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[KillerClowns]

Christ, are you dwarves or are you elves? If you think Hell has too many demons, then youkill them till the population reaches an acceptable number.

Like, say, only 14 billion or so?

Why cart off adamantine?  Mine Slade!!! (I heard there was a bug involving carving ramps you could do this with)

You can destroy slade floors with channeling, but if there's a wall beneath it, said will remain unscathed.  You can shorten the path from a Demonic Fortress to Hell proper with this, but you can't produce so much as a granule of usable slade.

But yes, some luck is still needed for some less nasty demons to be generated.

Hmm actually there's a question - are the demon types constant within a world? So if you breach hell in one fortress, can you breach hell in another fortress in the same world and be confident that the types of demons you'll get is the same as in your first?

Depends on what you mean by "constant."  I suspect, though I cannot prove, that demonic populations are not homogenous, so you might never encounter a given type of demon in a given site.  But no new demon types are generated after worldgen.

[DarthCloakedDwarf]

Christ, are you dwarves or are you elves? If you think Hell has too many demons, then youkill them till the population reaches an acceptable number.

What's infinity minus one? Minus ten? Minus a thousand? Minus a million?

Infinity is still infinity.

[PopeRichardCorey]

Christ, are you dwarves or are you elves? If you think Hell has too many demons, then youkill them till the population reaches an acceptable number.

What's infinity minus one? Minus ten? Minus a thousand? Minus a million?

Infinity is still infinity.

But it's a smaller infinity.  The ultimate goal of any proper dwarf is to whittle down the infinite until it's manageable.  This endeavor has produced some familiar results: Planepacked was an attempt to model and comprehend infinity; Dwarves have learned how to use an entire tree to make the tiniest of objects and leave no remains; they build statues of flies; quantum stockpiling; even mining itself is a reflection of this drive.

[KillerClowns]

Christ, are you dwarves or are you elves? If you think Hell has too many demons, then youkill them till the population reaches an acceptable number.

What's infinity minus one? Minus ten? Minus a thousand? Minus a million?

Infinity is still infinity.

That reminds me.  Interesting discovery regarding demonic numbers, and whether or not they're finite.  When I released the legions of hell, several earned names by slaying elven merchants and dwarves.  These entities, in the Legends screen, had birthdates; they were not born at the time I released the infernal legions, but rather, had ages around a few hundred years or so.  This leads to two possibilities.
1.  Demons are "infinite" or, more accurately spawned, ex nihlo, like migrants and the starting seven dwarves, with "reasonable sounding" information.
2.  Demons are tracked like every animal and, by logical extension, finite.
Unless someone figures out a direct way to extract information regarding "unnumbered" populations, it's still all theorizing.  And it's all academic in any case, unless the "unnumbered" descriptor is forced, and their populations are not so vast as the exported data indicates.  EDIT: Call it a hunch, though, but I'm thinking the second.  Dwarf Fortress tracks everything.  There are a finite number of flies and rats, and I have little reason to believe this pattern ends at either ants or demons.  So I'd wager on the second, although it's merely an educated guess based on previously seen patterns.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

Christ, are you dwarves or are you elves? If you think Hell has too many demons, then youkill them till the population reaches an acceptable number.

What's infinity minus one? Minus ten? Minus a thousand? Minus a million?

Infinity is still infinity.

Oh, they're infinite?

Well, in that case, here's what you do.

You take a healthy swig of plump helmet wine, pick up your mushroom-wood training axe, pull your kitten leather helm firmly over your ears, and go kill demons until their population reaches an acceptable number.

[KillerClowns]

Shameless self promotion.  Finals week is almost over, and when it is, I'll be applying science to Hell itself.

[Canalan]

Christ, are you dwarves or are you elves? If you think Hell has too many demons, then youkill them till the population reaches an acceptable number.

What's infinity minus one? Minus ten? Minus a thousand? Minus a million?

Infinity is still infinity.

Oh, they're infinite?

Well, in that case, here's what you do.

You take a healthy swig of plump helmet man wine, pick up your mushroom-wood training axe, pull your kitten leather helm firmly over your ears, and go kill demons until their population reaches an acceptable number.

Fixed that for you!

[Kidiri]

That reminds me.  Interesting discovery regarding demonic numbers, and whether or not they're finite.  When I released the legions of hell, several earned names by slaying elven merchants and dwarves.  These entities, in the Legends screen, had birthdates; they were not born at the time I released the infernal legions, but rather, had ages around a few hundred years or so.  This leads to two possibilities.
1.  Demons are "infinite" or, more accurately spawned, ex nihlo, like migrants and the starting seven dwarves, with "reasonable sounding" information.
2.  Demons are tracked like every animal and, by logical extension, finite.
Unless someone figures out a direct way to extract information regarding "unnumbered" populations, it's still all theorizing.  And it's all academic in any case, unless the "unnumbered" descriptor is forced, and their populations are not so vast as the exported data indicates.  EDIT: Call it a hunch, though, but I'm thinking the second.  Dwarf Fortress tracks everything.  There are a finite number of flies and rats, and I have little reason to believe this pattern ends at either ants or demons.  So I'd wager on the second, although it's merely an educated guess based on previously seen patterns.

I've read that it's the second case: each species of demon outnumbers each species of creature, vermin or non-vermin.

Spoiler: source (click to show/hide)

exactly how many ARE in play at any given point? is there a cap on it?

A single Demon species outnumbers every nonvermin species, combined.
iirc, Demon species are listed as being 'unnumbered', that is normally only applied to highly numerous vermin like ants.
Also, my maths was wrong. I did a quick check; the largest number of vermin creatures that is not listed as 'unnumbered' is Flies, which average around 28,000,000 pop.
That's right, 28 million.
That means that there are, at least, 28 million of each species of demon.
One single demon species outnumbers every single non vermin creature on the entire world.
Together, all the demons outnumber every nondemon creature, combined. Pocket worlds have 20 demon species, that means a pocket world has more than 560 million demons.
A Large world, with it's 52 species, has more than one and a half billion demons.
And remember; that number isn't even minimum. It has to be more than that due to the 'unnumbered' status.
Demons outnumber ants.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

That reminds me.  Interesting discovery regarding demonic numbers, and whether or not they're finite.  When I released the legions of hell, several earned names by slaying elven merchants and dwarves.  These entities, in the Legends screen, had birthdates; they were not born at the time I released the infernal legions, but rather, had ages around a few hundred years or so.  This leads to two possibilities.
1.  Demons are "infinite" or, more accurately spawned, ex nihlo, like migrants and the starting seven dwarves, with "reasonable sounding" information.
2.  Demons are tracked like every animal and, by logical extension, finite.
Unless someone figures out a direct way to extract information regarding "unnumbered" populations, it's still all theorizing.  And it's all academic in any case, unless the "unnumbered" descriptor is forced, and their populations are not so vast as the exported data indicates.  EDIT: Call it a hunch, though, but I'm thinking the second.  Dwarf Fortress tracks everything.  There are a finite number of flies and rats, and I have little reason to believe this pattern ends at either ants or demons.  So I'd wager on the second, although it's merely an educated guess based on previously seen patterns.

I've read that it's the second case: each species of demon outnumbers each species of creature, vermin or non-vermin.

Spoiler: source (click to show/hide)

exactly how many ARE in play at any given point? is there a cap on it?

A single Demon species outnumbers every nonvermin species, combined.
iirc, Demon species are listed as being 'unnumbered', that is normally only applied to highly numerous vermin like ants.
Also, my maths was wrong. I did a quick check; the largest number of vermin creatures that is not listed as 'unnumbered' is Flies, which average around 28,000,000 pop.
That's right, 28 million.
That means that there are, at least, 28 million of each species of demon.
One single demon species outnumbers every single non vermin creature on the entire world.
Together, all the demons outnumber every nondemon creature, combined. Pocket worlds have 20 demon species, that means a pocket world has more than 560 million demons.
A Large world, with it's 52 species, has more than one and a half billion demons.
And remember; that number isn't even minimum. It has to be more than that due to the 'unnumbered' status.
Demons outnumber ants.

Eh... no. That was just speculation based on the fact that vermin are the most populous creatures with given numbers, and since demons are "unnumbered," even if they're finite it's safe to assume there are more. But, it doesn't really prove anything.

In any case, will someone build a cave-in gun already?

[Psieye]

But yes, some luck is still needed for some less nasty demons to be generated.

Hmm actually there's a question - are the demon types constant within a world? So if you breach hell in one fortress, can you breach hell in another fortress in the same world and be confident that the types of demons you'll get is the same as in your first?

Depends on what you mean by "constant."  I suspect, though I cannot prove, that demonic populations are not homogenous, so you might never encounter a given type of demon in a given site.  But no new demon types are generated after worldgen.

The experiment to test this:
1) Set worldgen to only have 1 demon type and generate.
2) Breach Hell in a fort.
3) Abanon Fort (epic stand-off is optional)
4) Breach Hell in 2nd fort on same world.
5) See if the demon is the same species as before.
6) Repeat steps 4 and 5 a few times just to be certain.

[Black]

What if unnumbered simply means "No one has bothered to count them."

[riznar]

Someone change Worldgen's bookkeeper settings then!

[darkflagrance]

The poor bookkeeper dwarf would die of old age before he got even a tenth of the way.

[trav]

Dude, the very topic is a spoiler >_<

a title like "is there too much hidden fun stuff(SPOILERS)" would have been more appropriate

[Randy Gnoman]

Really, it makes perfect sense for demons to be nigh-infinite.  Perhaps this diagram will explain things:



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