Hello everyone today I am going to teach you how you can get kobolds to survive world gen.
Kobolds have a long history of not being able to survive in this game's development. This used to be due to a bug where they could not feed themselves due to being carnivores. Even though this was fixed there is still another reason for their lack of survival which I will get to.
This guide can apply to everyone, because under normal circumstances kobold civs will almost never survive past year 100 so it is likely happening to you if you aren't doing anything specific to prevent it.
So first here's a little info on how kobold civ creation works. When your world is created it takes turn placing a civs capital until the maximum amount of civilizations has been reached, then it starts simulating the history of the world. This maximum is defined by you either from the Number of Civilizations setting or the TOTAL_CIV_NUMBER token under your world's parameters in your world_gen.txt file in the init folder.
Once the capital cities have been placed, the civs spread out by creating additional sites from their capitals when history starts running.
However, kobold civs work a little different than other civilizations. They are still counted as civilizations, but they won't be listed as your neighbors in the embark screen. They also don't create their own sites like other civs, and instead are placed in caves created during world gen. Caves aren't the same as caverns. They are a specific map feature where the caverns get linked to the surface through a series of tunnels, and you won't know where they are on your map unless you change Make Caves Visible from No to Yes. Kobolds will never spread out from these caves to other cave spots, and don't conquer or claim other sites, so this will be the only location a single kobold civ ever inhabits.
This feature of kobold civs is why they die out so easily. Because they only ever occupy one site and also maybe their weakness and short height factoring in, a single rampage from a megabeast in world gen will almost always destroy a kobold civ.
A good way to fix this I discovered is to increase the number of kobold civs to a very high amount. This will provide some cushioning with the ones who accumulate a good population through sheer luck able to survive further into world gen. Even if you have 30 kobold civs you will likely see over half of them die out by year 200 so you will soon see why it is necessary to have a lot of them.
Here's how to fix it.
First, you need to make sure when you generate a world that the number of kobold civs isn't proportionate to the other civs to prevent rejections and too many civs being created as it needs to be much higher. You will need to edit one of your RAW files for this.
From your dwarf fortress folder go to the raw folder, then the object folder, and open entity_default.txt.
The settings that make up each of your civilizations are here, as an entity is basically what the raw files call a civilization.
The parameter you will need to change is under the [ENTITY:MOUNTAIN], [ENTITY:FOREST], [ENTITY:PLAINS], and [ENTITY:EVIL] tokens. These represent the dwarf, elf, human, and goblin civs respectively.
Under each of these civilizations find the [MAX_STARTING_CIV_NUMBER:100] token and change the number 100 to the maximum number of this civilization you wish to have in your world. You may need to come back to change it if you ever create another world bigger than the one you are creating now.
Leave this setting on 100 under [ENTITY:SKULKING] (kobolds). It is also irrelevant what it is set to under [ENTITY:SUBTERRANEAN_ANIMAL_PEOPLES].
Next you will need to create or edit some advanced world gen parameters. If you aren't familiar with advanced world generation, this wiki article will help you get started but they aren't too complicated to figure out the basics of.
From the dwarf fortress menu screen, go to Design New World with Advanced Parameters.
With the world you wish to edit selected, press e to edit. You can also create new parameters if you know how.
Under Number of Civilizations, you will need to set the parameters to a number that is each of the caps you put on all of the normal civilizations in the entity_default.txt file plus the number of kobold caves you want in your world. So if I set the maximum number of Humans, Dwarves, Elves, and Goblins to 3 and I wanted 48 kobold sites in my world I would set the number to be 60. As far as I've seen setting this to a very high number won't cause rejects like it normally would as long as you have enough caves in your world to hold all the kobold civs. I've had something like 50 kobold civs in a small world which hilariously resulted in every artifact pretty much immediately being stolen in world gen as soon as it is created so you can do that if you'd like.
You will also need to make sure there's enough caves to hold all these new kobold civs. There are two settings for this, number of Mountain Caves and Number of Non-Mountain Caves. Increase these to a number that is proportionate to the amount of kobold civilizations you are creating. Kobold caves don't count as sites in world gen, so there's no reason to increase the number in Site Cap After Civ Creation to accommodate this.
Congratulations, you are now done! Enjoy a world filled with thieving vermin once more!
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Topic: [Guide] How to make sure kobolds survive world gen (Read 1168 times)