Bay 12 Games Forum

• Civ Crucible Core [Steam] [DFFD] - This module contains all the gameplay tweaks, fixes, optimisations, raw completions, and other random things that pertain to the vanilla game. See the mod description to learn more about the specifics. As a graphics user, you will generally be able to use this module alone with no problem. Eventually, this module will contain any common definitions needed in the other modules. There aren’t any of these dependencies now and I endeavour to keep them to a minimum but there may be points where I can’t and would rather not flood the Workshop with a thousand compatibility patches to achieve it.
• Civilisations - The original meat of the mod. Currently consisting of six new creatures and seven entities with more on the way, these civilisations add new trading partners, enemies, and more life to world generation. The new module system allows you to mix and match these to your heart’s content.
  
  • Korriks [Steam] [DFFD] (playable) - Semi-intelligent kobold-kin at the dawn of their metal age
  • Undines [Steam] [DFFD] - Water spirits that are the life of the party
  • Rakshasas [Steam] [DFFD] - Honour-bound warriors sending raiding from the desert
  • Hiisi [Steam] [DFFD] - Reclusive knowledge seekers studying from frozen vaults
  • Leshy [Steam] [DFFD] - Stoic forest spirits cast from their homes doing anything to survive
  • Kappa [Steam] [DFFD] - Polymorphic semi-reptilians building rowdy communities in the marshes
  • Deep Dwarves [Steam] - Progenitors to modern dwarves launching attacks from the caverns

• Difficulty - Civ Crucible aims to bring back the heinous difficulty of DF’s Boatmurdered heyday. Wildlife have been buffed within reason while food is less abundant. New behaviours have been thrown in to keep experienced players on their toes. New playable races may be carnivores or have other alternate food production and offer other challenges to the player.
• Completion - Toady has left a few notes peppered around the raws for things that should be implemented. This mod aims to fill those gaps and more to iron out issues, oversights and add variety to the game without even needing to add new content.
• Industry - DF has a lot of different skills, some of them only marginally explored or useful. While not much can be done about potash making, the mod aims to bring more depth to different industries, add more capabilities and make them an engaging part of your fortress.

• Folklore not fantasy - Candidates for new civilised creatures were picked from folklores all across the world to avoid doubling down on western European fantasy too much. While extra layers of flavour may take some inspirations from popular media, they try to not be too overt.
• No derivatives, no beastmen - Vanilla DF has animal people pretty down pat and having twenty elf variations is lazy. While certain creatures will inevitably have parallels to existing sentients, they will have certain gimmicks to set them apart and will generally fall into the category of moderately tall, mostly-hairless flat-faced humanoids.
• Populate the map - Apart from goblins occasionally, areas like wetland, tundra and desert will never be colonised by sentients, and can often make up massive swathes of the map leaving players wondering where everyone's gone. By spreading new entities out into these wildernesses, it will ensure you’ll likely have more than one partner in the region to trade or contend with.
• Fit within the framework - New entities have been carefully crafted to add their own unique behaviours to the game, targeting individual quirks in worldgen, while still feeling like they could be part of the base game. Some entity mods go crazy with interactions and magic and that’s technically intriguing but not my cup of tea, Civ Crucible remains largely within the unintentionally-low-fantasy feeling of vanilla DF.

Well, if you want a proper Dwarf Fortress solution, you're going to have to wait until Starting Scenarios, which deals with actual purpose of locations ,society, politics, etc. That's when immigration mechanics are due to be revamped properly.

However, that's a long time in the future. If a placeholder is needed to make things a bit more fun for noobs in the meantime, then it's going to be based on a fairly random arbitrary number (like wealth, population or whatever). Doesn't really matter.