Signed up today to say, this is awesome! I've heard people floating the idea of a 1000-year-old fort before, for dragon breeding, but I never thought I'd see someone actually try it! (I think dragons had a 1000-year childhood back then.)
Anyway, you've inspired me to try it myself and I've started up a 2x2 fort with 40 dwarves. I'm only at year 7 and I'm already running into problems. Many of my dwarves are overall unfocused or distracted, they won't use my (small, non-specific) temple to pray even though they're upset about not praying, and I also can't get anyone to marry--they won't even idle in my shared bedrooms! Without any active meeting areas! How do you deal with this?
PS if there's a guide out there for keeping all your dwarves' needs met, please point me towards that. I haven't been able to find one myself.
Thanks! It'll be a while before it reaches 1000 years but here's hoping.
My dwarves seem to pray pretty regularly without any trouble, but I also have a temple for each god, so maybe that helps? I'm not sure. The temples also have very high value furniture that's been decorated for centuries so maybe that draws them in more frequently.
Marriage was trickier because when I started the fortress in 40.24 I had to set up the pre-honeymoon suites and disable meeting areas to get them to idle in the bedrooms with each other. You can't do that now because they need to go pray and listen to stories and what-not or they get distracted. When I upgraded the fortress to 42.something-or-other, tons of marriages happened because I'm assuming the relationship threshold for marriages was lowered and a lot them suddenly met the criteria to get married.
Now they seem to form romantic relationships fairly regularly, and marry, but I'd say make your meeting areas like taverns and temples small so they can interact with one another. And give them plenty of time to idle and socialize.
Although, I will say I'm having trouble getting children born since upgrading from 43.05 to 44.09. Haven't had a child born in almost 5 years which is concerning since we don't have migrants. Anyone else having this problem in 44?
Edit: Nevermind, just had a baby born.