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[Draco18s]

Even for a pocket world you'd have to find and kill some 200,000 red herrings.

[Sir Iryn]

I really believe we should do a succession game for this. An age of emptiness Succession game.

If we do it, we'd have to do maybe a pocket world, and find a site with all the good stuff (Running water, Flux, Magma, and ofcourse, HFS)

We must rebuild Dorf society! For if we fail, all of dorfdom dies with us!

Besides, what better way to commemorate the coming of the new release. If anyone can manage to come up with an appropriate world, count me in!

[RedKing]

But do you get migrants or sieges with no other civs around?

You shouldn't. I've personally experimented by capping the dwarven population at two, letting world gen run for 300 years (so the only two dwarfs on the planet die of old age), and embarking. You get seven dorfs cast by the hand of god, and then nothing further. No migrants, no caravans, no nobles. It's worth noting that these seven (and any descendants they might produce) must be killed off, otherwise they form a wandering civ, and further embarks will get migrants and caravans from...god only knows where.

Hmm. I've had a game where I picked a dwarf civ that had no sites (having been wiped out by the elves). I got migrants and caravans from...a refugee camp somewhere, I'm guessing. Perhaps a civ with no sites and scattered population is handled differently than a civ whose population has literally been made extinct. That was actually a fun scenario, since I was still at war with the elves and chose to build my fort on a very small volcano in the middle of the elven forest. (Unfortunately, the presence of a GCS and a metric buttload of troglodytes *and* fire imps *and* elf raiding parties proved to be a little too fun...)

[Xgamer4]

For the curious, here's a list of ages taken from the taken from the text dump on the wiki:

Age of Three Powers
Age of
Two
Two Powers
Age of the
 Age
Age of One Power
Age of Myth
Age of Legends
Twilight Age
Age of Fairy Tales
Age of Heroes
Golden Age
Age of Death
Age of Civilization
Age of Emptiness
The world has passed into
Unknown Age

I haven't edited it at all. That's how it showed up on the wiki.

[Draco18s]

I haven't edited it at all. That's how it showed up on the wiki.

Here's a better version:

Ages are determined by the states of the world during world generation. Some of the known things that influence the ages are: number of megabeasts alive and dominant civilizations.

List of known 'Ages', explanation and their (possible) triggers:
-Age of Myth
-Age of Legends
-Age of Heroes
Those three are most common. Almost every world starts from Age of Myth, goes through Age of Legends and ends with Age of Heroes. Those three are influenced by percentage of alive megabeasts and semimegabeasts. After passing certain (unknown yet) % value, Age of Myth turns to Age of Legends, and Age of Legends turns into Age of Heroes.
Killing Megabeasts that visit you in Fortress Mode is known to trigger change of Age.

-Age of (Megabeast' name)
-Age of (Demon' name)
Occurs mostly in pocket worlds, where there's one Megabeast/Demon with relative large kill list.

-Age of (Megabeast/Demon) and (Megabeast/Demon), eg: "The Age of Titan and Dragon"
Same as above, but with two notable Megabeasts/Demons.

-Age of Three Powers
Even better than above, three notable Megabeasts/Demons.

-Age of (Race name), eg: "The Age of Elves"
One race becomes dominant in the world, or it's the only race left in the world.

-The Golden Age
Civilizations are expanding, and there are no wars and other things for them to worry about.

-Age of Fairy Tales
Toady One' quote from 2008 devlog:

    "I finally saw a world arrive at the Age of Fairy Tales, which happens if mundane creatures (ie humans) make up at least 90% of the world's civilized population with the requirement that there are still a few fantasy creatures lurking around. In this case, it was a kobold cave that their scouts never found. I guess all of the fairy tales were about people having their crap stolen."

-Age of Twilight
There are no wars and other worries, but civilizations are too weak to expand or are crumbling apart.

-Age of Death
Seems to be triggered when pretty much everything in the world is dead.

-Age of Civilization
Seems to be triggered when Humans are dominant population in the world.

-Age of Emptiness
Seems to be triggered when every sentient creature in a world is dead.

Which apparently came from this thread.

[Grimlocke]

Animal populations are tracked. If you export world information when you generate a world, it spits out a text file (region1-world_sites_and_pops.txt) that lists all the creatures in the world. I just created a medium world right now for example and it has 48067 wolves (and 101518 groundhogs, and 3130614 two-legged rhino lizards, and......)

I'm not 100% sure if animals that ambush you in adventure mode are drawn from that list, or if they are generated on the spot. Something else to test I suppose.

Did this once, by training my adventurers weapon skills on ambushing wolfs. Eventualy I stopped being ambushed by wolves, I just got ambushed by... nothing. I got pulled out of traveler mode, and just stood amongst a bunch of trees. Found and killed a pack of unicorns, though they wernt the ones that ambushed me.

I proceeded to burn unicorn corpse kill elves with their skills.

So yes, ambushing creatures are drawn from the actualy region population. The game just doesnt recognice them being extinct, and so it ambushes you without any creatures.

[jokermatt999]

I'd love a save of this, and I'd also be interested in the group fortress from nothing idea.

[Doomshifter]

I'd love a save of this, and I'd also be interested in the group fortress from nothing idea.

It could make for a nice 'World is Reborn' sort of feel. The various gods of your pantheon have sent down dwarven representatives to start civilisation once more!

Also, given that you have no Civ to embark from, does your civilisations screen list anything? Is the 'Strike the Earth!' intro page changed? (You have arrived after a long journey... but there is no mountainhomes!)

[Ampersand]

I'm not sure, but I think the "missing" entities may be the

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

dwarfs/elves/humans held in the HFS being tortured by the HFS

[Draco18s]

So yes, ambushing creatures are drawn from the actualy region population. The game just doesnt recognice them being extinct, and so it ambushes you without any creatures.

Its possible that whatever ambushed you was hiding and ran away before you ever saw it.

[Nobody1225]

Phase Two Testing Underway.

While the game properly acknowledges the results of dwarves dying out in World Gen (as seen in succession games like The Last Dwarves In the World and engineering an old-age extinction for the dwarves), it appears that adventure mode extinction is not respected by fortress mode.

Despite all dwarves (all everything intelligent, that is) being dead before embarking to the fortress site--a caravan arrived in Autumn.  A dwarven caravan.

I scummed, abandoned, and went to adventure mode to hunt down and meet up with these merchants, to learn anything about them.  None of them had any details to offer on their family, their location, anything--no information whatsoever--and none of them appeared in legends mode (although their wagons, which scuttled as the adventurer approached, did) after interrogation by the adventurer.  There were still "missing" entries in the historical figures log who weren't there after the rampage and somehow were added during fortress play.

Going back with an adventurer and killing the merchants did add them to legends mode.  Killing them all did not make up the difference in "missing" entries.

There was no Outpost Liaison.  It's a bit disappointing that the game recognizes when you slaughter one particular extremely necessary noble in Adventure Mode (so they'll never show up again) but misses the big picture.  (Though I'm confident this will change in future versions: Army Arc pretty much has to check this, right?)

I suspect strongly that migrants will also pop once the fortress wealth is high enough; we shall see.  We shall also see if I can not only make contact with goblin civilization but also provoke their attack.  If elves also show up in spring, I'll consider the matter just about settled; all that would remain is to see if the "missing" four entries happen to be residents of the HFS.

However, even with these disheartening results, the Phase 2 Testing is not over, not by a long shot.  If these beings unknown to World Gen show up from the edge of the world map, then we'll just have to try again--with a pocket dimension island.

Can you do another experiment?  Branch off, and start several forts and abandon them.  See if it changes the age, into age of dwarf or something.

As I figured, the answer is yes--embarking at all once there are dwarves left alive in the world (say, embark, abandon without suicide, and embark/reclaim) produces the Age of the Dwarf.

Also, given that you have no Civ to embark from, does your civilisations screen list anything? Is the 'Strike the Earth!' intro page changed? (You have arrived after a long journey... but there is no mountainhomes!)

Sadly, the answers are yes, and no, respectively.

Curiously, and for this reason I will continue testing on this world before proceeding to a pocket island, its actually possible that the game acknowledged the extinction of the elves and humans but not the dwarves--before the omnicidal rampage, it was possible to play as an elf, human, or dwarf without having to "Play Now!"--afterward, it was only possible to play as a dwarf or Play Now! as a human.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

This thread defines all that is good in this community. In the interests of gameplay, we're willing to exterminate everyone.

[elizar]

One of the things you can do about the animals is to remove them all from the raws and then gen. Then you just got civs to deal with. Once you've killed every civilization, you could pass to the Age of Death.

[Sensei]

I think for a cleaner test you should have removed almost everything. IE, have one type of immortal nonreproducing creature be the only animal creature, get only two or three civs (one to play, one to trade, one to be invaders) with tiny pop caps, and such. And maybe just one megabeast? Although you'd have to make him absurdly powerful to be sure he survives worldgen.

[Nobody1225]

Experiment Phase 2A Complete

Dwarf Fortress Mode does not appear to respect Adventure Mode extinctions for any civilization.

Upon reaching the second spring, the world passed into The Golden Age--and elven caravans arrived.  Later that season, migrants arrived.  We breached the HFS, unleashed a horde of terrible things, and saw the end of the fortress and all who dwelled there.  Follow-up adventure mode, pumped to the same levels as Datan Worlddoom, killed everything that had come out of the HFS,

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

demon, spirits of fire, and the damned alike,

and went hunting for all survivors who had arrived at the fort (elf merchants returned to their retreat, and dwarf merchants returned to the original Mountainhomes).  Also swept every cave and civ site in world.  Starvation followed, since leaping into magma seems to cause lock-ups on 40d16.

On reclaim, the world passed into the Age of the Goblin.  By this point the legends list, while devoid of living goblins, had enough missing entries that they could possibly have all been goblins, in ambush mode, undiscovered by my dwarves or the adventurer at any point, and they would have outnumbered the reclaim team.  They certainly didn't come from their civ site--I swept that and the near vicinity several times.

However: Adventure Mode appears to respect at least some civilization extinctions achieved in Adventure Mode.

When there was nothing left alive in the world, the options in Adventure Mode were Human: Play Now! and a Dwarf of the one dwarven civilization--the one that had produced Datan Worlddoom, of course.  When elves were noted as being alive, the option to play as an Elf of that civilization was added.  When the elf merchants were slaughtered again, the option vanished.  Since goblins appear to be the tricky devils here, I shall add adventure mode playability to both goblins and kobolds during future testing.

Further items for research:

• Phase 2B: Does it make a difference if the world map is entirely surrounded by water?  I've decided to delay this particular research project, in favor of more promising leads.
• Phase 3: Will anything emerge in Adventure Mode, without going to Fortress Mode, after an Adventure Mode extermination?  My hypothesis is no.  However, disagreement on this matter inspired this topic in the first place, so I am committed to testing.
• Phase 4: World Gen Age of Emptiness better respected than Adventure Mode Emptiness?  Raw modifications required.  This'll take some work, but my current notion is to strictly limit the population caps of every intelligent species, and curtail their lifespan; basically what Zaranthan did but with every civilized race instead of just dwarves.  If civilizations die out naturally, will better results be achieved?
• Phase 5: Age of Death; Extending Extinction to All Animal Life?  Yeah, this is gonna take some raw modifications.  Extensive.  But if animal populations really are tracked, this raises fascinating questions, like:
  • Are the random encounters spawned from nowhere or taken from the pool?
  • If you continue to hunt in this area, will game really become scarce?

This thread defines all that is good in this community. In the interests of gameplay, we're willing to exterminate everyone.

You wouldn't dissect a frog while it was still alive, would you?  That's just sick!  Of course things must die before SCIENCE! can proceed!

One of the things you can do about the animals is to remove them all from the raws and then gen. Then you just got civs to deal with. Once you've killed every civilization, you could pass to the Age of Death.

I think for a cleaner test you should have removed almost everything. IE, have one type of immortal nonreproducing creature be the only animal creature, get only two or three civs (one to play, one to trade, one to be invaders) with tiny pop caps, and such. And maybe just one megabeast? Although you'd have to make him absurdly powerful to be sure he survives worldgen.

I'll likely try this both ways--obliterating the animals so they never appear in the first place in one world, and setting the animal numbers very low and restricted in another world so it really is possible to kill them all manually, and seeing if it sticks.