Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[EspritFort]

Is it just me or does having dwarfs being friends with each other destabilize the whole fort? Because I already lost 3 forts to tantrum spirals initiated by one or two dwarfs dying. Because he/they always had a lot a friends, suddenly a lot of other dwarfs went very unhappy.

Does not building a meeting hall prevent dwarfs from making friends? Because if it does, I won't build one anymore. Not having 150 dwarfs go berzerk over the deaths of 2 kind of outweights the benefits of a meeting area. 

[Psieye]

3 comments:

1) Make your meeting area huge, and there'll be less social contact between dwarves. This just slows the process down.

2) Idlers greatly speed up the befriending process. Keep everyone busy.

3) Dwarves can tank 1~2 friend deaths if you've infused them with ecstasy beforehand. Legendary dining halls, legendary bedrooms, legendary meals, lots of dwarven art (statues, chains, wells, doors, bridges, depots, whatever) to admire, mist generators.

[EspritFort]

3) Dwarves can tank 1~2 friend deaths if you've infused them with ecstasy beforehand. Legendary dining halls, legendary bedrooms, legendary meals, lots of dwarven art (statues, chains, wells, doors, bridges, depots, whatever) to admire, mist generators.

I know, but it just doesn't seem worth the effort if there's a way to not have them befriend each other in the first place.

[Psieye]

Depending on playstyle, it takes more effort to make sure nobody befriends each other than to set up the ecstasy system. If you have no meeting zone, dwarves will declare your old wagon's location (regardless of if it's dismantled or not) to be their meeting zone and will start befriending.

[petersohn]

Having the dwarves interact with each other has advantages too. It increases their social skills. It doesn't make them ultra-mighty in the new version as it did in 40d, but I guess it still increases some attributes. But yeah, best to keep dwarves occupied. And happy, of course. If you don't have economy, it never hurts if everyone has a legendary bedroom.

[EspritFort]

Depending on playstyle, it takes more effort to make sure nobody befriends each other than to set up the ecstasy system. If you have no meeting zone, dwarves will declare your old wagon's location (regardless of if it's dismantled or not) to be their meeting zone and will start befriending.

I always move underground and seal the exit, they can't reach that site 

[Proteus]

The only way to prevent too many friendships from happening would be,
to split your population into several subgroups,
each with their own assigned burrow
and each with their own dining/meeting hall,
that cannot be accessed from any other burrow.

This way they will most likely only make friends within their own subgroup,
preventing dwarves from other subgroups from tantruming if a dwarf from one subgroup dies/gets killed.

Of course this would also be rather micromanagement-intensive

[jei]

Is it just me or does having dwarfs being friends with each other destabilize the whole fort? Because I already lost 3 forts to tantrum spirals initiated by one or two dwarfs dying. Because he/they always had a lot a friends, suddenly a lot of other dwarfs went very unhappy.

Does not building a meeting hall prevent dwarfs from making friends? Because if it does, I won't build one anymore. Not having 150 dwarfs go berzerk over the deaths of 2 kind of outweights the benefits of a meeting area. 

Build the water mist system over the meeting hall. Should work miracles.

[kapusta]

Is it just me or does having dwarfs being friends with each other destabilize the whole fort? Because I already lost 3 forts to tantrum spirals initiated by one or two dwarfs dying. Because he/they always had a lot a friends, suddenly a lot of other dwarfs went very unhappy.

Does not building a meeting hall prevent dwarfs from making friends? Because if it does, I won't build one anymore. Not having 150 dwarfs go berzerk over the deaths of 2 kind of outweights the benefits of a meeting area. 

Not having a meeting zone indeed works, and I'm very surprised to see people always giving the standard "large meeting zone/multiple meeting zones/mist generator" advice, when not having a meeting zone or a dining room in the first place is the best thing you can possibly do to prevent friendships. I have started using this technique since my fourth or fifth fort and never had a tantrum spiral since.

Think of it this way: socialising increases happiness, so in times of peace you'll see your dwarves being ecstatic all the time. This is great of course, but when something goes wrong, it's much harder to stop the happiness loss because of the constant deaths of friends. Not having friends means your dwarves stay at a constant 100-120 happiness and rarely have mood swings.

[Urist Imiknorris]

As previously mentioned, mist generators are beautiful things for improvinga dwarf's mood. A dining room furnished with enough valuable things to raise it to the highest value ranking (Royal, worth 10,000☼ or more) coincides with massive happiness gain for anyone eating in it. Gold statues are the easiest way to quickly add room value.

[EspritFort]

Is it just me or does having dwarfs being friends with each other destabilize the whole fort? Because I already lost 3 forts to tantrum spirals initiated by one or two dwarfs dying. Because he/they always had a lot a friends, suddenly a lot of other dwarfs went very unhappy.

Does not building a meeting hall prevent dwarfs from making friends? Because if it does, I won't build one anymore. Not having 150 dwarfs go berzerk over the deaths of 2 kind of outweights the benefits of a meeting area. 

Not having a meeting zone indeed works, and I'm very surprised to see people always giving the standard "large meeting zone/multiple meeting zones/mist generator" advice, when not having a meeting zone or a dining room in the first place is the best thing you can possibly do to prevent friendships. I have started using this technique since my fourth or fifth fort and never had a tantrum spiral since.

Think of it this way: socialising increases happiness, so in times of peace you'll see your dwarves being ecstatic all the time. This is great of course, but when something goes wrong, it's much harder to stop the happiness loss because of the constant deaths of friends. Not having friends means your dwarves stay at a constant 100-120 happiness and rarely have mood swings.

This finally allows me to have a decent military. I always was kind of reluctant to send dwarfs into battle when ~2 deaths would already mean the end of my fortress and I could simply use traps instead.

Without friends I now don't have to worry about them suffering a few losses. Got too many dwarfs anyway ^^

Thanks

[bluephoenix]

Or you could just give each dwarf a 3x3 room with a bed in it, that should prevent them from talking in the meeting area.
Make sure you make a zone instead of using furniture to make the meeting area to prevent partys, thats what I allways do.

[kapusta]

This finally allows me to have a decent military. I always was kind of reluctant to send dwarfs into battle when ~2 deaths would already mean the end of my fortress and I could simply use traps instead.

Without friends I now don't have to worry about them suffering a few losses. Got too many dwarfs anyway ^^

Thanks

Actually, this is the one exception to the "no meeting zones" approach. I haven't investigated it fully, but I think dwarves make friends while training in the barracks (since barracks basically act as a meeting zone that you can't remove). So while the deaths of your soldiers won't make the rest of your fortress go mad with grief, it's still important to watch out for tantrums of military dwarves, for obvious reasons.

[EspritFort]

This finally allows me to have a decent military. I always was kind of reluctant to send dwarfs into battle when ~2 deaths would already mean the end of my fortress and I could simply use traps instead.

Without friends I now don't have to worry about them suffering a few losses. Got too many dwarfs anyway ^^

Thanks

Actually, this is the one exception to the "no meeting zones" approach. I haven't investigated it fully, but I think dwarves make friends while training in the barracks (since barracks basically act as a meeting zone that you can't remove). So while the deaths of your soldiers won't make the rest of your fortress go mad with grief, it's still important to watch out for tantrums of military dwarves, for obvious reasons.

Haha, thanks for the warning. Should be fixed by having a large amount of different small squads.

[kapusta]

Yea, you'll have to figure out for yourself how to best keep the military happy as this is a somewhat different question. Personally, I haven't had too much trouble as I'm rather cautious and rely more on traps. But, just in case tantrums do happen, the halls leading into my fortresses and all corridors next to the barracks are usually lined with raising drawbridges for atom-smashing tantruming military dwarves.