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[Firehound]

We all know that there is now rudimentary genetics in Dwarf fortress for all creatures, including dwarves. While there is plenty of talk of selectively breeding cows and horses and almost any other animal, has anyone considered trying a dwarven eugenics program, to create a society of super-dwarves?

I'm going to HFS for thinking of this aren't I?

[Retro]

in b4 godwins law

If it was possible, few players would have the patience to wait for more than one generation of dwarves to grow up. That said, I don't think it is possible, as some dwarves just refuse to get married (be it to certain dwarves or sometimes at all). You can't force them to have kids with each other, either.

[SpacemanSpiff]

Or you could try a challenge, and set up a reverse-eugenics program: breed a race of couch-potato idiots!  Select your brightest and best for the military, and send them on impossible missions.  The surviving dwarves will naturally be your weakest/clumsiest/flimsiest specimens.  Let them sit idle so they lose even more attributes, while simultaneously having plenty of free time to breed with each other. 

[Lightning4]

Another monkey wrench in those plans is that dwarves can gain or lose muscle over the course of a fort, making it a bit more difficult to breed through that method. Dwarves may be predisposed to gaining muscle faster, but it's hard to tell.
You could probably still breed for body size and height, or even appearance.

Modding gets around the breeding time, and you could probably combat the marriage problem by keeping the dwarves you want to breed in constant contact. It's not a guarantee, but at least a few marriages should eventually happen if you have a large enough pool of dwarves to draw from. Only problem is, sitting around will probably make these dwarves lose muscle and gain fat.
I'm leaving the ways of dealing with the unwanted dwarves to others, I'd rather stay clear of the HFS.

[o_O[WTFace]]

Stat gain and loss can only go to a certain % of starting stats ( think 50-200 ), so some 'genetic' stat level must be tracked somewhere.  I assume thats what would be passed down, assuming anything is passed down (might be random, like castes). 

[truckman1]

Another monkey wrench in those plans is that dwarves can gain or lose muscle over the course of a fort, making it a bit more difficult to breed through that method. Dwarves may be predisposed to gaining muscle faster, but it's hard to tell.
You could probably still breed for body size and height, or even appearance.

Modding gets around the breeding time, and you could probably combat the marriage problem by keeping the dwarves you want to breed in constant contact. It's not a guarantee, but at least a few marriages should eventually happen if you have a large enough pool of dwarves to draw from. Only problem is, sitting around will probably make these dwarves lose muscle and gain fat.
I'm leaving the ways of dealing with the unwanted dwarves to others, I'd rather stay clear of the HFS.

miasma and/or magma showers? Hey, someone had to say it.

[Kogan Loloklam]

Does mentioning Godwin's law count as a violation of Godwin's law?

I think it does, since it is an indirect reference.

[Kholint]

That said, I don't think it is possible, as some dwarves just refuse to get married (be it to certain dwarves or sometimes at all). You can't force them to have kids with each other, either.

You can't force dwarves to marry (though you can likely encourage it by using burrows* and meeting zones), but assuming they pick partners randomly or from the best fit of everyone they know, you can just 'remove' the undesirables from the system altogether. Any dwarf fortress player will already have a hundred different ideas on how to best sterilise the unfit dwarves!

*what a fascinating idea: if you separate dwarves out using burrows, could different burrow-specific gene pools develop (either naturally or artificially selected for, using magma and atom smashers and the like) over time? Could you engineer an eloi/morlock type situation? Disgusting, ugly engineer and pump operator dwarves working down below, fair, weak and idle plant gatherers up above?

[Phmcw]

You can make a spartan fortress. Kid that are weak are slaughtered. Only the srongest adult survive ; with the geneic system as it work now, that should grant you pretty strong dwarf... if you do it for 500 in game years.

[darkflagrance]

You can make a spartan fortress. Kid that are weak are slaughtered. Only the srongest adult survive ; with the geneic system as it work now, that should grant you pretty strong dwarf... if you do it for 500 in game years.

Mod the dwarves to live for like 10 years, and then regularly let adults die after they have kids to keep the population down, along with careful burrow arrangement and 1-tile meeting zones. It will be hilarious to see the Aryan super-dwarves by the time the fort falls.

[Malrin]

Make a monarchy with inbreeding royalty living in a burrow in a golden castle or high rise, which towers over the filthy peasants.

Should a noble (or anyone with royal blood) immigrate to your fortress, and they have good genes, they can join the royal family.

[AngleWyrm]

Two classes, the Plebeians and the Patricians. The Plebes live near the surface, and go outdoors to gather crops and cut lumber. The Patricians live deeper in, and never have to surface. They handle the more aristicratic jobs like Jeweller and Craftsdwarf.

It wouldn't need to be forced pairings, only segregation into desirable vs undesirable. Ugly dwarves, dwarves that are sickly, and dwarves with mental handicaps are relegated to the surface burrow. Pretty dwarves, dwarves with no physical or mental deformities, and dwarves with desirable features are welcomed into the depths of the earth.

Sorting jobs is an issue: A Broker must interact with the outside world, and could therefore be a plebe's position.

[Kholint]

Make a monarchy with inbreeding royalty living in a burrow in a golden castle or high rise, which towers over the filthy peasants.

Should a noble (or anyone with royal blood) immigrate to your fortress, and they have good genes, they can join the royal family.

What would be perhaps more interesting is to see whether the pampered nature of noble lifestyle means that the noble gene pool over time would stagnate* (as you could argue the real life monarchies have) or stay roughly the same - and would the peasant gene pool adapt to their environment? How much does a dwarf's traits affect his or her's survivability? How much of an effect does natural selection have on dwarves? (If most of your deaths come from mega project-related magma deaths or artifact tantrums, I'd guess not a lot - but it's always better to do an experiment than wildly speculate!)

*I'd love more meaningful (or more obvious?) traits to be added to DF - what about haemophilia? Allergic reactions to common or not so common foodstuffs? Catering for a plump-helmet allergic mayor would be an interesting challenge (assuming the AI was bright enough to avoid eating it - we don't want another burning-sock type incident).

[Kogan Loloklam]

Creatures with special dietary needs could end up being an interesting offshoot of food allergies. Your mayor is an elf? Well he has to have a sunberry a year or die!

[MetalSlimeHunt]

If Toady further developes genetics to a realistic level, we could let the game generate a few million years and see the result of dwarven evolution! Or everyone gets eaten by HFS, I guess.

But considering that we have slaver elfs and dwarfs who can will farm sentiant creatures to slaughter them and sell their components for money, I would say eugenics is arguably a step up on the karma meter.

For the time being a euginics program seems impossible, though. For once, there isn't enough authoritarian control over dwarven society to suit our needs.