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[Llamageddon]

Hi, in the init file DF says that 80 is minimum pop for a monarch. I read somewhere omn the wiki it is 120 and I just recently recently read somewhere else on the wiki it is 140. I aslo read somewhere else that you need even more than the ammount to get a monarch for some other features. Which is correct?! Also, can I just change the pop cap in the init and a saved game will update to the new pop cap?

[MCreeper]

Pop cap changes work for existing forts, yes.

[PatrikLundell]

There are two ways to get a monarch: the "normal" one which requires the fortress to be a metropolis (probably 140 pop. Check the wiki), plus a bunch of production targets within the last year (again, the wiki lists those). I've never gotten a monarch this way...

The "abnormal" way is for the mountainhome to get lost and the previous monarch along it (or later). This is typically the case with "struggling" civs, but can happen even if you start with what appears to be a healthy one. In this case a dorf in your fortress takes up the royal mantle ("after a brief discussion...") or, if two years (I think) passes without a monarch there's a different message (with the same effect), but with the difference that it tends to be the expedition leader, which means you have a chance to influence who gets appointed. The "abnormal" route does not bring with it the things the normal one would (royal guard, etc). I've gotten lots of mandate spewers that way.

The third case is a dead civ (actually dead, not just pretending to be: it's bugged, so it's somewhat rare). In that case you'll never get a monarch (rumor has it you might be able to revive a dead civ by founding multiple healthy fortresses, but I haven't heard that it actually is achievable: a single metropolis fulfilling the normal criteria does not suffice, anyway).

80 is the lower limit to get all other features except the monarch.

[klefenz]

If you play as a dead civ one of your guys will become king near the beginning.

[PatrikLundell]

If you play as a dead civ one of your guys will become king near the beginning.

Wrong.

If you get a monarch it was just pretending to be dead (e.g. by there not being a dorf in the world for the last 1000 years, nor any sites owned by any dwarven civ, nor any living members of the civ. Civs are very talented pretenders...). I.e. it was a "struggling" civ.
Dead civs get two migrant waves (it's possible to get less if migrants are blocked through necro invasions or pop caps, but apart from that, it's two waves), and never any dwarven caravans. They can be distinguished from "struggling" ones until you get in contact with another civ by the civ screen (i.e. civ section of the civ screen) being completely empty. For struggling civs your own civ is listed, and it also gets listed as soon as any other civ gets listed).
Also, DF culls actually dead civs from the list of civs you can embark as, unless all civs are dead, so to actually get a dead one you either have to generate about a score worlds with a single dwarven civ where that civ appears to be dead before getting one that actually is, or use DFHack to add dead civs to the list of civs you can embark as.

Both dead and "struggling" civs get the same message on embark: a warning about the civ being dead or *dying*. "struggling" = "dying".

[mikekchar]

I've never seen a playable dead civ before.  However, I've seen several "almost dead" civs (which have no locations -- not even a mountain home).  If you go into legends mode and look at the historical map, It should not show a tile for that civ if it is truly dead.  I've played where I think there was *exactly* one person left in the civilisation (they got promoted to king as soon as world activation started -- I was playing adventure mode).  It still has a few tiles where the civ is "vying for control".  The only problem with the historical map is that it's only updated every 10 years...  But If you were trying to gen such a world, you might set it for a super long history, save the seeds, break it, check if all of the dwarf civs have completely disappeared from the civ part of the map (not just locations), then start again if they haven't.

[PatrikLundell]

Civ death is somewhat broken, and Toady is aware of that. I typically did get my dead civs by generating worlds with a single dwarven civ, copy the save, do a test embark, check the civ screen, and then gen the world again (typically) or revert to the save copy (if it actually was a dead civ) to embark properly. Sometimes you could clearly see the civ wasn't dead, but out of the cases where there was no trace of it only about 1 in 20 actually was dead.

I'm currently using a more efficient method: pushing civs that ought to be dead over the brink during world gen with a script and adding playable dead civs to the list of selectable civs pre embark: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=165084.msg7526484#msg7526484.
This actually isn't strictly true, as the script I use during world gen does a bit more than slabbing civs, but the slabciv script logic is the one that's used during the history phase. However, the script I actually use is tailored specifically for my PSV world, and so isn't particularly useful for anyone else.