As much as I appreciate the sentiment, I think Retro beats me by a mile, since he has all 190 of his dwarves married, and they all have no less than grand bedrooms.
All I can say in response is that my fortress is very space-efficient (although I will definitely start making better rooms for my dwarves in the future, and simply shut off the economy), and that I have a very nice zoo/statue garden/dining hall/waterfall room.
Please forgive the derailment *hides*
All glory, as well deserved, to the creator of Undergrotto, which is without equal and an incredible masterwork of engineering, creativity, and patience. But to be a dwarf, and live and work as a dwarf, I don't see his philosophy shining through in the eyes of his dwarves the way yours promises too. In fact, a closer look at the save suggests that his dwarves actually live under fairly normal (read tragic) conditions.
Highlights of why being a dwarf under your philosophy is a glorious thing:
"If someone starts with a preference for green glass, then I don't care what skills they have, they're best suited for working with green glass"
"Part of the challenge of the game is ensuring that no single one of your dwarves ever dies, and that they all get meaningful work"
"Anything less is just failing in your duties as a dwarven overseer/deity"
Versus Retro's fortress focused approach:
"The fort is, as you might guess, rather far from efficient – dwarves routinely walk 300-500 steps to the dining pod, or the stalactite apartments, or the ship, and gods forbid if they ever need to go outside."
As of the posted undergrotto save, there are 23 dead dwarves in undergrotto and 105 still alive. So more than 1 out of every 6 dwarves to ever try and live there has died. There are grand or better rooms for 190 married couples, as well as more rooms for the nobility, but there have never been even 130 dwarves that have lived within undergrotto at any point in its history, let alone 380 happily married dwarves and their children.
And actually, not all of the dwarves there at the time of the save are married. 8 are fully single and another 10 are lovers but not yet married. There are only 5 underage dwarves across the whole fort. Marriage and children seem to be very important to dwarves. But of the married dwarves, 12 of them are widows or widowers. And one of the dead is a baby who's mother and father are both alive to grieve, for all that they now have another, still living child which surely comforts them. So there are only 35 married couples where both members of the bond are alive, and one of those has a lost baby to grieve. Thus of all the marriages that have existed in Undergrotto, just over 1 in 4 has been severed by death but left a living spouse behind to suffer from that.
I was not able to find anything as I looked at the living dwarves and their skills to suggest that an effort was made to match a dwarf's employment to their work preferences. It would be amazing to see this - who does this? I believe that level of attention and cooperation to each dwarf themself is incredibly rare. But such a thing I think would mean a great deal to a dwarf for every moment of their life, even though we do not get to see hard coded proof of this in their thoughts.
Thus, Retro's incredible, awesome creation is an architectural marvel, an incredible display of focused patience and planning skill. And I feel deep respect for him when I admire it. But it is not a place of great dwarven joy and self actualization as seen through the eyes of a dwarf living there, nor does it make any claim to be. It is what it is, and that is why, were I a dwarf, I would emigrate from any number of squares away to come to -your- fortress, where it sounds like a dwarf can become the best and most fulfilled dwarf he or she could possibly ever be.
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Topic: A way of dealing with Useless migrants... (Read 2638 times)