I played 40d for a while, but never got around to installing the DF, so I did that and genned a world with 550 years of history. It's kind of neat that there seem to be way bigger populations now, but apparently there's been some kind of Geneva convention since 40d and wars are much less interesting. I liked reading Legends accounts of wars where the attackers would destroy or conquer towns they successfully attacked (along with descriptions of elves stringing people up/feeding them to beasts, humans taking slaves, the conquerer establishing new government, the peasantry fleeing into the forest, etc.), and then in adventure mode you could find, e.g. forest retreats owned by humans and abandoned ruins and so forth. But now it seems that the only thing anyone does when they win battles at towns is to "pillage" them, which doesn't destroy the town, or get rid of its populace, or cause it to change sides, so the war just goes on and on and on. For example, there's a war in my new world that has been going on for 150 years, and is basically just 80 repetitions of 1) goblin army attacks forest retreat, is completely uncontested and then 2) pillages forest retreat. I mean, dude, just kill it with magma already.
Is it really not possible to get interesting descriptions of wars anymore, or did I just get really unlucky? Are the old 40d war mechanics ever coming back?