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[mightymushroom]

"Unless Dwarf was already max-stressed out by other factors." — This is the difficulty for investigating insanity and red arrows. Stress is known to be stored as a perpetual sum. The bucket in your analogy is not checked on a month-by-month basis; the bucket is never emptied. Thus reaching the breaking point represents the accumulated total of all things that a dwarf has experienced since the first tick they entered the embark.

Dwarf Fortress doesn't show that sum in any meaningful way, only the recent thoughts and a handful of long term memories. There is a terrible information deficit here. Meaning that, yes, a dwarf may sit at 99,999 for quite a while until a single drop of rain pushes them over.

This is why Loci's experiment is so compelling: it is deliberately set up to exclude all thoughts that are not from focus needs. And when it is run, dwarfs don't accumulate significant stress relative to other known or suspected causes. (I recall it was something like 6 points in ten years, when the danger mark is ~100,000)

(The perpetual sum method makes it just as easy to go the other way; as it did prior to the stress & memories rewrite of 0.44.10, when the majority of dwarves accumulated such a deep reserve of good thoughts over a lifetime that they were in a state of bliss no matter the circumstances. I would be surprised if such a method can ever be mathematically "balanced" across a suitably wide range of play styles to give meaningful, non-extreme stories to the bulk of the DF audience.)

[Sver]

I would be surprised if such a method can ever be mathematically "balanced" across a suitably wide range of play styles to give meaningful, non-extreme stories to the bulk of the DF audience.

The proposed solutions were either to keep the "bucket", but include a seasonal "normalization" counter (pulling the stress towards the indifferent zero), or to get rid of the "bucket" and use memories instead. But so far it seems that Toady went with the route of adding more sources of decreasing the stress rather (e.g. better socialization, priest consolation). Which is good in its own right, but definitely doesn't work on saves from older versions, such as the one in this thread.

[Sarmatian123]

1. Dwarves in old saves (our favorites to return to) fare worse with reboot of stress system, then newly created embarks. Missing functionality on old maps maybe? I had fresh new embark on largest map with 0.47.03 and I played it on 0.47.04 and for 5 years, despite rain (there was no cave adaptation or any serious conflict), there was not even 1 single distressed Dwarf and I did not even set up library. On embark  started on 0.40.24 and then played for 5 years and forgotten about for a while, the first year (the 6th of the game time) after ignoring petitions for guildhalls, I got sea of red arrows. Every 2nd or 3rd Dwarf had red arrow. There were other issues as well. Not all Dwarves had their rooms for example. I had to restart and redo everything by prioritizing needs first. Then I never had more psychos at once then 9 for whole 20 years. So situation was and still is somehow manageable on this old embark missing functionality like library for example.

2. Luci's experiment, which I downloaded, is intriguing, but faulty and inconclusive. It leaves more questions, then gives answers to. Even if statistics is no base to make any proof for scientific theories, it could show at least some indications for some answers.

a) Test has 7 Dwarves instead of 100 Dwarves for a smallest statistical study. 7 Dwarves can not possibly cover any significant portion of personalities existing in Dwarves. Indeed, how many personalities can be formed by attribute system?

For example in adventure I shaped my Dwarven peasant to have exactly 2 needs, which were fulfilled instantly with smashing 2 stones. I did it every 2 days and my Dwarf had always a perfect focus. Still for duration of 1 year my Dwarf was crying every single day. Even, when I got him company of woodcutter-followers and home was his old village, more then location due crashing to desktop bug with animals. I was thinking, if I did not miss something, when shaping his needs...

b) Test lasts only 10 years, when some strange effects of stress are visible only after 20 years with rain, sun/cave adaptation, injuries and angry arguments on top. It could be so, that a period of 100 years would be a better show case for long embarks. What if stress-increments from needs are very tiny to be noticeable on their own in just 10 years?

c) These 7 Dwarves idle. There is a hidden mechanic in DF about activities. For example scholar pulling lever in library, gets obsessive thoughts about such activity and then writes some book on this topic. Test Dwarves should perform perpetually an utterly meaningless activity, like hauling or pulling a lever. Most Dwarves I canned were compelled to obsessive hauling at cost even of fulfilling their needs.

d) There is issue, that all those Dwarves are not legendary in their skills and did not fulfilled their life goal. Maybe fulfilled legendariers react differently, as they expect higher status maybe? Also all 7 test Dwarves are military. We would need at least half of them to be peasants and craftsmen. Queen, commander and captains are nobility and are accessed through noble screen. Don't nobility differentiate in behavior from workers? Though I had two sheriffs in my 20 old game going nuts one after another. First had issue with missing chains, which hit him hard emotionally. Second had traits set against police work and keeping peace. Still commander or other captains never flipped into stress. Maybe military commanders and captains (exception captain of guard/sheriff) never flip emotionally?

3. If bad thoughts from focus interfere with stress recovery, then this is one certain connection of focus with stress. Without bad thoughts from needs, maybe stress could go down on its own? So, removing focus and its needs from stress mechanics is still a valid observation so far. Isn't it?

[mightymushroom]

Old saves are indeed almost certainly missing niceties that modern dwarves expect. I can't comment directly on what happened in your game without seeing it in more detail, but fulfilling a need often produces a 'good' (stress reducing) emotion at the same time: e.g. "Urist felt euphoria after praying to Armok McGod." So it may be that needs-related activity is a powerful piece of combatting stress even if unfilled needs do not directly cause stress to climb.

I strongly suspect this is why some players are reporting an improved stress situation in the 47.xx releases, with measures to improve how dwarves socialize, since socialization is an important source of both social/friend/family needs filling and a spark for some of the strongest good thoughts&memories such as getting married or having children. For that matter, merely having a pleasant conversation can produce a minor good thought, and those add up over time. (Or a bad thought for arguing, but nothing's perfect.) I have not tested long term, but it fits with what I know.

I agree that Loci's experiment is not perfectly conclusive. I'm just pointing it out as an example of how one needs to isolate factors. The dwarves are not given jobs or skilled up for the reason that doing those tasks gives good thoughts, which could interfere with the measurement of bad stress from missing needs. I admit I was too impatient to personally run the save for more than a couple years. But feel free to report if you find any change after even longer amounts of time.

It would also be interesting to do runs with different personalities, including high stress vulnerability – I seem to recall Loci's seven are all pretty bland in this respect.

Whereas you seem to be proposing a more "real world" test but not explaining very clearly how we could factor out the other thoughts in order to measure specific stress from unmet needs.

For example in adventure I shaped my Dwarven peasant to have exactly 2 needs, which were fulfilled instantly with smashing 2 stones. I did it every 2 days and my Dwarf had always a perfect focus. Still for duration of 1 year my Dwarf was crying every single day. Even, when I got him company of woodcutter-followers and home was his old village, more then location due crashing to desktop bug with animals. I was thinking, if I did not miss something, when shaping his needs...

Now, when I read this, there is a logical connection missing. You eliminated most needs from your adventurer, filled remaining 2 needs, and had emotional trouble while focus was perfect. Saying that filled needs do not prevent breakdowns is not a reason to conclude that unmet needs cause them.

[Bumber]

For example in adventure I shaped my Dwarven peasant to have exactly 2 needs, which were fulfilled instantly with smashing 2 stones. I did it every 2 days and my Dwarf had always a perfect focus. Still for duration of 1 year my Dwarf was crying every single day.

Dwarves can cry from being happy.

[Dracko81]

Yes bad thoughts attribute to stress.  However needs attribute to bad thoughts.  By not fulfilling needs you are adding to stress, long term this is worse as they dwell on these bad thoughts.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If you look at this dwarf the only bad thoughts are the meetings(arguments) and the snow storm, 2/3 of these are dwelled thoughts.  Add to this the 4 needs stresses of which 1 is a dwelled thought.

She was over 18k stress when I finally got it under control and to resolve the situation I needed to get here a copper craft, get some books for reading and put her into the military.  The added craft only slowed the increase.

If we calculate the stress from the above we have -8(anger -4x2), -4(frustration -1x4), irritation -1, 40(Bliss 8x5).  And we can stop right there because 40 - 13 = 27.  Which means her stress levels according to the bucket method fail.  Her stress levels should be decreasing from the above thoughts list, but they are increasing.

It took about 2 years for her stress levels to get to 0, and this is where they have remained despite rarely having any unmet needs.  While other dwarves have more bad thoughts and have negative stress levels.  The progression was slow at first and then quite sudden once the meetings with the mayor ceased.

Even though she gained the "can handle stress", this had a limited effect on her and only appeared to slow the progression.  Of the 70+ dwarves in the fort there is no other dwarves affected by stress in the way this one dwarf was.

Thoughts from unfulfilled needs are part of the issue of stress, but there are other unknown factors that seem to attribute also.  Unless someone can point out how this one dwarf became so affected by stress outside of unmet needs, you're basically guessing by using control groups.

You can even look at children in your forts born within months of each other.  I have a case of one child having -100k stress, but another the same age sitting at 0 stress.  You could attribute this to stress handling of the -100k child.  But there are other children with higher reported stress handling at 0 stress.  Which means there is something else going on.

The fact that stress seems to always drift towards 0 also makes the bucket method of stress accumulation to not be accurate.  If the bucket method was correct why are the majority of dwarves sitting at 0 stress.  There should be more variation.

There are too many unknown factors at work here and to say that needs thoughts have a minimal effect on stress is incorrect.  Especially when you can demonstrate that fulfilling the needs of a dwarf will lower their stress, by removing bad thoughts related to needs.  But having that same dwarf who's stress goes from 17k+ to 0k and never go negative despite keeping their needs and happy thoughts around, shows clearly there is a clearing of stress levels.  Why is this dwarves stress levels now sitting at 0 instead of pushing negative with so many good thoughts and met needs?  Why is 42/76 dwarves stress sitting at 0?

[delphonso]

I look forward to your experiment with 100 dwarves pulling levers.

[Sarmatian123]

Dwarves cry from happiness too? OMG!  Stop it! 

@Dracko81.

I see the factor hitting on her. It is the crippling shyness. I have no idea how to deal with it, like with tendency to be depressed.
Filling temporarily needs of focus, lowers stress temporarily. Removing those satisfactions from focus means it will return in majority of cases.
I never installed with success DFHack on my Ubuntu, so I can't say if Dwarves go negative with stress or stay at 0 for ever.

Another thing, I had to do for Dwarves to relax, was to disable hauling.
All stressed Dwarves were obsessive haulers (like those scholars pulling levers in library and becoming obsessed with that).
If there was a work to pick (and in automated fortress there is a lot of it), the stressed Dwarves were instantly at it.
Not tending to their own needs.

Though in my old 20(+5 without stress) year old fortress there was few master craftsmen,
who worked themselves out from stress by not hauling and producing constantly masterworks.
Though one of them flipped out again later, because of rain and I had to regretfully kill him.

I look forward to your experiment with 100 dwarves pulling levers.

Levers need mechanism and construction. But if we have 3 1x1 wood-stockpiles, giving their contents to one another... No construction needed, just 1 log.

I would too, but all my modding experience is limited to empty water-bucket reaction for press.
I never did any custom embarks or modded game.
The test would need mods: no-eat, no-drink and no-cloth (civilians!).

To get 100 Dwarves regularly, you would need play game with caravan for few years, before digging in like Luci did.
That means rain and dealing with Goblins. This would have an impact on the test and fail it.

I guess extensive customization would be necessary. 1 civilization present only? Starting with 100 instead of 7 Dwarves?
Desert biome to hope for a longer period without rain? Or dig in and wall in asap... Strangely, I couldn't spot any picks on Luci's embark.

Tbh, I never played a custom game before either. Just flipped the standard embark options this or that way. Though each of my embarks lasted easily for few decades. To make game run continuously, you need to remove ":"P":"R from all notices in announcements.txt  and let one cpu run it over period of 1 week, so this part seems relatively easy, when test is finally set up.

[Dracko81]

I see the factor hitting on her. It is the crippling shyness. I have no idea how to deal with it, like with tendency to be depressed.

Based on what?  Where does it say shyness is affecting her in anyway?

All my dwarves have time off.  I stopped using recurring tasks.  I only farm in Spring/Summer.  Season tasks are set up after the Season trade is done.  Typically Winter they had off except for jobs here and there.  All stone that is mined is also hauled inside that season.  My dwarves have plenty of time to relax, which you could probably notice with that dwarf having to make a friend and not have any negative thoughts about relaxing and only positive ones (prayer, taverns).

You don't need DFHack to view stress level.  You can view it with dwarf therapist.  I don't use DFHack.

[Sarmatian123]

I see the factor hitting on her. It is the crippling shyness. I have no idea how to deal with it, like with tendency to be depressed.

Based on what?  Where does it say shyness is affecting her in anyway?

All my dwarves have time off.  I stopped using recurring tasks.  I only farm in Spring/Summer.  Season tasks are set up after the Season trade is done.  Typically Winter they had off except for jobs here and there.  All stone that is mined is also hauled inside that season.  My dwarves have plenty of time to relax, which you could probably notice with that dwarf having to make a friend and not have any negative thoughts about relaxing and only positive ones (prayer, taverns).

You don't need DFHack to view stress level.  You can view it with dwarf therapist.  I don't use DFHack.

Never used that app either.
She is less private, when having crippling shyness.
I always imagined, this is a huge issue causing stress. Shouldn't be "She is more private" relaxing for such personality?

[Dracko81]

I see the factor hitting on her. It is the crippling shyness. I have no idea how to deal with it, like with tendency to be depressed.

Based on what?  Where does it say shyness is affecting her in anyway?

All my dwarves have time off.  I stopped using recurring tasks.  I only farm in Spring/Summer.  Season tasks are set up after the Season trade is done.  Typically Winter they had off except for jobs here and there.  All stone that is mined is also hauled inside that season.  My dwarves have plenty of time to relax, which you could probably notice with that dwarf having to make a friend and not have any negative thoughts about relaxing and only positive ones (prayer, taverns).

You don't need DFHack to view stress level.  You can view it with dwarf therapist.  I don't use DFHack.

Never used that app either.
She is less private, when having crippling shyness.
I always imagined, this is a huge issue causing stress. Shouldn't be "She is more private" relaxing for such personality?

She is less private, which is a personality trait.  Not a stress trigger, which are thoughts.  Unless you can prove that clashing personality traits with fulfilling needs is going to cause stress.

If it was true the only way to resolve that would be to make multiple warrens and limit access to taverns and guild halls.  Which I doubt will resolve the situation as you would be producing more bad thoughts.