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[Urist Da Vinci]

Wanted to see what the distribution of engraving topics was, especially with regards to the number of historical events.

A. Embarked on a world with a 5 year history.
B. Embarked on a world with a 550 year history.
In both cases, embarked with 7 miner/engravers and carved ~500 engravings.

Results:
~10% the symbol of your civilization
~10% the symbol of your group
45-50% historical records
30-35% shapes, creatures, deitys, likes/dislikes, etc.

5 year old worlds engrave with no lag
With 550 year old worlds, there is a lag each time an engraving is created (historical lookup time?)

In the 5 year old world, the historical events were all the same - a dragon made its home in that region in year 1.
In the 550 year old world, each historical event was different (as far as I could remember) - mostly dwarves and humans hunting and being killed by the giant jaguars, giant anacondas, and crocodiles of the region. I don't recall seeing the same name twice.

I didn't see any mayor election spam because the fort was new. Surprisingly, I didn't see any fort founding spam.

What else do we know, not know, or could test for?

[Lordraymond]

Next do one for statues. Perhaps boost your dwarves to Legendary +5 so they'll always make them portray events and not generic "a statue of dwarves" style things. Check the relativity of creating one about a fortress's events (perhaps on a 5 or 10 year fort with a ~100 year gen) against random gen happenings. It would be interesting to see if dwarves will favor events in their own fort than events in the world at large.

[rhesusmacabre]

Is it known whether of not a dwarf is more likely to engrave an image of something they themselves like?

[SRD]

Or what their leaders like? (Suckups)

[Bordellimies]

And if possible, artifacts. Ignoring the most basic ones (This is a dog leather earring. All craftmanship is of the greatest quality. It menaces with spikes of dog leather.), do the ones with actual historic stuff/pictures also differ with the world history length

[Garath]

Or what their leaders like? (Suckups)

the opposite has been observed more, such as when two dwarfs switch the mayor title, there will be a lot of engravings and statues of one or the other being removed, but not of them being elevated. It has happened to me that a baron hated worms and my metal worker was spamming statues of worms, despite not caring one way or the other about worms himself

[Urist Da Vinci]

Testing done on my own 1.5 year old fort in a 250 year old world:

Code: [Select]

shape                                  16%
civ symbol                              10%
local symbol                            8%
artifact                                8%
item                                    7%
plant                                  6%
deity                                  6%
selection of expedition leader          5%
foundation of fort                      5%
my history                              5%
region history                          5%
creature                                5%
dwarves                                4%
tree                                    4%
local historical figure history        2%
appointment of bookkeeper              2%
local historical figure likes bolts    1%
-If the engraver has item, plant, tree, creature preferences they will carve them. This is not labelled as "x is surrounded by the x". (I got weapon racks, turkeys, and lots of square cut gem shapes)
-If the engraver doesn't have a preference, they will carve random things (I got random trees and plants from this guy)
-The engraver appears to carve only their deity
-Artifacts evenly distributed among existing artifacts
-My fort's history includes goblins dying by falling or by a miner's pick, as well as the scuttling of a wagon and the haunting and putting to rest of a ghost (dwarven liason)
-My region's history was only a goblin being killed by a giant dingo
-Local historical figures get mention when they settled or were accepted into the fort. It appears that you have to kill something, get a noble position, or become legendary to become a local historical figure.
-It appears that local historical figures will be associated with their favorite/hated items or creatures.

Reduced complexity percentages:

Code: [Select]

civ symbol                              10%
local symbol                            8%
artifact                                8%
engraver's preferences or random 48%
history                            25%
I didn't get any "rendition of masterpiece" type engravings due to the fort being young.

Remember to filter your engravers to get rid of ones with annoying preferences or deitys!

Next up for testing: likely either statues, or the difference between skilled and unskilled engravers.

[GhostDwemer]

Excellent science. It fits with my much less scientific observations of engravings. The history lag is interesting. I think many will find the information about the deity engravings useful. If you want a temple with engravings of a certain deity, you burrow a worshiper to engrave there.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Excellent science. It fits with my much less scientific observations of engravings. The history lag is interesting. I think many will find the information about the deity engravings useful. If you want a temple with engravings of a certain deity, you burrow a worshiper to engrave there.

Force worshipper of deity of choice to make statues of whatever material. Discard statues of dwarves, cats, etc. and keep statues of deity. Install in temple.

[Girlinhat]

Sam here.  I won't be engraving temples until we get specific engraving methods.  Until then, statues shall abound!

[Lordraymond]

It seems to me that the subject of an engraving is entirely dependent on the quality. Low and no quaility engravings ALWAYS (In my experience) produce a generic engraving of a shape, symbol or entity. High quality produce more complex situations (An engraving of a dwarf surrounded by dwarves. The dwarves are laughing.) or portray historical events.

[Urist Da Vinci]

It seems to me that the subject of an engraving is entirely dependent on the quality. Low and no quaility engravings ALWAYS (In my experience) produce a generic engraving of a shape, symbol or entity. High quality produce more complex situations (An engraving of a dwarf surrounded by dwarves. The dwarves are laughing.) or portray historical events.

Tested that idea. Embarked with one engraver and 6 miners (no engraving skill). Mined out 2 rooms, and then walled in the engraver with some food and booze into one of the rooms. Had one room smoothed and engraved by the single skilled guy, whereas the other room was smoothed and engraved by a team of 6 noobs. At the end, the engraver was "talented" whereas the miners were only "dabbling" engravers.

Single Talented Engraver:
12% Civilization symbol
10% Local symbol
44% History
27% Engraver's preferences or random shapes/items/creatures/plants/etc.
2% Local historical figure (the expedition leader) surrounded by things he likes or hates
5% Artifacts (necromancer books!)

Team of dabbling engravers:
17% Civilization symbol
18% Local symbol
65% Engraver's preferences or random shapes/items/creatures/plants/etc.

Hmm... Looks like truth. If you want a higher chance of history records, use the most skilled engraver. I don't have access to a legendary engraver to see what that produces.

Its interesting that you don't get "founding of the fort" engravings in the first season of the fort. Perhaps it has to become last year's news before it gets engravable?

[GenJeFT]

Hello. The new guys 2 cents is here.

I in my fortress I have a Legendary +5 stone detailer I can have do engravings. I will carve out a room and tell you how it turns out shortly (I have the game running now).

Will follow up shortly.

[GenJeFT]

Here are my results after 80 carvings.

60 relate to history. Quick breakdown of history.

There are at least 3 dwarf fortresses of my civ besides me.

Piller of problems has a problem keeping a mayor (pun intended). At least 5 elections since year 03, now year 21.

Only mentions removals from a postition 4 times (most elections talk about election of new mayor, not removal, old mayor perhaps died?)

3 appointments to positions.

13 references to fortress foundings (vast majority repeats, all dwarven fortresses).

There are 8 references to artifacts. (including two references to Biscuits?)

Other marks.

8 emblem of a dwarf civ, I did not count this in history because dwarf civ still exists and therefore is not history.

4 of local governments.

ONLY 1 deity (the deity of the carver).

Only 1 hated object.

So with a Legendary engraver will engrave history roughly 75% of the time.

Side note.

Apparently Bronze colossus history is very important. The most common carving was of a human named Umcilvorymansions being killed by a Bronze Colossus named Zebna Searchbraved in year 3.

Other side note, wtf is it with names?

[Urist Da Vinci]

...
So with a Legendary engraver will engrave history roughly 75% of the time.
...

Yes, my own testing sort of verifies the 75% number. It seems that if your fort/region doesn't have enough history, then by legendary they will be engraving even the rather insignificant events such as "x gave up being a cheesemaker to become a mason" or "human merchants visited the fort in the year x".



Statues:

Code: [Select]

sample size 1000 via reaction, range of quality/creator skill levels

26% expedition leader (selection, likes/dislikes, etc.)
25% region history (hunters vs a single giant dingo)
17% founding of the fort
15% fort history (i.e. deaths of wagon, goblins, kobold. Rise of a ghost, dwarves settling, artifact creation, etc.)
12% deity (just the statue maker's deity)
5% engraver's preferences or random

Statues seem to produce better history since civilization symbols, local symbols, plants, trees, and shapes are all excluded from use. History appears to improve with quality, so at the noob end of statues you get a lot of random creatures, deitys, and the expedition leader.

Potential uses: a zoo with placeholder statues if you don't have a live creature. A temple of a god or the gods. A long hall with all the leaders and mayors of the fort that have ever held the position, sorted by year.

For people who want a hall of their fort's history, statues have the benefit of being placeable and disposable, unlike engravings.