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[Lozzymandias]

I’m getting back into df after a long break, my last fortress was back in 42.xx, and I’m trying to determine if it’s worth playing a siegeable site.

Back then, the horror from seeing a load of dead goblins every siege clean up put a sizeable chunk of stress every few years, but it was manageable with bedrooms, alcohol, good food, dining rooms and temples and taverns and whatnot. The impression I’m getting now is that stress stacks with dead sapients, so a single hundred corpse cleanup can severely traumatise dwarves all in one go (and thanks to the new memory reliving mechanic, they stay stressed). Is this an accurate assessment? As far as I remember the original stress mechanic was supposed to be cumulative, but it doesn’t seem to be playing out like that

[Shonai_Dweller]

The effect of stress of seeing a dead enemy has been nerfed. But it's still stacking, which is unintentional apparently.
Having said that, almost all my dorfs recovered from their stressful red flashing arrows a few months after my last siege (involving both dead enemies and friends and unsupervised cleanup). Some dorfs are lethally prone to stress though and need to be watched carefully. That's just something to watch out for like vampires and platinum loving nobles.

So...yeah, I find it playable certainly. Some are having a really hard time coping apparently though. Which is odd because I'm not using any tools to help me out (dfhack has some useful anti-stress scripts).

I imagine it would get hard/annoying to deal with if you wanted to run a 30 year fortress with regular sieges. But fps death will probably get you first...

[Lozzymandias]

The effect of stress of seeing a dead enemy has been nerfed. But it's still stacking, which is unintentional apparently.
Having said that, almost all my dorfs recovered from their stressful red flashing arrows a few months after my last siege (involving both dead enemies and friends and unsupervised cleanup). Some dorfs are lethally prone to stress though and need to be watched carefully. That's just something to watch out for like vampires and platinum loving nobles.

So...yeah, I find it playable certainly. Some are having a really hard time coping apparently though. Which is odd because I'm not using any tools to help me out (dfhack has some useful anti-stress scripts).

I imagine it would get hard/annoying to deal with if you wanted to run a 30 year fortress with regular sieges. But fps death will probably get you first...

I usually don't play anything less that 20 year fortresses, I like to get properly invested with, a tree farm and a magma pump stack and some really Fun exotic guard beasts, so I suppose I probably would have stress issues. If dwarves can drop all the way to red flashes from a single corpse episode then things are certainly very different to the long term stress (and de-stress) model I remember before. I might just choose a haunted glacier and get my kicks from dwarves v environment rather than dwarves v goblins. I hope the [LARGE PREDATOR] tagged creatures being unusually docile has since been fixed... I

[PatrikLundell]

My experience is that stress is significantly different from how it was before in that it's now impossible to save them all: you will lose some to stress no matter what you do (stress prone, no friends, no family + no preferred food or one that's impossible to get can be enough). It seems to be possible to rescue some, though, if you have some luck and are prepared to go thorough the effort (I had a mooded [i.e. won't go mad] carpenter who gradually slipped down to 100000 stress, but who I managed to nurse back to 80000 by pushing trinkets made out of a favored rock on the bugger [he refused to take them even when hauling them otherwise]). That fortress was lost to a bug, so I didn't see the end of the story.

Those who get stressed out by a single corpse hauling session should be taken off corpse hauling duty (I remove them from refuse hauling as well), and some of them may recover, while the rest of them will have to be either exiled or sent out to pasture in a hillock or conquered site.

Questers can also cause quite a mess... and visitors can slip into depression while visiting, and rejected petitions can push them into it. Also be prepared to get some petitioners who get stressed out right after you've accepted them, and who go bonkers before they are prepared to petition again for the full citizenship that would allow you to take some of the measures they pine for.

It's playable with adjusted expectations, though, so if you're prepared to accept that you should try it out. That doesn't mean I'm not looking forward to the stress being adjusted (again), though...

[Lozzymandias]

Patrik and Shonai your advice as ever is sage and wise

[Saiko Kila]

and I’m trying to determine if it’s worth playing a siegeable site.

If it doesn't rain, then sure, why not

I'm hinting at extreme vulnerability of some dwarves to weather events. The first total mental breakdown (i.e. irreversible insanity) I've witnessed wasn't caused by dead bodies. It was apparently caused by raining, mostly. It rather surprised me, because the dwarves were recovering from witnessing death rather nicely - until is started raining heavily and they had to work outside. The accumulation of stress (or rather its rate) was so massive it was nothing I've seen before, and this is after a couple of sieges with 100+ besiegers and many, many deaths. Fortunately only a few seems susceptible, but this is crazy.

If you are unlucky, stuff like this can break the fortress, though if you plan to have many dwarves, you can treat them as lepers and contain (isolate or euthanise).

[PatrikLundell]

Exile or sending out to pasture if you've got a hillock or conquered site is probably better than containment/extermination.

[Saiko Kila]

Exile or sending out to pasture if you've got a hillock or conquered site is probably better than containment/extermination.

I didn't write it, but by isolation I mean exile to the leper colony (i.e. hillocks), not containment in situ. Which wouldn't probably help anyway, I tried disabling outside jobs without much success, also dwarves are sometimes psychics and they just KNOW something annoying is happening on the map. By extermination I mean exile to the happy hunting grounds, i.e. afterlife, with all the ceremonial stuff, like arranging the accident and then a tearful commemoration.

Personally I would sent all bad dwarves to a single colony, just to observe how this changes its chance of survival. I would choose a colony closest to the gobbo border, and least defended, in case the problem needs a more definite solution.

[Shonai_Dweller]

And again, death-by-rain doesn't happen to everyone. The weather won't cause the complete meltdown of your fortress. Some dwarves are just problem-case nutters who your mountainhome sent you for lols. It's just something to be careful of. Like vampires. Exile works perfectly (or at least it will once 'child/spouse not present' bug is fixed).

[buuface]

How precisely are you exiling distressed dwarves? Using the DF command?
 
As far as I recall there isn't an option on the civ screen to send your own dwarves to an already conquered site - but you can request workers be sent from there to your fort.

I've tried using the hack script emigration-enable but what seems to happen is ALL my dwarves suddenly decide to abandon the fortress and walk to the map edge and then return to the fort immediately, including the stressed or haggard ones.

[Shonai_Dweller]

How precisely are you exiling distressed dwarves? Using the DF command?
 
As far as I recall there isn't an option on the civ screen to send your own dwarves to an already conquered site - but you can request workers be sent from there to your fort.

I've tried using the hack script emigration-enable but what seems to happen is ALL my dwarves suddenly decide to abandon the fortress and walk to the map edge and then return to the fort immediately, including the stressed or haggard ones.

View - Preferences - Exile (from memory).
It's a vanilla command added when holdings became a thing (you don't need a holding just to send them to wander the wilds).

[andrei901]

Seems like you should expect roughly 5-10% of all dwarves to be super depressed no matter what you do.

I'm on year 16, and spending a few months adventuring while the fortress was retired fixed some of my stress problems...by mostly having stressed dwarves leave. But more arrived, and the negative conditions provided by the simulation (left with 5k +pig roasts+, came back to 7 plump helmets) caused them stress. I've started methodically exiling the unhappy dwarves, but either I'm working too slowly or the game just wants to have a certain percentage of unhappy dwarves.

No more days of dwarves walking on clouds once you build the legendary dining room...

[Shonai_Dweller]

Until unhappy dwarves are able to react realistically by either leaving the fortress that they hate so much or trying to enable change through protesting (I refuse to haul any more scary teeth) and more extreme political action, (all of which is planned, but not for a while), stress is never going to be perfect. It will hopefully be in a bearable state by the Big Wait though.

It's completely intentional that dwarves overcome by the horrors of everyday life, no longer get magically better with a trip to a legendary dining room. But more work is needed. The support of friends, family, naked bards, pets, prayer and a good hobby should at least make it possible for even the most harrowed to get through the working day.

[andrei901]

I would love to see some sort of job-related consistent stress. Job preferences, that sort of thing. I think the "been away from friends/family too long" stress moodle really needs adjustment, though. I get being away from your friends, but I've got dwarves that have been living in my fort for 15 years still depressed because they emigrated away from their drinking buddies in the hillocks over a decade ago. Even with the dwarven lifespan of 160-180, that's a *long* time to make new friends and get over your old ones. Then, of course, there's the "hasn't acquired something in too long" and the "hasn't wandered in too long" which seem to be mainly the fault of the dwarves themselves. They are carrying rings and bracelets and pants around constantly, why don't they grab one? It's rare that trinkets are actually important, and I don;t really have a stockpile of them for any reason but to have them. Maybe this is a holdover from the economy days, but I think for now it would be prudent to have dwarves go and claim something from the trinket pile (if there is something there) every season or however often it takes to keep them happy, as an actual need based job like "eat" or "drink". The wandering thing I just don't get how to fix, it seems like it's their choice to spend every moment of their free time stuck to the tavern stool. This also applies to some thinking thoughts ("hasn't thought abstractly in too long" -- the library is right next to the tavern and we have literally the largest single book collection in the dwarven world!), but those might be fixable with the right job assignments.

I would love to see some sort of emigration mechanic where unhappy dwarves leave. Or where they occasionally petition you with a specific fix to their unhappiness, because half the time it's an educated guess even with the wiki. Seriously, if I had a dwarf come up to my mayor and say "Can you put a rose gold cabinet in my bedroom? I'd love that" I'd do it.

Also, some kind of catharsis mechanic for after mental breaks, like rimworld. I've noticed a few dwarves falling into a cycle of throwing a tantrum, then feeling bad that they started a fist fight/broke something/got the crap kicked out of them, so they tantrum again, so now they're sad that they started a fistfight (x2), which makes them tantrum again, repeat. So far, they eventually make the mistake of tantrumming next to one of my professional military and get beheaded, but until that happens, they cause all sorts of problems.

Side note: I have found that having all of my dwarves in "practice squads" that train 2 months a year (might cut it down to 1) on a rotating schedule seems to make them a bit happier, because they get combat skills somewhat regularly (1 level in 1-3 skills per training session is common) with a squad leader from my pros, and the happiness boost from improving a skill seems to be pretty big. Leads to a bit of frustration as I wait for my manager to free up and accept orders, but I've distributed the professions around enough that I (mostly) don't get slowdowns. The few times production stops is when I *need* my best craftsdwarf working, like when making weapons and armor.

[Lozzymandias]

I don't mind that you have stressy dwarves now who are highly strung and need delicate gloves, I do think that if we are to be saddled with these interminable whiners, we should at least have reasonably solid anti-stress measures, with reasonably few dwarves demanding goddamn orca lungs or other nonsense they won't have ever tasted, or idle dwarves that are badly distracted by the need to pray, but who never go to the temple or dwarves that need to socialise but never take the opportunity to in the tavern, or crundle bone loving dwarves who simply can't find anything they want in the enormous fortress stockpile of crundle crafts.

Stress management is the frog that boiled. Its laden with individual little niggles and bugs that can all individually be partly ameliorated but together add up to a larger and larger fraction of your fortress going batshit insane because the methods you used to use to revive dwarves from the horrors of fortress life have all been weakened by bugs, and it causes this overseer some stress.