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[Raven]

well not to be racist but wasn't really expected..



sooo... How is that possible? goblins in a dwarven civilization since the dawn of times? One of the first of his kind was a general too!

[Reelya]

Well goblins are immortal (in the sense that they don't age), so no matter how much time passed there could be "one of the first of his kind" ones. If they were conquered early on, then they'd become permanent members of the dwarven civilization. Since goblins are immortal they can advance very high in society, permanently biding their time in a current role while waiting for dwarves to die off so they can get promoted. Plus, they have much more time to gain social skills than dwarves, which helps to gain advancements. So it shouldn't be surprising that conquered goblins end up taking over many important jobs in the civilization.

[Raven]

legends of my world are pretty vague about that but the goblin general that fought in one of the first goblin wars was actually one of the first of his kind

Someone told me that in future versions there will be travelers of other races that could join our fortress

I don't really like the idea of a multiracial fortress... ^^'

[Naryar]

I know if I had a goblin liaison I would consider killing it, even if part of my entity.

Also, racism in DF and fantasy worlds isn't the same as racism in real life. IRL there is only one race in the fantasy sense, we are not different, or only by culture and only slightly by genes.

In Dwarf Fortress, goblins are inherently cruel sociopaths. It's written in their raws.

Of course this particular goblin has dwarf ethics, which is why I am actually being unsure about kiling it, but he still has a goblin personality.

If I say in Dwarf Fortress "Goblins are evil, sadistic, hateful creatures and I want nothing to do with them" it's mostly true. If you say in real life "[insert human group/ethny here] are evil, sadistic, hateful creatures and I want nothing to do with them" it's serious business (not to mention bigoted) and you can go to jail for that.

[utunnels]

Well can goblins learn from danger room? You can try trapping him/her in a danger room and poke him/her with training spears 24/7 so you get a legendary goblin.

[Sadrice]

They do learn skills, so it should be possible.  People have reported issues of goblins that get stuck in insufficiently lethal trap corridors have been trained to the point of invulnerability.  Or the spear of enlightenment thing.  As I recall, it was first discovered when a goblin with most limbs broken rolled through a trap corridor dodging everything, dodged through the entire military, batted a few bolts out of the air, and crawled off the map edge.

It will be a bit trickier, since you have less direct control over the liason's actions, other than by controlling where he has his meetings (relocate the mayor's office to a lockable training facility).

[Vattic]

They are much more likely to survive as part of a dwarf civ given that they aren't always killing each other.

[Max™]

Only fair that since gobs shave the beards off dorf captives we should shave something off him...

[utunnels]

They do learn skills, so it should be possible.  People have reported issues of goblins that get stuck in insufficiently lethal trap corridors have been trained to the point of invulnerability.  Or the spear of enlightenment thing.  As I recall, it was first discovered when a goblin with most limbs broken rolled through a trap corridor dodging everything, dodged through the entire military, batted a few bolts out of the air, and crawled off the map edge.

It will be a bit trickier, since you have less direct control over the liason's actions, other than by controlling where he has his meetings (relocate the mayor's office to a lockable training facility).

I trapped my liaison (not goblin though) in the danger room.
And he went berserk shortly after that.

[GoblinCookie]

Well goblins are immortal (in the sense that they don't age), so no matter how much time passed there could be "one of the first of his kind" ones. If they were conquered early on, then they'd become permanent members of the dwarven civilization. Since goblins are immortal they can advance very high in society, permanently biding their time in a current role while waiting for dwarves to die off so they can get promoted. Plus, they have much more time to gain social skills than dwarves, which helps to gain advancements. So it shouldn't be surprising that conquered goblins end up taking over many important jobs in the civilization.

Not that is not how it works.  Unmodded dwarves are entirely defensive in world gen, in order for them to go on the offensive you have to give them siege criteria in their raws (which in Forgotten Realms Mod I have done).  That means that goblins cannot be added to dwarf civilization by conquest because dwarves do not conquer anything. 

They actually immigrate peacefully into dwarf societies.  They do this a lot because the goblin entity tolerates the cave_detailed, which means dwarf settlements.  The reason there are so many goblins is that goblins have very large settlements (up to 10,000) and population growth is exponential, so the bigger the population the faster it grows.

When the population reaches between it's soft population limit and it's hard population limit, members of their civilization start looking to migrate to other settlements that are under their soft population limit.  Since goblins are generally on the offensive and dwarves on the defensive, the goblin settlements which they prefer are generally full up they end up moving to new dwarf settlements or settlements that have been reduced by assaults by monsters of other civilizations (such as the goblins themselves). 

Once they are there there is no getting rid of them, even if all settlements have been full up for centuries the goblins that originally migrated early in the game are still there.  Also baby snatcher has an effect, emptying dwarf settlements of inhabitents and adding to the population of goblins, thus causing them to migrate into dwarf settlements to essentially replace the snatched.

I know if I had a goblin liaison I would consider killing it, even if part of my entity.

Also, racism in DF and fantasy worlds isn't the same as racism in real life. IRL there is only one race in the fantasy sense, we are not different, or only by culture and only slightly by genes.

In Dwarf Fortress, goblins are inherently cruel sociopaths. It's written in their raws.

Of course this particular goblin has dwarf ethics, which is why I am actually being unsure about kiling it, but he still has a goblin personality.

If I say in Dwarf Fortress "Goblins are evil, sadistic, hateful creatures and I want nothing to do with them" it's mostly true. If you say in real life "[insert human group/ethny here] are evil, sadistic, hateful creatures and I want nothing to do with them" it's serious business (not to mention bigoted) and you can go to jail for that.

Actually what you say about goblin raws is not true.  Goblins have a baseline cruelty of 50, meaning that the only true statement about them is that no goblin is less cruel than the average dwarf is.  To say that goblins are inherantly cruel psychopaths is not a truth at all. 

This is the fundermental fallacy of racism, it may be true that group X is on average such and such more inclined towards such a status.  There is no such thing as Mr. Average and since nobody is Mr. Average no actual conclusion follows in dealing with anyone at all. 

That means that fantastic racism is still racism and racism is actually wrong regardless of facts about racial differences; aside from the situation where an entire population is completely identical what is described in the above paragraph is true. 

Since racism does not exist in the game world and everyone seems to understand the above, it means that it would actually be out of character to kill the outpost liason for being a goblin. 

[Uggh]

Twenty-two nobles are listed for my civ, all are goblins with the exception of my own baroness. Maybe having a longer history (starting at 1050) favoured them.
While I'm clearly pro-goblin , I would prefer for the sake of game atmosphere that only very few exceptional goblins advance that far in society if at all.
Modding them to be mortal, would that have other surprising side effects?

[GoblinCookie]

Twenty-two nobles are listed for my civ, all are goblins with the exception of my own baroness. Maybe having a longer history (starting at 1050) favoured them.
While I'm clearly pro-goblin , I would prefer for the sake of game atmosphere that only very few exceptional goblins advance that far in society if at all.
Modding them to be mortal, would that have other surprising side effects?

It would have little effect at all I think on the total population as a whole.  Since the details of non-historical characters lives are not actually directly modelled and that is 95% of the population. 

It does have an effect on historical characters however.  That is because if goblins get positions they keep them because they can only die violently.  But every time a dwarf dies of old age they might be replaced by a goblin.  A longer history favours them as a result.

The best thing to do however is to make them have to eat and drink.  That way limited food resourses tend to cut the population limit of goblin settlements drastically from 10,000 to about 500.   This means that since population growth is exponential the migratory overspill is thus smaller and we will only see a tiny minority of goblins in our settlements.

Basically I have done this in my mod and the goblin peaceful takeover 'problem' does not seem to happen even though goblins are still immortal. 

[Uggh]

But wouldn't that also decrease the number of goblin sieges as less settlements means that they are less likely to be close enough to your fortress or to send out armies?

[GoblinCookie]

But wouldn't that also decrease the number of goblin sieges as less settlements means that they are less likely to be close enough to your fortress or to send out armies?

No it would not.  The total number of settlements created during world-gen is limited by a hard number, which is why if you look carefully everyone expands rapidly and then stops expanding completely around 100 years after game start.  Curiously there is no number once world-gen is complete, so everyone goes on a spree of regaining lost settlements. 

Something called biome support limits the ability of settlements to form close to eachother, the higher the biome support the greater the density of settlements in an area and the more favourable that biome type is for settlement relatively speaking (that is they choose the best biome suport). 

Then there is the total maximum site cap, that is about 10,000 for goblin fortress and about 250 for dark pits.  However most civilizations do not actually use their maximum site cap at all, instead each settlement has it's own cap which is determined by the amount of food available.  Things like disabling farming for instance drastically reduce the population that is supportable for your sites, the reason that humans have such large population is the presence of farming; my mod's xvarts populations are far smaller due to lack of farming. 

The population in a Malthusian logic increasing rapidly whether by immigration or by natural means increases until it reaches the limit of the available food, thus the total number of settlements determines the total population and not the other way around.  Subordinate settlements, whether they belong to your civilization or not provide food for central settlements. 

Since goblins do not eat, their population increases up to the maximum number rather than the food number.  Therefore if you want your goblins once you have made them have to eat to have reasonable numbers in their sites, you have to give them underground farming tag.  At the moment goblins produce animal products (that means troll meat even though they should not be able to butcher them) which feeds those they kidnapped so we end up with loads of troll meat flooding those who are trading with goblins.

When you think about it it gets worse.  Goblins do not eat, which means that unlike everyone else once they end up in someone elses settlement they do not count towards the food number, meaning their numbers can increase up to the total maximum number (about 500 I think for dwarf fortresses) which everyone else is constrained by the food number. 

[Uggh]

Ok, that's more complicated than I thought. I wonder how you found this all out.
So, giving eating and drinking would also require giving underground farming, otherwise they wont prosper on troll food alone? I will try that for my next world gen. Thanks for these insights.