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[NW_Kohaku]

OK, I'm setting up the experiment...

I unfortunately didn't see any Dwarf Companion utility to change dwarf personality traits, so I just have to make do with what I already have.  My fort is only middling in size right now, so it doesn't have very many options where there are a value for both Imagination AND Artistic.

My best imaginitive and artistic dwarf is a leatherworker I nicknamed "Trenchcoat" (I nickname all my dwarves, and I'll be posting them here, just to keep track of who's who), apparently for liking leather, cloaks, and hats.  She only has 75 and 67. Remember that the cutoffs for the different titles are 91 and 76, so this is just the "sorta creative" and "sorta arty", but that's the best I have.  (If someone has a really massive fort, and wants to try...)

I have a child who has 11 imagination and 77 art.  I also have a hammerdwarf ("Tsundere", she has plenty of friendliness and compassion and likes people and is optimistic and plans, but has no control over emotions, and is quick to anger.)with 21 imagination and 78 art.  Maybe I can grow the child up via hax, and put the two alongside each other to see if the degree matters?

I have only one dwarf with low creativity and low art... a weaver nicknamed "burdock" for some reason...

I have no high creativity, low art dwarves. 

My architect ("Archy" stayed up late thinking of that one.) has a 1 in imagination and no art value.

I have a farmer ("zincroots" when they have no good personality things, I just go by what they like)...  with 84 imagination (nobody over 90) and no art value.

I also have two miners, one with 81 art (named "blues", since she's often depressed), and one with 11 art (named "grey" since he's got a very bland personality), both with no creativity value.

My current legendary engraver ("backpit", very antisocial, and also a legendary miner, so he's always back in the pits) has no art or creativity values, and has made hundreds of engravings.  I guess that makes an effective control.

Without control over other traits, however, I have no way of knowing whether there is cross-pollinating influence by other factors.  Maybe having lots of friends changes things?

edit: by the way, there's no way to make a child not a child, either, apparently.  I can, however, abuse Dwarf Therapist, and get some child labor going.  Oh, and she's named "Youmu".

edit edit: I can't assign labors to children through therapist, either... I thought someone said they could do it to nobles once, but I guess children are a special case...

[madjoe5]

Thats pretty interesting. What I would do is carve out four large rooms w/ no sharing walls, have the legendary engraver smooth all of them. Next have "Tsudere", "Zincroots", "Trenchcoat" and maybe "Blues" to engrave a little bit of the room at dabbling engraver.

Next, jack them all up to legendary engraver and engrave the rest of the room. See if anyone has any noticeably better results.

[NW_Kohaku]

Engravings don't have anything good on them (you'd just get dorfs or maybe squares, not anything with a story) unless they're of at least *quality*, I believe, so it's pointless to even try unless they're at least master.

[madjoe5]

Engravings don't have anything good on them (you'd just get dorfs or maybe squares, not anything with a story) unless they're of at least *quality*, I believe, so it's pointless to even try unless they're at least master.

Oh, I didn't know, so just put them at legendary right away then

[A-chana]

My best engraver seems obsessed with the first fort leader, too. I've seen her document a few other things, though (goblins and kobolds being killed, the nearby human hunters being killed by cougars and wolves, the time where I bounced between five brokers in one year, dwarves withering away or drowning, the time a war dog bisected a berserk dwarf). She doesn't seem to be too inartistic, though (she's listed as calm, self-conscious, impulsive, and easily cracking under pressure). Meh.

But, yeah, killing things seems to help a lot, as does doing odd stuff like constantly changing appointed nobles and letting dwarves go berserk (I have an artifact coffin with an engraving of one of the founders becoming an enemy of his civilization when he went berserk, and there's also an engraving of an unnamed stray dog (a child of one of my notable dogs?) screaming as it's being killed/butchered. Good times.). In fact, yeah, if you can figure out how to do a loyalty cascade in adventure mode, it should come up once in a while, too.

[NW_Kohaku]

OK, it's finally set up... turns out I happened to choose a spot with three seperate aluminum deposits... I'll have to remember to come back here when I delete this save, and go back to my pre-Dwarf Companion save.

Right, now I'm using a custom tileset made of Frankensteining several other sets together with a few new tiles I made myself (which you can identify by their incredibly difficult to see details.) I'm still tinkering with, and I have special tiles for elves, humans, and goblins (and kobolds, they share tiles with goblins).  So here's a "before" shot.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Now, the wall right above the "X" stairway is aluminum.  The red stuff is cinnibar, and that's an ore tile on the wall.  The rest of it is rhyolite.

edit: cleaning up all this stone is taking frustratingly long.... DARN HIGHLY SKILLED MINERS WHO WORK QUICKLY AND GET PLENTY OF ORES!

edit edit: At least this game keeps running when you're reading the forums... I should fly blind more often...

edit^3: Finally... took at least five times as long as the rest of this setup. 

edit the fourth: Now then, I have a smooth site for working on three floors.  Making another backup save at this point, for repeat tests, if necessary.  Note: this setup took about 2 months of preperation time.  Mostly in the stone hauling, even though I set up a quantum dump.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[madjoe5]

OK, it's finally set up... turns out I happened to choose a spot with three seperate aluminum deposits... I'll have to remember to come back here when I delete this save, and go back to my pre-Dwarf Companion save.

Right, now I'm using a custom tileset made of Frankensteining several other sets together with a few new tiles I made myself (which you can identify by their incredibly difficult to see details.) I'm still tinkering with, and I have special tiles for elves, humans, and goblins (and kobolds, they share tiles with goblins).  So here's a "before" shot.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Now, the wall right above the "X" stairway is aluminum.  The red stuff is cinnibar, and that's an ore tile on the wall.  The rest of it is rhyolite.

edit: cleaning up all this stone is taking frustratingly long.... DARN HIGHLY SKILLED MINERS WHO WORK QUICKLY AND GET PLENTY OF ORES!

edit edit: At least this game keeps running when you're reading the forums... I should fly blind more often...

edit^3: Finally... took at least five times as long as the rest of this setup. 

edit the fourth: Now then, I have a smooth site for working on three floors.  Making another backup save at this point, for repeat tests, if necessary.  Note: this setup took about 2 months of preperation time.  Mostly in the stone hauling, even though I set up a quantum dump.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Nice job, can't wait to hear the results!

This is why I love the community here, I come with a problem or explain something that annoys me, and we end with a science experiment that can prove to fix the problem

[NW_Kohaku]

AAAAAND THEY'RE OFF!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

AAAAAND THEY'RE DONE in the time it took me to post and type that.

Oh, and I now have eight pages of "masterpiece" spam, too.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Anyway, let's reveal engravings and get to evaluating data (plus letting our dwarves out of their cages... WHOA! almost forgot to actually note who was where!  No point in data that's not labelled.)

OK, so let's look at our control against our two expected high performers, on the middle level. 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

====================================

The LEGENDS of 'Backpit'


Oh, and remember how I said that I have nothing but images of elves getting slaughtered?  Yeah, definitely still popular with ol' Backpit. Of the 121 images he engraved (I did 11x11 because that's a shift-left, shift-up), 30 were of elves.  27 were of elves being slain, shot, smashed, or ripped (which I initially read as "raped") by goblins.  2 were of elves killing other elves.  One was of an elf actually killing (!) a human.

Of the 121 engravings, dwarves were far and away the most popular subject. 65 engravings total.

Oddly, I got an engraving of a dwarf named "Flying Keys" (named for the amusing prefstring) settling in Listenedguild (my fort) who is only a passing acquaintance (and one of 3 dozen, probably from just accidentally bumping into Backpit.)  I got an engraving of a masterpiece bone crown by "Van Gogh" (arty and depressed), who Backpit doesn't even know.  Also, a masterpiece coat, a masterpiece bag, and a masterpiece engraving by Archy, who was, of course, locked up in the floor below him, also engraving at the same time, and had never engraved before. Backpit, being a founder, is friends with "Sunny" (named for being very friendly, loving crowds, never depressed, etc. very popular, always relected) who has always been my expedition leader and mayor.   She was engraved for ascending to leadership 26 times, which is second only to goblins killing elves.  She was also shown admiring goblets (a preference), (and I've seen her engraved admiring cats twice before).  22 engravings of "laboring" or "travelling" relating to the foundation of my fort.  I had 6 engravings of dwarves because they were the symbol of my local government (really stayed up late thinking of that one, hunh, guys?).  5 were engravings of himself engraving.  Finally, one was just a picture of a dwarf... guess he ran out of creative juice.

Four of 121 engravings were of humans.  All were humans killing other humans.

One image of tower caps.  One image of dimple cups. One image of alder (trees).

Two images of armor stands and one of horses.  (Both are on his preferences list.)

Two images of dogs.  Both are apparently of my butchers keeping their exploding populaton under control.  One was screaming, the other falling.

One image of "Bursttallied", an artifact iron earring.

One image of giants, the image of my Civ.

One image of a camel being slain during a goblin ambush that hit an elf caravan as it was leaving.

Also, one image of a moon, one image of a star, and one image of waves.

Thus completes Backpit's creations... (Oh, God, that took like an hour, and that's only the first dorf?!)


=============================


The Engravenatings of Trenchcoat


This is, again, my high creativity, high art engraver.

She likes horn, earrings, bucklers, sea lampreys, and eating dwarven ale and pike.  She has no relationship with Sunny, the mayor.

59 dwarves.  24 engravings of laboring/travelling and the foundation. 23 of Sunny's being mayor. 2 of Sunny hugging cats. 3 of dwarves because it's the symbol of the local govt. 5 of Backpit engraving masterpeices.  2 of other dwarf masterpieces (a shirt and a statue). 1 of a dwarf killing a goblin.

31 of elves (Backpit did 30, so creativity and art have nothing to do with this).  27 images of elves being killed by goblins. (STILL NUMBER ONE!) (You'd really think that after the 8,000,000th elf that was murdered, they'd learn to just build some @$*%ing walls around their communes.)  One of elf-on-elf violence. Surprisingly, there was also two of a elf SHOOTING A GOBLIN!  I guess she really IS a creative dwarf.  There is also one of a elf ripping a human's leg.

8 of giants because they are my Civ's symbol.  (That's much more than Backpit did.)

3 of goblins.  1 engraving of a goblin that was just killed in the last ambush. 1 engraving of a goblin "withering" in a trap. 1 engraving of a dwarf caravan guard killing a goblin. (Stop kill stealing!)

1 engraving of a kobold that ran away with a pig tail sock from a dead elf in that same elf caravan attack the camel Backpit engraved died in.

1 engraving of a human getting killed by a goblin.

5 of artifacts. 2 engraving of "Fadescalded", the artifact alexandrite idol (and my first artifact).  Another 3 of Burstallied the artifact earring.  Oddly, not of any other artifacts, and I have 9.

1 of a dog getting butchered.

1 of a donkey being killed in an ambush early on.  Probably a caravan's.

8 of shapes.  One of diamonds. One of a blazing sun. (Hateful Sun!) 3 of clouds (odd, she doesn't even like clouds). One of a square. One of earrings (not the artifact).  One of crosses.

One of a lamprey.

One of alders, one of a ceder.


=================================

The "creative" work of Zincroots

Zincroots is creative, but has no artistic score.  She likes sandy clay, Zinc, bone opal, Glumprong, wolf leather, horn, the color beige, bolts, cages, mini-forges, muck roots, and loves to drink ale.  She hates spiders.

She has no relationship with Sunny, the mayor.
 
74(!) of dwarves. (Ugh, I somehow had missed some on my go through, and miscounted, and wound up having to recount about a half dozen times... I'm too bleary-eyed for this...) 21 of founding. 27 of the mayor's ascent. 1 of the mayor admiring a goblet. 9 were symbols of local government. 5 of other engravings, all by Backpit. (One engraving called "The Guilty Powers" was celebrating "The Carnage of Lard".  Oh, how much carnage you can inflict with lard... but the guilt you bear for weilding such power afterwards...) 4 were of other masterpieces, including a rhyolite mechanism, a rhyolite piccolo, mica statue, and a pig tail hood.  3 were of the dwarf who crafted an artifact (not the artifact itself), two were of Fadescalded, one of "Groupedzealot", the zinc shield.  3 were of dwarves settling, one depicted "Brasscask" traveling to my fort, one had "Tortise" laboring, the other had "Tiara" surrounded by dwarves who welcomed her.  1 was simply of a dwarf.

23 of elves.  (I guess she isn't so fascinated with goblins slaughtering elves?) 2 were shooting of a goblin by an elf. 2 were hot elf-on-elf killing. 1 was an elf injuring a human.  All others (18) were of goblins butchering elves wholesale.

2 humans.  One killing a goblin, the other being killed by a goblin.

2 goblins.  Both were being killed by dwarven caravan guards.

2 Giants, symbols of my civ, the Godly Tombs.

3 of Fadescalded.  (not counting the two of the dwarf making Fadescalded.  MAN that artifact is popular.)

2 of dogs.  One screaming, the other falling.  Both being butchered.

1 of a mule getting killed in a goblin ambush.

10 of shapes. One hateful sun. 2 thick crescents. One narrow crescent. 2 of squares. One of diamonds. One of a cage. One of crosses. One of a cloud.

One of bolts, which she likes.

One of spiders, which she hates.



OK, I think that's enough for one post... next time, I do a different floor.  It's worth noting that my control and both my high creativity engravers have about a 20% chance of engraving founding, and another 20% chance of engraving the mayor's ascent, although the mayor was a more popular choice each time.

[Aspgren]

I want you to know I admire the effort you're putting into this.

[smjjames]

You can generally get a rough mix when you have over 100 dwarves, but even then its a roll of the die.

Anyways, having artistic ability definetly seems to help with variety and perhaps more descriptive engravings

For the child labor, I've had them do labor such as workshop stuff, they still won't do general dwarf stuff like hauling and building stuff. I believe I've gotten one to do smooth flooring, not sure about actually engraving.

[NW_Kohaku]

I want you to know I admire the effort you're putting into this.

No offense, but... YA DARN WELL BETTER! Geez, what did I get myself into? I've been doing this for four hours straight...

Oh well, the top floor of this monstrosity:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

====================================

The crude, rudimentary masterpieces of Burdock

Burdock is my low art, low creativity dwarf.

Is only a passing acquaintance of a couple dozen dwarves.  He has no friends. (Loser.) 

Likes siltstone, steel, black pyrope, pig tail cloth, the color orange, picks, armor stands, mules, drinking dwarven beer, and mog juice.  Also hates spiders.

69 dorfs.  25 of founding.  24 of the mayor's election.  3 of her liking things. (1 of goblets, 1 of cabinets, 1 of bolts.) 7 of Backpit's engravings. (I should mention here that Backpit's last name translates to "Riderorbs"... which gets kind of funny the more tired you get, and if you have a bit of a dirty mind.) 4 of other masterpieces, including one other engraving, one dog skull totem, one pig tail vest, and one door. 5 were symbols of local government. 1 was of a caravan guard killing a goblin.

25 elves.  4 of elves killing golbins.  1 of elf-on-elf action.  21 of gobbos proving that they aren't the weakest of the civs.

2 humans. One killing another human.  One killing an elf.

2 goblins.  One dying in a trap, the other to a caravan guard.

1 kobold.  He's stealing that pig tail sock again.  <raises fists to the air> SOOOOOOOCK!

5 giants, all symbols of Godly Tombs.

6 artifacts: 3 Fadescaldeds. 3 Busttallieds.

1 dog, butchered, shown falling.

6 shapes or animals.  1 olman. 1 blazing sun. 2 quarry bushes (burdock was a farmer). 1 cave fish. 1 armor stand.

3 mules, which he likes. No cave spiders, which he hates.

====================================

The terrifying tale of the tempestuous Tsundere's trials

Close acquaintance of backpit, but not Sunny.

Likes native aluminum, trifle pewter, melanite, ivory, cave lobster shell, grates, likes eating dwarven ale, dwarven sugar, and pig tail seeds.  Hates fire snakes.

60 dwarves. 21 foundations. 21 mayors. 4 symbols of government. 2 Backpit engravings. 7 other masterpieces (two were of masterpiece meals by my cook.  one was a masterwork barrel made by Sunny.)  1 was of a dead dwarf, who dehydrated when I locked him in his workshop when he demanded cave spider silk in the second year, when I didn't have any.

30 elves.  5 elves killing goblins.  5 were elf on elf action.  only 20 were goblins killing elves.

4 humans.  2 getting killed by other humans.  2 getting killed by goblins.

5 goblins.  4 getting killed by traps.  1 getting killed by a caravan guard.

1 dead camel, from that elf caravan that was attacked.

3 giants, all symbols of my civ.

4 artifacts: 1 Fadescalded, 3 Burstallieds.  (I have other artifacts, you know...)

2 images of cave wheat.  (Maybe because she likes dwarven beer?)

1 dog screaming because it is being butchered.  (Seriously, I think my dwarves have issues with these dogs...)

6 shapes: 1 image of rope reeds. 1 wave. 1 kobold bulb. 1 crescent moon. 1 cloud. 1 willow.

4 fire snakes, which she hates.

[smjjames]

I'm not sure that his previous profession had anything to do with the quarry bush since all of the ones so far have a few engravings of plants, whether they are farmed plants or trees.

Edit: Except for zincroots, but still...

[NW_Kohaku]

Ugh, OK, that's enough for now...

Basically, this looks to be fairly consistant so far...

The differences between the low and high creativity and art dwarves have been fairly minor.  All I can really see different, besides what their "likes" and "dislikes" are, is that creative types tend to like putting in more shapes or random plants or animals, but they still overwhelmingly engrave either founding, the mayor, or one of the 8 million random seiges where elves got slaughtered.

[madjoe5]

Ugh, OK, that's enough for now...

Basically, this looks to be fairly consistant so far...

The differences between the low and high creativity and art dwarves have been fairly minor.  All I can really see different, besides what their "likes" and "dislikes" are, is that creative types tend to like putting in more shapes or random plants or animals, but they still overwhelmingly engrave either founding, the mayor, or one of the 8 million random seiges where elves got slaughtered.

Well, I also concluded that creativity and artsiness don't have an effect on this type of thing, yet. Something like this should be in the suggestions, regarding newer installments regarding dwarf attitudes and attributes.

[NW_Kohaku]

OK, I'll just do one more of these, Archy, and leave Blues and Grey out of this.  Archy has only 1 imagination, "Interested only in facts and the real world", which is essentially as low as it gets.  If there's no change here, then creativity having an effect is either debunked, or it has such a subtle effect that it's not worth mentioning.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

====================================


The documentation of the engravings created by the creatively sterile dwarf known as "Archy"

Archy has a wife ("Colorsands") who recently gave birth to a son.  He also has a pet cow.  Aside from that, he has 45 passing acquaintances.  He does not know Sunny, but is a passing acquaintance of Backpit.

He likes Bauxite, Nickle Silver, Dendritic Agate, amber, the color pink, idols, enormous corkscrews, cows, and two-humped camels (those one-humped camels can die in a fire!), and likes drinking dwarven beer.  He hates rats.

Of 121 engravings:

61 dwarves. 21 Foundings. 26 Sunny becoming Mayors, plus 1 Sunny holding a cat, 1 of her holding up a bolt. (Really has a thing for Sunny, doesn't he? He doesn't even know her... is he a stalker?!)  5 symbols of govt. 4 of Backpit making masterpiece engravings. 1 other masterpiece, a masterwork fish bone bolt.  2 of other dwarves immigrating.  1 of a dwarf killing a goblin.

32 elves.  Let's just assume they all relate to some random guy I never met getting killed (which I hear can lead to dying).

5 goblins.  3 dying in traps.  2 dying to guards.

2 kobolds.  They are both stealing a single pine arrow. (NOOOOOOO! Why was I so foolish as to leave spent ammo that I can't even melt down for steel out in the open where kobolds could make off with it?!)

7 giants.

3 dogs. two fetal, one falling.  All butchered.

3 images of the artifact Burstallied, and NONE of Fadescalded.

4 of things he likes. 2 images of corkscrews, 2 images of camels. (0 of cows, even though the cow was right there as inspiration...)

1 of the thing he hates (rats).

3 (only) of general shapes: A hateful sun, a cloud, and a mountain.

====================================

Now then, when I said that I noticed an increase in the number of shapes, keep in mind that things like simply a dwarf (with no story) are essentially a shape, as well.

I think it would probably be best to catagorize this into what sort of motivations there would be to each one...

One group is "History", one group could be considered "Heraldry" (although this may just be a part of history, or only used when there isn't enough history to shove history aside), one group is "Preferences", and one group is "Shapes".

History is all that crap about someone getting killed by someone else, completely without context.  Heraldry is the symbol of whatever town or civ, and may possibly include the founding of a city.  Preferences are simply when a dwarf draws lots of pictures of cats because she likes cats, or lots of pictures of spiders, because she hates spiders.  Shapes are when they simply draw crosses or clouds or mountains.

Now, I think it's fairly safe to conclude that when a dwarf wants to draw history or heraldry, there's no effective difference whether it comes from a creative or artistic dwarf.  History includes any local history (like elves being killed by the thousands), as well as fortress history.

==============

Further experimentation:  I think this would be best...  Preferably, one could create a world that stops worldgen at year 1, so that there's basically no history whatsoever.  Just keep aborting embark until you get some people with high art or creativity as well as low art or creativity.  Set them up to have legendary mining and engraving, and just go dig a few rooms, make some doors to lock them in, and see what they do with NO history to work with.  Either it will all be "Founding", or it will all be shapes and preferences.  If art or creativity brings out shapes, maybe you'll see a bigger showing of art in this test.  Otherwise, you'll see NOTHING but founding, like what the OP complained about.

I might be convinced to do this myself a little later, but I really don't want to do more experiments right now.