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[Deus_Vult]

Hi! I've been playing Df through years but it still remains an enigma wrapped into a mystery for me. I have a ton of questions, I've been surfing forums for ages, but some  answers are not direct or obvious. I apologize and thank you, dear urists, in advance!

1. Why there is so many goblins in dwarven civilizations in the new release? What is the mechanics behind that - do the goblins now simply migrate to dwarven fortresses as if nothing is between them (does not happen in fortress mode, although necromancer are migrating in, but it is kind of a bug-feature thing IMHO). See example:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And that's like almost every other dwarven civilization. Moreover, in one of my generations, a war broke out between pure-dwarf civ and majority-goblin dwarven civ (but their kind was still dwarf!) - what's going on there?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

2. How does one tell if the fort has "dug too deep" in Legends Viewer? or even vanilla legends mode. I've seen reports of this happening now during world history, but I've generated 20+ worlds and don't see how to find such an event.

3. What groups do now exist in legends mode? Mercenaries, bandits, necromancers? I've seen necromancers form entire civilizations (still counting as site govts) by conquering others, but can mercenaries or bandits do that? Does game even tell a difference between necro's groups and bandit groups?

4. Does dwarven personality traits really mean anything in this release or not? For example, does it matter if a dwarf values honestly - will he be less likely to be bribed?

5. Do dwarves eat cheese\leaves\fruits in this release?  I remember there was a point these feature was not working

6. One of the big ones: What is the proper way of designating locations - through buildings or through zones? My tavern keeper has not been pouring drinks to anyone - could it be because tavern is designated through table? How bugged are locations?

7. What is the priority of librarian (wise man) job - should I cancel all other of his labors?

8. How does one properly set up archery ranges? Does it matter how many targets there are (i.e. will more dwarves train? I didnt see difference). I know I should designate each one separately, but should I just put them in one room or separate by long rows of walls? My dwarves very rarely use them in training though. Should it inter-lap with barracks location?

This is like tip of iceberg, game is amazing and surprizingly complex. Honestly, if there was only legends mode, that would be stupidly great too.

[Ziusudra]

2. In vanilla legends mode, in the history of a site, the line that reads:

In the early winter of 34, The Mysterious Volcano of The Autumnal Stockade breached the Underworld at Floorchant.

[PatrikLundell]

Goblins get into non goblin civs through conquest, i.e. they lived at a site (conquered or otherwise), that was conquered by a non goblin civ, and became members of that civ. From there they're free to migrate to other non goblin civs, as they're now members of civs that are not directly hostile.

Wars can start between civs for various reasons. Humans are probably the "masters" at that, and elves are probably the most "inept". One buggy way for wars (including civil ones) to start is for two groups attacking the same site, which was under enemy control when the groups set out, with the first one taking it over and the second one then attacking the new non enemy controllers of the site.

4. Personality affects how easy it is to bribe characters. On the other hand, villains currently take no risks when failing.

5. Never heard of it. As far as I know they eat all edible things in fortress mode (except vermin, unless starving [except creepy crawler meat if you butcher crawlers]). Note that I don't consider meat from sapients to be edible, for this purpose.

6. I believe you can use either, but doing both for the same location results in a bookkeeping error (things in chests are counted twice). In order to serve booze the inn poisoners have to have access to mugs assigned to the inn: general ones are not used (and inn mugs aren't used for general use). However, the general trend is for DF to move towards zones.

[feelotraveller]

7. Yes, it is best to cancel all their other labours since distractions can set back their scholarly progress substantially (particularly at low academic levels).  To do both consider multi-month periods where they either labour at other jobs or carry out scholarly pursuits.  Or just leave them as full-time scholars. 

[Ziusudra]

2. In vanilla legends mode, in the history of a site, the line that reads:

In the early winter of 34, The Mysterious Volcano of The Autumnal Stockade breached the Underworld at Floorchant.

Also in vanilla legends mode in the Underground Regions section, the underworld areas breached into will be listed and selecting one of those will list any sites that breached that area.

[Shonai_Dweller]

2)
While in Legends mode, press 'p' to export information, then open the text file "xxxworld_history.txt" which will have been made in your dwarf fortress folder. New civs generated from circus breakthroughs (always goblins in vanilla) appear at the very bottom of the list. The year in which the first ruler of that civ begin their rule is the year of the circus breakthrough. That makes it much easier to locate in Legends mode. (The first battle fought by that civ will be the takeover of the site where the breakthrough happened).

That's much faster than exporting xml to Legends Viewer or searching Legends Mode lists.

[delphonso]

1. Patrick got this right - they were probably conquered and became citizens. It looks a bit strange, but it makes that civ a lot stronger - more citizens (ones that don't die of old age, too.) War and conflict seems to be more common in this version, so perhaps this situation is more common as well.
It's unlikely the war started because one dwarven civ had a lot of goblins and the other didn't.

3. I'm unsure about this one as well, and would be interested to see more answers related to it. I think Mercenary companies can't - as they are hired out by other groups. Bandits often control camps and caves, so I suppose it's possible they conquer a village - like kobolds do occasionally.

8. Unless something has changed in the latest version, only one archery range per zone will be used. So if you have 3 in a line, you should designate all three as ranges to ensure all three are used. A straight walking line is necessary to the range, and a dwarf must be able to stand at least one space away from it (to benefit from practice). If all those are true, then you should be good. I generally do a big square room with a wall of ranges on one side. You can probably overlap this with your training area, but I don't know if there are any range accidents that can happen (perhaps dodging into a shot.)

Also, if you channel out the edge of the room - any arrows that hit the wall and fall down won't break and can be used again. It's a nice time saver.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Worth noting that crossbow dwarves seem to practice on the range more as they grow more experienced. Don't forget to set the direction of shooting and mark it to (t)rain for your crossbow squad. Make sure they all have bolts and quivers too.

Remember while they're not on the range, they're still training in the regular barracks. It's the same as the way you don't see melee dwarves sparring all of the time.

[Deus_Vult]

Thank you all for your generous answers!
Another question arose - do I have to stockpile alcohol in tavern for tavern keeper to be able to serve it around? It seems like so, with mugs assigned of course.

Now for the goblin-dominated dvarwen nations. Throughout many generation attempts, especially on 500+ history worlds, goblins infiltrate absolutely all societies. Here's another dwarven civ from 600 yo OP world, and a couple of elven, both absolutelly outnumbered by their goblin compatriots.
Dwarves:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Elves:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Here's another elven civ, this one is interesting because despite there being only one elf for 330 gobbos, almost all officials are elven. This is kind of Orwellian.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also, I checked as per Shonai_Dweller advised, and it seems in the entire 600 history of world nobody breached the underworld. Curious. That might be possible because they were too busy repelling necromancers. Also another reason, is I limited caves to 1 (to save FPS, really is it that important to have all three caves if there's enough layers?)

I uploaded archived history of this world, if anybody is willing to help investigate reasons with me.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3mduhiqeffl994z/REG21history.rar?dl=0

[Shonai_Dweller]

That's very rare. I've never had a world where the circus isn't breached at least once. It only happens at dwarf fortresses, and only dwarves can manage it, so if dwarves are doing poorly or don't have many sites you might not see much.

Try a world in 47.01 for mass circus breaching. That was just silly.

[PatrikLundell]

As far as I know you don't need booze stockpiles in the inn for serving. In fact, one advice to reduce the serving rate (and associated poisoning) is to have the inn far from the booze stockpile.

There's a bug that causes candy spires that's set to reach a cavern which isn't present in the world to disappear completely. However, only a minority of the spires do that, and it would not be unexpected if the abstract site management of non player fortresses would be completely oblivious of that bug, and thus still produce those spires (possibly causing "interesting" effects on a reclaim attempt, with the potential of producing a breach through a non existent pillar). Apart from that, "intentional" spire breaches are new, and so are any potential bugs with the system (accidental breaching happened as far back as at least 0.40.24 when a fortress layout accidentally happened to shear through a pillar).