Bay 12 Games Forum

Ok, so with a pop_cap of 90, ACTIVE_SEASON:WINTER enabled for dwarves, and No dwarves showing up in worldgen (civ was destroyed by goblins: Civilized World Population |   62872 Goblins in world_sites_and_pops.txt)

The results are:
migrant wave in summer (3)
migrant wave in autumn (4)
liaison & caravan visit in winter
migrant wave in spring (of 19 dwarves)
migrant wave in summer (of 9 dwarves)

I am reasonably confident this would continue up to the population cap, as other tests have shown.

The important point is, with NO DWARVES showing up in worldgen, migrants waves still arrive as expected, after the visit of the liaison.  They are apparently generated as necessary, to satisfy the needs of the fort.  In the (c) screen, the dwarven civ listed there "has no important leaders".

Yesterday I brought it down to 3 population (poor insane dorf died of thirst) and still nada.  No migrants, and the message every season the fort attracted none.  Unfortunately, I didn't save the fort in that state. :|

Yes, all of my testing for this thread, up to this post, was done with NO [ACTIVE_SEASON]'S of any kind, no liaisons of any kind, no caravans of any kind.

I'll test the "no dwarves in the world" theory today.  Once with zero pop cap, and once with 90, and see if I get different results.  This time I'll allow the liaison and caravans. (I'll put back the standard [ACTIVE_SEASON:AUTUMN] for dwarves in entity_default.txt)

4x2 on the landscape monitor,
2x2 on the portrait monitor.

Never had a need for anything bigger than 4x2, and there's no scrolling with 1920x1200, in ascii mode.

Since there has been a lot of misinformation thrown about in this thread here is the fast and simple way that the population cap in the init settings works.
1)First two waves are hardcoded and are not affected by the cap. Even if every other dwarf in the universe is dead, you will still get the first two waves.
2)When the diplomat leaves your fortress he reports your current population to the mountain homes. This means that if your diplomat dies in horrible ways before he can leave then migrants will keep coming. The diplomat has to make it out alive to stop the migrants.
3)If your current population is larger then the population cap, then the mountain homes will no longer send migrants out. If the mountain homes is far enough away from your current fort, you may still get another migrant wave or two that were "traveling" before the diplomat left but had not yet reached your fortress.
4)A population cap of 0 is ignored. Set it to 1 if you don't want migrants.
5)Population cap does not affect current births in your fortress. That is what the child cap is for.

What this means: You are going to get at least 2 migrant waves. Kill them if you want, but there is nothing you can do about it. The diplomat has to make it to your fort, talk to your leader, and leaver to stop the migrants. Let him do this at least once after your population has reached the cap. It will take a year or two before migrants stop showing up after the diplomat leaves.

Some further testing I've done in the past week with 34.10 on this topic.

I've removed the [ACTIVE:SEASON] entry for dwarves in entity_default.txt in the raws.  This prevents caravans and the outpost liaison/diplomat from ever visiting the fort.  Not even once.  Never ever. Never.

With that, I've generated three completely new worlds, and three completely new forts, one per world.  One with a population cap of zero, one with a population cap of 7, and one with a population cap of 90.

I've then run the fort for 3 years, post embark, to see what the migrant waves will do, and what the resulting population will be.

The results are:  Two waves of migrants came to the fort, and then all migration waves stopped.  This resulted in 17, 22, and 18 total populations, respectively, after three seasons passed, post-embark.  For the remaining 9 seasons, each season displayed "The fortress attracted no migrants this season" and everything else worked as usual/normal/expected.

So while it is true you will always get two migrant waves after embarking, I have not observed that the migration waves will continue after that, if the outpost liaison/diplomat never visits the fortress.

Similarly, in an earlier fort, I had a population cap of 60.  I let the outpost liaison visit once, during the first year, disabled him, and I received migrants up to a population of exactly 60, and then the migration waves stopped.  No further visit was required to stop the migration waves.

I look forward to confirmation or denial of these results in 34.10, if anyone is inclined.

I currently have a small above ground area housing my depot and barracks. outside the walls of those areas, i have a small cross shaped set of walls with bridges closing off the ends. in the center of the cross, i want to remove the stone, and replace with with glass, pasturing some turkeys up there as watch animals. i know glass walls work for critter spotting, but do glass floors/ceilings? thanks for your gracious assistance.

Best system I've found are gem windows next to fortifications, with a 1x1 pen for a non-grazer, with a wall behind them, and a non-pet passable door.

Like so:

Pets can't run, so they don't need to be re-penned, and they spot all ambushes!

On the subject of skills...

I wrote this up today, which again, may be useful to the Runesmith audience.

It's a script, similar to the previous three, that allows you to target a dwarf in game, run the script with a single argument, and it will give you legendary proficiency in whatever skill you specify.  Same method as before, save the make_legendary.lua in ~\df_34_10_win\hack\scripts\ , then you can use it easily.

So if you want a legendary miner, target your favorite Urist, switch to dfhack, type make_legendary MINER and voila, you have a legendary miner!  If you want to see what skills are available, you can type make_legendary list and it will display them all.

So, I'm looking for the values that make up the "quick start" options, or best approximate them in advanced worldgen. Any advice? I  haven't seen anything about a way to extract worldgen info from an existing saved world, but I supose that would be the ideal if possible...

Create your world.  Start up in Legends mode, press 'p' to export, copy/paste the newly-created-worldgen file contents into your main worldgen file.  Voila!

As far as I've seen with forgotten beasts, if you have caverns, you will eventually get them, and there are no limits I'm aware of as to how many.  I've seen as many as 8 at the same time, in one cavern.

My personal solution was to remove caverns and let dwarves farm above ground (because they can already, technically) but of course, then you lose underground crops & underground trees.  Wasn't a big deal to me, but may be to you.

I've seen 70k goblins in a 300 year worldgen.  It doesn't take long if you set things up right.   The ideal is 10k goblins per dark fortress, so as long as you give the goblins the advantage, they'll take it.  The world does have to be large enough, though.  Pocket worlds have limits, and Dark Fortress density appears to be one of them.  Not that 30k or 40k goblins isn't enough, it just depends on your goals, I s'pose. heheh. 

When you're gen'ing the world, get into the habit of pressing 'p' before you accept it, and then look at the world populations file.  I do this every time now, and I also copy those 4 files 'p' makes into the save directory, so they are always there.  You can get that information later, however, if you make a copy of your save, abandon your fortress, start playing again in legends mode, and then export that same information. "p: export map/gen info."