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[Divinebeing]

How do you do it?

I currently have two dwarves that I want to get together.  How much do we know about what causes or delays relationships forming?

The hell is this, The Sims? 

[Jimmy]

Drafting dwarves prevents developing marriage in my experience. They'll become lovers but never marry while in the military.

As was mentioned before, religion and personality play a role in their compatability, but also age. Most marriages have been between dwarves of similar ages from my experience.

Time spent together is essential of course, so locking them in a cell together is a good strategy.

It has also been noted that marriages are most likely between immigrants who arrive in the same wave.

[Vester]

Drafting dwarves prevents developing marriage in my experience. They'll become lovers but never marry while in the military.

Specifically, they can't marry because they're soldiers. Soldiers can't throw or attend parties.

[Jackrabbit]

So, the way I see it, the Dwarf Fortress way to play matchmaker is to lock the lucky couple in a featureless room and dump in food and drink periodically, hopping they become bored enough to start bumping uglies. All right. Let's get on this.

[Vester]

So, the way I see it, the Dwarf Fortress way to play matchmaker is to lock the lucky couple in a featureless room and dump in food and drink periodically, hopping they become bored enough to start bumping uglies. All right. Let's get on this.

"Lucky" being used loosely in this case.

This is the dwarven way!

[Rowanas]

hey, if I was stuck in a cell with someone with food and water for long enough I think we'd probably jump each other eventually.

[Starver]

I've never really thought about forcing pairings, but now I'm going to have to consider what labour choices meld well together.  Setting up 'pair units' with associated workshops (Gem Cutter and Gem Setter, as an example) being supplied through a network of 'back passages' and dumping zones to distribute their raw materials.  e.g a "Sand Collector" and "Glassmaker" pairing whose resulting Glass Blocks are marked for dumping down a hole into the GC/GS area (before being unforbidden, of course).  Meanwhile a food and booze distrubution network (occasionally pressed into service to distribute furniture and other goods of interest) would be managed by a tunnel system inhabited by a pair of petential loverbird Food Haulers (micromanaging dumping zones, or just through player-inititated route blocking/unblocking or lever/pressureplate-adjusted access routes to the differing internal dumps if it can be automated to allow fair shares all round). 

I'm not sure if I'd need to give them plenty of down-time to become friendly to the point of matrimony.  I've had lovers arise from off-duty soldiers of the same unit, but rarely between workers, even those that might expect a lot of casual working-day interaction...  except miners, but of course those long, dark shifts at the ends of remote tunnels could be just where cupid likes to shoot his boltarrow.

But I don't like leaving dwarfs idle.  If I see parties, they're usually started by children and nobles that I can't get pursuade to take on tasks (like DMs being given animal training or certain metalworking stuff, just for the sake of gettingsome use out of them).

I don't know as much as  should about the upcoming "burrows" idea, but it sounds like this might (without the need for total segragation, and of course the micromanagement of items through marking for dumping and then unforbidding) be presed into use to allow player 'matchmakers' to get pairings to spend extended time together without permanent and artificial segregation between them and the suppliers of their vittals and raw materials, and the intended recipients of their own produce and "finished" products.  And then more information about compatible personality types would be useful, as it may be more important than compatible labour capabilities and skill levels.

[MrFake]

Can we get some clarification here?

- I agree that soldiers only seem to become lovers.  But, I've only seen soldiers lovin' on other soldiers, yet still marrying non-soldiers.  Er, for example, a few of my soldiers are bed buddies with each other, but one is married to the Mayor.  The married one is one of my swordsdwarfs that I drafted on embark, so I'm sure he tied the knot during his service.  Is it confirmed that they can't marry in service?  Can they marry if they're off duty?  Maybe it's just that soldiers can't marry other soldiers.

- It was my understanding that meeting halls are only congregation points, and that the actual social/relationship mechanic is fueled by prolonged proximity to other dwarfs.  From my limited experience, forts with meeting halls see an almost instant dwarfsplosion (or friendpocalypse, when the tantrum spiral starts), while forts without meeting halls will see only a few children right up until the place gets crowded, then they all start falling in love and/or giving birth (in weird places, naturally).  So, my assumption would be that if you want to make more dwarf babies, you just need a higher dwarf density.  If you want two specific dwarfs together, you need to keep them constantly close to each other.

[Starver]

Can we get some clarification here?

Take what I wrote as personal observation, only, during short-term fortresses playing.  i.e. suddenly realising (possibly after losing a squad member) that a romantic attatchment had arisen without my noticing.

I've never actually seen (read: noticed, so if there's a notification it's probably never happened) a marriage other than one that pre-existed the immigration wave that brought the pairing.  Nor (again, noticed) a loving relationship with a different person from the spousal one.

I've had an amazing number of children arise, but usually only from "good Catholic dwarfs" that came paired in a wave (with or without children already in tow) and kept "popping them out" year on year for the decade or so of Dwarf-time that I kept on playing the fortress involved.  Certainly long enough for native-born babies to achieve majority and become peasants (with strong "Grower" skills, of course) in their own right.

The only other relationship 'anomolies' are the lone-parent immigrants, where one or two kids come along with the new worker, but the spouse/other parent is absent as an entity from both the wave and the relevant page of information for those that arrive.  But that's just an aside, and not important to the discussion at hand.

[Vester]

Can we get some clarification here?

Take what I wrote as personal observation, only, during short-term fortresses playing.  i.e. suddenly realising (possibly after losing a squad member) that a romantic attatchment had arisen without my noticing.

I've never actually seen (read: noticed, so if there's a notification it's probably never happened) a marriage other than one that pre-existed the immigration wave that brought the pairing.  Nor (again, noticed) a loving relationship with a different person from the spousal one.

I've had an amazing number of children arise, but usually only from "good Catholic dwarfs" that came paired in a wave (with or without children already in tow) and kept "popping them out" year on year for the decade or so of Dwarf-time that I kept on playing the fortress involved.  Certainly long enough for native-born babies to achieve majority and become peasants (with strong "Grower" skills, of course) in their own right.

The only other relationship 'anomolies' are the lone-parent immigrants, where one or two kids come along with the new worker, but the spouse/other parent is absent as an entity from both the wave and the relevant page of information for those that arrive.  But that's just an aside, and not important to the discussion at hand.

The only marriage I've had in my most recent fort was between two of the original seven (my mayor and my chief grower). It took them three years to develop a relationship and another two before they actually got married. The wedding reception apparently lasted all of autumn.

I'm convinced that if you left military dwarves undrafted for long enough, they'd marry each other. So good luck getting champions hitched. More likely they've taken eternal vows of single-dom but secretly pine in their hearts for their lover's touch...

Okay gross. Had a mental image of dwarves making out.

[MrFake]

Can we get some clarification here?

Take what I wrote as personal observation...

Of course.  And I only meant that as an address to the board.  I'd hate to make a personal assumption on relationships, as I've been doing, and have them lead to a tantrum spiral in the middle of a megaproject.

... or, I guess I should say, I'd hate to let my dwarfs die sad and alone at the unlit bottom of some pit in the ground.  Yeah ... that sounds kind of like compassion.   

[Elliott_Thinas]

Almost all of the dwarfs in my fort have lovers but we have only 4 married couples, meaning that as the kids grow up, almost all of them are coming from the same bloodline. It's true military dwarfs almost always have lovers and lots of friends because they spend their off-duty time either mossin' with the other dwarfs or sparring. The different arms of the military seem to intermarry a lot though; my best champion, Tun, is a lover of a Royal Guardsdwarf and his second in command is in love with a Fortress Guardsdwarf.

[The Mad Engineer]

"Welcome to HappyLove, the Fortress of Breeding, where you will be paired with your living mate and job assignment from birth, living in a well furnished 3*3 area till the day you die."

Let's make a fort where all the dwarves are "paired" from immigration/birth.  All the born-and-bred dwarves would be unaware that another entity exists besides their breeding mate : D  No more tantrum spirals!

[Rowanas]

This is almost as horrifying as the murmaider thread.

[Beanchubbs]

"Welcome to HappyLove, the Fortress of Breeding, where you will be paired with your living mate and job assignment from birth, living in a well furnished 3*3 area till the day you die."

In Communist Fortress, life decide you!