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[Halnoth]

I'm going to do another test embark. I'm going to experiment with how quickly I can get a library running and dwarves producing books. I will probably turn off invaders for the test embark.

Here is the plan;

1. There are 14 different academic topic skills so on embark each dwarf will have a 3 in 2 topics and then a 2 in writer and a 2 in wordsmith (this way I can test if wordsmith levels with writer or not)
2. ASAP I will set up 7 different libraries. 1 for each dwarf. As I can I will add scholars and scribes to each library. The goal would be 4 scholars and 2 scribes per library.
3. I will moniter each library for several things; what topics are discussed, teacher student relationships, progress of skill level, and what books are produced.
4. Eventually after dwarves have reached X skill level I will create a giant library and combine them all.
5. Then I will repeat step 3 for the big library.

I will get back to you guys with my results and may Armok smile on my work.

[mgotthard]

Anecdotal only, but I started a fort where my orignal seven were all scholars and had Wordsmith at least novice  (I thought it was related to quality of work).

The early production of works was all history books on the fort and region.... So probably related to general literary works, etc.

PS if you want high levels of Teacher or Student etc, it has occurred  to me you should have two squads in your military which alternate their downtime as scholars and scribes for a season at a time.

Dwarf warrior monks FTW.

[Immortal-D]

PS if you want high levels of Teacher or Student etc, it has occurred  to me you should have two squads in your military which alternate their downtime as scholars and scribes for a season at a time.

Dwarf warrior monks FTW.

Unfortunately, this only works until the Dwarf becomes highly skilled in combat.  When a Squad is Inactive, the Dwarves will perform whatever labors they enjoy most, which is now training.  The only way of forcing a veteran to take on civilian jobs is by removing him from the military, which creates moderate to severe unhappy thoughts.

[AceSV]

PS if you want high levels of Teacher or Student etc, it has occurred  to me you should have two squads in your military which alternate their downtime as scholars and scribes for a season at a time.

Dwarf warrior monks FTW.

Unfortunately, this only works until the Dwarf becomes highly skilled in combat.  When a Squad is Inactive, the Dwarves will perform whatever labors they enjoy most, which is now training.  The only way of forcing a veteran to take on civilian jobs is by removing him from the military, which creates moderate to severe unhappy thoughts.

Wouldn't scheduling them for time off allow them to do civilian work? 

[Halnoth]

PS if you want high levels of Teacher or Student etc, it has occurred  to me you should have two squads in your military which alternate their downtime as scholars and scribes for a season at a time.

Dwarf warrior monks FTW.

Unfortunately, this only works until the Dwarf becomes highly skilled in combat.  When a Squad is Inactive, the Dwarves will perform whatever labors they enjoy most, which is now training.  The only way of forcing a veteran to take on civilian jobs is by removing him from the military, which creates moderate to severe unhappy thoughts.

Wouldn't scheduling them for time off allow them to do civilian work?

No they would individually train. That's besides the point though. Gaining skill in student and teacher while in the military is nothing compared to while a scholar. Scribes gain Accomplished student within a year and scholars gain student even faster. Teacher skill gain is slow but it is in the military too.

[Evaris]

PTW

[Kuschelflummi]

Hmm... my actual library only got 3 works so far. I'm not quiet sure if it does have something to do with the age of the world. Maybe in year 8 there is not much to write about. Yesterday I got a goblin siege. Hopefully this will get recorded in an epic dwarfen war tale :3
Could be really interesting.

[Halnoth]

Hmm... my actual library only got 3 works so far. I'm not quiet sure if it does have something to do with the age of the world. Maybe in year 8 there is not much to write about. Yesterday I got a goblin siege. Hopefully this will get recorded in an epic dwarfen war tale :3
Could be really interesting.

Dwarves ponder topics and then write about them. The age of the world probably only effects history tomes. The vast majority of books are not related to history.

[Kuschelflummi]

Dwarves ponder topics and then write about them. The age of the world probably only effects history tomes. The vast majority of books are not related to history.

Awww... but they do make other works depended to history. Statues and Figurines and such. Maybe I get lucky and get a whole lot of history books in my Library of the Ancients.

But it would be quiet interesting, if you got more books in a older world. For logical reasons, a older world should have more written works than a younger. Unless you got very dwarfy during world gen and all scholars die a horrible magma death.

[martinuzz]

Scrolls that have already been written on, still count as available writing materials in the location screen's count. I hope they're not actually used to write on again, too. Haven't seen that yet though.

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=9418

[Halnoth]

Scrolls that have already been written on, still count as available writing materials in the location screen's count. I hope they're not actually used to write on again, too. Haven't seen that yet though.

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=9418

Oh thats interesting, I didnt notice because I have make scrolls on repeat and the desired materials set at like 5000 or something.

[Halnoth]

Setting up different libraries for different subjects didn't work so well. Dwarves will ponder a topic they know more often but they will also ponder other topics somewhat frequently. Basically, it works better to have a bigger library and to simply add more scholars.

I also found out that the skill tracker which is only used in worldgen and adventure mode is an academic skill. Tracker will cause dwarves to discuss migration patterns and crap like that.

In this test fort I have so far 32 scholars. Basically any dwarf which had an academic skill was made a scholar and I picked random terrible dwarves to he scribes. I am keeping a ratio of 2:1 scholars to scribes. So far it is year 3 and I have 60 books. I expect this number to increase drastically by year 5.

[Bouchart]

Geez, 32 scholars.  I have a fort of 140 dwarves and only have two scholars and one scribe.  When I get home I'll increase the unit cap a little...

[martinuzz]

I'm starting to get a very strong feeling that dwarves that have been moody, and created an artefact, will never write a book again.
Not making a bug report yet, since it's just a strong hunch.


So please, anyone prove me wrong, if you have a dwarf that has created an artefact, and is still able to write books.

[Halnoth]

Ok so I have some results. They aren't really good. (Note: these tests were in regard to skill gain, if you just want books you will get them eventually with a group of random freshman scholars)

First, scholars can do the following activities to gain skill;
1. Ponder; this is an individual activity.
2. Discuss; this is a group activity with at least one other dwarf.
3. Learn/Teach; this happens between master and apprentice. Dwarves will form the master/apprentice association when the master dwarf has a high level (lowest I saw was expert) in an academic skill and the apprentice is low.

Second, leveling any academic skill is painfully slow. Dwarves gain between 5-30xp per activity, this is dependent on various skills but each activity happens at random, and competes with other leisure activities like worshiping or listening to music. As such, getting a dwarf beyond dabbling is nearly impossible.

Third, around 50% of the time dwarves will engage in an activity that is related to a skill they know. For instance, a surgeon will talk about medical stuff half the time. However, ANY academic topic can be chosen for an activity. This means that over years of time every scholar that participates in library activities will gain dabbling in every possible academic skill.

Fourth, dwarves only gain student and reading skill from reading books. Dwarves do not gain topic related skills from reading.

I tried various things to boost skill gain. I tried different numbers of scholars. First I tried several small libraries with 1 expert and 4 freshman scholars. This didn't work so well because the freshman sat around thinking of random topics and the expert was busy writing books. Then I tried a massive library with 50 scholars and the same thing happened only on a large scale. So, basically the number of scholars you have doesn't matter aside from the amount of books you can crank out per year.

The library does a good job keeping medical skills from rusting but don't expect to create a dwarven madam curie.

My advice if you are looking to get a library going is to embark with the academic skills you want otherwise it will take decades of in game years to get anything other than dabbling. I personally always embark with a doctor. Now ill just slap some writer points on there as well and call it good.

Also note, scribes don't matter. They just copy books. They can be anyone. You could just draft 5 or so random dwarves and they will occasionally copy a book for you.