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[FantasticDorf]

Yeah. Leaders should do more and the more complex the fort becomes the more dedicated the rulers have to be to their job. Maybe it could lead to a faction system where a greedy ruler will extort citizens, etc.

If the ruler is skilled and popular enough then they have support, or if not then maybe a real civil war could happen, with each side wishing to install its leader to the throne.
Imagine a scenario where the king keeps taking a dwarfs socks because they are his favorite item, but the dwarf happens to be an elite guard in the kings throne room... And so goes the tale of Urist "The Headless" Longhose....

There's already the upcoming law arc for flexible application of entities governence but pretty much, but it'd be helpful if actual insurrections would formally generate a new governmental name and some way to mediate the conflicts.

If dwarves can put forward a ultimatum first in a emergency roundtable meeting like a diplomat from the mountainhome asking that you surrender to the will of the Dwarven kingdom and accept a administrator peacefully to avert a siege, or the enraged/villian network leader of the opposition they can probably solve the problem without resorting first to violence.

[PlumpHelmetMan]

Isn't the law arc, in all likelihood, still nearly a decade away? I agree that some work before then would be helpful.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Isn't the law arc, in all likelihood, still nearly a decade away? I agree that some work before then would be helpful.

If I recall correctly it's set to be right after the Myth and Magic arc, which is pretty much as close in time as possible in the grand scheme of things (which may very well be 5 years or so off still, but definitely not a decade).

[Shonai_Dweller]

Isn't the law arc, in all likelihood, still nearly a decade away? I agree that some work before then would be helpful.

If I recall correctly it's set to be right after the Myth and Magic arc, which is pretty much as close in time as possible in the grand scheme of things (which may very well be 5 years or so off still, but definitely not a decade).

Myth and Magic at least a couple of long development phases. 3 years for one 1.5 for the other 6 months brush up/bugs in between, then development starts. Getting close to a decade.

And M&M won't get started for at least a year or two.

[PlumpHelmetMan]

Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking, which is where I was getting a decade from.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Well, even if that kind of scenario would play out it's still just around the corner in df development terms I'd say ^^

[nautilu]

There's already the upcoming law arc for flexible application of entities governence but pretty much, but it'd be helpful if actual insurrections would formally generate a new governmental name and some way to mediate the conflicts.

If dwarves can put forward a ultimatum first in a emergency roundtable meeting like a diplomat from the mountainhome asking that you surrender to the will of the Dwarven kingdom and accept a administrator peacefully to avert a siege, or the enraged/villian network leader of the opposition they can probably solve the problem without resorting first to violence.

I like your idea. A fort call to court should be easy and quick to implement and can solve some unhappiness problems without breaking the game. And can always be expanded into diplomacy later.

[Splint]

There's already the upcoming law arc for flexible application of entities governence but pretty much, but it'd be helpful if actual insurrections would formally generate a new governmental name and some way to mediate the conflicts.

If dwarves can put forward a ultimatum first in a emergency roundtable meeting like a diplomat from the mountainhome asking that you surrender to the will of the Dwarven kingdom and accept a administrator peacefully to avert a siege, or the enraged/villian network leader of the opposition they can probably solve the problem without resorting first to violence.

I like your idea. A fort call to court should be easy and quick to implement and can solve some unhappiness problems without breaking the game. And can always be expanded into diplomacy later.

Main utility in the short term would be calling a fort-wide meeting so everyone can tell you what their biggest gripe is via the mayor or whoever's in charge in the aristocracy on-site. Would at least give the player some idea of what the biggest problems currently are in regards to stress besides the super-obvious like post-siege clean-up. Would be useful once the population grows beyond a certain size I would think, and I think someone floated an idea to that effect earlier in the thread.

[Mephansteras]

That and more proactive stress fixing behavior on the part of the dwarves. If you've got taverns and temples and mugs and whatnot no one should be getting super stressed out about missing those things. I'd say once a dwarf gets stressed about stuff they should start prioritizing fixing what they can.

More spontaneous parties would be good. Or even cultural/religious holidays to give more of a fortress-wide break.

[Symmetry]

I'm very late but I had some things to add that I didn't feel were mentioned.

Looking here on the wiki we can see the complete list of emotions generated and their effect on stress https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Emotion
If the game is going to colour code them the thing that makes most sense is to colour code by strength of effect on stress.  If there's a pattern at the moment I can't see it.
Knowing what affects stress is one of the ways experts (who know this page on the wiki) can keep things under control.


Second, the stress system just keeps linearly adding up forever.  At the end of the second year anyone with less than 0 stress is going to be fine (if you keep them out of the rain etc.) but anyone above 0 is dead.
They are doomed.  There is no hope for them.  At some point they will go mad and it's just a question of how long it takes for the maths to hit 10000 and how many others they take with them.
I would expect dwarves to reach some kind of stress equilibrium, where more stress has less effect and vice versa for happiness.  This can't happen with the current system and is why the anxiety and dealing with stress personality entries are so important, and why the personality change from them is so devastating.
Personally I think the mood change from the rain thoughts is actually ok, it's the mathematically certain madness that results from these depressive personalities that breaks it.

There are two ways a dwarf mitigates stress when it gets bad, shouting at a mayor, tantrums.  Any other mitigation can happen at any time and is under player control.
So if a dwarf is stressed they will take these activities to cheer up, but none of them have a strong enough affect to actually help anything.  I've never seen them do a thing. 
Worse they just mean the dwarf spends forever running to the mayor and never takes care of their other needs.
So there's an attempt at auto balancing stress when the dwarf is very stressed but it doesn't seem to be doing nearly enough to offset the linear steady decrease over time when the daily / weekly adjustment is unbalanced.

I'm suggesting something like, at 5000 stress more stress counts for half and stress reduction count normal.  There will be some number here that balances stressed dwarves into a kind of annoying limbo where they can tantrum a bit, shout at the mayor, stumble obliviously now and then, but not be literally doomed.  There's still a game in there, not certain fortress destruction.


Finally, I hope the original post by ThreeToe isn't actually what we want...
It's hard to know how bad it is to lose 3 haulers to madness from a goblin clean up because I don't know how many there are or how long after the cleanup he waited but with 200 haul jobs in a death zone and 50 dwarves doing it I would expect to see 10 dwarves go mad over a few years.
In practice you don't let your "real" dwarves haul to keep them away from the death zones.  And also you have to keep the haul path for the corpses completely separate to the main fort so they don't see them.  At the moment the personality change consequences of seeing a corpse are too risky to let a legendary anywhere near them.
This makes using warriors quite risky.


The way the really bad personalities have such a strong effect has been mentioned by others but I wanted to repeat it.  It outweighs everything.
The way friendship/marriage is broken is only so important for stress because of the strength of these bad personality changes and how children is the best (repeatable!) way to get a positive personality change.
The second god not being worshipped only becomes important because of these super sad dwarves who can't be allowed a single unhappy thought.

For what it's worth I managed stress ok in my last fort six months ago, I lost a few soldiers after a fight and a couple of very depressed ones due to personality changes.
I stopped playing because I couldn't make more children without too much bedroom micro, but the stress management wasn't fun either.

[FantasticDorf]

saying of 47.01, the new intermingling of values from migration to be less straightly set in stone does add complexity to dealing with needs but things are much more managable now. Here's to more refinement with 47.02 onwards.

[Hinaichigo]

I really don't have a problem with the stress system as it is. If you make alcohol, nice accommodations, food, avoid bathing your dwarves in miasma, etc. it doesn't seem to be like a big problem.

[Symmetry]

saying of 47.01, the new intermingling of values from migration to be less straightly set in stone does add complexity to dealing with needs but things are much more managable now. Here's to more refinement with 47.02 onwards.

Superficially it's even better than that.  I have dwarves who worship 8 gods and they've managed to do the top 3 already with just a single all purpose temple and relatively little downtime.
I'm playing a bit differently without dfhack etc. and I only have this one temple, I usually make one per god, but still it's interesting.

[Scruiser]

I really don't have a problem with the stress system as it is. If you make alcohol, nice accommodations, food, avoid bathing your dwarves in miasma, etc. it doesn't seem to be like a big problem.

Are you referring to the latest version (47.01) or the older versions (44.x)?

What's the largest siege you've cleaned up after?  I thought it was manageable (except for the rain), then I had a couple 100+ goblin sieges to deal with.  The military took care of them, but it turned the entrance of my fort into a death trap of negative thoughts from all the corpses until I got them cleaned up, and the process of cleaning them up pushed several dwarfs over the edge.  After the first siege, I started using dwarf therapist to sort by stress and micromanage the corpse hauling labor.  (This was in 44.x, haven't gotten that far in 47.01).

This is one of the big ones, but there were many little things that were also broken in 44.x.  Dwarfs with multiple gods only praying to one of them (I've heard one account that this is fixed in 47.x); migrants with family outside the fort continually accumulating negative thoughts from missing their family; socialization not forming friendships properly/incredibly slowly (I think this is fixed in 47.x); dwarfs with no relevant skills wanting to practice a craft (Toady has apparently partially addressed this with guildhalls in 47.x, but I have tested it myself yet); Goblin migrants that joined through petitions getting stress from not eating good food or drink (Goblins don't eat or drink).

[Splint]

Goblin migrants that joined through petitions getting stress from not eating good food or drink (Goblins don't eat or drink).

Honestly, for creatures that don't need to it should be that they don't need to, not that they can't. Would also allow for vampires and similar things to mask their presence even more effectively too, while allowing those needs to be filled.