Bay 12 Games Forum

Can you post a save?

Not, y'know, dwarfputing. I'm not clever enough for that. I mean what real-life machine can run Dwarf Fortress at the most FPS? I am thinking an i5-3570k is probably it, but I'm not sure how fast that will go. I want to do a 16x16 embark and each dwarf will have their own personal fortress. I intend for there to be a volcano in the middle of the map and that is where I want to put the trade depot, so there will be lots of fluids going around.

Why the i5 instead of the i7?  Isn't 7 > 5?

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.

Thank you for that summary of the current understanding of how population_cap works.  That's how I understood it as well.  The reason I created this thread is because I've observed behavior that does not follow the rules you've set down above.  Either I've found a bug, something is corrupted in my setup, or there are further factors that are not yet understood.  I'm asking if anyone else has worked with minimal populations to determine if they have also observed similar behavior.  To recap the information in the previous posts:

Population = 2
POPULATION_CAP = 1
All migrants are killed immediately after arrival.
Meet with liaison each year, and each year he leaves the map.
Repeat for 7 years, migrants continue to arrive.

After work today I'll go back to the start and see if I can reproduce the behavior. 

Quote from: Finn on May 28, 2012, 12:10:21 pm

My pop_cap has been set to both 0 and 1 at different times, through numerous shutdowns and restarts, and I continue to receive migrants every single season.

If you're trying to !!Science!! it, you need to pick one and leave it alone.  The current theory (AFAIK) is that your population is compared to your population cap at various times, and migrant waves are generated if the population is under the cap.  Those migrant waves will take time to reach you.

Since you've been moving the cap, you don't know whether your migrant waves were generated when you had it set to 1 or set to 0.  And setting it to 0 might be like setting it to infinity (we aren't sure of that either!).

True.  I should have been more clear.  In the first year it was set to zero, but after the migrations kept coming I moved it to 1.  It has been at 1 for several years now, through several restarts.  So 0 didn't stop them, and now 1 hasn't.

Update:  So as I mentioned above, I received a migration wave immediately before the liaison appeared which brought my population to 7.  I let them live until after the liaison had visited and left, then killed them.  Now in mid-spring I have just received another wave. 

I'm not sure if this is a bug or just missing information from the wiki.

I have been running a single couple fort for about 6 years of game time.  In the first 6 months I killed 5 of the starting 7, then I've killed each migration wave that's come ever since.  However, they keep coming.  My pop_cap has been set to both 0 and 1 at different times, through numerous shutdowns and restarts, and I continue to receive migrants every single season.  Each wave is composed of at least 5 dwarves, usually 6.  I'm running 34.07 with LNP and Phoebus, however I don't think either of those should matter.   The liaison is arriving and leaving as normal.

My theory is that below a minimum population (I'm guessing, 7) the pop_cap is ignored and migration waves are hard-coded.  I believe that as my fortress grows (through children) that eventually these migration waves will stop. 

Before I go about changing the wiki or filing a bug report, I'd like to know if anyone else can confirm this behavior.

Edit:  A migration wave has arrived (bringing me to 7) just before the liaison arrived.  I am keeping these alive until the liaison leaves the map.  This is my 7th liaison.  I will see if the migrants stop coming after he leaves.

Anyone know the minimum number of couples to make a fort sustainable so intermarriage doesn't become an issue? I believe I saw a thread on it a year or so ago but haven't been able to dig it up.

In what way does intermarriage become an issue?

Dwarves appear to need 3 pieces of clothing to avoid unhappy thoughts:

Shirt or tunic
Trousers
Shoes or socks

Armor apparently does not work so be sure to include clothing in your military uniforms or set to wear armor over clothes.