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[PatrikLundell]

Currently half the performance troupe members are absent from the troupes, with many of them settled somewhere to be with their masters since several decades, which doesn't really make sense.
In addition to this performance troupes seem to travel in split groups, rather than together, as you often get a single visitor (announced as an individual) who nevertheless petition on behalf of the whole group. Performance troupes ought to travel together unless there are reasons for members to lag behind, in which case they should strive to catch up and rejoin.

The reason these issues cause more trouble than they should is that petitioning performance troupes are currently bugged so that when a group petition is accepted, you often get bugged "friendly" character "returning" as a result. These characters are performance group members that weren't traveling in the "army" that petitioned, but either alone or in other "armies", and they hover around the map edge until killed by invaders, wildlife, or insanity (performance troupe members often being naked on arrival probably gives them a head start on the insanity track).

Even when the bugs are fixed, however, the troupe behavior ought to be adjusted as per the above.

[delphonso]

Right, the bug is surely in the tracker, but the troupe behavior could use some polish

I'd suggest they seek out events in history gen (showing up at races or competitions makes sense). During gameplay, I'm not sure what should motivate them in any particular direction...

[PatrikLundell]

Seeking out events at which to perform makes sense, but otherwise I'd expect them to tour in one or more circuits, visiting a set of locations along paths that return to their "base" (adjusting the path depending on the appearance and disappearance of sites [which includes sites that haven't actually disappeared, but are hostile to visitors, such as necro controlled sites and sites under gobbo rule]).

Performance troupes are presumably touring to gain fame and (virtual) coin, while doing what they (presumably) love to do. Established troupes might be more inclined to follow somewhat fixed routes to cater to their established fan base, while new ones might be more random, possibly even to the point of deciding where to go next only upon leaving a site (basing the decision on rumors of good/bad events and reception would be good in that case).

Some troupes might be wholly tour oriented (until their members grow old and weary from touring), while others might tour only to try to find a place to settle in (in the latter case they shouldn't return to the sites that rejects them every year [and certainly not multiple times], but seek out new ones instead. Grr).

[delphonso]

Makes good sense to me. I hope they make t-shirts.

Tours in the real world are often promotions for upcoming or new albums. Currently troupes might have members who make books. Perhaps they could travel and drop off books along the way? Weird, but not unfitting to the DF world.

[Leonidas]

There's a lot to fix with wandering HFs. Right now I'm studying the visitor unretirement bug, where unretiring a fort will give you a big pile of unresponsive visitors labeled as hostile. It comes from retiring a fort with the sort of activity zone that will attract HFs: definitely taverns and libraries, maybe temples and guildhalls. I'm still testing. My theory is that the bug comes from background world processing moving HFs from structure to structure without checking for hostility between the HF's government and the the structure's government.

So I think that the sort of fix that you want, Patrik, would be part of a loyalty overhaul. Toady has this complex vision of multiple overlapping loyalties, but it's only partially implemented. It sounds like your problem with performance groups is that the effect of their membership in the group is not fully implemented. Amayi the elf is a member of a civ, a worshipper of a god, an apprentice to a master, and a member of a troupe. I don't think that the logic yet exists to figure out which of those group memberships will govern her actions.

[PatrikLundell]

There are at least two cases of bugged "friendly" characters in a normal (unretired) fortress:
1. Babies born by visitors.
2. Visiting members of performance troupes not present when a troupe petition was made. In this case I think the issue is that the performance troupe members belong to an entity that supposedly has been fully incorporated into the fortress, which normally (when e.g. criminal groups are fully incorporated into other criminal groups) should result in the dissolution of the group incorporated and the transfer of the membership to the receiving entity. However, a site government is a different class of entity from a performance troupe, although probably an incompatible one (i.e. you can be a member of one, but not both at the same time), which causes issues. On top of that, the whole business of fortress members leaving and returning (as the bugged troupe members claim to do), is rather messy and buggy (citizens leaving lose the ownership of their rooms at least: I don't know if that goes for hoarded clothing and trinkets as well, and we're painfully aware of the equipment corruption bug).

In your example, the civ is an entity, as is the performance troupe. A god isn't an entity, but a religion to a god is, and that is compatible with the two others. However, I'd suspect membership of a site government, performance troupe, merchant company, mercenary company, and criminal gang/refugees are, or should be, mutually exclusive, although there is the weird case of necro site governments founding site governments that are subordinate to them, somehow (site governments can also reclaim sites, but the new site government then answers to the civ, not the founding site government). A master/apprentice relation is a personal relation, with no entity involved.
It can be noted that it's fairly common for performance troupe members to be members of enemy civs, including the gobbo civ your fortress is at war with (without being "real" spies with a false identity, etc.), and while there's no indication in the fortress game of that fact (you'd need Legends Mode info), those buggers still report straight back to their civ to let the civ know where your traps are as soon as they leave the map (killing them while still in the fortress prevents that, but you need third party tools to know they're actually enemies).