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[Levi]

It would be nice if we could have less animal men in dwarf mode.  It starts to feel pretty silly when before I've had my first goblin raid I've fought:

Raven Men
Eagle Men
Swallow Men
Albatross Men
Osprey Men
Moon Snail Men
Cuttlefish Men
Thrip Men
Grasshopper Men
Mosquito Men
and one giant hamster.

Its like my dwarfs are living in some kind of comedy sketch world.

I mean, if these people are humanoid, shouldn't they be forming their own civilizations and such?  Or wouldn't the goblins and orcs have wiped out most of these freaks of nature?

I wouldn't mind so much if it was a small tribe of unusual animal men living in a cave somewhere on my map, but its like grand central station with all these guys running and flying over my fortress. 

At the very least, the base animal should be the most common.  The Giant version of an animal should be uncommon, but occasionally show up.  The animal men version should be the rarest, not the most common.

[Watsst]

Yeah I know what you mean, my last fort had 4 groups of about 5-6 animal men wander or fly across the map before I even saw my first animal, a giant louse. I'd be interested in finding out how commonly they spawn compared to normal or giant animals

[peskyninja]

I'm fine with the current animal men/giant animal number.

[Neonivek]

Well not all races should form their own civilisation... but ones who don't should form tribes in my mind.

Wandering tribal members isn't that big in my mind.

[xeniorn]

I completely agree with Levi on this one. I've only started a few forts since the newest version came out so it is possible that I've only been terribly unlucky, but in my experience so far the animal people are overly abundant. In every fort I've started in the high savagery pocket world I've created the ratio of non-humanoid animals to humanoid animals was over 5:1. And of the non-humanoids, 30-40 % of the animals were gigantic. It's like there weren't almost any normal animals in the world, and it really killed the immersion for me.

I've checked out the world's entities' populations in the exported text file from worldgen, and it confirmed to me that for a large number of species, the humanoid versions outnumber the normal versions. For example, there are around 2200 kea men, about 100 giant keas and about 1700 regular keas.

It would be very much appreciated if the populations were balanced out more in the following post-release releases.

[Loud Whispers]

I quite like the animalman horde converging on your little corner of civilization. Also, I rarely find more than one or two species of animalmen at a time :/

So er...

RNG fun?

[Sowelu]

My interpretation is that some savage areas are just /like/ that.  Not all.  I might be wrong about the "not all", but I'm okay if it's just some regions like that.

I have indeed seen the excessive number of them, though.  But again, assumed that it was a feature, not a bug.

[Kento]

Most likely it's an unintended consequence of the animal sponsorship drive, and one that is at least worthy of re-evaluation.

It's potentially aesthetically unpleasing because it may make the game feel more like Thundercats than a mainstream fantasy world, and because animalmen all feel the same just at the same time that many species of animals are becoming sui generis (giant sponges are the breakout star of .34, not their mobile cousin the sponge man). It may increase the difficulty in savage biomes (by making meat and bone more difficult to procure), but there are other ways to increase the difficulty in savage biomes that can make the game more fun and exciting.

[Silverionmox]

A 2 to 100 ration of animal men vs. animals would be reasonable IMO. In any case the frequency of groups and subgroups to appear ought to be settable either as part of the worldgen or the creature raws themselves, but for the time being a toning down of the cartoonish -folk and -men versions of every creature in existence and then some should suffice.

[catoblepas]

I feel that they are a bit redundant now that we have werecreatures. Do we really need two different kinds of human-animal hybrids? Add to this the fact that they don't bring much to the game, just more creatures to kill/be kileld by dwarves. Personally I am OK with possibly a few generics like 'birdman' or 'rodent man' because such things are rather generic. A rodent is a pretty broad term, and encompasses the idea of a humanoid rodent rather well. A 'mooseman' on the other hand, is a very sepcific animal. I think that after a while, there comes a point where it becomes a bit strange. Do we really need animalmen versions of every specific species of animal? Before you know it, we will be having subspecies animalmen. I'd personally rather not run into the likes of poodlemen or the like.

I feel a bit similarly about many of the giant animals. Giant spiders and Giant scorpians are pretty fitting, I think, because they are generic animals, but a lot of the giant animals are specifically giant species of existing animals, which is somewhat annoying. Personally, when I mod, I try to remove a bit of this sort of thing. There are plenty of animals, real and mythological, that are unimplemented which would go well into [SAVAGE] biomes. For instance, I modded in Aurochs and Tarpan (wild oxen and horses of the type often depicted in cave art) for savage biomes, and wargs as an [EVIL] counterpart for wolves. Considering many of the outlandish creatures Toady implemented for the underground, I'd say that this is definately not due to a lack of imagination, but I do think that the animal/giant animal/animalmen system is a bit bland way of handling things compared to the imaginative ways Toady has handled other parts of DF.

[MaskedMiner]

I'm hoping there will be time when we will have animalmen tribes. Though, I wonder how underground civilization tribes will differ from surface animalmen tribes 

But yeah, at the moment, while cave animalmen tribes use spears and blowguns and such, surface ones are just normal animals except that you can't butcher them because they have can_learn and can_speak tag. Heck, I've never managed to talk to them in adventure mode.

[utilitarian]

I'd have to agree as well. DF is great at creating an immersive world, and seeing 7-8 kinds of "men" wandering around as the only wildlife kind of kills things for me 

[knutor]

Isn't that the advanced bogeyman setting?  Or is a bogeyman something else?  I dunno, still working out all the changes.  It'd be great to know what to toggle, as more than one players has mentioned disgust in it.

Oh, you know what?  I bet these animal men have something to do with werebeast setting.  Anyone try tweaking that parameter to see? 

[Jothki]

Noooo, don't complain about animal men!

We have enough of them as there is, we don't need Toady adding more because you couldn't keep quiet.

[Greendogo]

What are you talking about Jothki?  That's what the thread is about, reducing the frequency of Animal Man encounters, or at least controlling them in some way to make the experience more immersive.

Personally, I think it would be cool if Toady made animal men rarer but able to form small civilizations.  If any Animal Men civilization prospered enough, then they would be given a random new species name and that species would then be able to make major civilizations like the Elves, Humans, Dwarves, etc.  And then they could also be chosen for adventuring.  But only if it happens during world gen or something.  But this would keep each world unique, because while all worlds would likely have some amount of Elephant Men, not all worlds would have Elephant men be capable of creating civilizations or being available for adventuring.