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[Zeeneri]

I recently embarked in a new world where all civilizations have fallen, and I mean all of them. There are no Dorfen, Human, Elven or Goblin settlements being occupied after 550 years of history. However, there are still a few dorfs living in what I assume to be unsettled, disparate populations. Most dorfs seem to be abandoned at birth with unknown Parents. Pretty much immediately my settlement assumed the role of Mountainhome, one of my starting 7 became Queen, and luckily she was level headed with very manageable needs (Except for a random panic surrounding a need for clear glass furniture in her throne room when I was just 20 dorfs strong, which I had to figure out how to make Pearlash rapidly.)

So here's the deal, there are still a decent number of dorfs living out in the wilds, somewhere in the neighborhood of 300. They started flocking to my settlement immediately after the first caravan even though I barely traded anything in that first autumn season, but I want to rebuild the Dorfen civilization and create a new generation of dorfs forged in the halls of my fortress. I put the cap on the population to 100 which quickly filled up from migrants, but left the absolute cap to 220. I want to fill in that space with new dorfen children, but It's been 5 years now and I only have 5 kids, 3 of which were migrants, and another 3 migrant children that have since grown up. I put the child cap to 100, and the "percentage" I left at 200. (is that 200%? 20%? I don't get this number.) and nobody seems to be having children. I thought maybe I was overworking dorfs so I enabled a lot of labor redundancy and put a lot of the more intensive processes on longer turnover rates in the manager menu (Restarts monthly to restarts seasonally, etc. Except for a very reasonable 3-of orders that repeat monthly to auto-complete queen/mayor demands.) I now have roughly 5-15 idle dorfs at any given moment, and anywhere between 5-25 dorfs socializing/praying/story-ing.

I don't know anything about modifying the RAWs or anything else, this was all done through the LNP. Is there something in my settings that's preventing new births from happening? Are there in-game conditions that prevent/contribute to the likelihood that a birth takes place? Are there actual 'pregnancy' events where the dorf needs to interact with a spouse or another in order to have children? I tried googling this question, but all I found was a furious cacophony of angry forum goers of their fortresses rampant with babies.

My long term goal here is to get a population near 200 with children, then bump up the fortress size limit to 500 or something crazy for long enough to get the majority of the other lost dworfs to migrate. The reason I'm not bumping up the pop cap immediately is because I don't want 300 migrants to make my game crawl as I'm trying to get dorfs to breed, which I assume would take like 5-20 game years to realize. If I could establish this sort of Beacon of a Mountain home, I'd then set up a few small hillocksy embarks with populations of 30~, until I've re-established the dorfs to a sizable couple thousand. It will be a peaceful land for time immemorial, but tales speak of a great end times that a certain cult will try to accelerate...

[PatrikLundell]

The main reason for dorfs not getting kids is that they're as socially inept as a basement dwelling teenager game addict...
Due to various deficiencies, they very rarely manage to socialize enough with any one individual to reach a stage of Lover or further, to Married. Unlike real life humies, dorfs currently (set to change in the next release) don't get kids out of wedlock, so marriage is currently mandatory. Thus, nuptial encouragement suites is my method of making dorfs socialize with carefully selected partners (opposite gender [or else no kids...], with both parties willing to commit to marriage with the opposite gender, no "bad" traits, such as hating the concept of family, and with a maximum age difference of 10 years (also set to be relaxed a fair bit in the next release).

Once married, female dorfs get pregnant by being idle next to their husbands for a while (with the husband likewise undistracted by eating, sleeping, socializing, ... [I'm not completely sure about sleeping, as I think I may have seen a case of the husband being asleep]). I typically encourage them to perform their duty to the fortress by burrowing them in their bedroom with nothing to do until she's pregnant (which I check with a DFHack script), but they're actually capable of producing offspring on their own occasionally if not worked to the bone.

Apart from nuptial encouragement, there have been a couple of fairly recent threads about the arrangement of tavern space to improve socializing, but that's probably better for making friends than finding a spouse.

[Zeeneri]

If two dorfs cohabit, does that mean they're married? I fear having to check through all the dorf details to see who they're married to manually.

I'd be interested in seeing that script. Is it available on github or otherwise?

[PatrikLundell]

If they are both "owners" of the same bed, yes, they're married.

The script I use is found on this web page (it's not a file, but a page with the file contents, so don't try to save the link): https://github.com/PatrikLundell/scripts/blob/own_scripts/stats.lua

[Bradders]

The best babymaking fort I ever had came about from a Migrant wave with 3 married couples with kids - lots of kids, and another 3 every year like clockwork.  I've never had the fortune of watching a Dwarven Wedding, as was stated above, dwarves are incredibly inept at socializing in current builds.  Seen a dwarven concert, some line dancing, lots of bar bands, but never a wedding.

[PatrikLundell]

There is no wedding to be seen. The only indication is an announcement of approximately "Urist McA and Urist McB have married. Congratulations!".

[Jimmy]

By fiddling with the RAWs, you can reduce the maturation time of dwarf children.

For example, setting babies to 1 year, and children to 1 year, means that each generation will become fully able to breed within 2 years time from birth. This can speed up your dwarf population growth if that's what you're seeking.

Unfortunately you're limited in your social aspects to what's hard-coded into the game, so make sure you have areas for social interaction in your fortress.

[Zeeneri]

I dunno. I've had lots of down time for my dwarves and I'm seeing like 20 or more people mulling about the tavern with the "Socialize!" flags for activity for two years now and It's not lead to any births so far, and I've not noticed any individuals who weren't married before becoming so, though that's really hard to see. I decided to bump up the lower cap to 150. I know that's going to be filled up by migrants(I have a caste of people who don't care for relationships pounding out gold crafts, smelting down anything that's not a masterpiece and retrying till it is and it all gets traded away) but I'm thinking maybe it'll give a window for the married couples to see that there's space in the fortress and copulate.

[Fleeting Frames]

Yeah, Socialize! flag is only about tavern activities to satisfy needs; it doesn't boost relationships on its own (though relationships can be boosted in taverns, even to marriage, if the conditions are right). Much like PatrikLundell suggested above, I recommend nuptial encouragement suites where the two dwarves are made to idle orthogonally adjacent to each other(; a positioning your typical player tavern doesn't exactly encourage.)

Stress & Psyche thread in DF Fort mode discussion has more on this if you're curious.

When doing the Moonhome succession turn, I aimed to breed a fortress to mountainhome. Perhaps the most important lesson/mistake I learnt there on this topic was that one should not half-ass it.

[Loci]

I've had lots of down time for my dwarves and I'm seeing like 20 or more people mulling about the tavern with the "Socialize!" flags for activity for two years now...

Bigger is *not* better, at least when it comes to taverns. A small tavern forces dwarves to stand to next each other, where they will actually socialize instead of standing around with a "socialize" job. One microfort in v0.44.12 had many friendships and one spontaneous marriage thanks to a tiny tavern and ample free time.

[mikekchar]

Someone in another thread (a while ago) mentioned that in order to increase friendliness, a dwarf needs to be in "Socialize" activity and a recipient needs to be in one of the N,S,E or W direction (in an adjacent tile).  If that prerequisite is followed, then the dwarf will end up socializing with all of the dwarfs in adjacent tiles (all 8 of them).  There was some talk of creative tavern structures/furniture to encourage dwarfs to stand in the 4 cardinal positions adjacent to each other.

[Iduno]

Need dwarven Tindr.

[UselessMcMiner]

Whats the appropriate size for a tavern? I usually have mine around 6x3. Is that too big?

[mikekchar]

It depends on what you want and how busy the tavern is.  Again, it seems that dwarfs make friends if they socialise and there is another dwarf in the next tile to the N,S,E or W (diagonal is no good).  So if you have 2 dwarfs in the room and they aren't adjacent, then the socialisation isn't going to help.  In a 6x3 tavern, the maximum number of dwarfs that you can have and *not* have them adjacent in the cardinal directions is if there is a checkerboard pattern... so 9 dwarfs.  If you have at least 10 dwarfs in that space, then you guarantee that some socialisation will be good.  Of course, the smaller the tavern the more likely the interaction.  A 1x3 tavern will guarantee good interactons if there are 2 or 3 dwarfs.  A 2x3 tavern: 4, 5, or 6 dwarfs. A 3x3 tavern: 6, 7, 8, or 9 dwarfs.  A 6x3 tavern would probably work well in a large fortress, or one with a lot of visitors.  For a smaller fortress with a private tavern, I think I would go with 2x3 size.

Speaking of this, I just realised that this probably impacts pre-nuptial suites.  If you burrow 2 dwarfs in a room and make a 2x1 tavern in it (remember to lock the door so nobody else can go there), it will probably speed things along.  Possibly do the same thing with a temple (or overlap it with the tavern)...  I should give that a try.  I've never had any of my dwarfs marry before...

[PatrikLundell]

I make my nuptial encouragement suites out of ordinary 3*3 bedrooms with two beds (one for each participant), a lockable door, and twin two tile stockpiles: one for booze and one for food. I then paint a tavern zone over all of it, get both participants in there with a burrow and an active tavern zone, remove the tavern when both are inside (to get rid of the visitors in the "tavern"), lock the door when the two are alone, and then recreate the tavern zone (as part of the main tavern).
While not optimal, it allows me to let them handle it on their own for a couple of months (until they run out of food or booze).