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[Shmo]

I've just gotten 34.07 and made a new world. Nothing fancy: history, size++, civs+, sites+, beasts++, savagery++, resources--.

I embarked on a fairly regular site mountain foothills, so far so good. Then I noticed that every immigrant in the first wave was at "Great" skill level in his respective skill. Some have other skills at competent or novice or something of that nature, but everyone's highest skill is exactly at "Great". All immigrants in subsequent waves also shared this property. Some immigrants were "Great" at two or more professions, however.

Is this a feature of 0.34? If it is, can it be turned off? I find I don't have much lowercase-f fun with all immigrants highly able.

As a side note, I have SET_LABOR_LISTS at NO.

[nukularpower]

I've definately never seen anything like that happen.

Maybe they are all vampires...

[Shmo]

Just as I was reading the Wiki: "Vampire immigrants frequently have very high social skills, and one or more skills at the "Great" level. By itself, this may not be sufficient evidence to prove a dwarf is a vampire, but it is a frequent indicator. Another excellent indicator is that all vampires have white hair or are clean shaven."

I've lost the fort to a Minotaur and abandoned it, so I can't investigate. Curses!

However, the world is still there, and I remember the civilization to which my group belongs. I'll see if this happens again.

[MenacesWithSpikes]

I haven't had the same results the original poster has had.

Something like 90% or 95% of my migrants come in with one weapon skill at Competent.  I'm guessing there's a lot of warring going on.  Other skills (not counting ones like Conversationalist and the like) tend to be at Adequate or Novice.  Sometimes at Competent.

I did get one Great Weaponsmith and one Great Armorsmith, though.  I'm thrilled about that.  I figure any vampire migrants will drain them first, though.

[slink]

I've been mostly getting migrants barely skilled in one to three professions, with a few having "Great" in one or more professions.  None are vampires.

[Shmo]

Another embark on the same world, with a different dwarven civ.

The first migrant wave is a procession of clean-shaven Greats with outstanding social skills. All of them have protruding heliotrope eyes, most of which are to some degree closely set. Most of them are over 100, and three are pushing 150. All of them also have scratchy voices and hooked noses.

In addition to being extraordinarily unsettling, this development is baffling. All of these dwarves are Great. They all to an uncanny extent share similar physical features. Furthermore, all of them have at least one past civilization membership (former member of...); most have two.

Addition:

I've forbidden all food and drink as part of "Operation Starvation?" It seems the would-be vampires are drinking from the brook, further confusing my understanding of this scenario.

They've all also grown hungry; no feeding on blood has occurred. It seems certain now they're not vampires. What, then, could explain these spectacularly bizarre demographics?

[slink]

If they are drinking from the brook, they are not vampires.  Belonging to one or two previous groups does not make someone a vampire, unless you stopped the world at some very low year.  Vampires normally have a whole wall of blue text in their membership area.

I often have two migrants with almost the same name arrive one right after the other when many of them arrive at once.  I take this to be a sign that the RNG is sticking.  Maybe your RNG sticking even more.

[Shmo]

Yep, it's very odd. Another immigrant wave. All the same as the first, all greats. I just noticed that all of their sideburns and moustaches are pretty much identical, too.

[Tolisk]

Merry band of brothers, they are.

[Tehsapper]

I have the same problem. Most of my immigrants have some novice-competent military skill, then all novice fisherdwarf skills and then their random craft skill, which is almost always "Great". That might be because 1/3 of my current fortress population are relatives of old bloodline family, which I named "Warharvest". Historical migrants receive skills they had before, so I suppose my dwarven civ lived on solely fishing and hunting
And yes, none of them are vampires.

[quarague]

First vampire paranoia, not everyone who is good/great at something is a vampire.
Second the skills of the migrants tend to vary a lot more world by world (or civilization by civilation) than in between migrants arriving at the same fort. If your civ is fighting a lot of wars almost all migrants will have almost identical combat skills, usually competent weapon + novice armor + novice dodger or some combo like that
If your civ is not involved in wars you will get virtually no immigrants with combat skills.
For labor skills my interpretation is as follows. It seems there are two categories 'skilled' and 'unskilled'. If your civ got 'skilled' than most of your immigrants will be great at some skill and frequently have a few other skills at lower levels. If you civ got 'unskilled' most of your migrants will be adequate or even only novice in 1 to 3 skills. 
I agree it would be nice if there were a little more variance but I don't think that can be modded easily.

[knutor]

Someone said, a little while ago, the first two waves are fixed.  What did the third wave contain?

Post the worldgen parameters for that world, if its an adv world, otherwise which one did you choose?  I wonder if this migrant uberskill bug, isn't a result of Toady lowering the vampire migrant counts.  Hmm.  *scratch head*  Knutor

[Antalia]

My 34.05 fort currently has 260 citizens. Almost all of them have close-set turquoise eyes, concave noses, and dark brown skin. Most are clean-shaven, but there are a number of long ponytails. Most of the men have double-braided mustaches.

The biome for that fort is hot jungle. I was thinking perhaps the game is now choosing physical characteristics appropriate to the biome? Darker skin would serve best under our scorching summer sun, but then those turquoise eyes might require sunglasses...oh wait, right, we live in a CAVE! Never mind. (I had created another fort before this one in 34.05, and nearly everyone had violet eyes and olive/tan skin in that one. That was in a more temperate biome, with a short freeze in winter.)

In my last DF2010 fort of about 160 citizens, there was a pretty even mix of skin, eye, and hair colors, and hair styles. So it's almost certain that something has changed since then.

If the biome and appearances are indeed linked now, I wonder where I should settle for the biggest variety of appearances? I like character portraits and it gets a bit boring when everybody's got the same nose, eyes, ears, and hair.

[slink]

One thing that has changed is that migrants are mostly historical figures in 34.x.  Given that appearances are inherited, and that each Dwarven civilization descends from ten or fewer Dwarves, perhaps it is not too surprising if they all end up appearing similar within one civilization.  It appears that nominally they descend from ten, as was the case in previous versions, but some fall by the wayside as necromancers or consorts to night creatures.  Even the ones who remain normal don't always have descendants.  I see there that, of the five founding male Dwarves of one of the civs in the world I am playing, only three had children.  However, all five females had children.  Two have husbands not listed with that group.  Presumably someone migrated.  At any rate, in 1050 years there is a lot of time for inbreeding.  It is too bad that the historical records don't include appearances.

[Shmo]

Against the better interests of !!science!!, I nuked that world and made a new one (I just need my fix, man, you ain't gotta judge me). New world, new fort: first wave of 7 or so had all Competents or Novices, as I had hoped. However they were all farmers (though of different professions). I didn't check their physical appearances.

If I recall correctly, the "all Great" phenomenon persisted into the third wave, so I think it's fairly independent of whether the immigrants are genuine or conjured up ex nihilo.

The explanations in this thread make sense. While I had never paid too close attention to physical appearances before, I think similarity to this extent would have jumped out. Perhaps heredity is now stronger (versus possible randomization), or merely that the dwarven civs I had selected, as conjectured, passed through tight bottlenecks (maybe Toady should add genetic diseases...). As for the "all Great", quarague's interpretation seems plausible, if a little contrary to the "no arbitrary categories" spirit of DF.

Given how delightfully easy it is for me to scrap a fort or world and start anew, I expect to have more data regarding this issue shortly.