and I have no idea if an acceptance of a troupe means a retroactive acceptance of any members who happen to amble in later).

Migrant waves are not a problem for me because:
a) I usually play dead civs => two waves and that's it, and
b) When not playing dead civs I adjust the pop cap between each wave to only accept 10 new ones, until I reach my target pop.