Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Crab]

Does anyone have a problem populating maps of larger than Small with roughly equal race populations? I find that the more civs there are, the more and more goblins outnumber every other race. At 15 civs, the goblin:other parity is okay-ish sometimes by year 125, when I normally stop, but for a medium map that's a pretty empty map. At 20 civs, goblins begin to get out of control. I think there are roughly two reasons. The first is that goblins seem to reproduce really fast which combined with being immortal gets a bit silly. The second is that goblins almost never seem to lose wars or battles, so they wipe other civs out really quickly.

I did a sample of 50 Medium world generations with standard settings (other than civs, which were set to Low (20)) to 125 years, and found on average that 2.6 civs went extinct, most frequently a kobold civ, then a human, then a dwarven, then an elven, then a goblin. The overwhelming cause of civ extinction was war (92%), followed by forgotten beast/megabeast (8%). Only 1 goblin civ in the entire sample was wiped out through war (to an elven civ). The average population was 23,232 goblins; 4,745 elves, 3,830 dwarves, 3,712 humans, and 826 kobolds. I've not done a sample test for higher settings as my potato would take forever at it, but using custom settings that are otherwise the same as a standard Medium and doing 3-4 tests, more civs makes this problem worse not better as the ratio of goblins to civs increases as the number of civs increases.

Does this not seem a little crazy to everyone else? Is there nothing that can be done about it?

[greycat]

Does this not seem a little crazy to everyone else? Is there nothing that can be done about it?

There seems to be a fundamental problem with conflicting goals.  Toady is aiming to create a world simulator, and that includes simulating goblins that are somehow balanced against the other races.  But in order to make fortress mode interesting, players (and Toady) want huge waves of goblin invaders.

So, on the one hand, you have player-created fortresses which are essentially impenetrable deathtraps for invading goblins (unless the player is inexperienced, or is intentionally letting the goblins have a prayer of winning).  This means goblins need to be numerous and aggressive -- aggressive, because why would you throw yourself on the gigantic obsidian + steel + magma dwarf fortress when you could stay home raising your children and writing songs?  Numerous, because once the first hundred goblins have done this, who's going to follow them?

Then on the other hand, you have these aggressive, numerous goblins running amok in world generation, before the player steps in.  How do you keep these goblins from destroying the other races?

I don't have any answers.

[Crab]

Does this not seem a little crazy to everyone else? Is there nothing that can be done about it?

There seems to be a fundamental problem with conflicting goals.  Toady is aiming to create a world simulator, and that includes simulating goblins that are somehow balanced against the other races.  But in order to make fortress mode interesting, players (and Toady) want huge waves of goblin invaders.

So, on the one hand, you have player-created fortresses which are essentially impenetrable deathtraps for invading goblins (unless the player is inexperienced, or is intentionally letting the goblins have a prayer of winning).  This means goblins need to be numerous and aggressive -- aggressive, because why would you throw yourself on the gigantic obsidian + steel + magma dwarf fortress when you could stay home raising your children and writing songs?  Numerous, because once the first hundred goblins have done this, who's going to follow them?

Then on the other hand, you have these aggressive, numerous goblins running amok in world generation, before the player steps in.  How do you keep these goblins from destroying the other races?

I don't have any answers.

Surely just make AI sites likely to resist goblin wins? I don't really object to there being 25,000 goblins so that they can regularly send 200-strong sieges at me, I just object when that 25,000 means that the number of elves, humans and dwarves is rather low indeed. I like to embark with all three available neighbours and a healthy dwarven civ so getting the monarch is a good challenge; but the propensity of goblins to make other civs go extinct really makes that rather more difficult.

[Dunamisdeos]

Does this not seem a little crazy to everyone else? Is there nothing that can be done about it?

There seems to be a fundamental problem with conflicting goals.  Toady is aiming to create a world simulator, and that includes simulating goblins that are somehow balanced against the other races.  But in order to make fortress mode interesting, players (and Toady) want huge waves of goblin invaders.

So, on the one hand, you have player-created fortresses which are essentially impenetrable deathtraps for invading goblins (unless the player is inexperienced, or is intentionally letting the goblins have a prayer of winning).  This means goblins need to be numerous and aggressive -- aggressive, because why would you throw yourself on the gigantic obsidian + steel + magma dwarf fortress when you could stay home raising your children and writing songs?  Numerous, because once the first hundred goblins have done this, who's going to follow them?

Then on the other hand, you have these aggressive, numerous goblins running amok in world generation, before the player steps in.  How do you keep these goblins from destroying the other races?

I don't have any answers.

Surely just make AI sites likely to resist goblin wins? I don't really object to there being 25,000 goblins so that they can regularly send 200-strong sieges at me, I just object when that 25,000 means that the number of elves, humans and dwarves is rather low indeed. I like to embark with all three available neighbours and a healthy dwarven civ so getting the monarch is a good challenge; but the propensity of goblins to make other civs go extinct really makes that rather more difficult.

Maybe have settlements that reach town size start to build walls? Sites with complete walls could be immune to raids/ambushes in worldgen, and get bonuses to full on sieges.

[NorkasAradel]

Maybe have settlements that reach town size start to build walls?

Walls are already a thing in very mature cities, but I don't know if they help in a siege.

As for the OP, I made goblins extremely short-lived. Perhaps I should also up their breeding speed so they can stay competitive, but again, i'm not sure.

[quekwoambojish]

To help reduce goblin war mongers, only generate 1 or 2 demon types.

This prevents multiple goblin civilizations from spawning in world gen making them less of an issue.

[SyrusLD]

I made goblins have to eat in one world gen (later removing it again during playing the fortress). It also reduced the numbers to a proper level. Not sure if that was a the reason why all invaders were untrained and weak - or it was just that in the previous version sieges were always quite weak.


If goblins at least got better at combat with age. It's like no civ actually gets some decent fighters, they all throw recruits at each other until one side dies of old age. Which won't be the goblins. And they probably also throw their pets at each other, which is why the goblins always win - they like trolls.

[sirdanilot]

What is the idea behind making gobs immortal?

[kingsableye]

I have struggled with this problem before (during 40.xx) and recently, with some failures and success.
If you can carry this over to 42.xx I think I have figured out some things that impact world generation, at least a little.

First off, I made Goblins eat. They have the tag for BONECARN but also the NO_EAT and NO_DRINK tags, which I find strange (so simply removing these NO_xx tags will make them eat meat). Doing this will limit their population growth; from what I've been told and understand, population growth is partially determined by food available. Goblins don't eat so they just keep generating more and more food, but never actually consume it.

Second, I made them mortal. It seemed silly that Goblins have the potential to outlive dwarves. I usually put their lower limit at the upper limit of humans, and their upper limit as the lower limit of dwarves. This seems to have a minor impact, really only being useful for older worlds, and I have noticed that most Goblin (and really most beings, especially in early world gen and younger worlds) die from violent events.

I've only generated a dozen or so Medium worlds with this, most under 250 years. It reduces goblin population by about 25% from what one would expect in a world with unmodified gobbos. So instead of 22,000 of Goblins, there will be ~17,500. This was in DF 40.xx.
In DF 40.xx there was still the world-gen bug where attackers always one battles and so goblins were able to conquer more sites and increase their population thusly (so that might be why the numbers didn't change as much).

When I have more time I plan on generating more viable sample amounts to really see what is making the numbers change, and by how much. As well as case studies for other races, and whether or not changing troll population growth is possible (100 Goblins isn't a large force, but if you add 800 trolls they have a decent chance at beating those 300 elves and 900 bears).

[Vattic]

What is the idea behind making gobs immortal?

Think it just fits with Toady and Threetoe's conception of goblins. There has been talk, in DF Talk methinks, that they aren't of this world having been brought through portals from strange places by evil forces.

[Urlance Woolsbane]

What is the idea behind making gobs immortal?

Think it just fits with Toady and Threetoe's conception of goblins. There has been talk, in DF Talk methinks, that they aren't of this world having been brought through portals from strange places by evil forces.

"Look at the sky! Are we in the underworld?"

[Libash_Thunderhead]

Try reducing types of demons in world gen settings to see if it helps reducing goblins as well.

[Diamond]

How is it a bad thing, though? I personally used to split goblins into several races - snow/sand/mountain/forest, sieging in different seasons. I even manged to get some fighting others at one point, messing with ethics. If someone competent in modding can explain how to do that again, it can potentially be a nice solution.