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[phscst]

I've started a new fortress and had some serious drink problems after the first (second?) migrant wave. My stock of dwarves dwindled to 6 until I had the mental capacity to queue up a few drinks manually (The manager had died earlier, stopping all jobs through the queue system). I don't think there has been a caravan yet.

Since then I have neither seen a caravan nor migrants, with regular messages "The fortress attracted no migrants this season". Despite my earlier mishap, the fortress is going strong with its reduced inhabitance, steel weapons and all. Hence I would like to keep it.

Is there a way to reinitiate migrations and caravans? According to the world screen, there is one allied holding nearby, with ~10 dwarves there. I've set up a messenger, but do not have the option to request migration from there, as suggested here

[Thon]

You may have embarked with a dead or dying civilization. First 2 migrant waves are generated and arrive regardless of settings I think, rest are attracted from other dwarven settlements. Also make sure you haven't disabled them if you are using the lazy newb pack or set your population cap too low.

Caravan not coming may be if you have embarked to an inaccessible location. They may have been taken prisoner as well. On my current game, there's a dark pit I'm staying away from. Releasing prisoners from there results in 200 merchant visitors who drink my booze, kill my fps and do nothing productive.

[Sarmatian123]

These visitors being all merchants is a bug, which I did encounter, when requesting labor from connected Dwarven hillocks. I think sending raids requesting tributes or something to some unreachable locations, can break the solitude and bring merchants in. Though there is some equipment bug in raids, which may corrupt save and destroy game. It is solved by sending naked Dwarves... Migrants are connected to exported wealth through caravans too. Even if civilization is dead, there should be some population in wilds. Trading with merchants should bring them in from wild. An alternative could be a... breeding program for Dwarves. Though it will take long time to set up and decades for kids to mature.

[PatrikLundell]

There's a huge difference between a dead and a "struggling" (or "dying") civ.
Dead civ:
- Two migrant waves (at most, can be reduced by necro sieges and pop caps).
- Never any dwarven caravans
- Never any monarch
- The only known certain indication of whether a civ is dead or "merely struggling" is that the civ screen' civ screen is completely empty upon embark. Normally you have your parent civ and your site government there. Once you get into contact with another civ (via caravan or attacks) your (dead) civ and site government is added to the screen.
- Logic does not apply to whether civs are dead according to DF, due to a very buggy process. Civs can have had no members and no sites for thousands of years without being considered truly dead.
- Dead civs can't raid, at all, presumably because it's the civ that performs "army" movements, and dead civs do nothing. Note that sending off messengers is the same as "raiding" from this perspective, so if a messenger returns the civ isn't dead.

There are a number of legitimate reasons for the caravan not arriving, as well as a number of buggy ones.
Significant loss of dorfs in one factor scaring away migrants, and trade is an important attraction factor, but fortress worth should be an attraction factor, so you might try to produce expensive stuff and build it in the fortress (I think weapon trap components are valuable, for instance).

If you have visitors, you can recruit new fortress members from petitioning visitors, but avoid performance troupe petitions, as they're bugged (and I suspect they're bugged to a fatal crashing level). It takes two years for them to petition for citizenship, but at that time they're full citizens and can be ordered around as normal (avoid mercs, as they never petition for citizenship, and squads of mercs have to be led by a citizen. Monster slayers will never petition for citizenship [as far as I know: I don't know if any has survived for two years]).

As far as I understand, you can only request migrants from sites economically liked to your site that are also a member of your civ, so if that site belongs to another civ you can't request anyone.

You can, as mentioned, also aim for a dorf breeding program. It should be a fair bit easier now than it was earlier because of the relaxed age difference restrictions, but you may still have trouble getting two breeding pairs out of your 6 dorfs, given that some won't marry and some don't have any hetero sexual orientation component, and, on top of that, some have personality traits that indicate they're going to be rather difficult to get married ("finds the concept of marriage to be utterly repulsive", is one clear example). It ought to be possible to get dorflets out of Lover relationships now, though (I haven't seen anyone reporting it happening in a fortress, though).
Given that you've got to deal with two or at most 3 pairs, setting up nuptial encouragement suites shouldn't be too hard, and once married, regular (i.e. yearly, or so) procreation encouragement sessions can be organized using similar techniques.

[knutor]

Bailed out of my last evil biome, migrants were too scared to come, but I had about 100 coffins full of dead and a ghost or two, who would just not settledown.

Try this aswell, because before my waves dried up, I had stuck waves. dfHack fixmerchant. Not sure if that did it, for me, or if exterminating the guests lingering in the topside pools and floating in space did it. If the guests are not pathing off map, you maybe have a bug, which is also stopping things from pathing on.

But if you get that.. did not attract migrants msg, its prolly not a bug. Bad luck, some embarks have few neighbors.