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[Neoskel]

How do i make sure i never, ever, ever get him without modding or utilities? Basically, what not to do. I supposed i'll eventually want to allow one to come, but only when my fortress is good and ready.

[sneakey pete]

Limit your population to something less than 80?

[Neoskel]

I'd rather not make any init changes either. But then there's always death traps to limit population with...

[sneakey pete]

You can also turn off the dwarven economy in the inti, if that's the only problem with they arriving that your concerned about.

[Dadamh]

I don't see the problem with editing init.  It's not like cheating.

Keeping your pop below 80 does it.  Also if you don't do much work in the way of variety, it helps.  The Wiki says you have to do 25 jobs in a few different categories through the year, so if you avoid that it might help.

If it's not the baron so much as the economy that bothers you, you can turn off economy in the init file.

[IcyLemon]

My fortress has a population of around 170, i've been doing at least 25 of every job, every season, and the baron still hasn't arrived after nearly 10 years. I've not turned any of the economy stuff off in the int, any idea what I could be doing wrong?
I'm on 39f btw.

[Haven]

Maybe they ran out? Barons don't grow on trees, ya know!

But actually, I've had this problem too. Only nobles have been bugged queens.

[Dadamh]

I haven't had bugged nobles in 39f yet.  They seem to come at a reasonable time, usually when I have decent wealth, job diversity, and pop over 80.

[Neoskel]

I don't like messing around with the init for features. Feels like cheating to me.

Anyways, since my fortress is pretty limited i should probably manage not to do too much variety of work. Plus my 13 z-level high tower keep is just the right height to irrevocably splat unwanted immigrants. I just dropped ten from the top at the same time. They left a nice big red splat on the ground. I wish i had made a video of it... Theres always the next immigrant wave i guess.

Oh, the FPS made me do it. 

[sneakey pete]

Are the dwarven caravans still getting through icylemon?

[Moogie]

There's no such thing as cheating in an unbalanced, alpha-stage, sandbox game.

Well, unless you do something like give your dwarves three pairs of arms, wings, and firebreath...

But simple things like popcap changes are merely adjusting the game more to your liking. Not everyone likes playing the same way- that's why we already have so much choice over things. Toady knows this, and it's why we can now set sooooo many parameters during world creation. It's why we can opt for graphics packs if we can't handle ASCII. It's why most 'regular' games come with Easy/Medium/Hard settings. These things aren't cheats, and the options would not be IN the ini file, fully labelled with descriptions, if Toady didn't want them to be modified.

I played my first few games of DF without any ini changes. I learned the basics of play, got a feel for the game, got a feel for what I liked and didn't like. And then I went in and changed what I didn't like, and gave the game a new lease of life for myself. There's no 'balancing' yet in this early stage, so it's up to us to balance it as we feel comfortable. I usually do minor things like 'show all history' (so I can see full details of engravings), 'show flow amount' (I like to see water depth), popcaps, graphics pack, and disabling sound/intro. One more thing I've done in my current game is to make Unicorns tameable (Exotic, mind you, so I still need a Dungeon Master to tame them). This has made my Mirthful Forest location ten times more interesting to play as I dot cage traps all over the countryside in the hopes of catching a pair of the beasts and creating a Unicorn Farm.

But none of that is cheating, and truely doesn't feel as such to me. I'd only feel cheating if I gave myself the option to bring Unicorns with me at the embark screen for 1 point each.

[BurnedToast]

I don't like messing around with the init for features. Feels like cheating to me.

Anyways, since my fortress is pretty limited i should probably manage not to do too much variety of work. Plus my 13 z-level high tower keep is just the right height to irrevocably splat unwanted immigrants. I just dropped ten from the top at the same time. They left a nice big red splat on the ground. I wish i had made a video of it... Theres always the next immigrant wave i guess.

Oh, the FPS made me do it. 

Don't think of the init as cheating, think of it as the options menu most games have. It's very useful, turning off weather for example can double your FPS (sometimes) with virtually no in-game effect (it won't rain or snow anymore but rain and snow don't do much of anything).

Limiting the population is similar, I couldn't run DF at all with the default cap of 200 dwarves or whatever - it would grind down to 5 or 10 fps and take all day to do anything. I could throw them off a tower like you do, but the popcap accomplishes the dame thing with no messy cleanup and less bother.

[IcyLemon]

Are the dwarven caravans still getting through icylemon?

Yup, they're arriving, trading and then leaving unhindered (with a wagon full of narrow golbin junk) as far as I can tell. I've been giving a fair amount as tribute each time aswell, iron bolts encrusted with gems, masterwork totems, that sort of thing. Yet i've only got the philosopher and the dungeon keeper.

[Neoskel]

Don't think of the init as cheating, think of it as the options menu most games have. It's very useful, turning off weather for example can double your FPS (sometimes) with virtually no in-game effect (it won't rain or snow anymore but rain and snow don't do much of anything).

Limiting the population is similar, I couldn't run DF at all with the default cap of 200 dwarves or whatever - it would grind down to 5 or 10 fps and take all day to do anything. I could throw them off a tower like you do, but the popcap accomplishes the dame thing with no messy cleanup and less bother.

Now don't get me wrong, i change stuff like whether pets will be allowed in coffins by default and other little things. But turning off game features like weather and population size just seem wrong to me. I kinda want to play the game as Toady intended it. Yes my FPS is around 15 right now, but that's not really all that slow (i'm starting to think that it might be showing the gfps though). I think it's the waves doing me in. Can't wait for the next version since Toady is doing some graphics maximizations. Means i can either play regular size with greater fps of large size with just as pitiful fps.

[Moogie]

That's why I mentioned the fact that the game hasn't been balanced yet. We don't know exactly how Toady envisions the final gameplay after he's done actually implementing everything. What we have right now is a 'partially constructed' game that requires some Masonry to... Okay, I'm not smart enough to think of a witty ending to that metaphor, but you get the idea.

You're really just shooting yourself in the feet by keeping things like Temperature/Weather which have almost zero in-game effects, and I bet you rarely even notice when it's raining (even less if you don't pay attention to the announcements telling you such). Just because a feature is there doesn't mean it's working or useful yet, and disabling them can actually be beneficial to your gameplay.