Bay 12 Games Forum

"Take chance, make mistakes, get messy."

When you are out adventuring your dwarves will travel and see the world.  I've had many former fortress residents become wandering bards and scholars.  The other thing is when you are away the fortress will send patrols out and will send raiding parties.  Your fort can also be raided, or at least bothered by thieves.  Raiding parties sent out will sometimes settle in other sites.

Whenever I build a new fort in the same world about a third to half the migrants are from my previous forts.  I've also had my former dwarves show up in performing troupes.

Another factor is that if a dwarf has family at another site they may go visit them, or return to live with them.

All of these things are on the huge "to-do" list.  I think the issue at the present time is that the myth and magic arc is going to fundamentally alter world generation.  So improvements to world-gen are going to come afterward.

It is currently undecided whether the various race's creation myths are going to be literal or interpretive.  Also, the role of magic as well as direct interventions by gods(?) will shake up world-gen events.  So I think that indirectly the myth and magic will improve many of the things you outline.

As far as the Legends Mode UI, it is low priority only because the general view is that any significant time spent on the UI is time not spent fixing bugs and adding features to the game.  In other words, 'it would be great but we want other stuff more' is the attitude.

That's my take on the current situation.

That being said I too really want world gen and post world gen events improved!  The past couple months I've been playing in a single world.  I've built four different forts between the years 504 and 533.  I've also done some adventure mode between each fort.  Between each one I export-legends and take a look at what has changed.  Having older versions of the XML to refer to is useful, as some changes are retro-active and alter some of the historical info.

I would say that warfare is the biggest oddity.  Many instances of one person attacking a whole town.  It seems like is one member of a civ gets in a tavern brawl with another it gets logged as a conflict and attributed to a war.  That's the only explanation I can think of. 

The upcoming villains and plots should add more volition to the actions of important figures in the world.  Honestly I'm going to reserve judgement until that is released.  I'm guessing it will affect world-gen quite a bit.

Marketplace will probably happen at some point.  They exist in world-gen.

Gymnasium.  World-gen has footraces and processions.  I could see some sort of old-fashioned, ancient greek style olympics happening in the future.  (I want chariot races!  Give us a hippodrome!)

I could see some arena thing in the far, far future.  Part of me imagines it would be an adventure-mode-only thing (knowing how things go in this game).  Right now dwarves just stand and flash when they spar with one another.  I can't picture an arena functioning any differently until there are some major additions to the game.

Botanical gardens are not dwarfy.  We have statue gardens.  And zoos.  And museums.  And memorial halls.

The studio could be useful from a 'fill needs' standpoint.  No idea what it might look like in its final form.  I could almost see it being a designation for a craftsdwarf workshop under the Workshop Profile.

Wait.  Iron bullets?

In adventure mode I killed a forgotten beast that had wiped out a fortress.  I claimed the site, but never got a message confirming it.  I retired my adventurer in another fortress.

In dwarf fortress mode I decided to reclaim that fortress.  When my expedition arrived there my adventurer was spotted and I got a warning of an ambush.  My adventurer was hostile and showed up in the units screen as an enemy.  I paused the game.  I didn't want to kill my character.

I used DFhack gui/gm-editor on my adventurer and set the 'visitor' flag to true.  When I unpaused the game my adventurer was not hostile and functioned like a normal visitor.

I've noticed that the liaison doens't leave with the caravan any more.  He just hangs out around the fortress as a visitor.

If the liaison dies a new one usually arrives with the next caravan.

Overlord Case Study of Rasima Beltfaith

I spent the evening with my old save.  I used gm-editor and bodyswap.

gm-editor screen one https://imgur.com/dq8Smin
gm-editor screen two https://imgur.com/vgt80Hz

What stands out to me is the civ_id is -1 and mood is -1 (None).  Otherwise everything else seems to be normal.  None of the 'flags' sub-lists had anything odd.  Only after I reviewed these screens did I then use bodyswap.

bodyswap status screen: https://imgur.com/cysXAgo
bodyswap description: https://imgur.com/BmLLWsc

Again, other than the complete lack of clothes and items, everything looks strangely normal.  I talked to other characters.  I had no specific incidents or rumors to bring up.  Looking at the perform-tell story he just had information that would be normal to a citizen of Thorntarget.

Legends Viewer/open-legends
I cross-checked all important info with the legends mode in the game itself.  I found no discrepancies.

Rasima "Beltfaith" Thìfithari
513 settled in Thorntarget and became overlord of 'The Stable Fellowship' of 'The Velvety Coalition'

There are two groups called “The Stable Fellowship”!  One is a bandit gang formed in 512 in Hammerstraws.  The ‘boss’ was Nonu Canyonfed.  According to legends mode Nonu is still alive and still the boss of the Stable Fellowship.  Hammerstraws is quite far to the northwest from where these incident are happening.

The second is the local government of Thorntarget formed in 513.  Part of “The Velvety Coalition.”

Thorntarget
Forest Retreat in the Split Jungles.
Founded in 79; taken over in 513 by “The Stable Fellowship” of the “Velvety Coalition” of “The Virtuous Empire.”
Abandoned 529

Hammerstraws
Hammerstraws is part of “The Realm of Sand.”  Many placeholder or undetailed groups of nomads have been formed in Hammerstraws.  Currently the place has a few humans and 38 goblin outcasts.

The place has 13 ‘locations’ or ‘structures’ including seven temples.  It seems it may have been massively depopulated by their constant warfare with the elvish civilization “The Humble Dusk.”

The Common Thread?
Looking up Gorno Syrupglow, she was overlord of “The Ripe Fellowship” of “The Virtuous Empire.”  There is also a group called the Ripe Fellowship in “The Confederations of Strife.”  I thought I may have found a common thread between the overlords.  However, there are no duplicate-named groups for any of the other overlords.

What Else?
Perhaps a political upset?  No relevant insurrections between 528 and 530.

The Virtuous Empire has been led by an elf vampire since 507. 
The Bulb of Deifying has been ruled by an elf queen since 420.  She has 25 spies. 
The Bald Realm is led by a human law-giver who came to power in 528.  Her eight friends are all elf spies.
The Tattooed Treaty’s king is a professional geographer.
The Tall Mists’ Queen was born in -142.

Looking through the rest, no one rose to power in 529.  The Bald realm has the strangest history.  I’ll have to look at it more thoroughly later.  They currently only have four sites.  The Bulb of Deifying has taken over most of their sites.  This was all before 484 and none of the civilization’s sites were abandoned in 529.

Taking a closer look at the Bald Realm’s leader, Xiza Ecruthew.  The previous leader died of old age.  In 528 the title passed to her.  Since 458 she has been working at the tavern “The Breakfast of Mushroom” in the town of Safefog.  Other than working at the tavern, there are no other entries for Xiza.

Safefog is a town ruled by the Bulb of Deifying.  It has twelve taverns.  Currently its population is almost entirely visitors to the taverns and the staff that works in the taverns.  The town once produced many works of literature, but the last book written here was nearly 80 years ago.  About the same time the eleventh and twelfth taverns were built.  All items of artistic or scholarly value have since been stolen from the site.

The Year 529
I’m still no closer to figuring out what caused all the sites to be abandoned.  I retired my previous fort nine months into 530.  That rules out the ‘two weeks’ between fortress and adventure mode being the cause.  So it was something that happened during my fort. 

In 528 I finished my grand library, which was the goal of the fort.  Throughout 529 scholars petitioned to study there until I had 30 scholars.  Between books purchased and books written, there were well over 150 books in the library when I retired the fort.

The last thing I can think to do is visit the abandoned tomb sites in adventure mode and see if anything is amiss.


-Addendum-

I have legends exported from world-gen, and the retirement of all three forts.  In each legends XML is shows every tomb site as "abandoned" in the year prior to when the legends were exported.  The only exception is one tomb where a band of goblin bandits has been living for centuries.  So the legends I exported in 530 show all tombs as abandoned in 529.