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Author Topic: Minimum Dwarves for Breeding  (Read 738 times)

Hitori

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Minimum Dwarves for Breeding
« on: February 08, 2010, 05:16:46 pm »

What is the minimum amount of dwarves one can have and still have an adequate gene pool to breed forever?
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Jim Groovester

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Re: Minimum Dwarves for Breeding
« Reply #1 on: February 08, 2010, 05:24:36 pm »

Two at the minimum. Four would probably be best.

While I've never experienced it personally, I've heard accounts of distant family relations marrying. Great uncles and the like.

If you had only two, then their children would never produce offspring because the children wouldn't marry their siblings.

Four allows two separate families to interbreed and mingle, I suspect, endlessly. The family tree would be pretty tangled up, though.
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Shades

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Re: Minimum Dwarves for Breeding
« Reply #2 on: February 08, 2010, 05:29:40 pm »

Could you manage three, two form a couple and have kids, kill of one other parents and get the other two too form a new couple and so have non-related kids?

But generally I agree four is the minimum.
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Jim Groovester

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Re: Minimum Dwarves for Breeding
« Reply #3 on: February 08, 2010, 05:30:31 pm »

Could you manage three, two form a couple and have kids, kill of one other parents and get the other two too form a new couple and so have non-related kids?

No. Dwarves pair off for life. If a dwarf's spouse dies, he or she will never remarry.
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Thorik

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Re: Minimum Dwarves for Breeding
« Reply #4 on: February 08, 2010, 05:31:05 pm »

Enter: The Hillbilly Halls of Dwarfdom.
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Shrike

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Re: Minimum Dwarves for Breeding
« Reply #5 on: February 08, 2010, 05:32:32 pm »

Or, the dorf bluebloods.
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Shades

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Re: Minimum Dwarves for Breeding
« Reply #6 on: February 08, 2010, 05:35:13 pm »

Okay so still three, A + B have two kids, C and first kid has kids, their kids should fall outside siblings of A + B's other kid and so allows interbreeding again?

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Its like playing god with sentient legos. - They Got Leader
[Dwarf Fortress] plays like a dizzyingly complex hybrid of Dungeon Keeper and The Sims, if all your little people were manic-depressive alcoholics. - tv tropes
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right. - xkcd

Jim Groovester

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Re: Minimum Dwarves for Breeding
« Reply #7 on: February 08, 2010, 05:41:47 pm »

Hrmm.

The children of A & B would be aunts and uncles to the children of C and the first kid. I don't know if dwarves marry their aunts and uncles in fortress mode.

It would be interesting to see if they did, but I do not know.
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Shrike

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Re: Minimum Dwarves for Breeding
« Reply #8 on: February 08, 2010, 05:41:59 pm »

Possibly?

You could mod the dwarves to become adults much earlier, and find out if this works.
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Kidiri

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Re: Minimum Dwarves for Breeding
« Reply #9 on: February 08, 2010, 05:43:53 pm »

The family tree would be pretty tangled up, though.
Try untangling this real life family tree. I think we should be glad Dwarves don't remarry. If you want to record a family tree, that is.
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LordBucket

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Re: Minimum Dwarves for Breeding
« Reply #10 on: February 09, 2010, 02:19:41 am »

Try untangling this real life family tree.

It's actually not as convoluted as it first appears. Seems they liked to adopt children of previous marriages, who sometimes married biological children.

So...man marries, has a child, and his wife dies. He then marries a second woman, and then he dies, leaving the woman with a child who is not biologically hers. You then marry that woman, and adopt the child. You then have a child with her, and your child marries the child you adopted.

That's the most complicated thing I see going on. Everything else is mostly just straight children and adoptions.