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[Azerax]

Greetings all,

I'm really embarassed to say that my dorfs have started to die of old age.  It's been about 2 in-game years since my fortress has been attacked, is there a set number of invaders?

Thanks,
Az

[ChuckWeiss]

I beleive that in the current version, yes, there is a limit; populations don't replenish except for the dwarves and animals that are breeding in your fort.

[Telgin]

In theory you could deplete invader populations, but you'd be hard pressed to.  I've had close to a 5 year gap once between seeing any invaders in an older fort.  Just [bad] luck, possibly.

How old is your fort?  How many invaders have you killed?  I seem to recall there being a bug that prevented new migrants (and possibly invaders, don't recall) if you had several thousand things die in your fort.

[VerdantSF]

I forget the version I played prior to this one, but I remember invaders being relentless.  Once sieges started, it was pretty much every season.  I kind of like that things calm down for a bit after big fights now.  Not sure if it's just random chance, though.

[Azerax]

Thanks for the replies, I'll give it some more time.  The fort is only about 20 game years old and I've only killed about 20 invaders per year before the gap. (so around 350). 
I've had about 200 deaths, mainly my distraction cattle, about 80 dorfs.  I haven't had any migrants in a couple years too, nothing bad has happened yet and the merchants keep coming.  I'll just keep building and building and wait!

Thanks!

[hiroshi42]

Invaders do not run out as long as their civ is viable, much like migrants.  I have had a goblin civ with just a demon as leader send waves of goblinite for years.  Similarly you can have a dwarf civ with 1 member send migrant waves of 50+, the game just generates new dwarves.

You are just experiencing a lull in your happy fun times.

[Deinos]

I thought the first two migrant waves were unlimited, and the subsequent ones will be limited by the real dwarf population?

[Kumquat]

It used to be that way for a while but people started complaining about not getting migrants or merchants, so it was changed.
You won't get any historical migrants if they don't exist in the game though. Noobspawned migrants have poor skills and no families.

[Telgin]

There is unfortunately a large amount of conflicting information floating around regarding that.  Someone with more time than me really ought to test this to clear it up.

My guess is that the game doesn't check the parent civ's viability / entity population until your fort's population record is created.  That only happens after the dwarf caravan arrives and leaves, or if you use DFHack with fix/population-cap.

[sweitx]

It used to be that way for a while but people started complaining about not getting migrants or merchants, so it was changed.
You won't get any historical migrants if they don't exist in the game though. Noobspawned migrants have poor skills and no families.

Oh! That's why I'm now getting migrant with little to no skills!
I was wondering about that when, early on, I was getting migrant with weapon skills, armor skills, a few labor skills, and scattering of social skill. Now I'm just getting migrants with, say 1~3 labor skills and nothing else.

[i2amroy]

How old is your fort?  How many invaders have you killed?  I seem to recall there being a bug that prevented new migrants (and possibly invaders, don't recall) if you had several thousand things die in your fort.

Yeah this bug exists, IIRC the method around it was to use DFHack to wipe out the records of your long dead and gone livestock, and potentially some of the dead goblins as well.