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[Danjen]

Is there a way to prevent immigration entirely, without embarking to an island site? I want my 7 dorfs to populate my fort without any so-called new blood intermingling. I've set the population cap in the init file to 1, but I still get the occasional immigrant or two every season.

[XmasApe]

The population cap in the init is only of middling usefulness, and evidently doesn't do anything if it's set below about 30. Even if it is at a high enough number that the game will pay attention, it only matters at the beginning of a check for migration. If you have a cap of 30 and 29 dwarves in the fort already, you will receive however many dwarves you were going to get anyway, over the course of the year, so somewhere between a half-dozen and several dozen.

I've taken to setting it at 30, then using Tweak to embark with 30 dwarves, so I get the base fort laid down before I increase the cap for migrants. I'm hoping the new version with its massive overhauls will make the cap mean something, as the surge from ~10 dwarves to ~50 tends to leave my fort such a confused mess I abandon it.

[Diamond]

If the init file cap doesn't work (it did work for me though for some reason, but wiki says otherwise), there is not any other way to get rid of them. Of course, you can keep on killing then until they stop coming, but that not really dwarvenly.

Instead, you can make immigrants start separate fort on other end of the local map to produce food, booze and other necessities for the higher caste of dwarven beings, that are starting seven and their children. Build walls and gates into the fortress, to keep impure immigrants out. Kill any immigrant who dares to enter the Fortress.

Or alternatively, I remember a thread on russian DF-chan about a goblin fortress, that had a death camp for immigrants under the fortress, to live, work, starve, tantrum, die and rot in. It was a very funny thread. Lots of fun.

[Fastler]

I've taken to setting it at 30, then using Tweak to embark with 30 dwarves, so I get the base fort laid down before I increase the cap for migrants.

WHAT?! How is this possible? What tweak is this? Where can I get it? Why have I never heard of this before?

[XmasApe]

I've taken to setting it at 30, then using Tweak to embark with 30 dwarves, so I get the base fort laid down before I increase the cap for migrants.

WHAT?! How is this possible? What tweak is this? Where can I get it? Why have I never heard of this before?

http://dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Tweak

[SkyRender]

Incidentally, migrants appear no matter where you set up camp, as does the Dwarven caravan.  I know this to be true, since I've built a number of forts on remote islands and still gotten wave after wave of immigrant and caravan.

[roger123275]

Two Four Three words, my friend: Dwarvern Atom Smasher

[SquirrelWizard]

I'm not 100% certain how meeting areas go, but you could potentially make a remote immigrant deathtrap by having an enclosed meeting area seperate from your entire fort. In the meeting area there would be a bunch of spike traps connected to a lever. The goal would be to have your immigrant wave run into the death trap, you lock the door, and then spam the lever.

Lava is cleaner, and sorts the remains.

The problem with this though is...

A) keeping the immigrants in the trap. Immigrants like to appear in long chains, meaning that the first immigrant might become nationalized before the last immigrant makes it into the room and tries to run out.

B) it will play havoc with your coffins. (I'm pretty certain that even if you dont have remains for the coffin, if the coffin is built and made for public use, the dwarves will fill it. I could be wrong though.

The benifits of this system would be it allows you access to your trade depot at all times (immigrants run to the death chamber, elves run to the deathpot. you can easily sort the immigrants (lets say by some odd chance you get a useful noble, like a dungeon master, you can convert the immigrants to military, and order them to stand in the death trap. Finally, since you keep both your populaces seperate, you dont run the risk of your citizens going bonkers because a friend died.

Again, this relies heavily on how the game treats multiple meeting spaces. Obviously we dont want to skewer/fry your citizen dwarves.

[SkyRender]

Actually, the ultimate immigrant death trap is a Giant Cave Spider.  Since immigrants will constantly move towards a meeting area single-mindedly until they reach it, nobody will try to fight the GCS, and its webs will keep them all nearby for it to slowly consume their flesh.  The real problem is finding a savage GCS and setting up a meeting area that only immigrants can reach that forces them to path near it...

[Danjen]

Two Four Three words, my friend: Dwarvern Atom Smasher

This seems to be the best solution. I can just make a 3x3 or so area to send freshly drafted immigrants to die.

[darkflagrance]

I've actually managed to get a 10 dwarf pop cap to work. As long as you don't produce very much in the first couple of years, you shouldn't see inflated immigration waves before the cap takes effect.

[Doomshifter]

You know, this gives me a fun idea for a fort that would really take advantage of the burrows system for the next version.

Your starting seven begin the fortress, making a shining, gleaming example of dwarfhood. You set that area as the burrow for only those seven. Shortly, immigrants arrive. They come into your fortress. After being handed rudimentary supplies (A pick, maybe a copper axe) they are sent outside to build their own slums surrounding your gleaming mountainhome. Shanty towns, shoddily built towers, plump helmets and miasma, tantrum spiral galore while your starting seven live in the lap of luxury they've made for themselves. Desired nobles, like the dungeon master (well, really, only the dungeon master.), will be taken into the mountainhome, mocking the slummers as they pass by.

I think I might try that. It'd be a good test of the burrows system.

[Roostre]

Ooh, I should try embarking to an island sometime. This newbie totally didn't know that would prevent migrants.

What other challenges does an island fort entail?

[TKGP]

Ooh, I should try embarking to an island sometime. This newbie totally didn't know that would prevent migrants.

What other challenges does an island fort entail?

Actually, I'm fairly sure that immigrants and dwarven liaisons will still appear even on islands.

[pushy]

Ooh, I should try embarking to an island sometime. This newbie totally didn't know that would prevent migrants.

That newbie totally didn't know because it totally isn't true. No matter where you embark, no matter how remote it may be, dwarves will ALWAYS have access to your fortress. By setting up on an island you're not going to get any of the other civs, but you will get immigration waves and dwarven caravans.

Because you don't get any other civs, an isolated fort (on an island or totally surrounded by mountains or whatever) is actually easier in some respects than other forts; you're never going to get kobold thieves or goblin sieges/ambushes, so there's no real need for setting up defences unless you've got some restless (undead?) natives...but on the flipside of that, no goblins means no infinite supply of iron (and crappy clothing and stuff to sell to the caravan), and no elves/humans means a caravan only arrives once a year so you'd better hope that the dwarves bring a satisfactory supply of whatever you want or it'll be an entire year before you can get more...and no sieges also has a good chance of making you bored out of your mind after a while.