I was under the impression that the issue of polygamy had already been resolved (at least in theory) by deciding to, as you said, do what should always be done in controversial cases: Write it into the game, but leave a setting in the init files that can disable it, if the player desires. It's how Toady implemented varying sexual orientation, and it's pretty much the only way to please everybody, so I think it's safe to assume that's how he would implement promiscuity--
if he chose to implement it at all, of course.
However, the main complaint against [polyamory] seems to be that it would inevitably result in (a lot) more dwarf children, which many players would not like. Personally, I find this argument weak, considering that we can adjust the [BABY_CHILD_CAP:100:1000] . . .
I skimmed back over those threads, and even found an example of this objection in one of my own posts:
. . . the only real problem with applying [polyamory] to dwarves that I can see is that it has the potential to take the typical dwarven married couple--the equivalent of a constantly repeating baby gun--and turn it into a baby automatic rifle.
Let me clarify that when I wrote that, it was with the consideration that if Toady was at the point of tweaking dwarves to have
multiple simultaneous sexual relationships, then naturally sexual relationships
themselves would naturally have
already been fixed. (Meaning, they would actually happen on their own--more on that later.) The baby cap and other raws actually make the situation
worse, in my opinion, by allowing a minority of polyamorous males to claim a disproportionate amount of the fort's baby allotment.
A counterargument would be the possibility of adding a couple more d_nit.txt settings. For one, a new option to switch dwarves between being monogamous and polyamorous (or turn monogamous ON/OFF) could be added.
A species-wide boolean would be far too simplistic, IMO. Sure, it's all right for exploring the idea, but I think it'd best be implemented at the Civilization level, as a part of the "randomized civ ethics" package, if / when that becomes a thing. For example, suppose two lines were added to the Init file:
[POLYANDRY:20:20:20:20:20]
[POLYGYNY:0:5:15:30:50]
In each line, the numbers are percentages for the behavior being randomly chosen for each civ during worldgen. They reflect the odds of a society deciding if polyamory (of each gender pattern) is Mandatory, Encouraged, Permitted, Discouraged, or Forbidden. So the settings in the example above reflect a user who wants his dwarven societies to be completely unbiased in the matter of allowing their dwarves to take multiple
husbands, but takes a far more conservative view when it comes to dwarves taking on multiple
wives. But even this level of specificity can't do the matter justice: It makes no distinction between relationships of Love <> Sex <> Marriage, which I personally consider essential if we want to see this matter
really fleshed out. It also makes no mention of homosexual relationships--but then again, it might not need to; a potential lesbian couple might simply make
two checks to see if they violate their civ's Polygyny setting, and
none against Polyandry.
Why is it that dwarves mate for life? I'd love to see a possibility of a widow or widower remarrying after their spouse dies. Also, I find it silly that dwarves have to be within 10 years of each other's age for a relationship to happen.
I don't think I've ever seen a single user express disagreement with these views. I, for one, would like to see the concept of dwarven
divorce, particularly if one partner is convicted of a serious crime or violation of moral standards.
Some of us want a higher than usual marriage rate / fertility rate and more dwarf babies - at least for certain experiments or goals. For example, consider Archcrystal: 410 years in a fortress. Everyone currently alive in Sethatos' fort was born there and descended from two dwarves down through 5 generations. He even set up arranging marriages for their descendants with pre-honeymoon suites. Imagine the micromanagement this must have involved, given the aforementioned limitations.
As Dwarf Fortress stands now, polyamory is not an issue not just because it literally
can't happen, but also because even if it
could, it still
wouldn't. In my experience, dwarves usually
don't get married, unless they're practically
forced to by the "love prison" setup you mention above. If you took a population-200 fort and then completely sealed it off (locking out all threats and ALL future migrants), you would create an idyllic dwarven paradise, with no work to be done apart from farming, brewing, cooking, and making clothes . . . it's my belief that, if left to its own devices as far as reproduction is concerned, this utopia would die out in only a few generations, because dwarves currently lack any sort of sex drive. Sure, they may "dream of raising a family", and have a Love_Propensity through the roof, but they currently have no mechanism to
seek out and woo desirable potential mates. That, even more than "mates for life" and "no more than 10 years apart", is what kills the dwarven race. As long as dwarves consider "a shared fondness for a particular type of leather" to be MORE important than "the survival of one's entire species", dwarven sexual ethics will
not represent a sustainable model.
What Should Be Done? In my opinion, love and sex should be long-term needs, that manifest both in a dwarf's Thoughts screen, and in their behavior. Just as a dwarf can feel frustrated over not having practiced their craft(s) in a while, or that it's been too long since they enjoyed their favorite booze, they should feel glum about not having flirted with anyone lately, and actively seek to correct that. (Both feelings & behaviors would be in proportion to their personality traits, of course.) Implement that, and loosen some of their moral strictures, and the average dwarf fort would be a LOT closer to having 30 couples with 3 children each . . . as opposed to the current standard of 3 couples, with 30 children each.