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[Dwarven War Boar]

I was wondering if genetic inheritance has advanced yet to the stage where a eugenics program is a realistic and rewarding goal. As far as specifics go, is it yet possible to both create a kind of similar appearing ethnic group out of your fortress dwellers, and to aspire to hitting maximum dwarven heights and widths so as to wield two handed weapons and larger armour (considering how maximum dwarf values just breach human numbers)?

I did a search but found only a few scattered references to user programs here and there, if there's an informative thread someone could point to that I've missed, that would also be good.

[Solon64]

I seem to recall there being programs in place to breed animals to be larger and thus produce more meat and bones.

I don't recall any threads on Dwarven breeding though.  Mostly due to a) Dwarven children growing up only after 12 years, b) difficult if not downright impossible to get desired pairings for breeding, and c) magma/goblins/FBs/HFS/boredom/FPS destroying any attempts at such a long-lasting project.

The Overseer who successfully completes such a project and can report on their findings will be revered throughout the twelfth bay, even though the research would likely prove more theoretical than practical, due to aforementioned reason "c"

[i2amroy]

It's certainly possible, though as was mentioned reason 'c' tends to cause problems before it can obtain it's true goals.

For reason 'b' you simply need to ensure that you force dwarves to marry who you want (by locking them both in a tiny room with food/water) before they can marry the dwarf of their choosing.

[Drazinononda]

a) Remove [CHILD] tag from dwarves
c) add [NO_EAT][NO_DRINK][NO_SLEEP] to dwarves and enclose a test sample in a large safehouse (dig or construct a completely enclosed space)

The only challenge then would be arranging the marriages properly, and that should be simple enough to overcome if it is in fact the only challenge.

[i2amroy]

a) Remove [CHILD] tag from dwarves

That would stop them breeding at all IIRC. What you would want to do is remove the [BABY:1] token and then change the child limit to [CHILD:1].

[Dwarven War Boar]

Modding the raws to make dwarf children grow up faster may be necessary. I wonder if anyone would consider this overly cheaty if I were to pursue this goal and posted progress?

Anyway, I suppose a plan if I were to strive for both aims would be first to screen migrants for similar appearance traits, work on creating the "ethnic group" through forced pairings as explained above by selecting parents with similar features and decent stats. Then when I have a more or less homogenous group, and several offspring with excellent traits, I could attempt to pair ideal children together so they can form a friendship and avoid contact with problematic love interests. This is assuming these interactions and "friendship level" are taken into account when marriage partners are chosen. At this stage to avoid issues with pairings I'd continue to coax marriage, and might consider sacrificing inferior specimens to Armok with a nice warm magma bath. I've considered using "lite-eugenics" before on previous fortresses where migrants arriving with traits such as "weak" were introduced to the bottom of a drawbridge, and it still seems like it would fit in here somewhere, and can more or less slot into anyone's migrant management with minimal effort.

Some things I've been wondering, if you find yourself with a super dwarf who is technically the size of a human, does the game still allow them to wear standard dwarf size clothing? For some reason I can't imagine that this would change and can't find any information regarding it, although I know large dwarves gain the ability to wield large weapons. Simple raw editing to allow native production would be a resolution in this case and would be ideal for weapons anyway. And also, according to the wiki a lot of information about genetics appears to be relatively unknown at this stage including recessiveness and dominance, but do we know if a child's traits are 100% governed by their parents or is there still some small degree of chance? I'm going to assume generational accumulation of stats doesn't happen, e.g. tall parent + tall parent = taller offspring. I ask in case it may be necessary to outcross with dwarves who have maximum height and width at some stage as opposed to just edging slowly towards that goal with a small controlled group who don't already exhibit those features. If this is the case then I'll just reverse the process and breed for size and function () first then appearance last.

Though few have the patience, it's interesting to think that if a fortress lasted a great amount of time with migration eventually being disabled and a high child cap, a fortress could more or less naturally develop its own ethnic group.

If I set out with this as my primary goal with a suitably dedicated fortress, c) shouldn't really be a problem. I'm thinking as much isolation as possible, no cavern breaches and certainly no candy until I've achieved super dwarfism. I can see this whole escapade taking a long time but I'm using a medium-high gaming rig so FPS death isn't likely to be a problem if I embark conservatively, try to avoid accumulating too much material wealth, don't mine for goblinite, utilise magma dumps, and all of the other standard FPS saving techniques.

[Maxmurder]

I don't think that modding to make children grow to maturity early would be cheaty in this case, as the main factors of the experiment are not affected. However, you may encounter an issue where the married couples are super fertile and flood the fort with offspring before relationships in the offspring could form. You will need an efficient method of disposing of unwanted offspring without inducing melancholy in the parents.

I would be very interested to see the results from this. The old fort ethnicity theory is interesting. Does anyone know how DF generates ethnic traits in world gen? Is it tied to the civ the person belongs to?

[Scottzar]

We know for a fact that eugenics occurs in attributes (or at least physical ones).
There is no separation between physical and mental attributes.
Therefore, eugenics occurs with attributes. Eugenics is a thing.

[NRDL]

PTW

[Xantalos]

PTW

[Dwarven War Boar]

We know for a fact that eugenics occurs in attributes (or at least physical ones).
There is no separation between physical and mental attributes.
Therefore, eugenics occurs with attributes. Eugenics is a thing.

I don't think you understand what eugenics is, natural trait inheritance isn't the same thing as controlled breeding for improvement.

[Larix]

Arranging dwarf marriages is rather time-consuming: i only once arranged a marriage of two drunks who weren't lovers already, and they went through the whole passing acquaintance -> long-term acquaintance -> friend -> lover -> spouse sequence over the course of six or seven years. And they had nothing to do in all that time but hang around in their shared awesome room. They only went outside to eat, drink and fetch fresh clothes (had disabled all meeting areas to prevent them from partying with others).

There may also be requirements for a marriage to be possible in the first place - spouses presumably cannot be siblings, other close familial relationships may or may not be excluded, too. I've seen some talk about needing at least one shared object of worship. If picking your dwarfs' spouses weren't such a chore and if it weren't so prone to lead directly into unspeakable crimes against dwarfkind (cf. this thread) i would be tempted to look into matchmaking science.

[Dwarven War Boar]

I don't think that modding to make children grow to maturity early would be cheaty in this case, as the main factors of the experiment are not affected. However, you may encounter an issue where the married couples are super fertile and flood the fort with offspring before relationships in the offspring could form. You will need an efficient method of disposing of unwanted offspring without inducing melancholy in the parents.

I would be very interested to see the results from this. The old fort ethnicity theory is interesting. Does anyone know how DF generates ethnic traits in world gen? Is it tied to the civ the person belongs to?

But I'm guessing adding [NO_EMOTION] would be going too far on the cheat scale when it comes to... "dealing with" inferior breeding stock. If I used drawbridges to throw children into lava, the parents won't mind will they? Where there is no body there is usually no emotion, correct? It seems to work when someone goes insane via a failed strange mood and you wall them in. And drowning in magma assigns "missing" status instead of "dead". Regular cat showers to induce a lack of emotion aren't overly efficient and would be difficult to achieve with all of the people who need that status being locked in dark rooms with Barry White music on repeat.

Arranging dwarf marriages is rather time-consuming: i only once arranged a marriage of two drunks who weren't lovers already, and they went through the whole passing acquaintance -> long-term acquaintance -> friend -> lover -> spouse sequence over the course of six or seven years. And they had nothing to do in all that time but hang around in their shared awesome room. They only went outside to eat, drink and fetch fresh clothes (had disabled all meeting areas to prevent them from partying with others).

There may also be requirements for a marriage to be possible in the first place - spouses presumably cannot be siblings, other close familial relationships may or may not be excluded, too. I've seen some talk about needing at least one shared object of worship. If picking your dwarfs' spouses weren't such a chore and if it weren't so prone to lead directly into unspeakable crimes against dwarfkind (cf. this thread) i would be tempted to look into matchmaking science.

Most reports I've read about the marriage process seem to state that it takes several months, I've never heard of it taking years. Supposedly the room should be very small though, I'd think about 3x3 or less, and I've even seen 1x1 recommended.

Wiki tells me this about marriage:
"Dwarves must be within 10 years of each other in age, and must not be Children or Babies, to enter into a romantic relationship. Being Friends may be a prerequisite as well.

Dwarves with similar professions are more likely to get married.

To enter into a romantic relationship, dwarves must be allowed to idle together in the same room. They will socialize and build relationships. If they are compatible in terms of age and marital status, they will eventually become lovers and then marry. If not, they will simply become friends. Dwarves with too little free time will not have time for romance. "

So really the only issue would be with non-native couplings, as I'll probably be somewhat annoyed if I found two perfect dwarves with an eleven year age gap. I should also probably lower my dwarf life expectancy to vanilla so there's more chance they'll be of similar ages as I had trouble with geriatric dwarves after world gen on a previous fort. I have heard about the "other requirements" before, but is this actually confirmed outside of speculation? I thought advanced marriage conditions were going to be explored in future versions.

[NRDL]

I think atom smashing, as long as there are no witnesses, can kill dwarves without unhappy thoughts. 

[Larix]

Arranging dwarf marriages is rather time-consuming: i only once arranged a marriage of two drunks who weren't lovers already, and they went through the whole passing acquaintance -> long-term acquaintance -> friend -> lover -> spouse sequence over the course of six or seven years. And they had nothing to do in all that time but hang around in their shared awesome room. They only went outside to eat, drink and fetch fresh clothes (had disabled all meeting areas to prevent them from partying with others).

Most reports I've read about the marriage process seem to state that it takes several months, I've never heard of it taking years.

If i want to marry off some dwarfs, i usually just browse through the unit list for 'romantic relationship' status and put those couples into shared rooms; _that_ usually takes a few months until marriage if there aren't too many distractions. Assigning them to the same job does seem to help, but it appears to be pretty random and slow in any case.

But if you want to 'breed' dwarfs with desired traits, you won't be looking for lovers, but rather for compatible individuals, regardless of relationship status. And what i've seen suggests that those will have to move through the ranks up to 'friends' before they can become lovers. My case was made even more complicated by the male being paraplegic, which slows all a dwarf's actions to about 30% of normal - this obviously kept him out of the room on his 'get fresh socks' errands and the like for exceptionally long times. I wouldn't be surprised if healthy dwarfs would get from passing acquaintance to married in two years or so.