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[levraininjaneer]

Hi

This time, I decided to recommend a dwarf with another 40 years or so of life left in him.

But alas, he is currently single. Heterosexual, but single.

The fortress is currently at its cap of about 60 dwarves. My strategy is to get the Baron married to the planter lady - also heterosexual and single, now about 80 years old. Then, as winter starts, I'll raise the pop cap and child cap.

However, I've never tried to get a dwarf to marry. I've cleared all the labors of both parties, so they have plenty of free time to get to know each other (though for now they seem to be catching up on some reading).

Any advice on arranging a marriage?

[Repseki]

Assuming they are both within 10 years of each others ages, and have compatible personalities, you should be able to setup a double bedroom/dining room/meeting area to burrow them in along with some food and drink.

[PatrikLundell]

It sounds your chosen bride won't cut it, as there's a 10 years max age difference, as Repseki said.
The way I do it is to first cross my fingers and hope at least one of the two has any kind of relation to the other one (obviously excluding a grudge, and probably any family relation, such as cousin or uncle/aunt). Once there is at least a tenuous relation in at least one direction (they're not always mutual), I burrow both of them in a room (typically their bedroom) with a bed each beside each other as well as food and booze, and lock the door. The room is painted as a tavern (adding it to the normal one works fine). The tavern serves both the purpose of attracting the prospective partners to the room, and as a socializing engine for them to really get to know each other. It should take less than half a year for them to marry (frequently a lot less), and you can check on their relation progress from time to time.
If I attempt the same procedure with two strangers they'll chat for however long they're locked up, but have always remained strangers when let out.
It's not unusual for the booze to run out, so you need to check on your couple from time to time. You can then unlock the door and extend the burrow with a little piece over a food/booze stockpile. They should run out, sate the need, and return for more socializing.

Once they're married, a very similar strategy can be used to induce them to procreate: Once they're in the (locked) room, remove the taverns so they're not socializing. They should get bored and do what bored, married people do when no interesting alternatives are available (such as lightning knocking the TV out). Procreation happens when both parties are in the "No job" state and adjacent to each other.  If DFHack is available it's possible to check for pregnancy, otherwise I let them have a few shift arounds so the get a number of adjacent periods. I then remove the burrow, unlock the door, and hope to get a dorfling 9 months later, which I usually do.

It can be noted that the new needs system interacts poorly with both burrows and military duties, with overridable needs still taking precedence over boring things like killing invaders. I've had MANY cases of burrowed dorfs running to their burrow, eat, exit and pray, go back to the burrow, drink, desert to meditate, ...

[Dunamisdeos]

Once you have two dwarves that are fully compatible, I highly recommend a love shack.

This being a 2x2 room with a bed and a quantum stockpile of food and drink. Lock em' in, and they have nothing to do but socialize. I've seen marriage anywhere within 3 months to as little as 1 month.

[levraininjaneer]

Wow, thanks so much for the help.

I didnt know about the 10 year gap. So, the planter is out by 4 years or so. In fact, no one was eligible. So I drowned some haulers and made the pop cap a bit higher. New migrants arrived. Among them, a heterosexual lady of appropriate age. However, she's married.

Will it work to drown the husband?
Or can I try to engineer an extramarital pregnancy?

[PatrikLundell]

Short answer: No and no.

Dorfs marry for life and do not remarry, so widow(er)s are thus reproductive duds. They're also totally unlike RL humans in that they're faithful and that they use contraceptives 100% of the time while in the lover state.

If you're on an old DF version for which DFHack is available you can use DFHack to change the age of creatures to get them in range.
You can also use DFHack to make unwilling dorfs willing to commit to marriage (as well as just check if they're unwilling).

[levraininjaneer]

Yup, I'm playing with dfhack in v 42.06.

I can read the docs for dfhack, but can you save me some time and tell me how to adjust age?

[Daris]

If you want to go the DFHack route, just use the nb_family_affairs plugin to practice arranged marriages.

[PatrikLundell]

Daris' suggestion is probably the better one.

Without that I'd try gui/gm-editor on a selected creature (can be done from the units lists as well). Somewhere is that mass of data is the creature's date of birth which can be modified (I've never done it myself, so I don't know offhand where it's located).