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[Schizotek]

Situation: My current fort, Charbone, has a bit of a migrant problem. I've sealed it off from the outside world, keeping only the first 25 dwarfs i obtained, plus 1 migrant since then that had distinguished himself by beating his berserk son to death, plus a couple children that have been born. I don't want ANY more dwarfs so I built a collection of lever activated deathtraps outside the fort near where the migrants come in and have em either commit suicide that way or starve/goblins/berserks/etc. However due to the pretty awesome wealth of my civ migrant waves have become an unbearable strain on my mason and engraver, whom almost never gets a break from making memorials to do actual goddamn work.

Solution: How do I get the waves to stop. Would redirecting the river (or magma) to the slightly sunken edge of the map theyre coming out of work? Or would they just come in and drown immediately?

[wierd]

Set maximum pop in the init file?

Adjust the allowable children pop to 0?

Or, do you just enjoy the sensless carnage?

[Schizotek]

Set maximum pop in the init file?

Adjust the allowable children pop to 0?

Or, do you just enjoy the sensless carnage?

Previous experiments in the past with max pop init changes indicated to me that it doesn't work well with exceptionally low groups of dwarves. And I don't mind natural breeding since it's so slow.

And who plays DF without enjoying senseless carnage?

[Don57]

As wierd already mentioned, aside from editing the init files, I don't think there's any way to really *stop* the migrants from coming.  Having a crappy, low-wealth fort will keep the migrant waves smaller, but that's about it (and difficult to actually do unless you want a really small and spartan fort).

Your comment about keeping the one migrant dwarf who beat his own berserk son to death has led me to make a suggestion: how about trapping all migrants somewhere, keeping them alive with food and water, then pitting them -- unarmed -- in one-on-one deathmatches with captured goblins/monsters?  Dwarves who somehow manage to survive the fight (or a series of fights) earn the right to live in your fortress.

[wierd]

prior to uncapping the population of my current megaproject fortress, I maintained an approximate population of 65 dwarves, after setting it at 50. The 15 additional were born on site.

If you set it below what your current population is, then migrants should be effectively disabled.

[Schizotek]

Set my pop cap to 20. Got a migration wave 10 minutes later. Only a handful of dwarfs this time as apposed to the ravenous useless horde I usually get. Think I'll revert it and just take in one more dwarf to become a fulltime memorial maker. I've decided I'll just think of the incredible amount of memorials paving the halls of my fort a feature instead of nuisance. And I'll see if I can't find a way to cage some cougars and wolves for a death arena without accidentally letting in the swarm.

[Agent_86]

If I remember correctly population cap changes don't take effect until the next dwarven caravan has left.

[wierd]

When life gives you migrants, make a memorial megaproject.

Bonus: make them all on constructed floors, supported by an unstable support with a lever.... when you run out of space for more memorials, pull it and see how many ghosts return.

[Schizotek]

Before I let this thread die I would like to ask if anyone has every actually tried to seal off the sides of the map with perpetually flowing water/magma?

[MaskedMiner]

Can't you seal of the sides with just walls?

I don't see why that is a big problem.

[MarcAFK]

Pop cap does work, just not perfectly.
the first 2 migrant waves are hard coded so you'll always get something like 40 migrants weather you want them or not.
However after they have arrived you can set your pop cap and it'll be respected very well, with 2 exceptions; births and migrant waves that have been triggered before you change the cap will not be affected.
But you can kill the excess off and you shouldn't get anymore to replace them.

[Lagslayer]

Obsidianize the edges of the embark if you want to preserve your FPS. Alternately, create death traps triggered by dwarves walking over it. Dwarf hits the pressure plate and !!BAM!!, magma.

[MarcAFK]

Migrants will just spawn on top of the obsidian, the only legimate way to seal off the map edge is either obsidian around upto the very sky(i don't know if they will still spawn on that top level you can't drop obsidian onto) or obsidian a moat around the edge then continiously pump water or magma into it, your FPS will die since it'll constantly flow off the map edge, maybe you could use DF hack to change the edge tile properties to be a source of whatever fluid you're using, then you'l have an island in a sea of magma! or water if you want, problem is islands get no migrants, trade, or animals.
Edit: I think trees stop things spawning on the map edge, can Df hack add trees?

[darkflagrance]

I don't understand why people always talk about the first two migrant waves being 20+ dwarves. My first migrant waves are usually 2-3 dwarves at most. Stop spamming stone crafts from day one or something, and low pop caps will hold up.

Also, there was a fort that surrounded itself with a magma moat to the map edge in 40d. It forced migrants and invaders to spawn on a narrow stone bridge where the militia or the magma took care of them. I can't remember anything about the name though, except that there was Snake or Serpent in it.

[Oliolli]

How about raising bridges spanning the edges of the map?