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[Urist McVoyager]

Do the mod fix and I'm sure you can get a sustainable population out of four or seven dwarves. It'd be fun to see how that goes. It's like the game Banished. It's a nonviolent version of this with 3D graphics and no migrants.

[Mimodo]

Do the mod fix and I'm sure you can get a sustainable population out of four or seven dwarves. It'd be fun to see how that goes. It's like the game Banished. It's a nonviolent version of this with 3D graphics and no migrants.

I'm not too sure. I've had numerous pairs from 377-391, and none of them married even though they've all idled for the past half a decade or so. If I have to let 40 migrants in just to get a breeding pair, it kind of beats the purpose of the whole project. Not to mention you need at least 2 breeding couples at the same time to produce offspring within the 10 year age requirements.
I think I'm going to consider my attempt a failure at this point. 18 dwarves total, 2 killed.

Spoiler: 'Wishcities' (click to show/hide)

For future attempts, I would suggest a few things.
1: Mod the marriage rates to be nearly 100%, as mentioned in the other thread. As long as dwarves match in terms of sexuality, they should marry. Many of my couples were "Dreams of starting a family" type dwarves, and still do not marry.
2: Mod out all fliers. a single eagle is enough to drop my FPS from 250 capped to about 160. A gaggle of ravens is enough to drop me from 250 capped to about 90. I ended up using dfhack to kill fliers to keep them from bombing my FPS every 2 minutes.
3: Mod out "critter" type animals, like fluffy wamblers, rats, etc. Every season 2-3 would escape from the traders and become part of my fort. They can't be killed or adopted or anything, and clutter the heck out of the animals screen. I'm not sure if they contribute to the animal cap or not, but my dogs and sheep stopped breeding after a while, despite having rather low numbers.

The migrants I've let in are locked in a clay dorm, and fed through a retracting bridge dump zone in the roof, so for me it doesn't really defeat the purpose too much having plenty of migrants.

I like how spread out your city is though. Mine is really tight, and currently swarmed with bunnies (which I probably should kill off soon).

Do the mod fix and I'm sure you can get a sustainable population out of four or seven dwarves. It'd be fun to see how that goes. It's like the game Banished. It's a nonviolent version of this with 3D graphics and no migrants.

I don't think you can. Pair 1 has a kid, pair 2 has a kid (or multiple). They all breed, then any more breeding is with cousins, so really you're capped at 2 generations if you don't want two-headed, six-fingered beardless dwarves

[Urist McVoyager]

I don't think Dwarven genetics work like that yet, but I do think the game prevents family members from marrying in the first place. At least close ones. Not sure how far out you can go. I'm considering building a new species for this sort of embark (I'd have to do the modfix anyway, might as well go fully into it.) and test it out. If I do, I'll share the results if I get far enough.

[Tacomagic]

I don't think you can. Pair 1 has a kid, pair 2 has a kid (or multiple). They all breed, then any more breeding is with cousins, so really you're capped at 2 generations if you don't want two-headed, six-fingered beardless dwarves

I don't get it.  Are there people who don't want that?

[Wumpi]

but my dogs and sheep stopped breeding after a while, despite having rather low numbers.

Were you killing off some of these animals and/or killing off a large percentile of the males?  If so, likely you were bit by the animal sterility bug.  It's a good idea to take a verified breeding pair and lock them away somewhere so they won't be slaughtered.  Males are a lot harder to test so keeping a large number of them around is typically beneficial. Alternately, employ the fix so you don't have to worry about your meat industry collapsing because you slaughter the wrong male.

I killed off a lot of the females. After I had a nice population of male war dogs and rams, I would save a female puppy/lamb and butcher the current breeding queen. This ensure I had a breeding female without having to constantly butcher dozens of puppies and lambs.
The fix may not have worked if this was indeed the sterility bug. Many of my early dogs were dying of old age at 14 years into the game. Also died of old age: A giant python, a yak, numerous rams.

...I love this. So much story.

I didn't realize until you mentioned it that most of the major events of Wishcities happened due to Bear not having pants one summer.

The migrants I've let in are locked in a clay dorm, and fed through a retracting bridge dump zone in the roof, so for me it doesn't really defeat the purpose too much having plenty of migrants.

An interesting spin on the upper-class/lower-class forts would be to lock the migrants in the caves below to live as primitive dwarves, and force them to send children to the surface as a form of sacrifice. The children must be taken above to learn the ways of the surface dwarves. This would be an easier method, since you could reasonably allow 40-50 cave dwellers due to the need for a military and metal industry.

I might look into the mods suggested in the forced marriage thread and try another surface city.

[Tacomagic]

Now that I think about it, i recall that there is/was another bug that once the death list gets too long, nothing else can be born.  I think there was a DFHack fix for that.  Have to research it as I acn only kinda remember it... and it might not even be for this game.

There may also be a hard limit on the number of creatures that can ever be spawned in a fort.  I've never had my creatures just spontaneously stop breeding, but 14 years is a lot longer than most of my forts last.

Might be something I'll look into after my current project.

Have you tried forcing a pregnancy to see if it carries to term?

The fix may not have worked if this was indeed the sterility bug. Many of my early dogs were dying of old age at 14 years into the game. Also died of old age: A giant python, a yak, numerous rams.

Which fix are we talking about here?  The raws fix, or the dfhack fix?  They each have quirks which may have come into play since you were killing off the breeding females.

[Mimodo]

You can force a pregnancy?

[Tacomagic]

You can force a pregnancy?

With DFHack, yes.

EDIT: Gotta remind myself how to do it.  Been a few months (since I was troubleshooting the sterility bug).  I'll post back here with the commands to use to make a female pregnant.

[Urist McVoyager]

When I talk about modfix I mean the raw modding. Adding in those Orientation tags to ensure breeding pairs.

[Wumpi]

Which fix are we talking about here?  The raws fix, or the dfhack fix?  They each have quirks which may have come into play since you were killing off the breeding females.

Oh, the "fix" I was referring to was keeping a breeding pair in captivity to prevent accidental butchery. My point being that the captive pair probably would die of old age soon.

is approx 350 too long? I'm certain my last real fortress was still churning out baby dwarves and cats after exceeding 900+ in goblin kills.
I vaguely remember seeing a dwarven marriage science thread once upon a time. Need to dig around and see what was uncovered. Maybe we should do some proper science for v.40.x to see what the dealio is with marriage. Sexuality was a recent addition wasn't it? Maybe the addition of that as a factor has made marriages nearly impossible?
I've been playing for 2 years and have never seen a marriage.

[Tacomagic]

Which fix are we talking about here?  The raws fix, or the dfhack fix?  They each have quirks which may have come into play since you were killing off the breeding females.

Oh, the "fix" I was referring to was keeping a breeding pair in captivity to prevent accidental butchery. My point being that the captive pair probably would die of old age soon.

is approx 350 too long? I'm certain my last real fortress was still churning out baby dwarves and cats after exceeding 900+ in goblin kills.
I vaguely remember seeing a dwarven marriage science thread once upon a time. Need to dig around and see what was uncovered. Maybe we should do some proper science for v.40.x to see what the dealio is with marriage. Sexuality was a recent addition wasn't it? Maybe the addition of that as a factor has made marriages nearly impossible?
I've been playing for 2 years and have never seen a marriage.

I'm not so concerned with the dwarves as I am the animals at this point.  Generally animals only stop breeding if you manage to kill everything but the sterile animals.  The fact that you had a breeding pair go dry is interesting, as I've never seen that happen before.

To my recollection, the problem with the deaths happened when you had more than 900 of them.  So likely that isn't the problem here.

EDIT:  Geh, forgot how complicated it was to artificially impregnate something.  I had a quick one-off script I used to be able to call to force it to happen, but I can't find it.

*Grumble Grumble*

[Mimodo]

Wait, so is the DFHack to make dwarves or animals pregnant?

I haven't been having any problems with animals. The rabbits are breeding like... Well... Rabbits I guess

Edit: I just jumped on again, and have finally got a pair of lovers in the breeders. Took about two years for that to happen, so I guess that's the kind of timeframe you're looking at. A note, these guys are locked in a room, with nothing to do but eat, drink, sleep, and party (yet the still feel the need to go on breaks... go figure)

[Karnewarrior]

One of the male dwarves is homosexual, and is in a romantic relationship with one of the female dwarves, thus taking her off the market for marriage. I need to find a way to break them up.

Foolish Gnome, you can't separate a dwarf from his Beard!
Kill me now, before the apuncolypse starts.

[Tacomagic]

Wait, so is the DFHack to make dwarves or animals pregnant?

I haven't been having any problems with animals. The rabbits are breeding like... Well... Rabbits I guess

Edit: I just jumped on again, and have finally got a pair of lovers in the breeders. Took about two years for that to happen, so I guess that's the kind of timeframe you're looking at. A note, these guys are locked in a room, with nothing to do but eat, drink, sleep, and party (yet the still feel the need to go on breaks... go figure)

I should feasibly work for dwarves, but I've just used it to make animals pregnant.  The tricky part is that you have to inject some genes into the female in order for the pregnancy to correctly carry to term.  I'm trying to remember how I did that.  I'm not sure if dwarf pregnancy is any different or more complicated, but once I figure this out again, I'll test it on a dwarf.

[Mimodo]

I'll be interested to see if you figure it out, let me know.

Unfortunately I had a very unproductive couple of hours this afternoon :/ but I've got two lovers, so hopefully they'll get married within a year or two. If not, I'll just dispose of them and get some more. There's still room for slabs.

Actually, what I'm concerned about it the children being unhappy when I kill off the parents. I don't want to have to keep feeding my breeding stock longer than I have to. They chew through double what my normal dwarves do, and quite frankly, it's a pain in the ass constantly resupplying them