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[Hans Lemurson]

How often do dwarves living in your fortresses actually die of old age?  Given the endless wars against the goblins, forgotten beast attacks, tavern brawls, failed moods and construction accidents, the opportunities to die an early death seem ever present.

Dwarves can live up to 170 years, and even if fortresses last that long, the constant peril decade after decade takes its toll.  But a well managed fortress often keeps some dwarves reliably out of harm's way...

How often in your fortresses do dwarves actually die of natural causes?

[PatrikLundell]

After a decade or two there tends to be between ½ and 2 deaths due to old age every year among citizens and residents (many residents are human, and so have a reduced life span, and many are very old: some old enough to die of old age while still residents, thus not even two years in the fortress). On top of that there tends to be 2-3 dead visitors to haul away.
However, I don't have many deaths due to accidents or war. An occasional were attack, plus some tantrum murders.

[CaptainArchmage]

The maximum age of a dwarf in an umodded save is between 150 and 170. The actual maximum age of a creature is rolled at birth and there's no exceptions for dwarves. If a dwarf dies of old age, savescumming won't help. This might change in the future, though turning them into a vampire, were-beast, or necromancer will stop them dying.

[Zealord]

I've never had to bury a dwarf because of old age. I usually generate 500 years of history in the worlds I embark, so you would expect an extremely old migrant arriving and dying in the following year but this doesn't happen either. I don't even know if you get a notification if it happens   

[PatrikLundell]

In 0.40.X it wasn't uncommon for very old migrants that died within a couple of years. However, that was changed such that you don't get migrants at the top of the age range, so it typically taken a couple of decades before the dorfs start to croak due to age.
The only notification you get is "Urist mcStooge has been found dead", and you can deduce it was because of old age because it happened right at the turn of the year.

Oddly enough, you can have visitors that fall dead as soon as they enter the map. This can happen for two reasons:
1. They're actually dead due to old age, but the game hasn't checked it yet.
2. They're missing essential body parts, and so die immediately on entry. That's reported for migrants as well, I think.

[CaptainArchmage]

I've never had to bury a dwarf because of old age. I usually generate 500 years of history in the worlds I embark, so you would expect an extremely old migrant arriving and dying in the following year but this doesn't happen either. I don't even know if you get a notification if it happens 

In Claspedbowels there's a huge range of ages. Several dwarves are literally in the 14-30 age range, but I have some who are like 145-147 ish I think and so we could see them die of old age soon. The world had a 250 year gen, so none of the original dwarves are still alive. Pop cap was set at 45 I think, so we're now at 52 given births and dwarven green cards. The civilization isn't particularly dead or out of whack though, there's plenty of sites.

[EternalCaveDragon]

I have yet to have a dwarf die of old age in my forts. I've had a few mysterious deaths that I never found out the cause of before the associated fort effectively died. Had a few vampire deaths, but mostly it's either a monster in the form of a werebeast, forgotten beast (mostly these in fact), and in one case a roc. Mainly because I'm too slow in setting up a military to defend my forts.