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[guitarxe]

I really don't like gigantic immigrant waves that have more dwarves in them than my entire fort population. And I know that they always come after your mountain-home liaison shows up for trade.
So, it seems like what he sees about your fort during this time will directly affect the next immigration wave(s) you get.

Now I know that you can limit your population in the init files, but the problem is not the total population cap, but rather how many dwarves you get per wave. I'd like to see many waves over the course of many years of 10 or so dwarves each. Not a mountain-load all at once.

Has any one done any !!science!! on this to see what exactly affects the size of an immigration wave?

We know that created wealth is one of the things that influences the size of a migration wave, but there are little more specifics after that. The wiki also mentions that it is the trade caravan - not the liaison - that reports on your fortress wealth.

So, this is what I propose needs testing (and I will test these myself when I come home, if someone has not tested this already):


1. We need to start from the top and the wiki is not infallible
    a) Is the merchant caravan still the one that reports on the fort's wealth?
    b) What effect, if any, does the liaison have?

2. How is the fort's wealth perceived?
    a) Does the caravan immediately ascertain the fort's wealth upon appearing on the map?
    b) Does the caravan (or the liaison) have to "see" the fort, in order to report on the wealth? (the liaison does run through your whole fort looking for your mayor, after all).
    c) Does the caravan judge the fort's wealth by the trade goods during trading?

3. Does what and how much you trade have an influence?
    a) Value of what you trade away.
    b) Amount of what you trade away.
    c) Trader profit.
    d) What about goods offered for free?
    e) Type of goods (for example, 1,000 value worth of wooden crafts vs 1,000 value worth of stone crafts).

4. What other factors can influence migration wave size?
    a) Other forms of wealth - imported, exported, architectural (built) wealth, etc.
    b) Food or Booze stocks.
    c) Animal value (value of all domesticated animals in the fort)
    d) Embark value (such as access to water (river/stream, etc), good or evil location, other geological factors such as volcanoes, number or type of trees, climate, available animals to hunt or fish, and so on(this one will be a bitch to test).
    e) Current fort population.
    f) Nobles in the fort (whether the fort just has an expedition leader, has a mayor, has a baron, a count, etc).

I think this will be plenty to start off. Please feel free to add to the list or test any of these. I will report back with the results when some conclusive tests are completed.

[SAFry]

Get anywhere with your testing? Going to take a while with all those variables...

I was just searching for more information on immigration as I've got a fort where I'm only getting 4 dudes a wave, it's year 7 and I only have 60 dwarves (some died). I have traded tons and have plenty of created wealth and a baron.

One idea I had was the dwarf civilisation I chose, there were 4 but the one I went with was almost non existent. It only had one site and was a long way from my embark site. Wonder if that has anything to do with it?

[Bigheaded]

have a weird idea food stockpiles make an influence.

Previously i was getting  ~7 dwarves literally every time, in a new fortress where i am making TONNES of food and doing rather a large amount of trading, especially with dwarves, i received a wave of 20-40 dwarves.

Best of luck on research, my only real notes is now i'm getting a lil better, is more dwarves feel safer in my house.


Another thing, in old fortresses, i lost a LOAD of stuff to snatchers/thieves, make enemy civilizations stronger kills immigrants maybe?


fairly new to DF so feel free to ignore

[Iosyn]

I think it's connected to fort created wealth.
yeah, some of the well-done forts I start might have say, 4-5 migrants in the first wave, 5-7 in the next and 20 in the one after-- and maybe half of them will be kids. God knows none of them will have any decent skills. 3 high master furnace operators,(on a map with only Galena and tetrahedrite. ;_; ) proficient cheesemakers, clothiers, beekeeper and novice fisherdorfs.

Welcome to boot camp, folks. Hope you know how to polish stone, because as of now you're all engravers, pump operators and axedorfs.
Thankfully it seems that most immigrants have a nice selection of combat skills.

[SAFry]

Well so far I've exported 338506 dwarf bucks worth of stuff to the dwarf caravans and this year (7 years in) I've had 4, 4 then 3 dwarves in migrant waves. So I guess there must be more to it then just wealth.

[wuphonsreach]

Common theories:

- Total wealth
- Exported wealth, imported wealth
- Difference between current population and your popcap

I've found that when I start very small (15 pop-cap) and only raise it 5 at a time each spring, I get rather small migration waves.  On the other hand, if I boost it 10 or 15 every spring, I get larger migration waves.

[Bobnova]

I thought it had something to do with how many the liaison thinks your fort can support. Don't know where that idea came from though.
If that is the case, food stockpiles would make sense as an important variable.

[WJLIII3]

I think offering lots increases size of migrant waves.

[oneguy]

i noticed on one of my forts i started once i had lots of food and supplies i still diden't get many immigrants. so i decided to build bedrooms, lots 1 for each dwarf i had and then some left over with a barracks and hospital. then my next wave was huge so maybe its something like  "there is food, and work, and housing, available, this must be a pretty swell place"

[Seraphim342]

I've noticed that the migrant waves I get tend to explode then taper off as I get closer to pop cap, usually ending up at about 110-120% of my pop cap.  Though I once had 39 dwarves with a pop cap of 40 and got a wave of 42 migrants...  very little in the way of exports and no offerings.  Pretty big fortress value though, just had an artifact platinum statue made on that one...

I generally like to keep my pop below 60 until I can get housing for ~100 or so dwarves and various nobles set up, as well as jails and at least one squad of good military (usually marksdwarves which also serve as fortress guard).  This past fort I had 42 dwarves with a cap of 40 didn't get any migrants.  Kept it there until I got 150 3x1 rooms dug, smoothed, engraved, and furnished, then set the pop cap to 80.... BOOM, 55 dwarf wave. 

[RavenZ]

I also suffer to over populated waves of migrants, and i was thinking - if no dwarfen civilization exist will be there also so much migration? I dont know how to edit those configs even with the wisdom of magmawiki (now dfwiki). Can someone research for us if this will have impact on migrations? I know that two first waves are hardcoded but i dont know nothing about the next waves.

[Bitharne]

I'm just not sure anymore...my latest fort (17k candy said to exist) has been weird and throws the conceptions off a lot:

The first two waves (summer and autumn of embark year) are always 2-10 dwarves regardless of what your wealth, food, bedrooms, etc are.

The third wave (summer of the following year), and all following waves, is supposed to be linked to created wealth. I think this derived from the fact that sieges and such are said to be linked to the same value.

However, in most forts I seem to always get 20something dwarves in 3rd wave regardless of it i've been limiting wealth, or cranking out crafts like no one's business, or even throwing out a suit of steel armor for my embark fighter (LOTS of wealth).

The following waves always seem to be in similar size: 20-40 dwarves each...again not seeming to be linked to heavily to wealth; if it is then it seems to be a (rather small) threshold that just has to be met and then lets tons of dudes show up.

That said, in my newest fort my waves have been CONSIDERABLY smaller. The third wave might have had 20...i think less. And the third and fourth had 10-15 (one was 11 i'm pretty sure, i'll check later when I have time). I was confused why this was the case since i'm not doing anything to limit wealth at all, and have a STUPID amount of food stored up for this early.

All I know is that, while I LOVE this latest hauling/mining update. I really can't wait to see an overhaul to immigration...one of the least liked things about the game atm is getting 40 new dwarves all at once and having to manage them effectively. Therapist makes it bearable, I couldn't imagine it without...it just saps a lot of fun out of forts for me.

Smaller waves of 5-10, and up to 20 as a rather large wave, would be nicer. Especially if we had a good way of knowing what attracts them, so it was simple for us to throttle it if we wanted: having no control over it even when you want to is...frustrating to say the least.

[SAFry]

Odd because my current embark where I'm getting tiny migration waves has a lot of candy and some other features too.

I let the first 2 dwarf caravans leave with barely any trade as I was too busy carving out my magma forges. Since then I've traded 300k worth of gem encrusted aluminium and platinum crafts, donated 3k of stuff (don't want the king showing up yet) have loads of food etc. I have empty bedrooms but not many spare, guess I could try that...

If you don't want too many migrants, try this: on embark look through the available dwarf civs and choose the smallest furthest away one. See if that slows it down.   

[Di]

Actually, popcap works just fine. It just can't turn away migrants that are already on the way to the fort. I usually get exactly that many plus a pair of spare dwarfs.
As for wealth, I guess it could track both absolute value and it's relative increase. In a current fort I got like 40 dwarves in first twoo-three years when I was piercing deep aquifer. Then I've started creating lots of furniture and trap comps and got to 120 it a year.

[Brewster]

It just gets ridiculous!
I start out with seven peasants, an anvil, and a copper nugget.
End the year with a nice 25 dwarf fortress.
Shortly after, 33 migrants show up.
I don't have room for all of them!

Not sure if it's because of the caravan that came and went.
Or if it was because I started to mine a lot of earth.