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[DizzyCrash]

So I was looking in the old creature text files at goblins and its listed that they dont eat or drink, why is that?! Is it important for gameplay? Cause I am really tempted to change that, but I think I should talk to the community first to see if anyone else knows the ramifications of doing such and why they are listed as such in the first place.

[Orange Wizard]

Goblins don't eat because they're descended from demons, or something. I think Toady mentioned that somewhere but I can't remember. It's not altogether relevant in any case.

If you remove the no eat/drink tags, you'll see fewer goblins in worldgen (because they're limited by food supply) and any goblins you capture in your fortresses will eventually starve to death.

[klefenz]

I read that you would need to give them underground farming tag so the have food.

[Orange Wizard]

... probably. Aboveground farming would work too, assuming they can use aboveground plants. Might need another entity tag for that one.

[DizzyCrash]

Goblins don't eat because they're descended from demons, or something. I think Toady mentioned that somewhere but I can't remember. It's not altogether relevant in any case.

If you remove the no eat/drink tags, you'll see fewer goblins in worldgen (because they're limited by food supply) and any goblins you capture in your fortresses will eventually starve to death.

It seems like they eat anyway cause they keep getting  killed and starting wars for cannibalism XD they just do it to piss the other races off?

They also have the bonecarn tag...

Mostly I wont do it cause I kinda like having a tun of goblins hostage and used in my arena fights, having them starve would suck, and I assume your dwarves are not nice enough to bring them food?

[Orange Wizard]

No. The only time dwarves will bring food to someone else is if it's an injured dwarf or an animal they want to train.

[ragman le bon]

If you dumped food down into a pit with captured goblins (that need to eat) in it, would they eat it?

[Orange Wizard]

Nope. The AI for invaders is pretty basic at the moment.

[Neonivek]

Goblins don't eat SPECIFICALLY because Toady couldn't picture them farming or raising animals.

So he made them have no need to eat.

That is it.

So why? Just because.

I don't personally agree with Toady's decision. But it is his to make and I respect that.

[That Wolf]

Oh, I thought it was because of sieging and army related invasions. So they don't starve when they got locked out of your fortress. And it might not be healthy for FPS if they all come with more than enough food to survive an apocalypse.
So it seems easier to leave it as is for the moment.
I see them farming fat little children myself.

[Man In Zero G]

They did eat at one time. Toady could not envision them as farmers - but they conceptually were hunters and strict carnivores. So no farming. But they did have hunters and butchers and cooks. (And they still do.) But then changes to worldgen sites happened regarding farming and tracking food in settlements. There was a brief mention of a bug were goblins were all starving to death, then suddenly goblins don't eat, problem solved. Once the game tracked food supply, the goblin hunters can't produce enough. Lack of farmers kills them off.
So basically, it was a quick and dirty bugfix that Toady decided to keep for a feature, because he thinks it makes goblins more sinister and otherworldly, and it's kind of cool.

Personally, I would prefer good old hunting/what-do-you-think-they-snatch-babies-for/sometimes-cannibal/eat-some-beak-dog-for-lunch carnivore goblins. But not eating does make them creepy and all, and it's Toady's call - after all it does make DF goblins unique that way.

[vjmdhzgr]

I'm pretty sure the reason they don't eat is because they're carnivores and carnivorous civs don't do very well in world generation.

[Miuramir]

It's more complicated than that; goblins don't need to eat partly because that allows them to have cultures that are dissimilar to human ones.  From a question to Toady One:

"Toady do you mean Goblins don't need to eat in any future update or that Goblins won't need to eat until you can get it working properly?"

"In any future update.  I know a few people were dismissive of our decision and called it a cop out, but we thought about these situations (including the Mongols) and rejected them.  Goblins that herd meat animals are insufficiently scary to us.  Goblins that die exclusively violent deaths in great numbers in a potentially vegetationless wasteland are better, and we want to explore a wider variety of possibilities than humans allow -- humans can be Mongols, because the Mongols were human, and we hope to support some human variety eventually.  There are beak dog considerations, etc., but those aren't fundamental -- wrangling some critters isn't as image-shattering as having large herds of meat animals ranging over grasslands with goblin ranchers."

How different could culture be if a civilization didn't have to eat?  One of the cool things about DF is that while in many games, the "nonhumans" are based off of some mix of historic Earth human cultures, Toady intends for the aliens to be genuinely alien.  Humans can *already* be Norse, Aztec, Mongol, Egyptian, and everything else humans have been; what are some cultures that humans *haven't* tried, for one reason or another? 

Needing to eat is such a fundamental element of not only human, but all Earth animal, life that we never seem to think about how things would be different if we didn't.  And one of the other most significant elements of human culture is the inevitability of aging and death.  If an entire society did not need to eat, to drink, and would never age or die naturally... how might they be different? 

All of the above is from a social / world building approach; which is more than enough justification in my mind.  But from a more gameist viewpoint, having a race of foes that can not only live, but thrive, in otherwise inhospitable and in fact downright evil places makes for more interesting game play.  Too many games handwave away the evil legions; if the countryside is that blasted, what feeds them?  In DF, the wastes are overrun by goblins, specifically *because* they don't need to eat and don't die except when killed. 

[AceSV]

Here's a thought:  Goblins are green. Chlorophyll is green.  Therefore Goblins are chlorophyllic autotrophs. 

Of course, that only works until they go underground, at which point you'd need chemosythetic autotrophs. 

[utunnels]

I wonder why you care about goblins not eating but don't ask why tigers and bears don't need food, it would be cool to see wild animals hunting each others...

... and any goblins you capture in your fortresses will eventually starve to death.

Well at least merchants don't starve even if they get stuck in your fort for years. Maybe siege monsters do not need to eat either.