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[Lysabild]

Setting the pop cap to 0 does the same thing as embarking without a civ except two things:
1. Dwarves will still come to trade
2. You can change it to a higher number if you need migrants

(the first waves will always come)

I didn't want few dwarves I just only wanted dwarves that are my dwarves kids.

[Jeoshua]

Then set the pop cap to 0.  You'll still get the first 2 waves, after that it will be up to "nature" to take its course.

May I suggest a birthing creche, in which pregnant mothers are kept for 1 year, 9 months, until their babies can walk by themselves?  This will keep down on the usage of babies as meat shields, which can be very counterproductive to trying to grow a population normally.

[Lysabild]

Then set the pop cap to 0.  You'll still get the first 2 waves, after that it will be up to "nature" to take its course.

May I suggest a birthing creche, in which pregnant mothers are kept for 1 year, 9 months, until their babies can walk by themselves?  This will keep down on the usage of babies as meat shields, which can be very counterproductive to trying to grow a population normally.

I'm not sure what burning creche means, but if the pop cap is 0 will they not refuse to make kids because you're over the cap?

[Jeoshua]

No, there is a separate baby cap.  The pop cap only governs immigration.

A birthing creche is just a place for mommas to go and raise their younglings for a year.  Guarded, safe, provided for.

[Befenismor]

I set it to 0 and only got 1 migrant wave(3 dwarves). that wasn't fun at all.. I got owned by goblins.

Wait.. I can change it to a higher number without abandoning my fort?

FFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

[Jeoshua]

Yeah you can exit the game, change it, come back, and it works just fine.  It's a game-session setting, not a per-fort thing.

Similarly you can switch invaders on and off too.

I usually leave invaders off until I have everyone in an actual fort.  Never did make sense to me that the Goblins would know that 3x3 stairwell in the middle of nowhere was even there.  Now build a tower, and they will know.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Advanced World Generation parameters. No cavern layers. World history >4-5 years. Dead dorfs, 'cuz they don't hunt in worldgen.

[Reelyanoob]

Never did make sense to me that the Goblins would know that 3x3 stairwell in the middle of nowhere was even there.

Assume the goblin thieves and baby snatchers are everywhere in the world and it makes more sense. And they could follow/track caravans, so the lone goblins you get at the start could be intended to be like scouts.

[Jeoshua]

That would make sense, except in worldgen and legends you can clearly see it explicitly defined where the goblins are.  It's a situation of "psychic guards" actually.  The gobbos just path towards you, period.  Doesn't matter if they could possibly really know... they just DO.

So I turn off invasions until after the first caravan comes.  It makes far more sense to me that way.  Then that argument works, too, since it actually could happen that a lone gobbo scout comes across a caravan loaded for bear, and follows it to your little fortress.

Year 2 I build a tower, and the first scouts arrive.

Year 3 I build magma defenses and the sieges die.

[Rocky]

I spent the better part of this morning trying to get rid of the dwarf civs so I could go at it without migrants. I guess I should have just tried the pop cap->0 thing. Oh well. It was a fun modding experiment/experience for me.
To those who are interested, here's a little log of what happened:

First, I tried fiddling with the max age, setting it to 15:17.
However, this didn't seem to make any noticeable difference when checking the legends-- they still survived into the present. I realized that it wasn't sufficiently small to make the dwarves die out.
Then, I decided to make them incapable of survival so that they'd surely die out. I set the baby and child ages to around 100 and 200. This way, even if they lived reasonably long, they'd never grow up and therefore never breed. It was either that or remove the female caste to prevent breeding. Another alternative that crossed my mind later was to mod dwarves to not have heads. I'm sure that would prevent survival quite effectively.
Well, it certainly brought them to a satisfactory level of self destruction. So much, in fact, that every time I tried to generate a world, it was rejected.
After turning on the rejected world log, I found that it did so because the playable race was dead. Not only dead, but absolutely incapable of living.
"Alright then, Dwarf Fortress" I said to myself. "How about this curve ball?"
I went to the entities file and moved the playable race tag from dwarf to elf. I made sure my dwarves were set to self destruct again, and gave it another go.
At first, it looked like world gen would pull through, but it crashed about half way through and closed (longer than last time though). I tried again, but it still cashed. I guess the game threw a hissy fit because it thought I didn't want to play dwarves any more.
So. Back to the drawing board.
I decided to reset everything to default and try something else.
I went to the dwarf settings and took out the tags that let them use weapons or become smiths. I ran another world gen, but with the same effects as when I prevented breeding. It would seem that, upon the discovery that they were forbidden to work metal, they decided that life was empty and destroyed themselves in some mass suicide. I imagine it involved volcanoes.
By this time I had tried numerous attempts and uncounted worlds, and finally gave up.

So... yeah. Population cap. Probably my best bet.

Unless I can find a good island without any dwarves on it...

Good luck to anyone else trying to get this sort of thing to work