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[Sowelu]

If we're going to fuss over names, I think it would be cool to (out of a small enough pool of animalmen present at your site, so you only ever see like 0-3 different types) give each local animalman type a unique random species name.  Whether they're in a tribe or not.

[Urist McDagger]

Yes. My two cents follows. Actual suggestions in bold. Spoilered because it's long.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There are too many animalmen and giant animals. I think this is part of a larger problem with savage areas being not as flavorful as they could be--just having bigger and humanoid versions of normal wildlife rather than truly 'exotic' stuff (e.g., giant lion/tiger rather than something like cave lion/sabertooth tiger).

I think a lot could be done with castes.

In many of the Threetoe stories, animal men serve as sort of big brother protector figures for the population of their normal animal counterparts. One way to achieve this sort of thing would be to make a humanoid version of whatever animal a rare-ish caste of that animal. So, occasionally you'd see a herd of horses watched over by a horse-man. Caste frequency seems to be more finely tune-able than general creature frequency, but I'm not really a rawmancer.

Biome tokens should be able to be specified for different castes of the same creature. I don't think they can be, but I'm not sure. If they were, one could specify that a humanoid caste of a creature would only occur in savage areas. One could also do interesting things that would add regional flavor, like having a single wolf creature with a normal wolf caste for benign regions, a warg caste for evil regions, dire wolves and wolf-men for savage regions, rainbow sparkle wolves for good regions, and ice wolves for cold biomes. Interbreeding them to get hybrids would be interesting, but would probably require an overhaul of how either breeding or castes work.

You could (haven't tried it in this version) talk to animal men if you were an elf adventurer (or anyone else with the at peace with wildlife tag modded in), but they didn't have much to say and wouldn't join you. That sucks, I really think elves should be able to recruit a posse of animal-men to go beat up a night troll. (Elves are, after all, generally associated with huge posses.)

Another idea would be to make animal men unique historical figures, via some sort of interaction from a regional force, like were- and vampire curses from gods, but benefical. "In 123, Falethewi, a regional force associated with dirt and sticks, elevated the moose Afwei to a moose-man because of his noble antlers and charged him with guarding the Glen of Glitter in the Fancy Forest."

I just assumed that's what he was going for, but that he just hasn't gotten around to making Forest Retreats and Spirits work that way yet.

[WillowLuman]

There are 2-different kinds of lovebird men. Why not just combine them?

[Vattic]

The problem with simply combining lesser known animals is that it's all a matter of familiarity. Different people will be familiar with different animals. For me here in the UK it makes good sense to keep hare and rabbit men separate as they are different enough but people from wildly different climates might want to see them combined.

[Areyar]

It would make more sense if only several animals were made into animal-people at world creation, rather than to have every beast have it's own intelligent version.
I feel it makes it very illogical for there to be only one type of men, dwarves, goblins, kobolds and elves.
A system similar to how the syndrome based night creatures are handled would make me happier.

Loved to see the snail/slugmen specifically in swamps though.

[WillowLuman]

The problem with simply combining lesser known animals is that it's all a matter of familiarity. Different people will be familiar with different animals. For me here in the UK it makes good sense to keep hare and rabbit men separate as they are different enough but people from wildly different climates might want to see them combined.

Both subspecies of lovebird though, it's a bit too specific to have a man version of each.

[Sowelu]

It matters a lot if you consider them to be like star-bellied sneeches and those without.  Superficial, but it can matter a LOT, especially for roleplaying.

[Fault]

what I don't like about animal men is all the redundancies present. like HugoLuman said, they all fill the same niche and are mostly identical.

This comes across as a startling difference to the animal men left over from the earlier versions of dwarf fortress. Each one presented a different challenge, and for the most part, had a unique ability - bat men ambushers use flying to path to your dwarves, frog men ambushers use swimming to path to your dwarves, snake men ambushers have a poisonous bite, ant men have a dangerous warrior caste..

compared to that all these new animal men are the same kinda thing, just different variations on 'person with the head and arms of a [blank]' that flit about occasionally spooking your hunters and beekeepers.

if they don't have traits that differentiate them from eachother in significant ways (like the cave animal men are supposed to) then there's little reason for there to be SO MANY OF THEM. The worst part is the atmosphere it gives off, these things having no real difference besides minor aesthetic leaves a bad taste considering they're mostly there because people paid for them to be.

[Splint]

On the plus side, the animal men can make great practice for soldiers. And since they're sentients killing them should slowly wear down thier suseptibility to tantrums; I did so using captured thirpmen. WOrked out great, the soldiers were the only ones not flipping shit

I agree some are redundant, and should simply be labeled birdmen, while others have some strange quirks (Badgermen get thier prone to rage, which makes for great gladiators while moosemen like to strangle cavies)

Now, if you could induct these ordes into the fortress as workers/warriors upon capture then they'd all have a place, and it'd encourage capturing them. I'd love an army of flying eaglemen jabbing marksgobs in the face while my dwarves beat down the trolls. Seems this thread overall does have some rather nice suggestions regardless....

[Ubiq]

The real problem is that the entries for the recent animal men and giant animal additions simply copies the FREQUENCY of the original animal entry, which is usually either 100 (and thus that animal will constantly spawn in that biome) or is left out and therefore defaults to 50. Compare this to Tigermen, who retain their original entry and therefore have a seperate frequency setting of 5. To fix it, you can add [FREQUENCY:5] to each animal man/giant animal entry or simply change the original's Frequency or even simply their related biome. An animal like the Dingo, which lacks a Frequency entry and therefore has the default 50, has NOT_FREEZING as its biome. A bunch of these new animals do as a matter of fact. So simply changing NOT_FREEZING to a more limited biome will have a big impact.

[Owlbread]

I like the current level of diversity in DF with respect to animal men. However, I think the game should pick the animal men species randomly from a list during worldgen, so one world may have a lot of frogmen but another has brown recluse spidermen and so on. The number of these animal men is also procedurally generated (there may be more batmen than peregrine falcon men, for example). No more are generated from this number; rather, they will breed and reproduce like other civilised races. Perhaps new species of animal men could be generated at random intervals in the coming years, which are then to be discovered by civilisations as time goes on. This would reach a cap, so you will eventually reach that age of fairytales and so on.

[MenacesWithSpikes]

I agree.  Please reduce the frequency of animal men/women in the new version.

It also is a PITA if you have a dedicated hunter at embark.  I want my hunter hunting animals for meat, not ignoring animal people.

[Areyar]

I like the current level of diversity in DF with respect to animal men. However, I think the game should pick the animal men species randomly from a list during worldgen, so one world may have a lot of frogmen but another has brown recluse spidermen and so on.

This.
Have worldgen select a restricted number of animal-people types at worldgen. Maybe a worldgen variable as that would make everyone happy: default(1-10), none, all, <integer>.

[Ves]

I'd like to see a limited number of animal-men at worldgen, then secrets like "Elevate Vermin" and "Elevate Beast."

Then you could end up with things like towers filled not with zombies and necromanders, but King Cobra-men and Cobra Commanders, or maybe even have some of them who move into their elevator's hometown and become productive members of that civilization.

Of course in Adventure mode, you can discover the secrets, then play Pokémon and try to get one of every species as a follower.

[Splint]

I'd like to see a limited number of animal-men at worldgen, then secrets like "Elevate Vermin" and "Elevate Beast."

Then you could end up with things like towers filled not with zombies and necromanders, but King Cobra-men and Cobra Commanders, or maybe even have some of them who move into their elevator's hometown and become productive members of that civilization.

Of course in Adventure mode, you can discover the secrets, then play Pokémon and try to get one of every species as a follower.

I support this with enthusiasm.