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[Domini0n]

So far every election has elected me a marksdwarf. Ive had around four different marksdwarves as Mayor of
my fortress. It seems odd, but who knows, maybe they like a violent leader. If I don't try to fix my squads then Ill find the other members following the mayor around, like a 10 man escort.

[Awayfarer]

I had a fort where for a while the election process would go like this.

1: Elect new Mayor and oust former mayor (the trader)
2: New Mayor meets unfortunate end.
3: Dwarves shrug their shoulders and re-elect the trader.

This all ended when a cheesemaker migrated to the fort. Now, he was already asking to be draft just by virtue of being a cheesemaker. His name? Led Zasitkel. That translates to "Led Knifemetal" Led...frikkin...KNIFEMETAL.

Led was trained as a wrestler and hoo boy, what a wrestler. During one of the fortresses first ambsuhes he singlehandedly wrestles three goblins to death. This wins the forts admiration, and shortly thereafter Led Knifemetal is elected mayor. The trader shakes his head and concedes defeat.

Flash forward to the next winter. There's another ambush, only one squad but ALL bow goblins this time. The dwarves raise the bridge but with icy horror realize that the moat has frozen and the goblins can waltz right over it. To make matter worse some nimrod has dropped a boulder in the main entryway. Even when the dwarves are allowed to go outside none will remove it.

Here's a map of the situation.
+ = floor
D = Door
O = Wall
> = Stairs

Code: [Select]

+O+++O
+D+++O
+O+++O
+ODDOO
++++++
+>++++
Mayor/wrestler Led Knifemetal is placed in charge of The Special Standards, the all civilian branch of the military. They're told to take shelter in the lowest level of the fort. Led bravely leads them OUTSIDE. For no apparent reason he decides to leave through the main doors and loop back in through the lone side door.

The goblins have by now lined up outside and stand, firing squad style and mow down the dwarves as they pass. 13 are shot to death, including the mayor. The goblins are eventually taken care of by the forts sporadic stone traps, few war dogs and young/inexperienced fortress guard.

Led Knifemetal is posthumously declared an idiot. When the tantruming is finally over they re-elect the trader.

[MuonDecay]

Led just got to thinking he was more hardcore than he really was

[Makrond]

The only way that name could be more win would be if there was a word for zeppelin in Dwarfish.

[Techhead]

Well, you could call it "flying bag" or something.
Or you could add the word for zeppelin in.

[pushy]

Giving one dwarf lots of social skills at Embark is supposed to get him chosen as Expedition Leader, but it never seems to work for me.  My starting smith got chosen over all qualifications and logic in my last fort, and now several elections later he's never lost.  He has almost no social skill and very few friends because he spends all his time down in the forges.  No inane demands yet though - guy doesn't like much of anything.

Anyone have any idea how dwarven politics actually works?

What you said about dwarves with social skills getting picked WAS true in older versions, but got screwed up when relationships were added into the mix (it then tended to be that the dwarf with the most friends became leader, though not always). I don't know if Toady's fixed that for the upcoming version (I hope he has).
As for the mechanics of dwarven politics in this version, fuck knows. I start so many games (getting bored with one site after a couple of years) I've tried to second-guess which dwarf would end up as expedition leader, and I still get it wrong more often than not.

[Awayfarer]

Led just got to thinking he was more hardcore than he really was

Thats pretty much how I picture it. Only for some reason I always imagine him with a Russian accent.

As for the "zepplin" thing, I suppose was kind of like the Hindenburg. So full of promise, so full of hot air, so spread all over the landscape.

[LumenPlacidum]

I don't know if Toady's fixed that for the upcoming version (I hope he has).

Fixed?  Who actually wins elections?  The person who's capable or the person with more support?  Sorry, but competence matters very little in the face of popularity.  It's a feature, not a bug 

[pushy]

Fixed?  Who actually wins elections?  The person who's capable or the person with more support?  Sorry, but competence matters very little in the face of popularity.  It's a feature, not a bug 

A group of people who've known each other for a couple of days are going on an expedition to climb Mt Everest. Who's going to be the team leader? The guy with all the climbing experience or the guy who knows bugger all but has been chatting everyone up? Fair enough that mayor elections later in the game would probably be determined by dwarves voting for their friends (and I've nothing against that), but for the starting seven common sense would dictate that the one with the skills is going to be expedition leader, surely

[Granite26]

Fixed?  Who actually wins elections?  The person who's capable or the person with more support?  Sorry, but competence matters very little in the face of popularity.  It's a feature, not a bug 

No, it's a bug... just not with the game

[Asehujiko]

The trader got kicked out of office in favor of a mauled peasant militia who's been in bed ever since he got jumped by a tiger during him immigration in the fall of year 1.  It is now winter, year 3 and he has: 3 never healing red wounds, missing eye, lower arm and an entire leg as well as yellow damage in 2 parts of his spinal column and brown in the last. It's a miracle he stays alive long enough to drink and eat. He immediatly mandates 2 rose gold items.

Fast forward spring immigration, year 4. A glassmaker, a metalsmith, a jeweler and some other useless cannon fodder. I immediatly tell the metalsmith to start doing something useful with the 1500 pieces of magnetite in storage. Before his immigrant status wears off however, the cotg rushes out of the fortress at full velocity towards the immigrant group and charges at the smith, cutting him in two with the steel longsword i got from the human traders the year before. His wife the glassmaker immediatly trantums and tosses her own daughter into the moat and jumps in after her, punching the child's head into her body and drowning herself. The cotg then murders the dead family's pet cow because it apparently touched the trantuming wife and is hostile to my civ.

[Joseph Miles]

Since when are immigrants KOS?

[Kagus]

Since Asehujiko started writing about them.

[ShadowDragon8685]

The retard mayor was probably pissed because all of his orders for Rose Gold went unanswered, and so there was an outstanding death warrant out on any Metalsmiths for failure to follow a production order.

It's bad when the nobility order useful dwarves imprisoned/beaten/Hammered for failing to produce their talc dildoes or whatever, it's even worse when they sign orders to kill "whom it may concern, RE: Talc dildo production failure".

[Joseph Miles]

It's bad when the nobility order useful dwarves imprisoned/beaten/Hammered for failing to produce their talc dildoes or whatever, it's even worse when they sign orders to kill "whom it may concern, RE: Talc dildo production failure".

That caught me off guard right there, fucking hilarious though. This is my new siggy on my forum, thanks for the laugh!