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[SaD-82]

The questions in regard to reviving dead dwarven civs are many, I know, but this one in particular I didn't see anywhere:
Did someone experience reviving a dead civ by bringing war to other civs?

The reason behind this question is:
I've rolled a world, looked at legends viewer and legends mode to get a feel for it and tried to decide which civs could be the chosen targets to play a bigger role (forced by me and my dwarves in adventure/fortress mode). The usual stuff. In legends viever I saw that there was one dead dwarven civ. Dead is dead, not just merely dying, and legends viewer confirmed it. And by starting with adv. mode (my usual setup for starting many, many games in a certain world) I couldn't choose this civ (I couldn't choose another civ which states that this civ is dying - and it's the most intersting civ I've encountered in a long time: Just one fort at the outskirts of a sprawling evil landscape , completely surrounded by mountains, cut off from the rest of the world with no interactions between any other civs - lost by time and space and in constant warfare against the monstrous beasts sitting alongside them in this huge bowl of terrifying and haunted tundra. My fingers itch at the thought of bringing this dwarven entity back to life by forming more fortresses inside this big crater filled with husks and unimaginable terror...but that's another story.).

Some weeks passed, my adventure retired (forcefully by a decapitating blow - I guess, a night troll isn't just someone who loves memes at night) and I looked at legends again.
The dead dwarven civ got a king.
Which was struck by a human in a freshly started war.
The dead civ immediatly got a new king.
I looked closer.

The dead dwarven civ once was eaten by an elven civ (not just literally). Surviving dwarves got part of an elven group inside the civ but remained part of their dwarven civ (but not of their particular dwarven groups which were replaced by the elven one). So far, so good.

If I embark with this dead civ, some time in the future my king will show up and live by my side. (Or he will be replaced by some of my dwarves if he decides to die by another human as his predecessor did.) The relevant question now is:
If I start a war with the elven civ (and the particular elven group of which my king is part of), logic says that my king will become enemy of said civ (and group) and will no longer be part of it. Instead he will be just part of my group and the dwarven civ. Ongoing from this thought: Is it possible to revive the dwarven civ by just starting a war and breaking free from the treehuggers? (I know that you need more: More people, more places, more bureaucracy, more of all to bring back a civ from dying - but is it possible to bring the civ to just dying by starting the war? I could test this, yes, but I don't want to screw things up, if my thoughts are correct, therefore I would need planning and some "precausions". If someone else experienced the same situation I would love to hear what happended in their histories and to their civs.)

[AtTheFinComrade]

If you can't play in Adventure Mode with the dying civ, it's likely that the one fortress it seemingly owns is actually occupied by a bandit organisation that's an offshoot of the civ and not a loyal local government. That is common for dying but not dead civs since bandit sites will not be targeted by wars but keep their parent civ from being declared dead.

If the king dies during fortress mode, a new king or queen might be elected from your fortress population but a living monarch living outside your fort will never move in unless your fort becomes a metropolis and you reach the requirements. (For which you need an outpost laison whom you won't initially have.)

I don't think declaring war on the elven civ will kick your king out of his group. If the king is living in a site conquered by it, the civ is probably already at war with yours anyway.

You can bring back dying civs, but not dead ones. If you conquer at least one site and allow some of your dwarves to live there, land holders and civ-level administration (general, diplomat and outpost laison) will be elected there after a few months, essentially rendering your civ alive again. Be aware that enemy civs can attack and even reconquer sites you conquered. Curiously, the merchants of the autumn caravan can become land holders if you don't conquer anything in the first few months.

To conquer sites, I prefer "demand surrender" over "attack and conquer" since it doesn't involve a fight and thus no risk of losing dwarves even in case of failure. It also allows you to conquer sites with armed and untrained squads. You don't really need planning. Try to conquer sites with low population first and let some trained soldiers be stationed there to prevent the sites from being reconquered.

If you are concerned about ruining something, make a backup of the world before fortress mode.

[SaD-82]

If you can't play in Adventure Mode with the dying civ, it's likely that the one fortress it seemingly owns is actually occupied by a bandit organisation that's an offshoot of the civ and not a loyal local government. That is common for dying but not dead civs since bandit sites will not be targeted by wars but keep their parent civ from being declared dead.

The dying civ isn't the one I'm talking about - and the dying civ isn't occupied by bandits. With this civ all is well, just dying. No reason to bother wth it. 

I don't think declaring war on the elven civ will kick your king out of his group. If the king is living in a site conquered by it, the civ is probably already at war with yours anyway.

That is the relevant part. If someone tried a similar thing I would love to hear about it, as the elven civ isn't in a state of war with any groups founded by the dwarven civ. It's all cozy and nice. Therefore my question. If the king is just part of our civ and our group then there should be no problem to generate a liaison - maybe just in a second fort, but there would be no restriction by wrong civ and wrong site living in it.

Don't get me wrong, I thank you for your answer but your answer consisted of things I already knew, which weren't part of the question and educated guesses. I would just love to hear facts by someone who tried/experienced the same. Thank you, nonetheless.

[PatrikLundell]

A fortress from a truly dead civ can't start wars due to a bug. You can send squads out, but they never arrive anywhere, presumably because army movement is performed by the civ rather than the site (at least that's what I think is the reason). If a king exists for a civ it isn't truly dead, but presumably "just" out of sites your adventurer could start in. Finally, if there is a dwarven civ that isn't truly dead in the world, you can't embark in fortress mode as the dead civ, as it's culled from the list of selectable civs (it's fairly easy to add the civ to the list and embark with it using DFHack).

If you want to play around I second AtTheFinComrade's suggestion of making a backup of the world before experimenting.

[SaD-82]

A fortress from a truly dead civ can't start wars due to a bug.

That's disappointing.
Although - can't war be declared? I mean: The civ I want to wage war against is an elven civ. Elves, trees, axes -> sad elven faces, war declared by them. This would involve some save scumming as there are 9 elven civs in total which are centered around themselves, but, sometime, I would get the correct civ. But...
Another reason to postpone testing as all of these tests would involve massive amount of time. Again and again. If noone ever was in a similar situation and tried the same I will have to test it or abandon the idea. Unfortunately, but well...

[AtTheFinComrade]

After browsing legends in one of my worlds, I found a queen that's member of my dwarven civ but also a goblin group of a civ that's at war with mine. So enemy groups will not expel your dwarves.

As for dead civs not being able to declare war; well, your able to provoke elven civs by killing diplomats and stealing from caravans and they will eventually declare war and lay siege to your fort which you can fight off, but if the civ is really dead like you say, you will never be able to attack back. If you still want to play a rebuilding-a-dead-civ-scenario you could try to generate new worlds unless you find one with a not-quite-dead dwarven civ.

[SaD-82]

If you still want to play a rebuilding-a-dead-civ-scenario you could try to generate new worlds unless you find one with a not-quite-dead dwarven civ.

That's not what I want - maybe I should get way more clear to prevent helpful tips for which I haven't ask (seriously, I appreciate your help by mentioning things which new players maybe want to know):
I play DF since 40d, since 2009. That's a decade of knowledge. This I mention to give a short overview that if I want to ask for specific things I only ask for them. 

After browsing legends in one of my worlds, I found a queen that's member of my dwarven civ but also a goblin group of a civ that's at war with mine. So enemy groups will not expel your dwarves.

Depends.
In the end they are goblins, therefore you are at war with them by default. At least in fortress mode, not in adventure mode - there you are at war if this goblin civ is actually (by legends mode standard) at war with your own civ. Therefore it would be interesting to see a human/elven civ becoming an enemy in the course of a fortress mode run to see if any member of your own civ who are part of some of their groups will lose their group-rating and by legends mode standard are listed as "former member".
The reason because I have hopes in this is: The changing in civ membership happens in world gen and while forwarding time. Running an adventure or a fortress counts as "time-forwarding" regarding the rest of the world. (In 34.xx the changing in civ membership did function in adventure mode, too, but this - sadly - changed). And goblins? Well, they have different rules concerning kidnapping and counting as in war.


Edit:
The changing in civ membership would be just one way. The other one would be the already mentioned one: Waiting that the current king dies and one of my dwarfves get voted into kingship. Then there would be an actual king without any bonds to the elven civ.
The whole situation is kinda puzzling because:
The dwarven civ is dead. It has a site (a camp) which could be used by dwarves who survived the war with the elven civ but instead they (two dwarves in total + the king who died while I ran my adventurer) never used it as a retreat option. The most puzzling thing though: The dead king was appointed king while I ran my adventurer. Before there was no king (the last one died some fifty years ago while defending against the elves - the throne was vacant for fifty years and suddenly there was a new king).
I guess I really have to test this mess.

[delphonso]

You can find and talk with the king. In my revival of a dead civ game, my queen is part of a poetry group in the elven civ that destroyed us. Because of that, I think she falls outside of civs, but has duties keeping her inside the elven civ. If we were to attack the site, the calculations would likely ignore 'visitors' like her. Since you can't go to war with performance groups, I don't think ejection is possible.

[PatrikLundell]

If a civ has members it isn't dead. In addition to this, DF's accounting is bugged, so civs that should be dead still won't be if you play them, because the entity population is still positive (and unchanging), despite not having had any hist figs for centuries, no sites, and nothing happening. It's possible to kill a civ that should be dead by hacking the entity population to be zero during world gen (doing it after world finalization, and usually just before that as well, doesn't have any effect).

[SaD-82]

In my revival of a dead civ game, my queen is part of a poetry group in the elven civ that destroyed us. Because of that, I think she falls outside of civs, but has duties keeping her inside the elven civ.

That's an interesting thought. I didn't see anything related to that in legends (mode and viewer), but it sounds interesting enough to give it a go.

If a civ has members it isn't dead.

"It shouldn't be dead" - with this I could agree. The problem is: Never getting a caravan and never get any migration waves beyond the first two harcoded ones are signs of a dead civ, too. Well - no caravans, no migration waves beyond the first two hardcoded ones (this was easy enough to test). Dead or dying?
As I mentioned, something is quite puzzling: The fact that out of thin air a new king was appointed after 50 years without one. (And this change in leadership of a dead civ in game terms lead me to these questions. If the game can create something out of nothing (and even it it would be just a bug), then the player could do something similar by understanding what lead to this and trying to recreate things or pushing forward existing ones.)

Edit:
The "no members thing" won't be the only sign which the game uses to determine whether a civ is dead - if a civ has no groups left the game assumes (I assume) that there are no members, because all members have to be in a group by default. There are dead civs with surviving members who are outlaws but without real groups belonging to said civs. Or dead civs who were conquered and eaten by another civ. The original civ is dead because there are no groups left - this is the case I'm talking about. In game terms and by any observations of the game itself, said civ is dead.

Edit No.2:
And now it gets really interesting.
Remember that I mentioned there is one site left which belongs to the dwarven civ? A camp?
Browsing legends it revealed that said camp was founded in a time before time by a dwarven group. This group never had any members nor other related historical events. A blank group so to speak. All other dwarven civs (8 in total) don't had something similar. Their first sites were created in year 1 and all of these were fortresses. Created by actual groups.
Maybe this is the reason for this whole situation?
Well, it seems that I have to test another thing (sigh) by claiming this camp with an adventurer (and either retiring him there or retiring him in a newly founded fortress of mine belonging to the dwarven civ in question) and seeing if this will change something regarding to the kingship.

[PatrikLundell]

It's possible to fail to get both caravans and migrants for a living civ, especially a "struggling" one, and it happens from time to time. The only sure sign I know of is that the civ screen's civ screen is completely empty at embark (normally you'll find your own civ and your fortress there). Your civ and fortress gets added to a dead civ's list of civs as soon as you get into "real" contact with any other civ (i.e. attacks of any kind or caravans).
Also, the appearance of a monarch is a common sign of a "struggling" civ, in particular those that should be dead but aren't, although in those cases the new monarch (almost?) always get elected (using one of two processes) in the only site owned by the civ within two years.

It's true that the sum of the group members of a civ should sum up to the civ's own count, but it doesn't, as that accounting is bugged. Toady is aware of it, but not why it doesn't work properly, beyond that it's rather messy.

If it's true that a civ can be dead despite having hist figs (that can become monarchs, on top of that) it's a novel discovery (which isn't impossible, as we don't know exactly how it's intended to work, let alone how it actually works with various bugs in play).

[delphonso]

That's an interesting thought. I didn't see anything related to that in legends (mode and viewer), but it sounds interesting enough to give it a go.
...
Remember that I mentioned there is one site left which belongs to the dwarven civ? A camp?
Browsing legends it revealed that said camp was founded in a time before time by a dwarven group. This group never had any members nor other related historical events. A blank group so to speak. All other dwarven civs (8 in total) don't had something similar. Their first sites were created in year 1 and all of these were fortresses. Created by actual groups.

I didn't realize our glorious Queen Shorast was in a troupe until I met her in person and asked to join her (thinking it'd make my bark scorpion man a member of our civ) - only after I looked at the legends of bark scorpion man did I see the troupe listed. It wasn't in her own personal history in legends viewer.

The camp established at the beginning of time - I guess - is some sort of place-holder retroactively added to civs with no sites in the world creation process. I generated several worlds trying to find a dead civ with interesting terrains and notable historical elements. Several of the dead/dying/struggling/populated by a single goblin dwarven civs still had a single site - always a camp established before time.