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Author Topic: [QUESTION] Can I use a custom secret interaction to jumpstart a hive based civ?  (Read 729 times)

Tubercular Ox

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[QUESTION] Can I use a custom secret interaction to jumpstart a hive based civ?
« on: May 09, 2018, 05:57:38 pm »
By hive-based I mean eusocial, a la ants, bees, wasps, termites, naked mole rats, some aphids, and that one species of beetle everyone marvels about.

My plan was to make the species mostly genderless, but with a few males, and have a custom secret that turned people female so there would be a kickstart of queens at world gen.  I made a copy of the dwarves that worshipped a regional force and the female-turning secret aligned with Nature, so there would be easy access to it and difficult access to actual necromancy.  It worked in that genderless dwarves are becoming genuinely female by lusting for immortality and learning the secret, but they're not going on to have kids, despite a serious kick in the pants via personality trait changing.  According to my Legends file, one even had "start a family" as a goal but never got around to it, exploring the depths of the world instead.

Is there something special about learning a secret that precludes family?  If not, how can I bludgeon what few queens there are into having kids? 

But most importantly: Does it matter at all?  The Legends file shows new dwarves appearing from somewhere, sans parents but born after the beginning of the world.  Where are they coming from?  Genuine females have a 1 in 10000 pop ratio.  (The civ won't spawn without at least some chance.)

And finally: How do I make sure they pass the secret on?  They don't seem to be writing books on it, even though it should be possible.

The secret:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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Meph

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Re: [QUESTION] Can I use a custom secret interaction to jumpstart a hive based civ?
« Reply #1 on: May 10, 2018, 01:19:27 pm »
Quote
that one species of beetle everyone marvels about.
Which one would that be?

I don't think that secrets are a reliable way to get a civilization going. If nothing major changed in the way DF handles genders of transformed creatures, they also won't marry and have kids, because the game stubbornly still treats them as males.

I guess upping the clutch-size to rather large amounts would help, but that might cause chaos in the fort, once you have several mating couples.
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Tubercular Ox

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Re: [QUESTION] Can I use a custom secret interaction to jumpstart a hive based civ?
« Reply #2 on: May 11, 2018, 11:23:12 pm »
Quote from: Meph on May 10, 2018, 01:19:27 pm
Quote
that one species of beetle everyone marvels about.
Which one would that be?

I don't think that secrets are a reliable way to get a civilization going. If nothing major changed in the way DF handles genders of transformed creatures, they also won't marry and have kids, because the game stubbornly still treats them as males.

I guess upping the clutch-size to rather large amounts would help, but that might cause chaos in the fort, once you have several mating couples.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austroplatypus_incompertus  Perhaps "marvel" was an exaggeration.  :P  Or maybe "everyone".

Thank you for telling me that.  I was under the impression I'd gotten it to work, but only royal females were marrying, and later I found out that worldgen will invent a member of any caste, if none are available, to fill a CASTE_ALLOWED:DWARF:SOMETHING_SILLY position.  My theory is that caste is not tracked for nonhistorical figures, the game assumes pop ratios will be sane, and therefore assumes that a member of any caste is available to promote to historical without dicing for the possibility.  So it seems the royals were marrying because they were genned female and not because the system was working.

Back to the drawing board. 

The wiki says dwarves will never remarry after their spouse dies.  Is that still true?  It destroys some of my other plans.

Is it still true
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