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[guitarxe]

So with the latest version due to the change that immigrants will mostly be historical figures I'm quite fed up of having migration waves containing sometimes nearly 50% brats or more.

What can be done during world gen to minimize the number of children that come in a migration wave?

[Chaia]

If modding dorfs is okay for you:

find the [CHILD:12] tag for the dwarves in standart.txt, set a lower number for less time as a child
which means less children arrive at your fortress

[darkgloomie]

or just build a MAXIMUM HAPPY FUN CHAMBER for kid migrants. Isn't that pretty much what everybody does these days?

[guitarxe]

I do that, too. But that still means the proportion of adults arriving doesn't change.

I could try modding the child age, but is there anything else that can be done?

[pisskop]

I don't really find too many childrens... maybe 1 or two in a wave if at all.  I let them haul and post a marksdwarf at the gate to shot the goblin who steals them...  I consider childs part of the Fun!  Go tell them to deconstruct a support if they bother you...

Come to think of it, if I gave kobolds child theifing, would they have colonies of brainwashed childs?  Kinda trying to strengthen them.

[the woods]

Agreed. If I wanted to see kids I'd go outside. Just edit reality to make the problem not exist.

My last fortress was 42% children and babies though lol. I looked up the US resident population by sex and age in the year 2000, and the percentage of humans aged less than 20 in the US was
(19176 + 20550 + 20528 + 20219) / 281425.0
which is 21% 28.5%.

So even counting every human under 20 as a child, that dwarf fortress had, proportionally, twice the way more children. I'm starting to think that goblin kidnappers are not only condoned but necessary, and that the thieves' lives are not present because of the necessity of preserving children, but are part of an adoption ritual which arose to let the dwarves accept the giving of their own children.

e: missed a row >_>

[thiosk]

Just set the ratio to 30/30 and it's all fine.
Kids aren't nearly as much trouble as you'd expect from reading these boards.

Terrifying biome?  WALL. THOSE. FUCKERS.  OUT.

[Urist McPenguinhead]

Alternatively, you could use some good ol' Dwarven Child Care

[GreatWyrmGold]

I just leave them in a normal dwarven fortress. Works every time.

[Jahsg]

Its simple, put them all in a room walled off by a closed bridge, stock with low quality booze and prepared meals, right off your main entryway or trapped path, when siege arrives.. pull a leaver and let them be slaughtered by goblins play.

[Callista]

If modding dorfs is okay for you:

find the [CHILD:12] tag for the dwarves in standart.txt, set a lower number for less time as a child
which means less children arrive at your fortress

If you mod that down to 1, does it make babies grow up to adults, or does it just give you a one-year childhood after a one-year babyhood? What if you take it down to 0; does it eliminate childhood?

[Cabbagetroll]

Magma

[IamanElfCollaborator]

Children aren't that bad.

You DO need more meatbags.

[Miuramir]

My last fortress was 42% children and babies though lol. I looked up the US resident population by sex and age in the year 2000, and the percentage of humans aged less than 20 in the US was
(19176 + 20550 + 20528 + 20219) / 281425.0
which is 21% 28.5%.

So even counting every human under 20 as a child, that dwarf fortress had, proportionally, twice the way more children.

Pre-modern population distribution was *significantly* different than what we are accustomed to today.  Remember that DF is set pre-1400.  A quick check shows that in the 1910 census, which is still far more modern than medieval, the US population had 32.1% children, defined as age 14 or less; and this doesn't count the still significant mortality rate of the very young.  If I' reading the 1890 tables right, it was 35.5%.  Earlier censuses had less specific questions, but the median age for the entire US (all classes/races/sexes) in 1820 was 16.7 years old; the earliest US census data (white males only for 1790) show a median age of 15.9 years.  (By comparison, the 2010 US median age across all groups was 37.2; a mere 220 years back drops the median age by well over half, and DF is intended to be set the equivalent of over 600 years back.) 

Picking a semi-random well documented case, King Edward I (1239-1307)... had at least 14 and perhaps 16 children by his first wife, of which only 6 survived to adulthood.  When his first wife died and he took a second, he had 3 more total, 2 of which made it to adulthood.  Note that this was a family that was, in general, well-supplied with all its physical needs; yet less than half of them made it to adulthood. 

Population growth requires, in the most general terms, that a couple have an average of more than two children that survive to adulthood and bear children of their own.  Given that not all adults are able to have children (become priests, die in accident or combat before having children, many other reasons), you need noticeably more than 2.0 surviving adult children per couple; given child mortality rates well over 50% in many cases, a couple having 5-6 kids was quite common, and 8+ kids wasn't significantly unusual in many places. 

tl;dr: DF is attempting to simulate a pre-1400 medieval population.  A substantial fraction of your population *should* be children for a vital and thriving fort; if you don't like that, feel free to mod it to something more to your liking, but be aware that you're getting into the category of mods that make the game easier by making it less realistic to your personal taste. 

[Loud Whispers]

Well the social Goblin Claus services can help with unwanted child problems. They're nice guys like that, driven to do good things by their cruel nature.