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[mikekchar]

I have family rooms.  The room contains 1 bed for the couple and one bed for each non-baby child.  I assign each bed, but the couple's bed I only assign one of the dwarfs (because the other is auto assigned).  It may or may not be relevant, but each couple is pumping out a baby *every* year!  More than half of my fort is children now.

What may be more relevant is that I've been experimenting with a more organic approach to  fortress design this time.  I've made a small central fortress.  This fortress contains only the basics: still, kitchen, military oriented stuff.  Around the fortress I've made hillocks: essentially a hatch cover over a stairway that goes down 1-3 levels to a dwarf's dwelling.  The idea is that dwarfs live in the hillocks and that in times of disaster, they evacuate to the fortress.

Each dwelling (both inside and outside the fortress) is 2 6x6 rooms, with an optional alcove that contains a shrine to the family's god.  The main room contains the beds, some tables (1 assigned to each adult dwarf and one extra unassigned table for the children) and chairs.  In the attached 6x6 room I have 2 workshops, for people to work.  The workshops have permissions set to allow only the resident dwarfs to use them.

The idea is to make is so that the dwarfs are near their homes as much as possible and don't have to roam all over the fortress all the time.  It works pretty well.  The only time the dwarfs are wandering around is when they go to the tavern (right in the middle of the first level of the fortress), when they are hauling stuff, when they are smoothing stone, etc.  Otherwise they are home bodies.  I get *frequent* good thoughts from talking to loved ones... and babies.  Too many babies :-)

[Fleeting Frames]

That's quite remarkable, mikekchar(1 baby a year per couple - though if everyone is married, it should stabilize at over 90% of children). As the dwarves stay home idling in their rooms, the tavern zone is unmarked as meeting zone, correct? How do you do on filling the needs?

[FantasticDorf]

As long as the tavern room's physical x by x zone floorplan is layered down, it will still function as a tavern but not beckon dwarves to walk into it for no reason and get stuck when you turn off the meeting zone, more of a 'i need to fill my needs up then go' basis. More cleanly done by turning the meeting zone off after creation immediately whilst paused to resume with dwarves not queuing up to go there yet.

> As all DF jobs and trivialties like setting new stocks for a general stockpile without dwarves piling on every relevant object they can find can  be solved with tactical pauses and precise movements.

Inactive gathering zones exhibit the same kind of recursive behaviour but its just annoying by this stage, on the other hand without it being a meeting zone it won't attract pets to linger there for no good reason than to be the subject of barfights, grumpyness bumping into each other or generally being hard to find in the slog of dwarves.

[mikekchar]

The tavern is a meeting hall.  I believe it is the only meeting hall I have.  Interestingly, it is probably buggy because nobody idles with No Job there.  Not quite sure what's wrong.

So far I'm satisfying needs pretty well. All of my adult dwarfs except one are "somewhat satisfied".  My one dwarf who was "unfocused with unmet needs" was my expedition leader (I've capped myself at 35 dwarfs at the moment).  I have 2 dwarfs who have long term stress (one, seemingly because he dislikes family and he has 7 children LOL, the other who is in a constant state of rage after having been rained on when he immigrated :-P).  I've managed to keep their needs fulfilled, but they spend all of their time yelling at the expedition leader and so he never had time to meet any of his needs.  I replaced him as expedition leader to give him a break and I'm hoping he'll come around.

At least for me, I'm not sure I can play this game at the moment without capping the population -- just too many things to take care of in a single year and it's too easy to get overrun with dwarfs that will go crazy.

[garlicfiend]

There's a new thread talking about stress on the DF reddit. User u/PlanningVigilante made an insightful comment which I am copy-pasting here because it's stuff that hasn't been mentioned yet:

I've only had a problem with a few dwarves who were unusually susceptible to stress. My current fort is 34 years old, and I've had to get rid of only 1 dwarf due to incurable stress. I do nothing to micromanage their stress levels.

Here are two random dwarves I picked out of the tavern for no reason:

https://imgur.com/a/KALoHW6

You'll see a lot of positive thoughts about bedroom furniture, praying, partying, hanging out with children, etc. completely overwhelming the negative thoughts.

I'll also note that most of my dwarves have personality traits about always being in love and/or being filled with joy, due to gaining siblings or offspring. This may be Toady's subtle hint that the playerbase's enduring contempt for children is misplaced. Children provide tons of positive thought opportunities, and can completely change a dwarf's personality for the better

Also, user u/mikekchar mentioned this in regard to the "need to wander":

- Wandering: Fishing and Hunting. You must wait until they actually return with the kill for hunting. For fishing, the need will be met right after catching a fish.

I know mikekchar has been active in this thread, but I haven't seen that mentioned here, so thought I would throw it in to be added to the list.

[FantasticDorf]

But dwarves who dont have children usually don't hate the concepts surrounding it so they just become sad without a extended effort to find their 'beard-mate'.

Normally the dwarves disposed to having families will usually have beliefs leading up to 'raising a family' as a lifetime goal, however crafting dwarves will be abstinate largely in favour of a masterpiece and summarily get sad. Does the lifetime wish push any sort of direction for the dwarf doing anything that needs do not?

DFhack test would be to change the dreams of a number of dwarves and see if the fortress gets flooded with children & spouses implicitly, just incase we're looking at the wrong thing. Lifetime dreams pre-date and already push forward dwarf objectives off map before the needs were even made remember.

[Fleeting Frames]

Just checking....These dwarves with dreams of family and large families: Are they migrants? Worldgen goals are handled differently than fortress-mode ones (as shown by none of your dwarves obtaining slabs from the gods), and actual unculled historical units can pull a whole personally-made kindergarten with them.

Void dwarves don't have extensive family, though, so this needs a suitable world to confirm. Though I'm not sure how easy that is; I had the same brewer arrive several times with save-scumming migrant wave, even as the rest of wave changed. Perhaps Legends Viewer/Browser would be able to check if there's a correlation.


In fortress mode, even dwarves who have level or two of dislike against one stage or another of relationship process have shown capability to be wed (I am not certain of the exact thresholds, but I have erred on setting them pretty low in relations-indicator), though at least for one dwarf I've had to replace the spousal candidate in marriage burrow with a better suited one.

And even dwarves who absolutely love marrying each other have to spend months inside the burrow provided they don't start out knowing each other. I have not done exact tests how fast exactly though. Given this, as long as you already manage to get some marriages I suspect you'd get more children even with dwarves being incapable of seeking a beard-mate.


Now, I'd be very surprised if it turned out your crafters started ignoring jobs depending on their goals, especially as some goals are plain impossible and as they don't start doing crafting jobs when they need it (goals are kind of quarter-implemented currently). Some of the needs borne from need to be with people might result in going Socialize! more often.


At least figuring out which needs, and thus personalities, cause that might be an interesting test.


As for seeking spousal candidates on their own rather than being more receptive in general...There's the question of how you'd distinguish it from relationship rust+being faster to make the relationship in general.

One possible counter: Well, such dwarves shouldn't have the common distraction from not seeing their friends, as long as they have at least single one they could theoretically marry.


(Overall I'm skeptical, but do see few merits to the idea.)


@garlicfiend: Partially correct. Plant gathering also works for wandering. (Said by Toady, and tested and put on the wiki by me. Though instead of fort mode note, it really should get a fort mode tab.)

[Adequate Swimmer]

Is it possible to weaponize stress, such as making a holocaust museum on the map edge armies tend to come from? Will invaders that have been polderized by a set of bridges break from rain/heat/thirst and go crazy?

[mikekchar]

@Fleeting Frames: I totally forgot about plant gathering.  I can confirm that as I've done it before.  Thanks for the reminder!  (Plant gathering is a lot easier to control than fishing and hunting, so I like it better)

[Shonai_Dweller]

Is it possible to weaponize stress, such as making a holocaust museum on the map edge armies tend to come from? Will invaders that have been polderized by a set of bridges break from rain/heat/thirst and go crazy?

Invaders will go crazy yes. Not just beserk, but full on running around babbling breakdowns. Shut the door and let invaders hang out in the rain with the corpses of the last invasion and they'll soon break. Especially during year-long sieges.

[Saiko Kila]

Is it possible to weaponize stress, such as making a holocaust museum on the map edge armies tend to come from? Will invaders that have been polderized by a set of bridges break from rain/heat/thirst and go crazy?

Yes, but this may take some time. I had an elf and goblin (visitors who got spooked during a siege five years earlier and turned to "Friendly", which means their all flags were cleared), the elf finally snapped and then died of thirst after couple of months (he didn't need to drink before snapping, hence survived so many years while basically circling the same tree), but the goblin doesn't need to drink at all.

Invading goblins can be haggard etc., and this happen even faster than with these two visitors (in course of months, not years), but this doesn't do much harm to them. They are easier to fight, but they also like to wander away and off the map, unlike neutrals, who can stay for years and go really crazy. If you want to turtle, you may use old corpses to spook bad guys, but I would make them surrounded by bridges, and lower the bridges only during siege, when own people are safely burrowed away.

There is a chance than it will backfire anyway, if you send your military nearby. Seeing corpses from a single siege is enough to force some soldiers into depression and tantrum throwing...

[Immortal-D]

Loving the discussion and new information   I have just returned from a long respite, but will attempt to sort & add all of the new stuff tomorrow.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Loving the discussion and new information   I have just returned from a long respite, but will attempt to sort & add all of the new stuff tomorrow.

Don't forget to clearly indicate what's 'broken and would improve matters if fixed' for Toady's reference from 'how to workaround currently broken stuff' for players.

I mean, I'm sure you're already doing that. But only this thread and 'announcements' (which is currently filling up with, 'hey it's pretty much working now' comments) are providing detailed info that could help fix things.

[Adequate Swimmer]

The problem is open-ended as ass, and somehow gets more complex the more we research it. Finding a solution that's going to work for each combination of climate, social conditions and enviromental pressure is going to be .. non trivial.

[Fleeting Frames]

It's complicated by one man's solution being another's problem (see stress in 44.09).

Though I'm also thinking of how almost all of billw's(I think?) happiness tracker lines had either a positive or negative slope, i.e. an eventual result of ecstatic or miserable. Tenth the thresholds and recurring strong feelings make things happen sooner, but don't actually cause plateaus much.