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[TomiTapio]

The embark dwarves and migrants have zero or near zero social skills despite being 80-130 years old and having lived in a community for all those years.
 
I think it would be more realistic that all adult dwarves have at least novice skill level in conversation, speaking (or is that public speaking/leadership?), lying, consoling, flattery and intent judging. One might suppose that dwarven settlements do have the occasional party (or talking to the psychiatrist, who I'd rename the "counselor").

"Great, another cheese maker who has not spoken to anyone in a hundred years."

[Josephus]

The embark dwarves and migrants have zero or near zero social skills despite being 80-130 years old and having lived in a community for all those years.

This is because rather than sending out their best and their brightest to go out and colonize places where they might get eaten by wild pigs, Dwarven Central Command prefers sending the tower-dwelling introverts. On one hand, they might become pig food. On the other hand, they might actually get lucky and establish a fort good enough that the popular dwarves will want to move in.

[TomiTapio]

This is because rather than sending out their best and their brightest to go out and colonize places where they might get eaten by wild pigs, Dwarven Central Command prefers sending the tower-dwelling introverts. On one hand, they might become pig food. On the other hand, they might actually get lucky and establish a fort good enough that the popular dwarves will want to move in.

Some cases you get _all_ of the parent civ's people migrating in, if they are only a handful.

Really, how many players invest in social skills on embark? Four levels of axe-forging or four levels of "There, there."
The embark seven are young elites on a mission to become legends.

[NW_Kohaku]

I put some social skills on some of my starting seven (specifically, the dwarf I think most suited for expedition leader, and sometimes, one for expedition leader, and one for the accountant/trader).  You only really need one guy with armorer or weaponsmithing, and things like digging are going to shoot up so fast there's no real point in putting stuff like that on them.

That said, the entire skill thing is kind of silly, considering as I've never had a child who wasn't either a whirling social butterfly or a legendary farmer by the time they grew up.  Skills are so easy to gain that the only way to be an adult with no skills is to have either been on permanent hauler duty, or to have been grown in a vat as a fully-formed dwarf.  (The latter of which is basically the case.)

[Pilsu]

Social skills in general could use a rework. Even the introverts become masterful in the art of persuasion and idle chit chat over time.

[Duke Drake]

Skills are so easy to gain that the only way to be an adult with no skills is to have either been on permanent hauler duty, or...

"Would you like some soap, Miner?"
"How about you, Farmer?"
"Axe-Lord, you look like you could use some-- OW!"
Urist McUrist, Soap-hauler, has improved at conversation.

[ctrlfrk]

They embark with no social skills, and immediately set to work constructing a turing complete magma machine...
I think they're IT dwarves...

[madk]

Perhaps the current on-embark skills system should stay as it is, but the social skills would be part of a separate system where you'd get a certain number of skill points to distribute across them, but these at no cost to the total embark points.

[NW_Kohaku]

No, people don't buy social skills for the same reason you don't buy things like mining - no point in spending your precious points on something you can easily build up quickly if you wanted.

A one-tile meeting area will put your otherwise completely unskilled dwarves at legendary status for social skills within a season.

... Kind of makes me wonder what they talk about if they litterally stand about a dining room with only a couple tables and chairs in it for a few months on end with only occasional darts out of the room for the food and booze stockpiles next door...

"Hmm... looks like the dust speck flew on the microcline table after all... I guess Urist wins this round.  She'd be up 20 Dwarfbucks, if we had any money."

[Kilo24]

No, people don't buy social skills for the same reason you don't buy things like mining - no point in spending your precious points on something you can easily build up quickly if you wanted.

That's more because it's not useful, though the cost is certainly a large part.

The big thing here is that it doesn't matter too much at what social skill they start at as a gameplay view, since they're not that useful and if you really wanted to, you could just give them no jobs for a season or two to max them out.

I'd like to see a more balanced skill valuation, I guess.  One where cheesemaking isn't as costly as weaponsmithing.  It wouldn't completely solve the problem, but it would alleviate it.

Hmm... maybe, in addition to the skills you buy, give them a bit of free experience in random skills, which tend to have a high probability of being social.

[Lord Darkstar]

No, people don't buy social skills for the same reason you don't buy things like mining - no point in spending your precious points on something you can easily build up quickly if you wanted.

A one-tile meeting area will put your otherwise completely unskilled dwarves at legendary status for social skills within a season.

... Kind of makes me wonder what they talk about if they litterally stand about a dining room with only a couple tables and chairs in it for a few months on end with only occasional darts out of the room for the food and booze stockpiles next door...

"Hmm... looks like the dust speck flew on the microcline table after all... I guess Urist wins this round.  She'd be up 20 Dwarfbucks, if we had any money."

They are dwarves. They are probably comparing the tastes of all the alcohols they've tasted, including the (guessed at) effects of storing/aging the alcohol in different types of wood or metal barrels, and stored at different depths in the fortress.  And they are probably recounting all the legendary deeds their ancestors and clans have done to each other--- "Did you know that I had a great uncle that got both his legs and his arms chopped off during the siege of 872 on the mountainhome! My great uncle Urist McUrist, he didn't let a simple thing like missing both his arms and legs stop him from killing goblins. He grabbed his broken battle axe's handle in his mouth, and beat 108 more goblins to death in a beserk fury, until he died of de-alcoholization. My uses that axe handle to this day to beat us kids whenever we sneak off to talk to them elf and humans that come a-trading. Says she doesn't want us to get any un-dwarvenly ideas. See that? There's a scar from that axe handle right there!"