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[Chrras]

Hello! I am new on these forums, but I have played Dwarf Fortress for years

Yesterday something strange happened at my new fortress (using PeridexisErrant's Starter Pack 0.43.03-r09).

I heard fighting noises, and I thought it was sparring, but when they continued, I zoomed in on the location, and it appeared that a child had gone mad. I have no idea why, and it also appear that people around this child was going mad too. The mad dwarves killed the other dwarves, and when I tried to set my military against them, I couldn't even order them to kill.

At this time I had about 130 dwarves, a decent military of about 30 dwarves, at least 20 of them fully equipped and with a good amount of training. I lost more than 75 dwarves to this, almost 20 of those were soldiers. I lost a few legendary dwarves too, and my fortress is currently a mess.

I don't get mad about getting attacked, or your fortress destroyed by other means, but this is just pointless. I have absolutely no idea what happened, why it happened, and how I could have stopped it. See screenshot with the action log: http://i.imgur.com/inuYEd8.png

Have anyone experienced similar stuff, and do you know how to fix this? Because this clearly doesn't seem intentional

[GhostDwemer]

Probably a loyalty cascade, or as Toady called it, the "civil war bug."
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Faction
Look down at the bottom under "Loyalty Cascade." It explains some ways it can start, and the dfhack method of fixing it.

[MorsDux]

I had some kea birds frighten my dwarves who then climbed up on trees. Then they couldnt climb down and would eventually die of thirst, so i decided I would chop the trees down because it sounded easier and more fun to handle injuries than making stairs for a bunch of trees.
Most dwarves fell off nicely only 1-2 dead, but one of the dwarves fell on top of the lumberjack and they started fighting, resulting in a civil war with 40+ dead. I was lucky that it ended there. The rest of the fort spent half a year cleaning up the insane amounts of knocked out teeth lying around.

[Chrras]

Thanks, it sounds like that is the problem. Now I know that if it happends again

My dwarves spend a whole year cleaning up the mess, also because my tombs were not quite ready for 75 bodies

[mikekchar]

The key for minimising a loyalty cascade is to avoid having dwarfs see it.  I'm not entirely sure of the mechanics, but I *think* it's driven off of the need for vengence.  If they see the conflict, they get feelings of vengence, choose a side (usually based on family connections) and then they will fight to the death.  If you think of it as a syndrome that is spread on sight, I think it will make a lot more sense.

The problem is that there is no cure.  What you have to do is to  separate the citizens who have seen then violence from the ones who have not seen the violence.  Then you wait until it is over.  Doors are your friend.  If you are quick you can limit the damage to only a few dwarfs.

I don't have enough data, but I also noticed that the dwarfs with good discipline were less likely to get caught up in the violence.  This may be a reason for national conscription.  I really wish dwarfs with good people skill (Passifier, etc) could diffuse the situation...