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[Dwarf_Fever]

My first three games had mostly "ecstatic" dwarven communities with lots of friendships, I would take a loss of 5-10 dwarves in battle, and then, without fail, the rest of the fortress would murder each other off to the tune of 80+ dwarficides. As I learned from the helpful folks here, part of the solution was to try and prevent friendships from forming.

While I appreciate there are other ways to play that might not result in this situation (apparently a legendary dining room was not enough, it also needs to be so big dwarves get lost in it and never see each other) I'm pretty sure friendship mechanics are not supposed to make friendship a game stopper. Hence some thoughts:

1. If a dwarf is killed by outside forces, any dwarves "grieving" do not tantrum, instead entering a temporary stage like "melancholy."

2. In exchange, a lack of friendships might cause negative thoughts, likely triggered by dwarves with no friends being at parties, assuming they are not newcomers, ie in the very latest immigrant wave.

3. Fortresses receive a "Cohesion" rating. This is a percent measuring how many friendships there are per dwarf. Fortresses with high cohesion reduce the chance of tantrums as well as insanity. Low cohesion slightly increases the chance of tantrums and insanity.

[IT 000]

I would take a loss of 5-10 dwarves in battle, and then, without fail, the rest of the fortress would murder each other off to the tune of 80+ dwarficides.

I am skeptical. I've smashed 50 or so dwarven children, most of whom were friends with everyone in the fort. No tantrums, I just kept cranking out roasts and statues. I believe other forces are at work here. Like one fresh migrant went on a tantrum and your sheriff beat the *stew* out of him.

I'm pretty sure friendship mechanics are not supposed to make friendship a game stopper. Hence some thoughts:

That's what friends are for. To start tantrums, without having friends your fortress never would have fallen.

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Losing is Fun
Personally, I don't see how your ideas would make the game more Fun or enjoyable. I like my quick tempered dwarves, I actually get nervous when I see a flashing down red arrow.

[Dwarf_Fever]

Skeptical it happened? Lol. Why would I waste my time creating an account to post here otherwise?

Even so, there simply shouldn't be any "other forces" that cause 80 previously happy dwarves to kill each other off one after another for no good reason, with no indication of what the problem is whatsoever.

And no, anything massively stupid the AI does on its own behalf is not "good reason."

[tolkafox]

Don't let your military become friends with people. They should be busy training anyways, not socializing.

For proper reference, I just drowned my entire military. The only person that didn't like it was the person who watched them drown, he got a 'has seen death' bad thought. Everyone else didn't give a damn because they didn't know any of them. For ~SCIENCE~!

The problem here is that you don't fully understand what is going on and how to control it. If I killed that one guy you saw that one time at that one place, you wouldn't care. If I did it in front of you, you would care. If I chopped your mothers right arm (sailing in an arc) and smashed her left pinkie toe causing her to bleed to death in front of you, you would most likely go crazy. Unless you had your favorite booze in a really nice dining room.

I mean, a really nice dining room. We're talking gold statues with ruby eyes and shit.

[Lord Vetinari]

OP has merit, though. All the responses untill now are workaround, friendship and love shouldn't be avoided.

I belive that Toady has things in mind for dwarven relationships when he'll come to the personality rewrite sometime down the line; if not, the suggestions are good.

[Urist McCheeseMaker]

A friendless dorf should simply feel lonely.. have some bad thought for a social dwarf without any friends, and have baseline happiness a bit lower than right now. Any friendships could add up to an exceptional dining room's worth of happiness total, and no more. This bonus is simply withdrawn completely when a friend dies, and slowly recovers.

That way, a dorf will not go too insane from losing friends in a war, but will still be crankier and such. With a change like this, dorves are less unstable anyway so the big boosts to happiness could be toned down a bit. And that should result in a more fun game, where shiny dining rooms don't make a dwarf forgive every single problem with the damned fort he lives in, and where a dead cat does not equal BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD.

[harborpirate]

Actually that makes some sense! Dwarves that go insane would be the ones who's last friend was killed. And lonely migrants shut in the mines would be dangerously unstable.

[greenskye]

I think a couple of things could improve this situation.

1. A maximum amount of happiness that is received from social aspects. (I think all sources of happiness should have a max value; dining rooms shouldn't carry the same weight as your wife/husband's life). In this way, as stated by Urist McCheeseMaker, more friends = less important friends. If you still have 20 friends after one dies it shouldn't affect you as much.

2. More relationship types. I'm not sure, but I believe the highest you can get is "friend" right now. You should be able to have a "best friend" as well. This friend should carry more weight than your other friends. In the same vein your wife/husband should also carry a significant weight, as well as close family members.

3. I believe this already exists, but not all dwarves should care about friends in the same way. Loner dwarves should not place as much weight on friends as highly social dwarves. In the same way certain dwarves should have only a few best friends, while others have many friends, but none of them are close.

Through a couple of extensions to the current system I believe you could model some highly complex and accurate simulations of social interactions. In the future I hope relationships have more impact on other aspects of the game, such as the need to protect family/friends, cliques, family business, etc.