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[PatrikLundell]

I've had this problem for a while now: the number of visitors dwindle gradually over time. My current embark is extreme in that regard in that I had a visitor cap of 20 (for a pop of 22: don't want the visitors to outnumber the citizens). I received only a trickle of legitimate visitors, with the vast majority being villains, and for half a year after the 3 year mark, I received a steady trickle of villains, with not a single legitimate visitor.
Now, I'm sick and tired of the broken villains and questers, so I now kill them as they enter the embark using DFHack's "exterminate him" command (questers only when targeting my artifacts), but even without that, visitors die in droves as they stream into the embark during undead sieges (during a 3 month early siege they probably killed 20 visitors, most being villains, of course). It's possible DFHack's command somehow screws things up, but given my past experience (when I didn't exterminate anyone, but they still died in sieges), I suspect DF still think the visitors are at the embark as they haven't left. The reason for that thought is that I increased the visitor cap to 40, and I suddenly got a bunch of legitimate ones, in some cases without a single villain in between them!, although it already shows signs of drying up due to villain elimination (and a couple of questers) after just a month or so. The villain trickle, of course, continues (one every few days).

[knutor]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Add many more temples, and use the temple building guides, to design them specific to their god. IE. god of rivers,lakes,fishes, should have a flowing fishfilled zone in it. temple to god of treasury, greed filled with coins.

As soon as I opened up a topside openair Temple to a god of night,sky, I began getting visitors after a dry spell.

Also check your tavern guest setting.. Welcome All.

But with that being said, do not relabel activity zones, meeting areas, for example, repurpose old obsolete temples into guildhalls as the game has issues with that in this version.

[PatrikLundell]

While it might be possible to get additional visitors with open temples, most of those attracted are useless (i.e. they won't petition), and supposedly spies hide in their number (although I've never seen a single real spy, despite searching for them [enemy civ performance troupe members a legion, but they're not "real" spies]). In addition to that, legitimate visitors tend to stay on half year long prayer benders, catching up on a prior life time without (or something), slowing the throughput to a crawl.

[Shonai_Dweller]

While it might be possible to get additional visitors with open temples, most of those attracted are useless (i.e. they won't petition), and supposedly spies hide in their number (although I've never seen a single real spy, despite searching for them [enemy civ performance troupe members a legion, but they're not "real" spies]). In addition to that, legitimate visitors tend to stay on half year long prayer benders, catching up on a prior life time without (or something), slowing the throughput to a crawl.

You've never found a spy? In the current version or ever, since spies were introduced? I wonder if they've all been replaced with plotting villains now? Another weird glitch of playing dead civs, perhaps?

Legends used to always reveal plenty of spies in my fortresses. Haven't checked for them specifically since villains started.

[PatrikLundell]

Never, as in not a single time in any version. It's not because of dead civs, as I gave up on those when I discovered their raiding was FUBARed. However, I'm back to dead civs since raid corruption kill fortresses, so it can't be used anyway. However, I haven't used public temples because of their problems (drastically visitor turnover reduction due to prayer benders, and all the visitors they attract on their own are useless riff-raff [some who are supposed to be spies passing as riffraff]. I've tried the new temples a couple of times before bugs killed my games, and they didn't attract any spies, just riffraff and villains posing as riffraff. I haven't noted any villains who were actually from enemy civs, and I think I should have.

I've also found that "exterminate him" to treat the villain stupidities doesn't cut it: corpse hauling (even with half of them going away in puffs of smoke on account of being undead), junk hauling, and shock from seeing villains die by the hundreds is killing the sanity of the dorfs as well as causing a significant reduction of the ability to perform productive work. I'm not sure how many villains I get per year, but it's probably between 50 and 100 (starting when the tavern opens). The next cure will be automatic teleportation into the magma sea for disposal, rather than manual extermination one by one.

[martinuzz]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Add many more temples, and use the temple building guides, to design them specific to their god. IE. god of rivers,lakes,fishes, should have a flowing fishfilled zone in it. temple to god of treasury, greed filled with coins.

Where can I find these temple building guides you mention?

[vjek]

Since visitors were added, I've observed the same problem.  Visitors just.. decrease over time.  It seems like initially, there can be consistently 1-3 (I've verified this with over a dozen embarks in the same visitor-attractive world) that arrive, then depart after a few months.  After that, barring troupes and slayers if you breach the caverns, hitting the cap is... rare (for my forts).  In some cases, after the initial 3, exactly zero visitors ever appear again.

Even with 100 civs in the same world, things don't work as you would expect, or hypothesizing would allow.  I've even artificially increased the value of a tavern/fort to over 100M , and it makes exactly zero difference to the number of visitors.  Having 0, 1, or 10 Tavern Keepers and/or Performers also doesn't seem to have any impact.  Fortress citizen count doesn't seem to have any impact.  Aboveground/belowground, nope.  Trees/shrubs/grass, nope.  Entirely carved/smoothed/engraved out of native gold, magnetite, candy, or chert, nope.  The only thing that I've found that keeps them away is a 100% Evil embark area.  Other areas, such as Temples, Libraries, etc, nope. 
Beyond that, Untamed Wilds is the same as Calm, although I must admit, I haven't tried a 'Good' embark.  Lairs don't appear to matter.  Corpses, magma, rivers, heck, even sieges don't seem to have any bearing.
In any case, it's not something immediately obvious that determines that 100 visitors would actually ever visit a fort, that I've seen, so I'm not sure why the default cap is set to that value.

I've checked this against the civs in the world, too, to see if there's something pre-embark that determines who visits.  It may be related to 'human visitors' or 'elf visitors' or 'dwarf visitors' to/from/at/in other civs, but I've seen situation where numbers of many dozens/100+ of each and a Tavern/Inn of 100M value will get exactly zero visitors, ever.  So, while it may have some bearing under some unknown ideal condition, it's certainly not the prime indicator. 

Overall, as of 0.47.04, I give the visitor mechanic in general a hearty 1/5 gabbro stars. 

[knutor]

Maybe, its related to just what isnt exactly said, in the quoted flavor text of each new visitor. Rumors(intrigue), npc vs npc intetactions, exiters talking to newcomers. A multiplier vs "happy and satisfied" exiters. Dunno, I quit a fotress for lack of visitors, but it did have a number of tantrums and rotting corpses.

The guide is just a table, its here:
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Temple
Finding the tip for large dance floors, helpful, for some reason I was putting altars in center.

[PatrikLundell]

I think I know that the number of available hist figs in a world matters when it comes to getting visitor or only a small trickle, but it should be that with enough people around there should be a sufficiently large pool of potential visitors to not run out of bodies in a rather short term. The worlds I've generated the last few years have all taken number of people of various races and civs into consideration, so if there aren't at least 20000 elves in the world [note: non hist figs. The total HF count tends to be around 30000, including the dead ones] (typically the lowest number, except for the usually close to extinct dorfs and insignificant to eradicated kobolds), I discard the world and make new attempts again.

[knutor]

@PL, I think you've driven a nail into your thumb. Says up there in your prev posts that you stopped raiding. I know I only got tower visits after a visit 8d hike, to raid them. They followed the trail back, I suppose.

[PatrikLundell]

@PL, I think you've driven a nail into your thumb. Says up there in your prev posts that you stopped raiding. I know I only got tower visits after a visit 8d hike, to raid them. They followed the trail back, I suppose.

I'm not aware of any connection between raiding and visitors. I'm using the normal DF term for visitors, i.e. non hostile "guests". I know you can use raiding to induce sieges (which is the only interaction you can have with necro towers, apart from some of the villains probably coming from some towers, but they'll definitely come without any prompting) and to establish trade, but neither of these are visitors. Apart from monster slayers and questers (and, I assume, villains passing as the former), you need an open location for visitors to come (tavern for general visitors and performers, dedicated temples for pilgrims, prophets, spies(?), etc. and library for scholars (villains target all of those).

[knutor]

Sieges, yes. It was a siege, not visitor. Thank you for correcting me.

hmm. Have you got your cavern drawbridge closed? Open it up, on an evil embark, they were visiting me, by coming and going thru the caverns.

[PatrikLundell]

I've had visitors (and caravans) leaving through the caverns, but they can't come in that way. I'm talking about visitors, i.e. civilized sapients, not wildlife that might currently not be hostile (or FBs, which always are). While some cavern critters may be sapients, none are both civilized (if you consider cavern civs to be civilized) and friendly (cavern sapients are at best neutral).