Bay 12 Games Forum

Its quite possible that your dwarves have not actually been wiped out, but just that the queen has been killed/died (though that cant bode well for the rest).  It's entirely possible that your migrant was the crown princess and you just didn't realise until she inherited.  Inheritence works properly down family lines now, yet I do seem to recall te game pausing and triggering a pop-up alert to let me know one of my dwarves had just inherited 'baroness'.

Hit 'c' for civs and select the dwarven civ to see what sort of noble structure they have, if they are genuinely destroyed then it might lead to oddities like no liaisons/migrants, but you ought to see a liaison named on that 'civ' screen.  (I've never seen a message indicating that I was *not* recieving a liaison, very odd.)

You check this properly by generating a world, then right as it finishes (or you interrupt it) you are given the option to discard it, use it, keep running history and *export images*.  If you have already embarked then go to the 'Esc menu' and choose export local image.  This generates the same files as the previous method, replacing a region map for z-level maps of your fort.  But both methods gen the site_and_pops file that you really want.  It will appear in the game-folder beside the exe. (If making the file from a running fort then deselect all the z-levels before exporting the local image to get just the pop/site file without dozens of bmps.)

First disclaimer.  I'm in much the same boat as you, absent more or less since early 31.xxs but i've trashed a few 40_xx forts so can offer a few pointers specifically with regard to changes.

In answer to the post above (written simultaneously): the plants generated outside of summer cant always be eaten raw but many brew, cook, mill and process.  Also traps are hitting for me, not the instant wtf limb severing it was but they hit.  I've always been careful about the mechanisms in weapon traps though, quality was always accuracy, maybe that got tightened up a bit.  Digging tree roots is also a fine tactic if you just want the tree gone without generating wood, be aware thats how it works, tree just goes poof, never was.

A lot of the changes feel like they are heaviest in adventure with the active world and all that, combat mechanics got rewritten, will impact both but only once combat actually triggers.

FLIER -
First up, theres something whack with fliers.  Fine they were always whack...more whack than usual.  Flying animals wont move, they just sit there in the air, I embarked with 6 wild ravens that hadnt budged a single tile by 3 years later, coincidentally blocking any more animals, seiges, even snatchers from entering the map.  They dont move or leave, and are only replaced by a new critter if killed.  Step one for me is find/replace on the RAWs to remove all [FLIER] incidences.  Behaves fine with this done, you just got lots of birds wandering about (they will leave and free up spaces properly on the ground)

WOOD -
Fort mode is much as it always was to be honest.  In 40_05 at least im not seeing any elven diplos, so its back to deforrestation on epic scale.  That said, any mature tree with 3+ z-levels behind it is gonna drop 5-15 logs so wood scarcity is not nearly the issue it was.  Running early metal industry (managed iron by 1st caravan no problems) is super viable since you can spare wood for charcoal even with barrels, bins and beds churning out.  Its quite easy to 'lock-up' an early fort by having a wood pile too large, everyone set to haul wood and being a bit aggressive in your felling, so keep an eye on it.  My first try in 40 i designated on pause at the start as usual, unpaused and made coffee, came back to 600 logs but nothing else had happened and everyone was on wood duty. *sigh*

TREE FARMING -
Assuming you actually have 40_05 and not an earlier 40 release you dont have to worry about trees drilling through layers, which was a P.I.T.A to manage though amusing.  I did see a lot of problems with felling trees causing something to punch a hole into my first soil layer, this happened when felling a tree on z-1 that had punched through and capped out at z+1 or more.  Felling said tree on z0 left no hole where the trunk punched through and properly harvested the 1-log stump on -1 at the same time, but the other falling logs from above seemed to be bashing through (though it never generated cave-in alerts).  At any rate I had a lot of holes to fill, so if on 40 below v_05 dont do subterranean tree farms.  This was fixed in 40_05 but means that you now for the first time need a proper multi-z level hall for underground tree farms.  a single z-level will never grow trees, just saplings that die.  I find 3 levels gives a usable farm so you want thick soil layers or you will have to muddy stone to get the saplings to take hold deep enough.

SURFACE PLANTS -
One area that has definately changed my 'start-up routine' is the new surface plants.  Traditionaly I build a small farm area first summer, primarily plump helmets, maybe some pigtails in the rotation.  Now its fully viable to never plant underground at all.  The range of plants available to grow on the surface has increased by an order of magnitude and many of the options have alcohol products.  My last 2 forts i've put every dwarf on herbalism and quickly cleared a swathe of the surface plants to get some samples for seeds, then built a cluster of 4x1 fields.  Anything that looks like a berry seems to be a good bet, most brew just fine, theres also a range of dye/flour/fabric options on the surface crops. 
Caveat if you have a go-to fortress design like me:  A seed-only food pile set to accept no barrels right by the farm plots is (or at least was) the universal farm design to cut back on cancelation-spam.  This pile will need to be considerably bigger if you are going to 'herbalism' the surface and you will need to consider bags for seeds more actively on the logistical side (make/buy some) as you can end up with a lot of different varieties (which take 1 bag and 1 tile each in a barrel-less pile). 

edit: oh and farm plots on the surface still cry about needing mud.  they dont, and will still cry even if you give them mud so dont bother

BANDITS -
Another change that has altered my play-style a little is the roving groups of entities on the world map brought by the active world upgrade.  Having been an older player you likely know the various triggers for goblins/MBs etc with regard to pop/wealth.  I've had a number of forts now take a 'goblin seige' in the first year, sometimes before the dwarven caravan.  Even where that fort then recieves no more hostiles for some years.  A check through legends afterwards indicates that these are not actually seiges coming from the goblin civ but a group of all-goblin bandits who stumble across my site real fast.  So be prepared for a little early-action.

DISCIPLINE, HORROR -
Lastly, theres one aspect of the combat changes can be felt real easy in fort mode and thats discipline.  This skill is now used to control whether dwarves flee from scary stuff.  Gone are the days of civilian dwarves running from wildlife, they ignore it now.  All living things seem susceptible to horror, they can be horrified into immobility if they fail a Disc check.  Not sure exactly what causes them to take these checks yet, but the goblin bandits I mentioned above lacked Disc and several froze in horror when I deployed my squads (as did 2 of my own militia who had not been training long enough to start gaining Disc!).  Wild animals also seem to be affected by horror.  You can even horrify your haulers if they have to pass a refuse pile containing sentient remains (this trains their Disc, i have 3 goblin skeletons in a pile on the route to the Depot, occassionally a hauler freezes but they are all dabbling/novice disc now).  Witnessing death now seems tied into the horror system.  I have no proof, only supposition, but I imagine this system has completely replaced the old 'used to death' adaptation system.

Final thought:  Dwarvern thoughts expanded a bit.  Still a bit of a mess to trawl through but they now have a dream.  Accomplishing this doesnt seem to do anything yet, not even noticed a happy thought associated.  Also the addition of a number of randomly generated spoiler-related metals can give a few very difficult to satisfy preferences to watch for in nobles.

So the OP link is now good for 40_05?  Grabbed it from this thread a couple of days ago for _04 and all sweet, didnt like the switch to _05.  I'll regrab the file and see.

For what it's worth...  The OP link and dffd file description still refer to 40_04, though i see an edit performed post-40_05.  The only ref to _05 is the name of the actual download directory on dffd.  Confuzzling.

Cursed by a mummy?  Theres a thread just below this one that discusses pretty much what you are describing.  Mummys would be friendly to your necro, but maybe you picked up a curse before turning necro

Not really asked but related to your last comment in OP.

If you do give a dwarf Animal Training and tell him to train a war or hunting animal then it will follow him and act as if assigned to him and yet wont trigger bad thoughts when it invariably gets splattered by something nasty.  If you can face the micromanagement (made simpler by dwarftherapist) then this is preferable to doing it the way it was intended.

Quote from: xaritscin on April 11, 2013, 08:19:10 pm

wooden weapons are for training i think.....

1)Wooden weapons (which you can get from the elves) and training weapons are two different things. Wooden weapons actually have an edge to them, and can be dangerous to unarmored enemies.

i2amroy is quite right here.  I do indeed use training weapons rather than wooden elf weapons for this combat practice, elf swords despite not penetrating armour are certainly not toys.  I have a tendancy to forget all about those hippy's since im prone to genning worlds entirely without them.

I'm pretty sure doors are counted. Many of the doors in my fort are high quality gold doors, and they seem to improve the value of a room compared to stone doors.

The question they are asking however is where is it counted.  In the base room value (which gets modified by this 'm' value the OP defines) or as part of furnishings, which this hypothesis says is unaffected by the modifier.

Following with interest, and thanks for the link to Kipi's work which I missed somehow