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[Marianne]

Hey,

I have a heterosexual coulke (queen and a miner) and they are lovers.

I put them into a room for over two (real-life-hours) and they won't marry. Does the child cap has something to do with it? I have 1 child in the fort and a LNPack child cap of 50:50 but I don't get my queen to marry this miner.

I read something about that there is a 20% chance that they stay eternal lovers which would be the end of my queens legacy because she took the title at embark. Is there a way (dfhack) to check the marriage orientation, I don't want to go on playing a fort where where "I am locked out" of continuing my queen's noble legacy.

My queen wants to raise a family according to her status and the miner doesn't have anything in his status about "not wanting marriage" (but he doesn't trust others - maybe this could be a problem?).

Would be nice when some experts can help me. So... maybe I have to aban. the fort... because of this but bettern than playing with the hope "it may happen in the future.".

[Maul_Junior]

IIRC Gayday checks marriage potential as well as orientation.

EDIT: also gaydar

[martinuzz]

What he means is, being heterosexual is no guarantee for a dwarf to get married.
There are dwarves who just won't ever progress beyond lover.

DFHack has a command, 'gaydar', which shows you exactly what you have. 'Likes females' means the dwarf will go into a lover relation, but not marry. 'will marry females' means it will marry them.
I have noticed that a lot of dwarves have the 'likes' tag instead of the 'will marry'. You really need gaydar to find out which dwarves are compatible, unless you accidentally hook up 'likers' with 'marryers' and waste good marriage potential.

[vjmdhzgr]

I believe 20% of dwarves will become lovers, but never marry. This chance of course can overlap, resulting in an annoyingly high chance of dwarves never marrying.

[Shonai_Dweller]

It's annoying, but I doubt many dwarves visit a hellhole part of the earth to dig in the dirt for a megalomanical overseer and think, "here I shall find true love and raise a family"...

[feelotraveller]

The first thing I would do is check their orientation flags.  Select one of the couple then in DfHack type: gui/gm-editor <return>.  In the screen that now replaces DF window scroll down the list to 'status' and hit return then, current_soul -> orientation flags.  Check that the dwarf has marry_male (or female as appropriate) set to true and romance_male (female) set to false and if not change them (using enter).  Then use 'esc' repeatedly until back to DF window.  Repeat for the other dwarf. 

If you made changes this was probably the source of the problem and bridal suite attempts should be repeated.  If everything was already good it may be a personality problem as that can also impede marriage but you might want to give the couple some more time as it sometimes can take ages.  Best of luck. 

[Marianne]

The first thing I would do is check their orientation flags.  Select one of the couple then in DfHack type: gui/gm-editor <return>.  In the screen that now replaces DF window scroll down the list to 'status' and hit return then, current_soul -> orientation flags.  Check that the dwarf has marry_male (or female as appropriate) set to true and romance_male (female) set to false and if not change them (using enter).  Then use 'esc' repeatedly until back to DF window.  Repeat for the other dwarf. 

If you made changes this was probably the source of the problem and bridal suite attempts should be repeated.  If everything was already good it may be a personality problem as that can also impede marriage but you might want to give the couple some more time as it sometimes can take ages.  Best of luck. 

Thank you so much for this! It's like I thought... the miner-"male" doesn't want to marry the queen. I am so angry about this.

If I read the status information I often got messages like "they had an argument" and so on, not much positive stuff for a lover-couple but maybe that's the reason... she wants to marry him and he says "No.".

Fuck this shit. :/ I should have known this before. Thank you!

[Orkel]

The first thing I would do is check their orientation flags.  Select one of the couple then in DfHack type: gui/gm-editor <return>.  In the screen that now replaces DF window scroll down the list to 'status' and hit return then, current_soul -> orientation flags.  Check that the dwarf has marry_male (or female as appropriate) set to true and romance_male (female) set to false and if not change them (using enter).  Then use 'esc' repeatedly until back to DF window.  Repeat for the other dwarf. 

If you made changes this was probably the source of the problem and bridal suite attempts should be repeated.  If everything was already good it may be a personality problem as that can also impede marriage but you might want to give the couple some more time as it sometimes can take ages.  Best of luck. 

Thank you so much for this! It's like I thought... the miner-"male" doesn't want to marry the queen. I am so angry about this.

If I read the status information I often got messages like "they had an argument" and so on, not much positive stuff for a lover-couple but maybe that's the reason... she wants to marry him and he says "No.".

Fuck this shit. :/ I should have known this before. Thank you!

It is time for an unfortunate cave-in accident and hope that the queen finds a new partner.

[PatrikLundell]

Given that feelotraveller provided info on how to "persuade" them to marry the opposite gender, a cave-in is overkill. I'd wait to see if the shock therapy worked before looking for a replacement, especially given that I think "lover" relations are for life the same way as marriage is, so the queen would need either brain surgery as well or garbage compaction treatment against the condition.

[C4st1gator]

You'd think that your dwarfs, integrated citizens or modded civs would marry on their own accord once they find a suitable partner.
After all citizen husbandry allows your settlement to thrive without immigration and grow on its own, but you still have to get them to adulthood, before your new generation can contribute meaningfully to your society, so it's not like your organically grown citizenship is super OP. As far as I know, there is no dwarven eugenics program yet.
Which has to do with the scarcity of married couples.
But when the common solution is to lock two citizens into a room until they are ready to wed, something seems off.
In my experience settlers marry on their own hilariously late into their lifespan. The only saving grace of the current system is, that your citizens then bring a child into the world each year, regardless of how old they are. This makes their family trees branch like crazy, but the rarity of marriage in general makes it so that there are usually only a handful, massive families in a given fortress.

That's when we breed relatively long lived species like dwarves. Species with a shorter lifespan might run into trouble finding a lover before they die of old age. This means we could potentially get a single family, that dies out after the second generation for lack of possible partners.
In my eyes, this means that marriage and childbirth mechanics will have to be reworked at some time in the future.

My proposed solution would be this:
- Your citizens may actively seek potential spouses, eliminating the need for marriage prisons.
- The courtship period has to be shortened down significantly. A 30-40 year courting process can be cut down to 2-7 years.
- To not flood your fort with children each year, the married couple should get less likely to have additional children for each child beyond the second one.
- Fertility should decrease with age. The fertility of a married couple may reach 0% after they pass 50% of their species lifespan.

This should have the following intended effects:
- You no longer have to coerce your settlers into having a family. This lets you focus your attention elsewhere.
- Instead of a few massive families, you have many small to medium sized families, with the occasional large one.
- The higher amount of families prevents the lack of possible partners, offering more choice.
- While citizens no longer give birth until they die of old age, the overall amount of children will be higher.
- This enables dynasties to properly emerge. You could have an adventurer become a noble, or even forming a royal bloodline.

Optionally, humans last names can be made inheritable, for easier identification of family members. This behaviour could be handled either at the civ or species level.

[Kat]

It is time for an unfortunate cave-in accident and hope that the queen finds a new partner.

dwarfs never re-marry though.


There's also a thing that comes with DfHack called family affairs, that allows you to change marriage relationships, so that might be useful too.

[C4st1gator]

It is time for an unfortunate cave-in accident and hope that the queen finds a new partner.

dwarfs never re-marry though.


There's also a thing that comes with DfHack called family affairs, that allows you to change marriage relationships, so that might be useful too.

That script is glorious, as it solves the marriage scarcity issue in the most straightforward way imaginable. Thanks for pointing me towards that.

However, I'd still prefer it if matchmaking happend mostly at the tavern with your normal dwarven socialization. While dwarven fertility will give me a steady stream of new recruits, the sheer amount of children coming from the same pair seems extreme.

Mind you, it is entirely possible for a pair of humans to sire extreme amounts of children, but most of these numbers are from a patrilineal system relying heavily on polygamy.
Then again it is also possible in a monogamous marriage, by using the one childbirth per year method dwarf fortress utilizes.
Normally, such behaviour is not practical due to resource limitations, or for cultural/legal reasons like an inheritance being split among thirty children.
There are very few cases even in real life, such as Feodor Vasilyev, who have given birth to that many children.

Yet in the game it seems to be an all or nothing thing. Even wierder: During worldgen marriages and childbirth seem more like the proposed solution with more marriages, but less childbirths per couple.

[martinuzz]

One of the main problems is that with the addition of taverns and the like, dwarves on 'no job' have become a real scarce thing.
It does strongly look like, that in order to form relationships, dwarves need to be next to each other on 'no job'. I don't think relation forming happens during reciting and listening to poetry or dancing. The only way a tavern contributes to relation forming is that it concentrates dwarves, and they do get to do some minor relations building in the short 'no job' moments in between socializing activities.

Which is why dating booths are pretty effective, as long as the dwarves using them have the right preferences, because they force them to be on 'no job', and next to each other.

[PatrikLundell]

Taverns would work as well once the dorfs had a minimum level of knowledge of each other, provided they were capable of seeking out and strengthening existing relations rather than chatting with the random visitors they happen to stand beside, and that would also allow them to fulfill the "be with friends" and "be with family" (if they have any) needs.
My pre nuptial suites have a tavern zone in them, and as long as one of the parties knows the other one their relations progress. However, "no job" seems to be required for the crucial initial "passing acquaintance" step (I've yet to try that in my suites, so it's based on what others have reported). The "no job" thingie may or may not require the adjacency or no job condition to change to bump relations another point, so small burrowed zones where a limited number of dorfs are kept together might be better than 1:1 confinement for that step.

[Kat]

possibly related, but, since building a library, the only citizen(s) I have ever seen with "no job" have been vampire.

Everyone else is reading the books "Animal Reproduction. The Easy Way", "And She Sang Economics!", "Right Triangles after the End", "Dissection in the time of my ancestors" and many more exciting titles.