Bay 12 Games Forum

The caravan arc will mainly affect fortress mode, as supply and demand of goods will be tracked for all civilizations, the ones you trade with should soon have enough stone mugs/serrated discs/prepared meals and will either not pay much for these any more or stop buying them alltogether.
The army arc will concentrate on features concerning combat and sieges, possibly allowing the player to send out armies to other civilizations sites (darf fortresses, human towns, elven forest retreats).

Hopefully wear/consumption will sustain demand, otherwise trade will crash out once you've maxxed out the supply of every good your fort can produce (which shouldn't take long, given the way goblins and kobolds insist on flooding your fort with junk.)

So, if two breeding pairs aren't enough, how about three? Are six dwarves enough to be able to breed enough dwarves to get the population as high as your average fort?

As I mentioned above, testing continues.  This is the scenario I am testing. I'll get back to you on that in a couple of weeks.

Three questions, but first some context:

So I embarked on a chasm which had only a half-dozen tiles that were actually open to the rest of the map.  I swiftly hacked down some trees and boarded up the entrance with walls and floors so that the chasm was entirely sealed off.  Except for a couple of batmen and some cave swallowmen pathing out, not only did my framerate improve, but it kept my dwarves safe as well.

I noticed a large population of naked mole dogs (six or seven packs, to be exact), and decided I wanted to capture them for a breeding program.

1) I have a faint memory that animals that begin as denizens of caves, chasms, or are otherwise on the map when you embark (as opposed to immediately spawning and entering the map when you unpause) are not able to breed.  But I've seen evidence that this is incorrect as I purchased a male Giant Eagle from elves once, and the local female Giant Eagle began popping out little giant eagle babies on a regular basis.  Would these mole dogs be tamable and breedable?

2) Should they have been breeding there in the chasm?  I noticed they were not, which added to my doubts that they would breed in captivity any better.

I figured that these mole dogs weren't going anywhere, they were camped out on several tributary caves and ledges in the chasm itself so I wasn't in a hurry to go down there and risk dwarven lives to capture them quite yet. (Playing last dwarves.)

I noticed a puff of miasma, though, and when I went down to look, half the mole dogs were dead and there were several that had already rotted clean away!

I decided that something was killing them off, so I looked around for culprits but other than batmen and cave swallowmen I didn't see anything that could reach them (no Giant Cave Swallows).  There were no webs at all and no cave spiders that I could find, either.

I spent some time observing them and watched as one by one they simply keeled over dead - nothing was attacking them.

3) I've decided that they were dying of old age - how long do Mole Dogs live, and is there any way to prevent this, or do I simply need to hustle to capture them before they all die and the meat and skins rot off?

The fact the crop is blinking and that you can see it with 'k' means that it is no longer part of the field plot - it's been harvested and then is sitting on the field. For crops in the field, use 't' to see the internal elements of the field. (Imagine the farm plot like a workshop - 'k' shows you the workshop tile plus anything on top of it, 't' shows you inside instead).

So, if that is the case, it means the crops are being harvested but not carried to your food stockpile - you said you have enough barrels and storage space - check 'o'rders then in case Dwarves gather food is turned off.... that's all I can think at the moment...

This, blinky = harvested but no stockpile space. 

Also make sure people have food hauling on.

Also make sure your stockpile isn't full of meat barrels with 1 meat in them (plants can't be put in meat barrels).

Also make sure you haven't accidentally forbidden plump helmets or whatever.

Unless there's mods in play, the gold armor is probably EXTREMELY good, as it's an artifact. (Gold can't make armor, AFAIK, except by mood.)  Give it to a champion.

I am conducting this research right now in 40d.

Preliminary results: Two breeding pairs is not sufficient to produce a sustainable population.

Assumption: Anyone with a listed family status cannot go the Acquaintence->Friend->Lover->Spouse path.

Observation: If you have two breeding couples (1 and 2), Children of those couples will fall in love and pair off (couple 1,2).  Children of 1,2 will list every dwarf in the fort as family, excepting the 3 that are not part of the two breeding pairs.

Dwarves also seem to have a prohibition against cradle robbing (probably just as well), as I have yet to see one of my original 7 shacking up with any of the children born on site - the kids shack up the moment they hit adulthood, however.

My research on !!Genetics!! continues.

I think it may have been a discussion about immigrants showing up with picks, axes, and so forth.  I know immigrants could be soldiers...

As of 40d, chain leggings had the highest return for armor, and giant axe blades for weapons.  .5 each.