Welp, I found out after starting and going on until the second migrant wave that my parent civ in this world is probably dead. Is there any way to enable a tell in the civ select/embark screen that shows whether a parent civ is dead or am I just unobservant?
Probably going to need to alter raws to make dwarves grow up faster...
The quickest way to tell is to embark as that civ, and check your 'c'ivilization screen in game. If it is completely empty, gg.
Also, if there's even a single alive civ available, dead ones won't show up.
If you dump the txt files from the site selection or world generation screens, you can investigate them to find out the dwarven population that's left. If it's really low, you can assume the civ is dead and they're just living in random towns.
This doesn't work, precisely.
Even if the last dwarf died a 1000 years ago, the dwarven civ may still be just dying, not dead.
Briefly considered seeing if I could bolster the ranks with tavern citizens but reading further it appears you can't control them as well as normal dwarves?
From taverns, you can get mercs, which are only for soldiering - not great, but hey - animal men wielding great axes is kind of cool.
All other residential applications will apply to become citizens with the same mayor in two years, however. Though if this is months later or half a hour later depends on how you run your fort :v