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[govod]

Neither Google or the forum search could solve my dilemma, maybe one of you can crack it? I'm playing vanilla DF version 0.42.06.

I want a world at the beginning of time, so year 5. I've disabled immigration with the population cap but I do want dwarven visitors to my tavern (mainly tavern, since I've understood scholars visiting libraries and requesting citizenship are rather more rare anyway?). So far I get humans, and only humans, every time.

I've been creating  worlds in the advanced world gen, specifically size 33x33, with a bunch of desert regions. I've tried changing the number of civs, ranging anywhere from 8 to 75, but the only real result with the higher settings was that my tavern was flooded with even more humans. I get caravans from all different races and the mountain home liaison alright and no reports of disasters or such.

I've tried embarking right next to a fortress, or between two that are close together. I've tried embarking near the home civilization and I've tried embarking near another dwarf settlement. I've tried exporting a lot of wealth, I've stocked my tavern with quality stuff, I've built bedrooms for possible long-term visitors. In my latest attempt I checked the legends mode first and found a fortress that actually has a bard and a poet in it, so at least I know for sure some do exist in this world.

If I read the Legends mode right (I don't have much experience with it), the world in year 5 doesn't have that much more humans than dwarves, yet humans seem way more eager to travel? I'd prefer not to make a dwarf-only world, the other races are fun for different reasons.

For testing purposes, I created a basic small world with 250-year history, medium number of civs, and got a few visiting fighter dwarves and one goblin. Still not a lot, but it was more than I've ever gotten with very short history.

TL;DR: Is it hopeless to get what I want in vanilla, a very short history 33x33 world with dwarven visitors but no migrants?

Thanks!

[Fleeting Frames]

I dunno. I'd say give libraries a chance, as I find dwarven fortress are where you see some typically; but in year 5 there are prolly none. (And even when there are, it's more likely going to be mostly elves with some goblins judging by my sites and pops lists.)

I certainly know of no significant way to get what you want (beyond perhaps having limited number of others and 100 dwarven civs or the like); I do have an old 42.06 medium region fort from my newbie days which has mostly dwarven scholar visitors, owing to no tavern, but it's in year 202. With a longer worldgen, I'd say perhaps aim for dwarves taking over a city/dark fortress, from inside or outside, but in 5 years there's not a whole lot of population growth beyond founding of sites.

[PatrikLundell]

To get dwarves you need mountains for them to spawn in, but I guess you already have that. Apart from that, limiting the number of titans and megabeasts limits the number of starting sites that get trashed immediately.

However, the conditions for when visitors start to be sent out from civs, and what kind of visitors that are sent out are poorly understood. I believe there is a basic "volume" requirement, i.e. civs have to be robust enough to have "spare" people, but that's about it.

[mikekchar]

If it's any consolation, I've had a fortress with very short history that had visitors -- not many (about 3-4 per year).  Never got any mercenaries, though (which was a shame, because I wanted to hire mercenaries).  Even though I embarked next to a fortress, I actually only got humans visiting me (from half way across the world).

[govod]

Thanks for the replies, guys. I have made experiments with the advanced world gen, thought that if I increased the number of civilizations but limited the max number of sites people might concentrate in one area, but sadly that did not work (guess civs like to stick to their own people). I guess there's no (easy) way to increase the number of starting people when a civilization is created? Lots of civs and sites did increase the amount of human visitors a lot, mercs and entertainers alike, though. I've decide to try another approach: playing and retiring a number of fortresses. If they don't all get destroyed, I'm hoping to eventually get visitors from my own forts.

[PatrikLundell]

Creating and retiring lots of fortresses quickly is not a good way to increase your civ's population, because the migrants to your latest fortress come from your previous ones to a large extent (when I've done it with dead civs I tend to get 5-6 of the  seven from the first fortress as members of the two migrant waves for the second one).

[govod]

To clarify, I'm not gonna retire the fortresses very quickly, and I've also turned off immigration by limiting the population cap. My plan is to pair off my dwarves as best I can, maybe get some human visitors to join, then retire the fort in maybe a decade? I just want to see if the dorfs from one fortress can visit another, maybe bring over some books.

[Fleeting Frames]

They can, dunno about books though.

You could mod dwarves to have higher max site pop number than 120 in entity_default.txt raws before generating. Haven't tried myself, though.

[mikekchar]

One thing you can try is to go adventuring.  Everybody who you meet and talk to gets a name, which makes them a historical figure.  I don't know if that will increase visitors, but it might.

[kelid190]

I've had this problem in my fortress I started in year 5 too.  Only human visitors.  I was considering trying to retire and un-retire the fortress just to get some more visitors.  The (human) ones I was getting have all started to die off; fewer and fewer visit each year, and when I made figurines about the ones I wanted to see again, I learned they'd passed away.  Are new visitors actually ever generated during fortress play or are they all gone once they're dead?

[Shonai_Dweller]

I've had this problem in my fortress I started in year 5 too.  Only human visitors.  I was considering trying to retire and un-retire the fortress just to get some more visitors.  The (human) ones I was getting have all started to die off; fewer and fewer visit each year, and when I made figurines about the ones I wanted to see again, I learned they'd passed away.  Are new visitors actually ever generated during fortress play or are they all gone once they're dead?

The world persists as you play, so yes, you should get more eventually. But check Legends to see what the actual population of your neighboring civs is. At 5 years, it's probably pretty low, and only a fraction of those will take on jobs which enable visiting (bard, merc, bandit, scholar of various disciplines). And if they're at war, the population will be even lower.

Honestly your better off letting the population grow in worldgen if you want visitors. The world won't magically create them for you, it needs population pools.

[Fleeting Frames]

Archcrystal got visitors after upgrading to 43.05 from 40.24 after centuries, for what's it is worth. Not sure if they were all elves and goblins, though.

That said, I've noticed this "quietness" as well - in one test embark, lots of wars in first 17 years, and then silence for next few decades. Couldn't find any non-player fort births in legends mode of succession world (started in year 2, currently in year ...52?) either. Flame52 noticed the world sorta dying with Bastiongate, iirc, as well.

Overall, I assume you can still get them, but there seems to be kind of downward spiral.
Perhaps adventure mode trips to talk to lot of people (to make them historical figures) is in order.

[kelid190]

Hmm.  That's interesting information, thank you for the replies.

I hadn't considered doing the adventure mode thing, I might try that.  I'd been planning to go between adventure mode and fortress mode in this fortress anyway.