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[McOrigin]

Hi,

the wiki is not very extensive on this topic and I would happily add some stuff there. However, I would like to gather some more information, but need to confirm oder deny what I have observed so far.

1. What kind of "general" guilds can we see?
The "z"-menu, the "guild zone menu", the wiki (skills/professions-table) and DT-icons suggest:
Miners (edge case, because only mining als skill/labour)
Woodworkers
Stoneworkers
Rangers
Metalsmiths
Jewelers
Craftsdwarves
Fishery workers
Farmers
Engineers
Seems to be pretty straight forward. However, something is strange: I have a farmes guild and dwarves happily make skill demonstrations, but strictly limited to 7 skills: farming, plant gathering, plant processing, milking, cheese making, brewing and cooking. My legendary wood burner might just have startet, not sure.
But I do have legendary tanners and butchers and a skilled bee keeper who are members of the guild and have the labour enabled but have not spread the word so far: They do have time off, they attend other skill demonstrations, but are do not share their knowledge since .. years.
On the other hand, I do have dwaves which have some few skill point in shearering or spinning but their labour is not enabled. Does that prevent skill demonstrations?

2. Who exactly is joining the guild? Is this forced automatically by profession?
The 'z'-Info tells me I have 28 Farmers in my fortress. Using DT I see 28 dwarfes with the "farming" profession. Seems to match. I can confirm I have a dwarf who has left the farmers guild to join the crafters guild. And I have some specialists like the lye maker or a tanner who are part of the guild but have not attended a single skill demonstation so far..

3. Members in several guilds
I have, more or less unintentionally, created a weavers guild because there was so much silk to harvest in the caverns. This kicked off the general craftdwarf's guild too (I expected some kind of general "clothworking guild" together with my clothiers, silly me..). I definetly have dwarfes in both guilds but not yet checked if all weavers are  in the craftdwaves guild too. I suppose they are.
I have not found a dwarf who is in 2 "general" guilds, or any cross-border-memberships, e.g. weaver in the farmers guild.

4. Attracting visitors for guilds
I created a doctors guild on my hospital because I had no skilled staff at all. I hoped I might attract visitors in order to import some knowledge. No luck so far. Do i need a tavern, librabry or temple for this? The wiki does not mention visitors for guild halls specifically. My next try would be the "split libray" approach..

5. The downside of an open guild hall
I know experience an interesting effect: My CMD had 1 point in surturing and started a skill demonstration to random idle dwarves. This kicked off a feedback loop: more dwarfes gained their first skill point in surturing and hold skill demonstations themself. Thus I have peasant-surturers with 5 points in surturing and it will be very hard to switch them to a more useful profession..

Any input or shared experience is very much appreciated - how do you set up guilds, what kind of guilds do you aim for, if any?
Do you stick with general guilds and try to keep the skill distribution of you dwarves even in order to avoid specialists guilds?
Do you use visitors as skill boosters?
 

[FantasticDorf]

Guilds are formed when about 5 dwarves have a similar profession field and petition a request. The farmer's guild might end up being your first one and when its officiated, guilds only allow in members relevant to that field, so planters, brewers, millers and threshers etc can attend and teach in the farmers guildhall to other farmers.

• When dwarves attend a demonstration, afterwards their need to learn is fufilled drawing them to that place. If the other demonstrations are simply too engaging and need fufilling for them, they probably wont attend the places you want them to without additional coaxing via forcing them with a burrow for a forced fortress staff training day when their learning needs finally get too low and cant get to a library instead

Setting one up spontaneously is not so tightly restricted and any dwarf can theoretically attend, and you might want to do it for something that is hard to train or labor intensive while still being retained as a useful skill like engraving or whatever you deem to be important if your workshops are manager restricted by skill level. Visitors can also teach their skills they're purveying meaning that travelling medical-philosophers can be a leap-off point for dwarves learning, though they can't teach philosophical doctrines like mathmaticians, but travelling engineers can lecture in mechanics guildhalls (another common one a little way into a fortress).

• A personal favorite of mine is to set up a burrow over a siege engineer guildhall burrow set publically to train new catapult and ballistae users without extensive field training, and then when i have enough to start a guild letting them teach each other mutually without inviting other dwarves by 'inducting' new members into the guild.

The teaching skill by leading demonstrations carries over very well, so ex-military dwarves who train and learn through demonstrations and sparring tend to get their information across clearly, and this works in reverse or with migrants with lots of skill in teaching no doubt for being a guild leader offmap in their personal histories for many years.

3. Members in several guilds
I have, more or less unintentionally, created a weavers guild because there was so much silk to harvest in the caverns. This kicked off the general craftdwarf's guild too (I expected some kind of general "clothworking guild" together with my clothiers, silly me..). I definetly have dwarfes in both guilds but not yet checked if all weavers are  in the craftdwaves guild too. I suppose they are.
I have not found a dwarf who is in 2 "general" guilds, or any cross-border-memberships, e.g. weaver in the farmers guild.

All 'Main' guilds encapsulate all the smaller 'sub-guilds' instead of over-writing them. The larger guild existing and having value in it as seen in the 'L'ocations is the only condition keeping the guild members who originally petitioned for it happy about the situation as to rather denying the request in favor of a more specific one.

Eitherway its a great social space for dwarves to chat soberly with other people in their trade.

4. Attracting visitors for guilds
I created a doctors guild on my hospital because I had no skilled staff at all. I hoped I might attract visitors in order to import some knowledge. No luck so far. Do i need a tavern, librabry or temple for this? The wiki does not mention visitors for guild halls specifically. My next try would be the "split libray" approach..

• A tavern is required to attract wandering scholars yes, but if you receive any migrants in the meantime they'll teach what they know. Its a waiting game, and also dependent on distance to the nearest settlements for footfall instead of wandering monster hunters and the like, but scholars are particularly drawn to libraries (ideally all 3 types of location, library, tavern & temple is adequate)

5. The downside of an open guild hall
I know experience an interesting effect: My CMD had 1 point in surturing and started a skill demonstration to random idle dwarves. This kicked off a feedback loop: more dwarfes gained their first skill point in surturing and hold skill demonstations themself. Thus I have peasant-surturers with 5 points in surturing and it will be very hard to switch them to a more useful profession..

• Answering your own questions here, controlling them with burrow access is much more reliable than letting them run free, and generally petitioned guildhalls are a lot more focused if its a specialist subject like animal training without the stimulus of having a animal infront of them to learn on the job.

[McOrigin]

Thanks for that input!
Am I reading this correct: I could abandon the weavers guild and qould still keep my weavers happy because the craftdwarf guild still exists?

Can burrows be used to forbid dwarves a zone?  Or would I need a big "everything but not doctors guild" burrow for everyone else and a smaller "doctors guild and life support" for the medical staff? I barely use burrows for a panic room, I am not so used to micromanage dwarven brigades with them..

[A_Curious_Cat]

Guilds are formed when about 5 dwarves have a similar profession field and petition a request.

Actually, the default is 10. The setting can be found in d_init.txt.

when its officiated, guilds only allow in members relevant to that field

...

Setting one up spontaneously is not so tightly restricted and any dwarf can theoretically attend

Actually, you can change who is allowed to attend in the (l)ocations screen.

There are four choices:

• Guild members only.
• Citizens only
• Citizens and long term residents.
• Everyone.

I prefer to set all of mine to everyone (you never know when a visitor might have legendary skills).

Also, I believe the way it works is that watching a demonstration increases the watcher’s skill in the skill being demonstrated with the actual skill gain being dependent on teacher skill of the dwarf leading the demonstration and the student skill of the dwarf watching (with the caveat that watching a demonstration cannot increase the watcher’s skill above that of the dwarf leading the demonstration).  It also, wouldn’t surprise me if leading demonstrations increased the teacher skill and watching them increased the student skill.  Anyway, I have no personal evidence of the points in this last paragraph, it just seems logical that that is the way it would be. It would be nice if someone did some !!science!! and confirmed things one way or the other...

Anyways, for now I just make guildhalls as they are petitioned.  My standard guildhall is an 11x11 room dug out of stone, smoothed, and furnished with four tables and four chairs.  You may need to add a couple statues to get the room up to snuff depending on what the walls are made of.  Engrave and add more statues to make a grand guildhall...

And, yes, your first one probably will be a farmer’s guildhall.

[Bumber]

for dwarves to chat soberly

What heresy is this?!

[FantasticDorf]

My memory was more shakey than I remember it being then.

for dwarves to chat soberly

What heresy is this?!

Its more important than it looks, they might grind freindships quickly in the tavern but the reality of between friends really defines who a dwarf wants to keep company with long term when sober.

[PatrikLundell]

Removing a guild hall that's been set up as a result of a petition would make the members of that guild unhappy and give them an unhappy thought. I don't know if the same goes for the removal of a guild hall the player has set up.

You can create a guild hall for skills you'd like to have to attract visitors (assuming it's open for everyone) to perform demonstrations there. I also had the surprising experience of having a kid mood in metal working, which I assume was the result of that kid having picked up knowledge from a demonstration.

[A_Curious_Cat]

My memory was more shakey than I remember it being then.

for dwarves to chat soberly

What heresy is this?!

Its more important than it looks, they might grind freindships quickly in the tavern but the reality of between friends really defines who a dwarf wants to keep company with long term when sober.

Heresy!

BURN THE HERETIC!,! !,!,!!! ! !

[FantasticDorf]

Removing a guild hall that's been set up as a result of a petition would make the members of that guild unhappy and give them an unhappy thought. I don't know if the same goes for the removal of a guild hall the player has set up.

You can create a guild hall for skills you'd like to have to attract visitors (assuming it's open for everyone) to perform demonstrations there. I also had the surprising experience of having a kid mood in metal working, which I assume was the result of that kid having picked up knowledge from a demonstration.

Just being nearby is often enough, its the same kind of subversive effect with temples, in which being near powerful sermons begins to wane weak beliefs and strengthen existing ones closer to the topic as the priest sermon's through persuasive arguement whether people like it or not with all zone bystanders.

Mass engraving tutorials via my convenient starting 7 engraver/teacher/dodger candidate lead to a uptick in masonry artifacts until there were enough people to make their own guild, whether that's what you want particularly or not is up to debate but putting them in a squad set to do professional activities all the time is a way to retire them into a parallel way of living outside of the occasional season off duty to get down and dirty dancing on the taven floor, indulge in some light reading or just return to the barracks in their own time to grind more skills.

[McOrigin]

I got confirmed what I was looking for regarding guilds. Thanks guys!
I will go with a open-to-everyone metal smithing guild and doctors guild form the start with my next run and experiment with more than one "inside" burrow to control who has access to which guild before they are petitioned and become "closed".

I do have an unhappy weaver which I would like to make some friends among his kind. But I still have to figure out why my weavers guild hall is quite not used: They have no labour activated, they were training at individual comba drill until i turned that off (thanks for the tip with the squads, in order to avoid more peasants becoming suturers..!) But I think they still have too many options and needs (temple, library, main meeting hall, craftdwarf guild, public doctors guild ..) to run around. Besides the general needs, it would be interesting to see if they prefer their dedicated guild over the more general craftdwarves guild.

I think I should have paid more attention to DT, in order to keep them general craftdwarfes instead of becoming dedictated weavers. But that is a differnt story on it's own.

[Bumber]

Its more important than it looks, they might grind freindships quickly in the tavern but the reality of between friends really defines who a dwarf wants to keep company with long term when sober.

A dwarf should never be sober! What kind of twisted overseer are you?

[anewaname]

My current fort has no trading partners that bring books, so guilds are the only way to satisfy dwarf knowledge needs until some scholar decides to write a book. So, I set up every guild possible.