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[Jesterdwarf]

Hello again  .
Just a few things I noticed:
- You can't make dwarven bows, reaction consumes a log and produces nothing;
- For some reason necromancer towers seem severely underpopulated even when using preset worldgen and by underpopulated I mean there's like 6 or so zombies plus necromancer;
- There's an ungodly amount of paladin bards, dwarven druid poets and legendary dwarf poets visiting every season;
- Orc visitors 95% of the time are naked. Orc poets carry books with them but nothing else (I guess orcish poetry requires a lot of muscle flexing or something), orcish warlords actually wear armor which is probably how they became warlords in the first place;
- Shadow visitors still visit despite being opposed to life, additionally they are kinda obsessed with biting or punching when they fight wild beasts but fight normally when pitted against civilized beings;
- No enemies show up despite there being several hostile (and reasonably strong) civs nearby, friendly civs show up normally and die horribly because I'm bored and there is no justice in this world. Megabeasts show up occasionally but they usually get eaten by local Shadow Representative or something like that anyway.

[GM-X]

Hello again  .
Just a few things I noticed:
- You can't make dwarven bows, reaction consumes a log and produces nothing;
- For some reason necromancer towers seem severely underpopulated even when using preset worldgen and by underpopulated I mean there's like 6 or so zombies plus necromancer;
- There's an ungodly amount of paladin bards, dwarven druid poets and legendary dwarf poets visiting every season;
- Orc visitors 95% of the time are naked. Orc poets carry books with them but nothing else (I guess orcish poetry requires a lot of muscle flexing or something), orcish warlords actually wear armor which is probably how they became warlords in the first place;
- Shadow visitors still visit despite being opposed to life, additionally they are kinda obsessed with biting or punching when they fight wild beasts but fight normally when pitted against civilized beings;
- No enemies show up despite there being several hostile (and reasonably strong) civs nearby, friendly civs show up normally and die horribly because I'm bored and there is no justice in this world. Megabeasts show up occasionally but they usually get eaten by local Shadow Representative or something like that anyway.

Hi Jesterdwarf, thank you for reporting this. I noticed there is a lot of weird things happening in DF 47.04. Normally, I do not modify DF until Toady One has released a well groomed update because a lot of these things get ironed out by him.

Dwarven Bow: Metal ones should work, but there was indeed a bug for wooden Dwarven Bows which I have corrected for the next release.

Ungodly Amount of Bards & Poets: I don't like the sound of that. Are you embarked close to Paladins and Druid Dwarves?

Nerco Towers: Yes, I noticed towers are massively weak compared to the last DF release. I made no changes to how they function. Tinkering had no noticeable effect which means they may be broken in vanilla. Or they may work differently now. In some versions, towers didn't get super diverse until very late in history.

Naked Poet Orcs: This sounds like something I can address.

Shadows: When they visit, are they killing everything in sight or just wandering around? Shadows will continue to be the most modded race cause they are challenging to fit into normal DF roles.

Megabeasts: Shadow Representatives are killing Megabeasts? Like what kind? What else are they doing around the map?

No Sieges: That is a big deal. I spent a lot of time reviewing how they work each version of DF and there seems to be no clear explanation for why they do not show up more often. At one point, five years seemed like the most common time to get one. Typically NPC forts are more established so more tempting to attack. This was the best information I found:
http://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/2rfjj8/biggest_siege_youve_seen_in_40x/

I recommend trying a different embark spot without Shadows, and let me know how that goes. It is possible they are killing most units in that area. I will for sure revisit everything you mentioned for the release of v40.

p.s. Have you explored the caverns? How is it going when you dig deep?

[Jesterdwarf]

Poets: I picked an embark that is relatively close to both Paladin and Druidwarven civs, yes. Didn't expect there to be like 4 to 1 ratio of Paladin/Druid civilians to everyone else visiting.
Necromancers: Sometimes there is an occurence where necrosiege arrives (i.e. "The dead walk, hide while you still can!") but there's only 5 zombies which immediately leave the map and lift the siege. But I don't know if it's because of the mod or just general Dwarf Fortress things.
Shadows: Well they have Opposed to Life tag, which makes them forget everything and want to kill absolutely everyone the moment they step on the map. Shadow visitors have civilian jobs so it leads to some Shadow Poet arriving to (supposedly) have a good time in the tavern and instead they go on a rampage. Sometimes it's just Shadow Representative, which is I assume some kind of administrative or diplomatic position. So far I've seen them to 1v1 a cyclops on two occasions, although now that I think of it cyclops is probably a semimegabeast so I apologize for misinformation. In general, Shadows arrive, then either make a beeline to your tavern or hang around the edges of the map indefinitely until someone comes too close.
Last fort I played was located in the middle Orc, Dark Elves, Lizardmen and Warwolves' territory, all of them have sizable population with Lizardmen having almost 10k lizardmen doing lizardmen things in one of the towns. Shadows also were considered 'neighbours' on the embark screen despite being half a continent away. Fifth year in so far and no sieges save for two necromancer sieges I talked about earlier.
Other fort had similiar problems, with 20k Goblins and 12k Frog Fiends just twiddling their thumbs despite the newly created fort being like two days of marching away from their towns.
Also had a dark elf come to visit only to turn into two-headed jumping spider man and cause something that looked like loyalty cascade because dwarven druid caravan attacked the werespider, and then wizard caravan attacked the dwarven druids, and then everyone had a jolly good time attacking my dwarves.
I didn't dug deep enough to check on the demons, but other locals were fun enough. Great cave crocodiles and great frogs certainly caused a lot of death and misery, especially for the visiting monster hunters who ventured into the caverns and died immediately like it's Dark Souls.

[Jesterdwarf]

After examining 26 worlds in total (yes I had a lot of free time last week  ), I have to say that Dark Ages... aren't really that dark. Evil races are always on the losing side.
Dark Gnomes, Aboleth, Greater Hags, Kobolds - usually wiped out entirely or reduced to 1 site with 10 or so members
Dark Elves, Orcs, Gnolls, Hags, Dark Elf Vampires - rarely wiped out fast but get bullied relentessly, lose constantly and generally are absolutely irrelevant
Frog Fiends, Warwolves, Lizardmen - sometimes they have big populations, but never use this advantage and rarely actually expand. Sometimes luck doesn't favor them and they get reduced to 2-3k population and stop being a presence in the world.
Goblins, Shadows - actually win wars and sometimes expand (Goblins moreso than Shadows). Shadows either spawn in some far off corner of the map and multiply relentlessly until there's like 4k Shadows in ever major settlement which isn't something anyone would want to tackle with, or spawn near other civs, get in wars, win or at least inflict severe losses and do fine anyway. Goblins rarely drop below 10+ population and usually become the most numerous race by far, reaching 80k pops at a time.

Meanwhile, good races:
Clerics, Wizards - the only good races to actually go extinct sometimes. Still do relatively well most of the time.
Paladins, Dwarved Druids - they sometimes do so well they have populations equal to humans (who usually are the most numerous race after goblins), and even if they don't they still don't get wiped out or crushed ever.
Humans - tend to have the largest population after goblins or legendary dwarves most of the time, never seem to do bad or be under any danger.
Dwarves - are relatively few in numbers, but never go fully extinct.
Legendary Dwarves - always kinda OP.
Elves - get into fights all the time, but replenish losses fast so they are always ok.

[GM-X]

Poets: I picked an embark that is relatively close to both Paladin and Druidwarven civs, yes. Didn't expect there to be like 4 to 1 ratio of Paladin/Druid civilians to everyone else visiting.
Necromancers: Sometimes there is an occurence where necrosiege arrives (i.e. "The dead walk, hide while you still can!") but there's only 5 zombies which immediately leave the map and lift the siege. But I don't know if it's because of the mod or just general Dwarf Fortress things.
Shadows: Well they have Opposed to Life tag, which makes them forget everything and want to kill absolutely everyone the moment they step on the map. Shadow visitors have civilian jobs so it leads to some Shadow Poet arriving to (supposedly) have a good time in the tavern and instead they go on a rampage. Sometimes it's just Shadow Representative, which is I assume some kind of administrative or diplomatic position. So far I've seen them to 1v1 a cyclops on two occasions, although now that I think of it cyclops is probably a semimegabeast so I apologize for misinformation. In general, Shadows arrive, then either make a beeline to your tavern or hang around the edges of the map indefinitely until someone comes too close.
Last fort I played was located in the middle Orc, Dark Elves, Lizardmen and Warwolves' territory, all of them have sizable population with Lizardmen having almost 10k lizardmen doing lizardmen things in one of the towns. Shadows also were considered 'neighbours' on the embark screen despite being half a continent away. Fifth year in so far and no sieges save for two necromancer sieges I talked about earlier.
Other fort had similiar problems, with 20k Goblins and 12k Frog Fiends just twiddling their thumbs despite the newly created fort being like two days of marching away from their towns.
Also had a dark elf come to visit only to turn into two-headed jumping spider man and cause something that looked like loyalty cascade because dwarven druid caravan attacked the werespider, and then wizard caravan attacked the dwarven druids, and then everyone had a jolly good time attacking my dwarves.
I didn't dug deep enough to check on the demons, but other locals were fun enough. Great cave crocodiles and great frogs certainly caused a lot of death and misery, especially for the visiting monster hunters who ventured into the caverns and died immediately like it's Dark Souls.

After examining 26 worlds in total (yes I had a lot of free time last week  ), I have to say that Dark Ages... aren't really that dark. Evil races are always on the losing side.
Dark Gnomes, Aboleth, Greater Hags, Kobolds - usually wiped out entirely or reduced to 1 site with 10 or so members
Dark Elves, Orcs, Gnolls, Hags, Dark Elf Vampires - rarely wiped out fast but get bullied relentessly, lose constantly and generally are absolutely irrelevant
Frog Fiends, Warwolves, Lizardmen - sometimes they have big populations, but never use this advantage and rarely actually expand. Sometimes luck doesn't favor them and they get reduced to 2-3k population and stop being a presence in the world.
Goblins, Shadows - actually win wars and sometimes expand (Goblins moreso than Shadows). Shadows either spawn in some far off corner of the map and multiply relentlessly until there's like 4k Shadows in ever major settlement which isn't something anyone would want to tackle with, or spawn near other civs, get in wars, win or at least inflict severe losses and do fine anyway. Goblins rarely drop below 10+ population and usually become the most numerous race by far, reaching 80k pops at a time.

Meanwhile, good races:
Clerics, Wizards - the only good races to actually go extinct sometimes. Still do relatively well most of the time.
Paladins, Dwarved Druids - they sometimes do so well they have populations equal to humans (who usually are the most numerous race after goblins), and even if they don't they still don't get wiped out or crushed ever.
Humans - tend to have the largest population after goblins or legendary dwarves most of the time, never seem to do bad or be under any danger.
Dwarves - are relatively few in numbers, but never go fully extinct.
Legendary Dwarves - always kinda OP.
Elves - get into fights all the time, but replenish losses fast so they are always ok.

Thank you for the deep dive. I've examined hundreds of worlds across 6-years of releases. World gen conflicts are not accurate representations of how strong dark races really are. For example, none of the special attacks or physical resistance is taken into account during those battles or wars. No spells are used or breath attacks. Why fair races do so well in world gen seems primarily to do with reproduction which is touchy to tinker with in early releases of vanilla. The dark part is not only the civilizations (which in 40.X are very slow to go to war) but also the curses, mega-beasts, monsters, and wild animals.

There are other factors. Normally, I spend more time tweaking the ratio of races but since this version of DF is not being fixed/updated, doing so results in a lot of wasted time as it often breaks each update. Towers usually dominate the landscape with huge undead populations, that isn't happening in 47.04 for some reason, which is another reason things are less bleak. (Normally, I would not even update this mod without very robust towers appearing but for villains it was worth it.)

There is still a lot of danger to face, but yes this version of Dark Ages is less war-like than intended. I will try to address the situation in v40 if at all possible without sacrificing stability. Once DF is released to Steam and starts getting regular fixes across the board - a much more refined version along with a new tileset can happen.

[Jesterdwarf]

Thank you for the deep dive. I've examined hundreds of worlds across 6-years of releases. World gen conflicts are not accurate representations of how strong dark races really are. For example, none of the special attacks or physical resistance is taken into account during those battles or wars. No spells are used or breath attacks. Why fair races do so well in world gen seems primarily to do with reproduction which is touchy to tinker with in early releases of vanilla. The dark part is not only the civilizations (which in 40.X are very slow to go to war) but also the curses, mega-beasts, monsters, and wild animals.

There are other factors. Normally, I spend more time tweaking the ratio of races but since this version of DF is not being fixed/updated, doing so results in a lot of wasted time as it often breaks each update. Towers usually dominate the landscape with huge undead populations, that isn't happening in 47.04 for some reason, which is another reason things are less bleak. (Normally, I would not even update this mod without very robust towers appearing but for villains it was worth it.)

There is still a lot of danger to face, but yes this version of Dark Ages is less war-like than intended. I will try to address the situation in v40 if at all possible without sacrificing stability. Once DF is released to Steam and starts getting regular fixes across the board - a much more refined version along with a new tileset can happen.

In retrospect I think my posts look far more accusatory than I intended, sorry. And it wasn't really a deep dive, to be honest.
The lack of sieges despite my fortresses having around 100 dwarves and millions in wealth and lots of exports was confusing so I thought it may have something to do with worldgen. Goblins probably do so damn well because they are immortal, while (I assume) custom races have finite lifespans.
Anyway, it seems that sieges don't really work like you'd expect them to work in this version of DF:
1. Now I've had that bug (?) which I've thought affects only necromancers (siege message pops out, 5 or 6 invaders spawn and then immediately leave and siege is lifted instantly) appear with human, warwolf and legendary dwarf sieges. I checked the world out, because my first thought was maybe they don't have the numbers to actually siege me, so they arrive and instantly rout because they are outnumbered or something, but no, civs are absolutely fine, they have the numbers and clear path to me.
2. On other hand, only three years into the latest fort and first proper necromancer siege arrived! It only consisted of, oh, 56 walking corpses, 5 lost butchers and a necromancer (who was promptly eaten by a giant crocodile). Three weeks of absolute carnage and we won, losing only 95% of the fort population which in my book is a clean victory. Anyway, the weirdest part was that this army had to walk for two weeks to get to me, while frog fiends, goblins and gnolls are in 2 or 3 day walking distance and yet they do nothing apart from some goblin thieves popping out now and then. Which leads me to believe that frequency and intensity of sieges depends on... No idea on what. They aren't at war with each other, they have decent population, they are close, my fort is close, well-populated and exports a metric ton of wealth every year. But no, it's 200 years old dwarven necromancer from the other side of mountain range who decided that enough is enough and came to kill us all (and was eaten by the crocodile).
Speaking of lost butchers, is it normal that I have a lot of lost butcher, fallen slayer and forlorn zombie visitors (inbetween all those paladin poets, who, by the way, also get eaten by giant crocodile)? They behave normally and don't seem any more murderous than any other visitor, but it looks like they are supposed to be tied to necromancers somehow. Or am I wrong?
Oh, and necromancers are visiting too. They are members of other civs and I had in fact a necromancer in my fortress. He was elected mayor, didn't doanything necromancy and was eaten by giant crocodile so I didn't have time to check if he could raise zombies.

[GM-X]

In retrospect I think my posts look far more accusatory than I intended, sorry. And it wasn't really a deep dive, to be honest. The lack of sieges despite my fortresses having around 100 dwarves and millions in wealth and lots of exports was confusing so I thought it may have something to do with worldgen. Goblins probably do so damn well because they are immortal, while (I assume) custom races have finite lifespans. Anyway, it seems that sieges don't really work like you'd expect them to work in this version of DF.

Sorry for the slow reply, been dealing with the real life Dark Ages of 2020.

If you didn't do a deep dive before you have now. I didn't take offence. You raised important points that I would fully address if there was a way to do so and do so - without consuming a lot of time. I have been down that road before only to have bugs fixed the next update.

On other hand, only three years into the latest fort and first proper necromancer siege arrived! It only consisted of, oh, 56 walking corpses, 5 lost butchers and a necromancer (who was promptly eaten by a giant crocodile). Three weeks of absolute carnage and we won, losing only 95% of the fort population which in my book is a clean victory. Anyway, the weirdest part was that this army had to walk for two weeks to get to me, while frog fiends, goblins and gnolls are in 2 or 3 day walking distance and yet they do nothing apart from some goblin thieves popping out now and then. Which leads me to believe that frequency and intensity of sieges depends on... No idea on what. They aren't at war with each other, they have decent population, they are close, my fort is close, well-populated and exports a metric ton of wealth every year. But no, it's 200 years old dwarven necromancer from the other side of mountain range who decided that enough is enough and came to kill us all (and was eaten by the crocodile).

Very glad to hear you survived a serious necromancer siege. If you feel like it, can you check what monster lairs are in the area around that fort? Or if there is a history of rampages in surrounding civs?

Speaking of lost butchers, is it normal that I have a lot of lost butcher, fallen slayer and forlorn zombie visitors (inbetween all those paladin poets, who, by the way, also get eaten by giant crocodile)? They behave normally and don't seem any more murderous than any other visitor, but it looks like they are supposed to be tied to necromancers somehow. Or am I wrong?

Those sound like night creature experimental zombies. This report is very helpful as I'm unclear about their behavior. I'll have to take a closer look at that.

Oh, and necromancers are visiting too. They are members of other civs and I had in fact a necromancer in my fortress. He was elected mayor, didn't do anything necromancy and was eaten by giant crocodile so I didn't have time to check if he could raise zombies.

You have a serious crocodile problem. I do think he would have, given a chance to approach a dead body. Still something is amiss cause vanilla necromancers seem extremely common now.

[Rahk]

I was going to try to add Taffer's Revised into Dark Ages for all the vanilla fixes, but I wanted to see if you thought there would be any glaring incompatibilities.  I know I'll have to go through a file merge to preserve the changes from both mods, but figured I'd ask if you might be aware of any major issues I might run into.

 Thanks for the mod.  Dark Ages is one of my favorites.

Hi again Rahk, I am unfamiliar with that mod can you post a link to it? If it only cleans up vanilla raws it should theoretically work like a charm. If you do get it running smoothly, I'd like to know.

Sorry I haven't been back to the forums in quite some time because of RL stuff.  But here was the mod I was asking about.   http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=161832.0 

I did merge it into Dark Ages, and it has run fairly smoothly for my latest play through, since you were interested. 

[GM-X]

I was going to try to add Taffer's Revised into Dark Ages for all the vanilla fixes, but I wanted to see if you thought there would be any glaring incompatibilities.  I know I'll have to go through a file merge to preserve the changes from both mods, but figured I'd ask if you might be aware of any major issues I might run into.

 Thanks for the mod.  Dark Ages is one of my favorites.

Hi again Rahk, I am unfamiliar with that mod can you post a link to it? If it only cleans up vanilla raws it should theoretically work like a charm. If you do get it running smoothly, I'd like to know.

Sorry I haven't been back to the forums in quite some time because of RL stuff.  But here was the mod I was asking about.   http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=161832.0 

I did merge it into Dark Ages, and it has run fairly smoothly for my latest play through, since you were interested.

Great. If I had more time I would probably take vanilla raws in a similar direction (again). There is some overlap in features but no clear conflicts between the mods. I haven't changed the vanilla raws for this release yet so nothing is lost by combining them.

-It should be safe for a copy and paste overwrite (although I haven't tested it).

Dwarf Fortress Revised
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=161832.0

[hund]

Hey first of all i tried this mod for the first time this week and i love it 
But i do have a question,
Is there a way i can disable certain civilizations/races (for example legendary dwarves, paladins or shadows) in the worldgen or by removing them from the game completely? Because (as far as i understand the worldgen) the very high variety in factions causes alot of interesting races to go (nearly) extinct in most areas of the world map.

[GM-X]

Hey first of all i tried this mod for the first time this week and i love it 
But i do have a question,
Is there a way i can disable certain civilizations/races (for example legendary dwarves, paladins or shadows) in the worldgen or by removing them from the game completely? Because (as far as i understand the worldgen) the very high variety in factions causes alot of interesting races to go (nearly) extinct in most areas of the world map.

Hi Hund, thank you. It's untested but you could remove Goblins from entity_default.txt to free up a ton of world space.

[GM-X]

[ϟ] DOWNLOAD DARK AGES: IV [PC]: ---> Starter Pack [47.04] (212MB)
Dark Ages: War & Mythos [Wiki]: (Read Me)
DOWNLOAD [PC]: Wanderlust ASCII [47.04] (14MB)
[v39 to v40] - Release Notes:

• War Crafting: Fixes typos in dark ages adventure crafting and adds [17] weapons and armor which be crafted in Adventure Mode
  
• Dark Ages IV: Starter Pack with soundsense and most utilities
• 333-Year old Medium Region Included
• Mummy Curse added
• Fixed: Toy Factory no longer produces massively
• Should fix Dwarven Bows
• Vampire Lords are now human size
• Minor updates to curses
• Iron Dwarves have arisen
• Vampire Hydra have arisen
• [3] New weapons added which can be crafted in Fort Mode: Thora Spear, Casula Mace, & Xhylon Crossbow
• [2] New vampire strains have arisen: Dirt and Gloom
• Dark Ages Dragons can now climb
• Most Armor can now be refit in Adventure Mode
• Vampire Bats are now extinct
• Ancestral spirits no longer live underground
• Great Bats are now extinct
• Stable medium & large advanced worlds
• Hyper-active History
• Paladins, Druid Dwarves, and Clerics have joined forces
• Hags now reproduce
• Hags joined forces with Gnolls
• Serpentnakashim have fallen
• Dark Stranglers have fallen
• Dark Elf civilizations have risen

[Kyuuketsuki_23]

Greetings, I'm loving the mod so far and yet, one thing isn't clear to me. Could somebody tell me please, what do the Dark Elf Vampires' Hide in Shadows, Woodland Enchantment and Cast Sleep natural abilities do?

[Kyuuketsuki_23]

Also, is it normal that when I use the Transform into a wolf ability, it's said in the logs that I "have transformed into a nothing"? If not, how to fix that?

[GM-X]

Greetings, I'm loving the mod so far and yet, one thing isn't clear to me. Could somebody tell me please, what do the Dark Elf Vampires' Hide in Shadows, Woodland Enchantment and Cast Sleep natural abilities do?

Hi Kyuuketsuki, thank you. You raise a good point - I need to add Spells & Powers to the Wiki in a big way.

• Hide in Shadows: Invisibility.
  
• Woodland Enchantment: Should make most wild animals friendly.
  
• Sleep: Sleep attack spell which can be resisted - results may vary.
  

Also, is it normal that when I use the Transform into a wolf ability, it's said in the logs that I "have transformed into a nothing"? If not, how to fix that?

Do you transform into a wolf? I will need to take a closer look at that.