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[Jack_Bread]

In 19, ?emeni Packreleased, a diplomat and the last elf in the world, escaped from her human captors (who had conquered her home retreat fifteen years earlier) and fled into the Swamps of Thinning.  In 20, she took for herself the title of leader of her civilization, and was therefore elected by a unanimous vote of all surviving civilization members: her.  She was unable to accomplish anything further in the next twenty four years and died of old age in 44.

I would sig this if I didn't have anything in it already.

Keep it up! It's really getting good.

[Nobody1225]

Phase 4: Success

World gen extinction--The Age of Death--is respected in dwarf mode.  No trade.  No migrants.  No thieves.  No invaders.  Nada.

The important thing is this: world gen decides what civilizations exist and no longer exist.  Through your actions you can cause new beings to pop into the world--running a fortress, for instance--and as an adventurer you can kill them off--but they pop or not pop based on whether history has decided that the civilization is dead or not.

Rebuilding Dwarven society from a starting seven would be an incredible challenge, though a worthy one.  However, I haven't yet had any success in getting a civilization to be re-activated--there's always a Dwarven civ to embark from, but I can't get it to reappear in the Civs screen of fortress mode play.  History at this time is less dynamic than we'd like...

Although, after the Age of Death passed into The Second Age of the Dwarf, a series of HFS breaches brought it into The Age of the Demon, The Age of the Two Demons, The Age of the Three Powers, and then The Age of Myth (not the Second Age, since there was never a first--that was just The Titan Age), which is cool in and of itself, but nothing new to the player base.

Phase 5 testing will recommence tomorrow.  I will isolate the critters whose lack makes embark hiccup, and leave only those and civilization-forming critters intact, and greatly reduce the populations of such wild animals as much as possible.  We will then answer the question that has been bugging us since we started playing the Oregon Trail on an Apple IIe in our elementary school classrooms in the late 80s/early 90s.

[Puzzlemaker]

So, if you abandon during the age of death, then reclaim, will you get migrants from the new civilization?

[Nobody1225]

So, if you abandon during the age of death, then reclaim, will you get migrants from the new civilization?

As far as I can tell, no.  Neither migrants nor traders.  My observations in the Age of Death are that the civilization doesn't seem to re-activate, even if you add new dwarves to its census rolls through embark/abandon/reclaim.

For instance, if you embark during an Age of Emptiness, while the game acknowledges that all civilized beings have died, the civilizations still show up on cue on your "c: Civilizations" screen and then pop accordingly when the time is right (migration, trade, etc).  The Age of Death is different--nothing shows up on your "c: Civilizations" screen ever again.  And nothing associated with those civilizations ever pops again--no thieves, traders, ambushes or sieges.

Phase 5: Game Does Become Scarce

As I had been advised, the game tracks animal populations at world gen--and the changes in play are respected.

A world was generated with only the following critters still in the raws:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Wagon, the contents of creature_fanciful, Wolf, Dwarf, Human, Elf, Goblin, Kobold, Dragon, Demon, Spirit of Fire, Frog Demon, Tentacle Demon, Purring Maggot, Cave Lobster.

If you remove purring maggots from the raws, the game locks up at embark, although it gens just fine.  Reason uncertain.  Cave Lobsters themselves aren't necessary, but apparently if you remove the last creature with the tag [HASSHELL], the game locks up at embark--you can, for instance, include turtles and exclude cave lobsters.

A world-painted pocket island was generated--oceans on all sides, and with judicious control of rainfall, the number of world squares of forest was limited to 13--with the wolf cluster numbers turned down to 1:1, the wolf population set to 1:1, and the [MALE] tag added in an attempt to get them to stop breeding.  To provide the proper Age of Death atmosphere, I also gave a max-age to the [MEGABEAST] and [ENDING] monsters, so that even if no dwarf got a lucky crit on them in this island's history, they'd still die before worldgen ran out.  (That works, by the way: their max-ages are respected, although the number you plug in isn't the number that fires, since creatures alive in year 1 have some arbitrarily earlier effective birthdate.)

An export of data in legends mode indicated that there were indeed only 13 wolves in the world.  And a crapload of purring maggots, but I'd no intention to go hunting for vermin in adventure mode.  And other than that, absolutely nothing else left alive.

The [MALE] tag doesn't seem to do what we think it does, or it doesn't do it for wildlife when calculating populations in the background, or its effects are overrode if there are still tags for [CHILD] in the entry (parthenogenesis, perhaps?).  I'm only saying this because I started with 13 wolves, killed 14 (with a DF Companion super-powered human wrestler), starved and went to legends, and got a new total of 2 wolves left alive.

A new adventurer was sent to try and kill the last two--the first wolf actually got the drop on one, killing her, mainly because one too many instances of DF were open and DF Companion wasn't super-powering the right adventurer.  But I went with it; and checked legends--there was now one wolf left in the forest, and one wolf in a cave, who now had a name.  Last adventurer set out, killed both.  Then the adventurer walked around the circle of forest for a year of in-game time.

No more wolves ever appeared.  Legends specifically records 0 wolves in the Outdoor Animal Populations.  Now, that doesn't mean random encounters stopped--as the wolf population dipped, an increasing number of false alarms happened, meaning fast-travel stopped, 'T' was blocked for a few turns because "You Must Survive the Ambush", but there was nothing.  Nothing in sight, and DF Companion read nothing in memory.  Once the wolf population dipped to single digits there were about three of these false alarms for every actual encounter with a wolf.  Once the wolf population reached zero, these false alarms still came up as often as normal encounters might...but no wolves ever appeared in a year of walking around the same thirteen world map squares.

(These false alarms are probably an unimportant bug of some kind, and a little annoying, but I like to think of them as the last being alive, wandering the world in ever-mounting terror and madness, freaking the fuck out whenever he thinks he hears something...but it's just the wind, right?  Right?)

• Phase 1: Completed, success: it is possible to kill every civilized being in adventure mode and bring the world to an Age of Emptiness.
• Phase 2a: Completed, failure: Age of Emptiness is not respected in Fortress Mode.  Civilizations which are still alive will spawn new things at the normal times.  Adventure mode can kill everything in a civilization but cannot kill the civilization itself.
• Phase 2b: Not completed: one possibility is that the spawns observed in 2a come from off-map--as in, off world-map.  If the world is an island, this might make a difference.  Considered doubtful at this time, but will test.
• Phase 3: Not completed: animal populations in Phase 5 have been observed as staying dead, despite the long passage of time in Adventure Mode.  Perhaps, if civilizations are still alive (Age of Emptiness, not Age of Death), they will spawn things in Adventure Mode if sufficient time passes.  Will test.
• Phase 4: Completed, success: if an Age of Death is achieved during world gen, it will be completely respected during play.  Dead civilizations stay dead.
• Phase 5: Completed, apparent success: animal populations can be reduced to zero in adventure mode, and during adventure mode this will stick, and the results are observed in legends.

[zchris13]

We have evidence that it also sticks for fortress mode.  Dead animals stay dead.

[KillerClowns]

We have evidence that it also sticks for fortress mode.  Dead animals stay dead.

Aye, but that isn't the question.  Do animals wiped to extinction remain extinct?  (Evidently, they do.)
I think I drove woolly mammoths (Dig Deeper addition) to extinction in one of my forts... may check the legends eventually-ish.
EDIT: Nope.  Mammoths exist.  Wiped out those in my area, maybe.

[zchris13]

I have sources that say that they do not come back.  Migrations just stopped.

[100killer9]

But there are still living ocean creatures. Try building a pump tower next to the tallest volcano and flood the world with magma in adventure mode

[Nobody1225]

But there are still living ocean creatures. Try building a pump tower next to the tallest volcano and flood the world with magma in adventure mode

Not in this world.  There's nothing in the ocean.  At all.  Only aquatic life are cave lobsters, and they're only in underground lakes.

[Sir Iryn]

I think we may be getting close to some good succession game material soon.

[Draco18s]

I like to think of these false alarms as the last being alive, wandering the world in ever-mounting terror and madness, freaking the fuck out whenever he thinks he hears something...but it's just the wind, right?  Right?

Epic-fucking-sig'd.

[PTTG??]

That's pretty creepy right there. I'd be coo with a succession game like that.

Hm... The Last Fort of All.
Stuck with seven dwarves and whatever children they have. For once, a game where each dwarf life was worth more than a month of waiting for the next migration swarm.

[Draco18s]

On the downside, no caravans.

On the upside, no invaders.

[Thief^]

Or you could try to get it into the situation where only goblin and kobold civs are alive. That way being the last dwarves could be a challenge.

I do have one question though. If you are the last dwarves, do you start with the king? What happens when he's supposed to turn up?

[Nobody1225]

Or you could try to get it into the situation where only goblin and kobold civs are alive. That way being the last dwarves could be a challenge.

I do have one question though. If you are the last dwarves, do you start with the king? What happens when he's supposed to turn up?

The last dwarves in the world are being done, and I'm in no hurry to step on toes (although the principles used to ensure that everything died in these worlds could also be used to ensure that only dwarves died in another world).  However, a truly empty world, like what was used for the Phase 5 tests and was just now being used for the phase 2B tests, devoid even of hostile animal life, is of course pretty slow going.  The critters probably need to come back...or if most of them are still gone, then something needs to be out there that is hostile, in large numbers, and explains why everything in the world is dead--at least for an interesting game, in my opinion.

If you're the last dwarves in the world...well, this might change in the next version, which'd be awesome, but as of 40d, there is no king and there never will be a king again.  Assuming you've passed into the Age of Death, your civilization has ended.  The seven dwarves who embark carry the memories (and have access to the goods in the area of that civilization for their embark), but not the institutions.

(Mechanically: no migration ever means no immigrant nobles, ever, although with rigorous breeding and a lot of patience you could get the full run of appointed nobles.)


Phase 2B Completed.
Fortress mode stuff spawns at the edge of your fortress map, when the time comes.  It is not necessary to be able to path from the world map edge for new things to pop.  In other words, causing an adventure-mode-based Age of Emptiness on an island world (surrounded by water on all sides) makes no difference--non-world-gen-killed civilizations will still pop their stuff when its triggered (trade, migrants, etc).


Meanwhile, Phase 3 testing will be time-consuming, as my hypothesis can't really be proven so much as confirmed or dis-confirmed based on how ridiculously long I'm willing to wander the wilds in adventure mode.  However, this is not the end of my Dwarven Research!  Covetously pursuing the violent Dwarven equivalent of a Nobel Peace Prize in Historiography, my next research project will be harder and slower going, since I really have no idea how it works and it isn't just a question of how thoroughly you kill everything: What, actually, is the difference between a Golden Age and a Twilight Age?  There's been plenty of speculation but little science...


All phases related to fortress mode have been completed.  I favor the idea of a succession game as a bit of a send-off for our beloved 40d (even if the moddable entity positions mean that this concept may work much better in the next edition) but as it would be a community game, I won't set it all up alone.  To keep in theme I'd like it to be the Age of Death, but to make it a challenge despite the absence of invaders some adjustments are needed.

I'll mull some ideas over myself for a bit, but welcome all input.