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[acci_dent]

Just wondering if female dwarves are any different to male dwarves.

Also, I know dwarves have babies, so how exactly does that occur?
Do dwarves find spouses? Is there a set time of pregnancy or is the pregnant status of female dwarves always unknown?

[JT]

Dwarves do not marry during fortress time (yet); however, when dwarves immigrate to your fortress, occasionally they will arrive with a married spouse.  For instance, if your Metalsmith during the first midsummer comes with a Peasant, that Peasant is your Metalsmith's wife or husband.

Dwarves become pregnant during fortress time, and their gestation is tracked.  However, players have no means of determining when conception occurs -- particularly because right now, the reproduction is abstracted and the female can be impregnated from halfway across the fortress -- so it's effectively unknown.

Female dwarves are not physically different than male dwarves in any way.  Not even the beards! ;-)

That doesn't mean much, however: no female in the game, aside from the ability to be impregnated, is any different than any male in the game.  The "raw" object files contain no syntax for distinguishing the genders in this way that still allows the species to reproduce.

[Necro]

It seems to me that 90% of the time when I'm narrating (a habit I have in all games) the game and thinks "he", and then checks for gender, it's a she. You'd think otherwise, when the females do all the birthing.

[Thallone]

At least they don't reproduce as prodigiously as the livestock (dogs, cats, etc). Though I can see where having them reproduce on some of the glacial maps would be a good thing.

[Endiqua]

Every time I see a topic like this I hear Gimli saying "It's the dwarves that go swimming with little hairy women..."

[I3erent]

Well they all have beards...

[pushy]

It's true you don't see many dwarf women. And in fact, they are so alike in voice and appearance, they are often mistaken for dwarf men.
It's the beards.

[Koji]

One of my dwarves had triplets yesterday.

I lost track of her, but I wanted to check whether she somehow carried all 3 babies, and if the babies had similar likes/dislikes. That'd be neat.

[nerdpride]

I think one of the fortresses I started almost had a full crew of women.  Someone might need to change whatever it says on the wiki about male-female populations of dwarves and livestock always being balanced, because it seems random to me after the first female.

It's also odd how some animals can give birth without any males around.  I was worried about my horses not being able to reproduce once, and then they went and had some foals anyways.  Maybe they do the frog thing like in Jurassic Park?

[JT]

IIRC, only the starting animals are balanced in gender, and I don't think it applies to dwarves (not that it matters, because the starting pioneers are all sexless freaks).  After that, since everything's replaceable through trade or just natural immigration, I don't think it tries to go for a round-robin gender rule any more.

However, I haven't honestly looked closely enough to verify this one way or another, although I did immediately think that particular statement was suspect when I read it a couple weeks ago.

[pushy]

quote:Originally posted by JT:
<STRONG>IIRC, only the starting animals are balanced in gender, and I don't think it applies to dwarves (not that it matters, because the starting pioneers are all sexless freaks).  After that, since everything's replaceable through trade or just natural immigration, I don't think it tries to go for a round-robin gender rule any more.

However, I haven't honestly looked closely enough to verify this one way or another, although I did immediately think that particular statement was suspect when I read it a couple weeks ago.</STRONG>

Yup, you're right. Any pets you bring with you will have genders interchanged for each pet of a single type you bring (so bringing, for instance, 3 dogs or 3 cats guarantees 1 of one gender and 2 of the other). When they give birth, the gender of each offspring is decided at random (I'm evil and butcher any kittens and the vast majority of male puppies/foals/whatever, and have sometimes ended up killing all 3/4 of a dog's puppies from one litter. In one game I think there were about 4 litters of puppies before I finally got a new female to keep). Pets brought through immigration are also randomly assigned a gender.....and dwarves' genders are randomly assigned as well.

[ October 17, 2007: Message edited by: pushy ]

[Mzbundifund]

quote:Originally posted by nerdpride:
<STRONG>It's also odd how some animals can give birth without any males around.  I was worried about my horses not being able to reproduce once, and then they went and had some foals anyways.  Maybe they do the frog thing like in Jurassic Park?</STRONG>

Your horses can breed with the horses that pull trade wagons.

[acci_dent]

Wow, talk about helpful. I don't think I've ever had such a response from any other forum in such a short time ever.

Shame about females being exactly the same. I guess I can't justify my almost refusal to give them any jobs that revolve around physical labour... Oh well.

Also, on the note of animals, why is it whenever I create a new fortress, there's always 2 mules and 2 horses + whatever animals I actually choose to bring? They aren't in the list when I prepare carefully.

[AlanL]

Is there any jobs that don't involve some kind of actual work? I just treat females and males the same.

[kuro_suna]

quote:Originally posted by acci_dent:
<STRONG>
Also, on the note of animals, why is it whenever I create a new fortress, there's always 2 mules and 2 horses + whatever animals I actually choose to bring? They aren't in the list when I prepare carefully.</STRONG>

they pull the wagon,
also if you bring more stuff you get another wagon plus horses or mules to pull it free