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[PatrikLundell]

I try to generate a PSV world with quite a lot of megabeasts for 400 years. What I think I see is that if I set the advanced world gen site cap to -1 (unlimited), I predictably get a world with a lot of sites. However, when I try to cut down on the sprawl by setting a site cap, I think I seen things develop more or less normally until the site cap is reached (presumably: I don't have any actual measurements). Before the cap us reached, sites are formed, sites are razed, and sites are reclaimed (looking at the world gen "graphics"). Once new sites cease to be created, however, I think I see sites wink out, but only rarely be reclaimed, resulting in the humans (whose sites change visibly when razed: the small even sites look the same) gradually edging towards extinction.
Other races aren't the cause, as I've mostly kept them separated. Human wars might be, but I don't really see why the reclamation rate should sink just because the new site founding has ceased.

Since my races are separated, the elves are expanding covering their part of the map in sites, to a large extent. Could it be that a razed site doesn't count, but a reclaimed one does, so the elves keep nibbling away at the human sites by founding new elven ones when human sites are razed? Experimenting with expanding the human area at the expense of the elves seems to help the situation a bit.

Is it only my peculiar world, or have others seen something similar?

[DG]

Yeah, I see this. Once you reach the cap and a site is lost, another race can "steal" that slot to make another site of their own and so the original race loses the chance to reclaim, because if it was reclaimed the number of sites would go over the cap. And then as history moves on they lose population via attrition and so can't reclaim even when the number of ruins would allow it.

So lets say you allow 4 races in worldgen (we'll ignore kobolds for simplicity's sake) and allow 20 sites. On most seeds you'll get them all starting with 5 sites. Then, depending on the history, if a dwarf site gets razed, they may or may not be able to try a reclaim if they have the mandwarfpower because another race might take the empty slot to build a site, giving themselves 6, again hitting the cap until some other site is razed. At least that's how I think it works from my experience. It's tricky to work out what exactly is going on, as you know.

I don't think it is race dependent beyond certain races being more or less likely to lose sites while other races still have capacity for expansion. I find that dwarves almost always lose a fortress early to a (edit, typoed megabeast earlier) megaforgottenbeast, for instance. The other races don't have that danger, but the dwarves share in all of theirs.

One potential way to get around it is to try and use savagery settings to cut down on the site sprawl rather than the site cap number, but that's hardly perfect either.

Most of the time I gen custom 33x33 islands with 8 megabeast caves and 16 semimegabeast caves, 5 civs and 50 site caps and then just reroll for ages until I find a history (that I like) that keeps all of the civs alive for at least 100 years. Usually takes a lot of regens.

I reserve the right to be utterly wrong about how it all works 

[PatrikLundell]

Thanks for your reply. It certainly matches what I see. I've replaced elven territory with human biomes,  but I'm getting a bit much human territory, so savagery and biomes nobody likes (I've modded goblins to start on glaciers exclusively, to keep them where I want them to start) will be the next step.

If what we think is correct, there might be a need for either a "site hogging" limitation, or a strict site limit, i.e. count ruined ones as well, so after that point you can only reclaim or conquer to expand.

[DG]

That would be a nice addition. I patiently await customization/tweaking/rerolling options for the game before, during and after world gen on all of the components individually but I doubt it will ever approach the level I want.

[Thelo]

Thanks for your reply. It certainly matches what I see. I've replaced elven territory with human biomes,  but I'm getting a bit much human territory, so savagery and biomes nobody likes (I've modded goblins to start on glaciers exclusively, to keep them where I want them to start) will be the next step.

If what we think is correct, there might be a need for either a "site hogging" limitation, or a strict site limit, i.e. count ruined ones as well, so after that point you can only reclaim or conquer to expand.

Or consequences of too many sites and population leading to cataclysm/extinction/civil war events that would drastically diminish site number of any civ that overexpands.

[PatrikLundell]

Thanks for your reply. It certainly matches what I see. I've replaced elven territory with human biomes,  but I'm getting a bit much human territory, so savagery and biomes nobody likes (I've modded goblins to start on glaciers exclusively, to keep them where I want them to start) will be the next step.

If what we think is correct, there might be a need for either a "site hogging" limitation, or a strict site limit, i.e. count ruined ones as well, so after that point you can only reclaim or conquer to expand.

Or consequences of too many sites and population leading to cataclysm/extinction/civil war events that would drastically diminish site number of any civ that overexpands.

You shouldn't make it impossible to play as the last dwarves in a sea of goblins...

It's one thing to take over everything because of successful conquests, and quite another to have civs edged out due to site limits mechanics allows one civ to expand up to the cap when another loses a site to ruin, blocking the loser the chance to reclaim it.

[Thelo]

Thanks for your reply. It certainly matches what I see. I've replaced elven territory with human biomes,  but I'm getting a bit much human territory, so savagery and biomes nobody likes (I've modded goblins to start on glaciers exclusively, to keep them where I want them to start) will be the next step.

If what we think is correct, there might be a need for either a "site hogging" limitation, or a strict site limit, i.e. count ruined ones as well, so after that point you can only reclaim or conquer to expand.

Or consequences of too many sites and population leading to cataclysm/extinction/civil war events that would drastically diminish site number of any civ that overexpands.

You shouldn't make it impossible to play as the last dwarves in a sea of goblins...

It's one thing to take over everything because of successful conquests, and quite another to have civs edged out due to site limits mechanics allows one civ to expand up to the cap when another loses a site to ruin, blocking the loser the chance to reclaim it.

I didn't want to say that those events should happen every game, more like they COULD happen given certain conditions and make world generation a bit more varied.