Covenant Ringthane, you say
"Those five children, ironically, went on to marry the other five founders"
My understanding was that dwarves will only marry another dwarf within 10 years of each others age.
Does that mean your using a df hack script for getting dwarves to marry ?
I ask because Ive failed to get a marriage script to work and hope you can advise.
Cheers
This worries me. I haven't tried creating a script or anything. I didn't even know of the ten-year age restriction. I hope I haven't got a bug, but it seems likely. Worse, this has made me recall that when I first generated the world and started playing, there were several crashes. In my experience, DF seems to be crash-bug immune, but it's still a possibility. Either way, it's unsettling :S
I'm sorry for getting your hopes up, as well as everyone else's. However, I'll see if I can make similar pairings in a fresh save.
That... Is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard. The amount of actually living healthy dorfs in that fort must fluctuate wildly though? Are you never in danger of crumbling to your end while doing something like that?
No, since once the vampires' relatives area dead, they should be pretty well immunized from insanity. Yes to the large fluctuations of living dwarves, I guess, although if everyone else is busy and happy, and his popcap is set high enough to keep attracting migrants, I guess it wouldn't matter much in the end.
All I can say is... wow. A lot of overseer oversight for each potential recruit (and resetting the trials, etc), too. Any chance of a map upload? And since when (IRL) have you been playing this fort?
Well, the vampires essentially ensure my fort from total destruction, although I see that as almost cheating. Were all my living dwarves killed (bar the family-less mason who is trusted with the secret of the Granites - he lives in his
sealed secluded room up there) I would release the vampires to kill or be killed - the prospect of goblins and elves being clubbed to death by silver crossbows is wonderful.
The only real threat to our fort is sieges. Not from actual death, but from wood. We can't access the caverns, so the surface is our only source of wood. Plus, we don't have a magma source available this close to the surface. It's our one true need. Mind you, I've just taken a wild guess as to where the caverns are, as not to breach them.
There is actually a big population flux in this fort, mostly due to embarking near a necro tower (our fort is supposedly anti-undead, which is why we kill any vampires, werebeasts, zombies and other beasties that come to the fort). I send my militia out to beat them in close combat. But in times of peace, the population mostly suffers from a combination of of old age, ambushes and the pure awkwardness of having a werebadger queen (again, we are 100% anti-undead). Thankfully, I know when she'll transform, so I make sure the military's doing their anti-cave adaptation routine or something. After she transforms back I usually execute the "godsforsaken" dwarf "responsible" (plus anyone who glorious leader change forms).
The only problem I have with migrants is when there's too many deaths (not the kind in which they don't come that particular wave, but the 3000 population rule), but a dfhack command fixes that problem.
Overseer oversight? I'm not quite sure what you mean. Admittedly, micromanaging everything is time consuming, but when you have a relatively stable fort with only the occasional insane dwarf (recently I've been preventing dwarves from creating artifacts and watching the chaos for more fun), even the most mundane task can be fun. Picking the potential recruit is a bit time-consuming, as they can't be a "noticeable" dwarf e.g. too powerful or too weak. Replacing the undamaged undead is a little annoying, and all the haulers to carry the soon-to be rezzed body parts into the final room, all who must be executed by one of our great fallen heroes...
Oh, and a bit of trivia, but I have a huge coffin tower all the surface where most of the fort's dead go. It's sealed shut most of the time, but I'm thinking of opening it up when a necro stops by...
In real life, I suppose I've been playing it for about 2 and a half months. The fort itself is exactly 253 (yep, two hundred and fifty three) years old. That's a long time. Admittedly, at one I handed the world over to my friend for 5 or so days, and it had advanced about 30 years when she gave it back - considering she has a full time job, I don't know how she found the time...
If the world is bug-free, I'll upload it. If not, well, I can always give instructions on constructing a similar arena.
Apologies to the OP for derailing your thread - I got a bit carried away
EDIT: I started my fort on Year 17, if that has any significance.