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[Slackratchet]

I made a map, a rather small island to be specific, with 10,000 years of history and Goblins rules. They have destroyed all the dwarves all but five humans, who I imagine are captives, and a single city of elves. Is this normal? I'm going to try it a few more times and see what happens but I was curious if anyone else had done such a thing.

[Footkerchief]

It's time to conquer Earth.

[Telgin]

I've read several similar reports.  The prevailing theory is that goblins tend to outcompete most everyone else because they live forever and, unlike elves who also live forever, have access to metal weapons and armor.  Their populations tend to grow faster than everyone else as a result.

[Authority2]

Now it's up to you... to restore the balance.

[Maolagin]

Yup, seems pretty common actually. I'd say in the majority of the long worlds I've made, history entered the Age of Goblins somewhere between the second and fourth century.

Although, it's not like your adventurer is the only hope for dwarf-kind! Violent critters that they are, goblins will quite happily murder each other willy-nilly under the right circumstances. I just had a world pop out of the Age of Goblins into a second golden age right around the year 800, because a war between a goblin civ and a goblin-dominated human civ killed off ~20000 gobs. Although even after that, they remain the most numerous race by a fair margin.

[Slackratchet]

So it seems due to Goblins being warlike and immortal. Why are goblins immortal again?

[Telgin]

An arbitrary decision by Toady so far as I know.  It can easily be modded if you so choose.  The appropriate tag for a maximum age can be copied out of the human raws, for example.

[therahedwig]

An arbitrary decision by Toady so far as I know. 

Well, specifically, the DF goblins are basically the same as the LotR goblins(Orcs): They are immortal like the elves, are greenish, worship demons when given the chance... The big difference really is that LotR goblins had no free will depending on which version of the origin story you believe... And they were incapable of forming large civilisations by themselves, unsurprising given their shitty personalities.

But, obviously though, we need myxomatosis for immortals in worldgen if there's nothing else stopping them. (Had an island full of Elves in a recent worldgen).

[Slackratchet]

I've been thinking about it and rather than a nasty disease for Goblins I think maybe if they just didn't work together so well it would help balance them out some. If they couldn't organize beyond maybe a large town without collapsing from within it would work better. I just don't see selfish, greedy, warlike, gits such as the Goblins coexisting without a strong leader to unify them.

[miauw62]

Their leaders are often demons, iirc

[Melting Sky]

I've read several similar reports.  The prevailing theory is that goblins tend to outcompete most everyone else because they live forever and, unlike elves who also live forever, have access to metal weapons and armor.  Their populations tend to grow faster than everyone else as a result.

Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. The elves have their hilarious wooden weapons hindering them and the humans and dwarves both suffer from mortality. Dwarves have steel but they also have weaker native weapon types than the other races. The only down side to the Goblins is that they are enemy to all.

[Trif]

An arbitrary decision by Toady so far as I know. 

Well, specifically, the DF goblins are basically the same as the LotR goblins(Orcs): They are immortal like the elves, are greenish, worship demons when given the chance... The big difference really is that LotR goblins had no free will depending on which version of the origin story you believe... And they were incapable of forming large civilisations by themselves, unsurprising given their shitty personalities.

That's not quite right. Tolkien's goblins aren't immortal or green, and judging by the goblin tribes under the Misty Mountains or in Moria, they can form large-ish communities on their own.

Toady explained immortal goblins and elves in DF Talk #3:

It's a question you have to answer anytime you ... People - including ourselves - flippantly include immortal races in their fantasy settings and a lot of questions go unanswered; like 'How often do they breed?' 'What does it mean when you have someone working really hard at learning a skill for a thousand years?' Those quests generally just get ignored, and there's nothing that special about immortal races. Or they answer those questions but only in really specific ways for specific parts of the story or whatever. But with a larger simulation then all of the side effects also kind of rear their heads, like we've got these giant elven armies making the forests not safe to be near. So right now just the fact that the elves don't expand outside of their forests is the thing that saves you from having a world full of elves. Goblins are the same way, goblins are also immortal. We're going to keep them that way, though, and we're just going to try and make the necessary adjustments; they'll either be cultural adjustments or physiological adjustments so that the immortality can stay. [...] We want to have immortal races because it raises a lot of interesting questions and plot points and so on; it's good to have them in there I think. Right now they haven't been answered to satisfaction because the elves are breeding machines, they're just kind of locked in their forests. The forests are very dangerous to get near if you've seen those world generation battles where it's like four thousand versus one hundred, as the elves have just been stocking up. There are artificial caps right now on populations, that's just supposed to simulate food or something but it's not wholly satisfactory, especially when we get to the pre-caravan arc resources stuff where it's actually tracking more closely how much food there is and so on; the problems are only going to escalate I think. Although it could just end up self-correcting as well, which would be nice.

[Fluffy]

There also a thing with instant-win conquests, and goblins are pretty aggresive.

[TD1]

And you think Dwarves aren't?

But I know what you mean.

[Slackratchet]

Their leaders are often demons, iirc

And that's great but I'm suggesting the only time they should go on a massively organized killing wave is when they have a leader. If their leader dies or is killed the fall back to infighting. Additionally 'massive' shouldn't be continent spanning in most cases either. I can't imagine leading an army of Goblins who really only listen to one leader is easy and shouldn't be a stable situation.