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[Sophismata]

Maybe allow people to create an Outpost, as opposed to the normal fortress. An Outpost could receive greatly reduced immigration and less trade, until such time as the owner decides to upgrade its status (a permanent change).

Maybe have outposts created in more dangerous areas a lot more susceptible to attack, to present some added challenge?

This way you're keeping it simple, and not really creating an abundance of game modes that can hurt game longevity.

[Aristharus]

I've yet to have bigger problems with immigration. That's probably because I read all those horror stories here before I started to get those huge immigrations, so I was ready. For me the game is pretty much getting ready for whatever might come, be it immigrants, nobles or frogmen. For this reason I have always lots and lots of beds, rooms and farms ready when the immigrants come, and I have never had any problems with them.

Of course, if someone likes to play the game differently, they should be able to. So if many people want it to be an option, then make it an option. I wouldn't use it, though.

[Oboro]

I thought I was prepared for immigration, but on my most recent game I received SIXTEEN immigrants in my first batch, which I believe comes at the end of the first winter.

I was able to recover, at least for the time being, because I had expected 8 immigrants and double that was not enough to really push me over the edge, but it was a struggle. I guess I enjoyed it, but receiving a more manageable amount would've been nice.

And it was a total wash when the second immigration brought me up to 54 dwarves. I just gave up at that point, especially because two of them were Nobles and there was absolutely no way for me to manage the influx of normals AS WELL AS the Nobles in a time-frame that kept a lot of dwarves from going crazy.

They did go crazy, and my fortress did fail miserably, and I did have to restart.

I think maybe instituting an immigration cap, regardless of how "prepared" the game thinks the player is, might be a wise move-- or, even better, make three caps, and have them set as "easy", "normal", and "hard" mode.

[Woodstock]

All I want is to be able to have the focus on the game be expanding into the mountain amd creating a fully functional society, and not "will I be able to sustain the next wave of immigrants?".

[Aristharus]

quote:Originally posted by Oboro:
<STRONG>I thought I was prepared for immigration, but on my most recent game I received SIXTEEN immigrants in my first batch, which I believe comes at the end of the first winter.</STRONG>

I prepared for something like 25 in the beginning and after that have made it pretty well, kinda being one step further all the time. I haven't had to think about it that much, I think for me the balance between supporting immigrants and improving the society in other ways has been just perfect.

Granted, some of the immigrant waves are very big, so an option would be cool. I had good luck on my first run and made it, and later I've learned the amounts of immigrants and such, so I've been prepared and still had time to focus on other parts of the game.

[ August 17, 2006: Message edited by: Aristharus ]

[polpoint]

yeah I agree with the last guy. all the immigration forces me to keep expanding. immigrants can be pretty bad if they show up in the middle of winter, and you have very low food stores and your river is empty.

if all of that happens, send them out hunting for elephants & giant leopards! You wont have to worry about so many for long

else set everybody fishing and/or gathering plants and you have a pretty steady source of food.

If you are really starving, cook up some alcohol! (until they fix it)

[Baro]

I can prepare for it fine, it's just not the game mode I want to play.  I want to challenge my self in other areas than sheer population capacity.  This isn't a "wahhh the game is too hard I can't do it." this is "wahhh I love the game but massive immigration just makes the game tedius and boring for me, I just want to micro manage a small outpost!"

It's like in simcity.  Some people build to get the tallest towers, the biggest population,the most taxes.  Yet some people build, still within the rules and framework of the game, tiny pretty farming villages and such.  Some people like me love to do both, yet some absolutely can't understand and look down on people who play the oposite way as them.  yet everyone has fun.

We've got the no-holds-barred all our population and mining freight train to oblivon option for the group of dedicated hard-core players, the type of players that are often over-represented in game forums.

But you've also got the hordes of silent adorable masses like me who just want to make a pretty dwarf petting zoo with nice detailed walls and a pretty layout which we slowly and carefully expand at our own leasure.  There's still dangers and challenges, but we face them calmly and slowly.

If the above doesn't interest you, don't do it.  But it DOES interest a lot of people, and only some minor tweaking in the form of an ini file or in-game options/orders is needed.  Easy peasy, and suddenly all the simcity/petting zoo types can truely get into the game.

[ August 17, 2006: Message edited by: Baro ]

[RPB]

quote:Originally posted by Baro:
<STRONG>Some people like me love to do both, yet some absolutely can't understand and look down on people who play the oposite way as them.  </STRONG>

Fortunately this isn't the case here, so you can stop arguing about it already. No one's actually said anything against its implementation in the last half of the thread.

[ August 17, 2006: Message edited by: RPB ]

[karnot]

quote: I thought I was prepared for immigration, but on my most recent game I received SIXTEEN immigrants in my first batch

Thats a rather small amount. I received 9 first year, and now, spring 2nd year, i received 27...thats rather...well...many.

[Demon]

In earlier versions, immigration was much smaller (I think one-third of what it is now).  The trouble with that was, you'd never get a really big fortress.  So, immigration rates were inflated really heavily.  I think the only problem with the system is how much wealth and space are contributing to the immigration now.  The reason people get e.g. 27 dwarves at once is they have a LOT of wealth (stone crafts?).  If the wealth numbers were rebalanced a bit, it'd be easy to expand slowly without really introducing any options.  To expand quickly, the player would simply have to create as much wealth as possible and dig out as much space as possible.  So I would say the 'pull' (a variable the dictates this sort of thing) should be wealth/5000 and space/64.  Those numbers were 1000 and 32, respectively, last I knew.  What does Toad think of these?

[Oboro]

quote:Originally posted by karnot:
<STRONG>
Thats a rather small amount. I received 9 first year, and now, spring 2nd year, i received 27...thats rather...well...many.</STRONG>

If you read what I wrote, I got 16 when you got 9, and I got 28 when you got 27, so don't go calling mine "small".

[karnot]

I guess you should write things more clearly...

[Toady One]

D, there's still the issue of the nobles, which I think is a lot of the reason why playtesters wanted more immigrants.  You need a certain population to support them, and 5 dwarves in spring didn't cut it.  Many nobles are tied to total population, but many aren't.  I could change the numbers slightly, though I think some kind of debug menu is also in order.  Rather than establish "easy/medium/hard" modes, at this point, if I ever do, I think having some people playing the game with different settings can help to sort some of these issues out.  It's probably too early to decide on a final format for start options.  The game might be fun a lot of the time, but it's still a little baby alpha.  Even allowing people to make their dwarves instantly happy or making food unnecessary would help to find late-game bugs.  The spoilers would start to become a real issue though.

[gimlet]

I think part of it is we're getting better at the early game, so we have pretty decent fortresses running quickly which is attracting more immigration.  I know on this latest start I deliberately am not doing anywhere near as much detailing as I was doing last time (I had most of my idle guys doing it all winter).

[Quiller]

I wonder what influences immigration.  I actually have had a lack of immigrants.  I had one immigrant my first year, the metalsmith, and 3 the second year.  4 immigrants and 2 deaths, so a net increase of 2 dwarves over this time.  I've got everybody doing like 4 jobs each.  (Though my fisher is pretty steady at pretty much doing her job, with occasional breaks to train dogs.)  It gave me time to get agriculture setup, but with most people's skills being at dabbler it does take a while to get things done.  I'm looking forward to the day when I have enough people to have soldiers, and maybe bring people down to two jobs each.