Bay 12 Games Forum

There's something underground that WON'T STOP BURNING. Is there a DFhack command I can use to fix this?

Try automining whatever veins you hit on that staircase. That'll improve your chances of finding the caverns significantly.

Yeah......I lost a lot of important dwarfs. The smelter king, the scholar, some animal trainers.....and to add insult injury, almost all the livestock I worked so hard to obtain. The dogs, the reindeer, the elk, the muskox....but I wasn't completely wiped out. Life goes on in the fort. Nature still provides me more livestock. Still holding out for those giant polar bears I spotted earlier.....

I've set up some new raw modifications along with Modest Mod and am testing them out in 42.05. One mod I got elsewhere puts season restrictions on all crops and makes them take longer to grow (like, multiple seasons longer). The other mod I did myself with help from Deeper Dwarven Domestication; basically, I removed the [COMMON_DOMESTIC] tag from everything except dogs and gave the animals that previously had them wild populations (I also made all hauling animals ubiquitous to their environments, to ensure that every civilization always got haulers). My intent was that every civilization would (realistically) only have domesticated local animals. Other than the fact that only hauling animals seem to get domesticated, it's working as planned.

So, to test it all out I'm making a long-term fort. The embark? 3x3 savage tundra. Perfectly flat, except for the upper right corner which contains some evil cliffs and a volcano. I've got no neighbors, not even goblins, and my civilization is dead or dying. No trees, and almost no plants. There's no river, though the first cavern contains water. It's got soil, sand (no clay unfortunately), tetrahedrite all over the surface, some hematite in the first cavern, no flux spotted yet. I embarked with 3 miners, a mason, a mechanic and 2 farmers (brewing/herbalist and cooking/herbalist) as well as plenty of dogs. First thing I did was carve out a little underground living space below the tundra and dug until I hit the caverns, then set up some wells. First migrant wave had nothing but farmers, one of whom happen to also be a miner. Second migrant wave had a woodcrafter (who's going to be reassigned to being a glassmaker), a furnace operator and a blacksmith. I made the furnace operator my manager (because he had the organizer skill) and my book keeper (to conserve furniture), then he became king in the spring. Sold some statues to the caravan in the fall for food, booze and more dogs. No outpost liaison showed up. Third migrant wave contained, among other less important dwarfs, a mason, a stoneworker, an armorsmith, a doctor and a great potential scholar (Competent in Mechanics, Optics Engineer, Reading, Writing and Wordsmith). Oh, and the cliff throw the odd undead beastie my way now and then.

It's......different from what I've done before.

But you know what?

I love it!

Without any neighbors and a dead civilization, no one will come along and bug me. There's no need to make trade goods since there's no caravans, and without any sieges to worry about my defensive trapline needn't be tremendously large. And of course, without any sieges to come along and clog up my cage traplines, I can capture and tame surface creatures to my heart's content. I will have giant polar bears trained for war guarding my fort, and herds of elk, muskox and reindeer supplying me food and wool! Just need to get the magma smelter and magma forge set up, as well as the magma glass furnace. You need glass for greenhouses, after all!

Edit: woodcrafter just had a strange mood. Good thing I got wood from the caravan too. Also, I got my fourth batch of immigrants in early summer (including a weaponsmith and another 2 mechanics, WOOHOO!), so maybe my civilization isn't dead.

I have recently found that aside from animals with the [COMMON_DOMESTIC] tag, the only above-ground [PET] animals that will be domesticated in worldgen are those with the [PACK_ANIMAL] tag. Why aren't the above-ground [PET] animals without the [PACK_ANIMAL] tag being domesticated?

To elaborate a bit further, I removed [COMMON_DOMESTIC] from every animal except the dog. After making sure every animal had wild populations, I gave alpacas, llamas (which Modest Mod had given [PACK_ANIMAL]) and yaks the [UBIQUITOUS] tag. My line of thought was that dwarven civilization ALWAYS starts in the mountains, making these animals ALWAYS appear in every mountain biome would guarantee that every dwarven civilization I generate had access to shearable, milkable and hauling animals. I've generated 10 worlds, and in each world my civilization had domesticated yaks and llamas, but NEVER alpacas. I had made Dralthas and Elk Birds [PET] animals in the latter 5 worlds, but in all worlds it was the same case for above-ground animals; only above-ground animals with [PACK_ANIMAL] were ever domesticated. (Interestingly, 6 of those civilizations had domesticated donkeys and 8 had domesticated both kinds of camels, making them the most common 'variable' domestic animals.)

Yep, I gave them the tags. However, I noticed a pattern: they were only domesticating animals with the [PACK ANIMAL] tag. I'll do some tests later today by creating more mountain creatures with the [UBIQUITOUS] tag and with or without the [PACK ANIMAL] tag and generating 5 more worlds. if the ones with the [PACK ANIMAL] tags are always domesticated while those without are not, I'll go ask Toady if there's a known reason this happens and set about making sure every civilization has access to at least one pack animal. I'm also going to set Dralthas and Elk Birds to [PET] instead of [PET_EXOTIC] without giving them the [PACK ANIMAL] tag; all 5 civilizations had general familiarity with them, so I want to see if they can be made domestic.

Take your pick: