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[wierd]

Ok, last week there was a thread asking questions about what kinds of relationships dwarves are willing to become involved in, and when dwarves will begin hooking up with family members, and how distant they must be to be considered marriage material.

So, I created Secretchambers the Lurid Decay, and founded the society of UglyDefects the Anguished Faces of Love to help definitively answer such questions.

The 7 honeymoon suites have been constructed, and one lucky couple has gotten hitched all by themselves so far.

Living accomodations for a VERY large number of dwarves (over 700!) Have been allocated, and the two initial migrant waves have arrived.

It is now time to seal the vault-tec vault, and begin the societal experiments!

To help engage our readers, prospective pairings will be submitted for approval in this thread, along with excerpts from their thoughts pages.  This can double as a eugenics research experiment.

Now-- to begin the experiment properly, I need to prevent any further migrations. How can I accomplish this without also turning off babies?

[Hostialan]

Lock migration waves outside so they will starve or go insane, the dwarves inside will not be affected by their deaths so long as you make slabs for them.
That is the only non-mod way I can think of preventing Migrants

[wierd]

Ok, the fortress is now completely sealed off.

Once all the bedroom designations are completed, the initial round of honeymoon subjects will be selected.

[Deepblade]

You could also set the migration cap in the D_init file. After the dwarf liason leave it goes into effect, and if you go under it you'll probably get massive waves that are potentially way over it.

[wierd]

I don't see a migration cap. Just a population cap (which institutes birth control), and a child percentage cap.

[Saraias]

To seal off the migrant totals, set the population cap in the init file. This is not the absolute population cap, just the population above which the mountainhome will not send migrants (after the liaison/caravan visit when the total population of the fort equals or exceeds this amount). The other variable of interest is BABY_CHILD_CAP. You'll keep having babies up until the first number you reach. So you may want to set it higher and lower depending on where you're at in the marriage experiment. Default is 100:1000 (100 babies, 1000% of population). I often bump it up to 150-200 when I have a large number of couples and want to diversify the family pool by ensuring that they all have a chance to extend the bloodline. When the time comes for reproduction, remember that idle couples appear to get pregnant more often. In my forts, anyways, the always-on-duty military types (and even those who individual combat drill all the time), or those in industries with constant work, tend to have the smallest birth rates, even when there is lots of baby-cap to go around. I look forward to your findings!!

Edit: as an example, my current fortress has a Pop_cap of 95, baby_child_cap of 100:1000 and about 350 citizens right now. Most were born here.

[Deepblade]

While you're at it, you should see if you can breed create a blood line of larger than average dwarves.

[itg]

You'll save a lot of time if you edit the raws to set the adulthood age to, say, 2 years old. I think you can do this by changing the [CHILD:12] tag in the creature_standard raw file to [CHILD:2]. You might be able to set [BABY:0] and [CHILD:0] and have dwarven mothers give birth to full-grown adults, but someone with more modding experience will have to answer that question.

[Matoro]

I'd recommend you to find a world with an extinct Dwarven civ. You'll get just two first migration waves.

Also, something I've noticed concerning relationships: Nearly any possible dwarven pair without grudge will become lover and go married if they are kept in a small room with bed, table, chair, food and booze. It takes about three months. Oh, and don't forgte the ten years rule. First of my marriage research projects failed because I didn't knew that dwarves can't marry anyone more than ten years older or younger than them.

[Fluoman]

Just adding my voice to the project, but I recently personally confirmed that a fort with a pop_cap set to 1 and a child cap set to 100:1000 allows conception of dwarves.
Allowing the first two migrant waves in and separating the useless migrants (grunts to provide food) and the experiment migrants (grunts to provide babies) WILL be faster than just getting by with the founder seven.
With a pop_cap of one, you only need one meeting with the liaison.

On another subject, since this is +Science+ about reproduction, can you check if reproduction by spores is possible among dwarves?

[wierd]

I have already started a fortress on a world where I tried VERY hard to extinctify dwarves. Somehow they survived, despite #civs being turned waaaay up, X/Y elevation variance being turned waaaaay down (removes cliffs, and makes mountain generation difficult), #peaks being set at 2, savagery being set absurdly high, volcanism set absurdly high, etc.

The embark is savage. It relentlessly spawns animal men and giant animals. I used dfhack's embark command to embark directly on top of a necro tower, and before unpausing, locked and forbade the doors, then built the fortress all around the necro tower, thus incorporating it into the fortress's design.  It's inhabitants will be used to preserve the bodies of the dead in permanent unlife. (Gives me something !!fun!! To do while I wait for dwarves to become inbred idiots.)

I am gonna run with a few house rules.

1) nobody enters or leaves for any reason at all. There litterally will not be a door into the fortress.
2) the liason will speak with the mayor/baron through a fortification slit, via a tiny 1x1 room with a locked door. The meeting room will be an exploit: create an office in a 1x3 tube room, then install a fortification wall afterwards. This will allow the liason to get into one side of the office, and the noble into the other. The liason will never get inside the fortress, because the fortification will be in the way.
3) per the above rules, the trade depot is there just to avoid the "inaccessible depot" spam, and the caravans are goblin bait. Nothing more. They are to be ignored.
4) Goblinite will not be collected
5) only food, crossbow bolts and clothing items will be created inside the fortress, and only as needed. Mandate items will be created, then atom smashed or melted.
6) per 5 above, moods are disabled.

These rules are in effect to ensure total longevity of the fortress, since item creation is what usually causes the FPS death, and this fortress will have to run a very long time to complete the experiment.

As already stated, the fortress is nearly ready to be sealed, and the experiment begun. Fortress has 31 residents at the moment. That is enough to begin. The "dwarven consolate chamber" still needs to be constructed, but will be easy to accomplish.

Tomorrow I will begin candidate selection for honeymoon suite duty, and will post the lucky single's data for thread feedback and matchmaker services.

[Larix]

You should really consider switching invaders off for such an experiment. It'll lose you the forgotten beasts, true, but it will save you from item clutter and murderous slab-immune axedwarf ghosts. You can always switch invaders on later if you want to have some FUN.

You can put the depot inside, where the caravan can't get at it - no wagons will appear and the traders will freeze on the map edge until it's time to move on. They're still susceptible to ambushes.

If you set your population cap very low (ten or so), you won't receive more than the first two migration waves, and since pop_cap doesn't affect anything _but_ migration, it won't hinder your breeding, which is only governed by the child cap. All those people murdering harmless migrants by the hundreds are either enjoying the practice for some unfathomable reason or aren't aware of the possibility to simply edit the d_init file so migrants don't migrate.

[Fluoman]

All those people murdering harmless migrants by the hundreds are either enjoying the practice for some unfathomable reason or aren't aware of the possibility to simply edit the d_init file so migrants don't migrate.

Or they can't get the liaison to go in the fortress, which prevents the game from enforcing the pop cap.

[Mr S]

DFHack has a command to update the pop_cap to the Mountainhomes.  Just sayin'

[Flarp]

Since socialization (in DF defined as "two dwarves being idle and in adjacent tiles to one another") is a key component of relationship building, you might also want to invest in some very small statue gardens. Since the passing acquaintance -> long-term acquaintance transition (as well as, probably, the acquaintance -> lover transition) seem to be based on compatibility, these Socialization Suites will allow your experimental candidates to mingle automatically and select their most compatible lovers.

Also, in an early fort with a relatively low population, a couple statues of valuable metal in a smoothed room will generate very happy thoughts, counterbalancing any complications that might occur down the line, especially due to the side-effect of creating many potentially-dangerous friendships.