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Author Topic: The dwarven population cap is like the rhythm method  (Read 8300 times)

Patroclus

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The dwarven population cap is like the rhythm method
« on: April 21, 2012, 07:10:09 pm »

Just a suggestion, and doesn't work very well to prevent pregnancy.

I have a fortress in its 14th year now, and I have managed to keep casualties very low.  For years the population was very steady at 260 (130% of the 200 cap).  Every time a kid got kidnapped, or someone died on a high-risk urgent sock retrieval mission, I would get new births 9 months later and return to exactly 260.

I've done so well at keeping casualties down, in fact, that now some of the children born in the fortress have reached maturity and are now adults.  However, much to my surprise, about 9 months after the first dwarven bar mitzvahs (bat mitzvah? hard to tell with the beards) occurred... I am now getting new births, and the population is up to 265.

Very strange.  Could the number of children just be a fraction of the number of adults, and not the population cap?
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Corai

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Re: The dwarven population cap is like the rhythm method
« Reply #1 on: April 21, 2012, 07:12:59 pm »

I think its 1 baby for every 10 adults.
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slink

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Re: The dwarven population cap is like the rhythm method
« Reply #2 on: April 21, 2012, 07:15:06 pm »

According to the documentation in the d_init file it is the lower of

#1.  an absolute number of babies and children
#2.  a percentage of adults

where the entry is [BABY_CHILD_CAP:#1:#2].

In the first case, if five children have grown up, and five more children are born to take their place, you now have five more total.
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Hephaestus

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Re: The dwarven population cap is like the rhythm method
« Reply #3 on: April 21, 2012, 11:07:47 pm »

According to the documentation in the d_init file it is the lower of

#1.  an absolute number of babies and children
#2.  a percentage of adults

where the entry is [BABY_CHILD_CAP:#1:#2].

In the first case, if five children have grown up, and five more children are born to take their place, you now have five more total.

The million dollar question is, does this repeat ad nauseum? Will there always be children who grow up to be adults who make more children and bust your pop cap? I imagine old age starts to kick in at some point, but if there are always children around, your fort would, in theory, continue to grow unabated still fps death/HFS suicide/Goblin invasion/Giant Sponge attack.
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slink

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Re: The dwarven population cap is like the rhythm method
« Reply #4 on: April 23, 2012, 09:09:58 am »

According to the documentation in the d_init file it is the lower of

#1.  an absolute number of babies and children
#2.  a percentage of adults

where the entry is [BABY_CHILD_CAP:#1:#2].

In the first case, if five children have grown up, and five more children are born to take their place, you now have five more total.

The million dollar question is, does this repeat ad nauseum? Will there always be children who grow up to be adults who make more children and bust your pop cap? I imagine old age starts to kick in at some point, but if there are always children around, your fort would, in theory, continue to grow unabated still fps death/HFS suicide/Goblin invasion/Giant Sponge attack.
It should.  We know the population cap only functions, such as it does function these days, to prevent migrants from arriving.  We know that the population cap doesn't affect births, because that is controlled by the baby cap.  Therefore the total population will be controlled by the baby cap plus the death rate, once migrants have stopped arriving.  Someone posted a percentage to match the death rate by old age, but I didn't save the link to that.
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Deathworks

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Re: The dwarven population cap is like the rhythm method
« Reply #5 on: April 23, 2012, 09:36:19 am »

Hello!

Slink: While you are correct about the init file setting, I am not quite sure about your five grow up, five are born example. I was under the impression that, once the cap is reached, no pregnancies are started. Once the number goes below the cap, all married females can and will get pregnant, so that the cap could potentially be breached. However, I have not thoroughly checked this with science, so I may be wrong.... In the last few fortress, I rarely got marriages and I always try to avoid migration, so no way to test this.

Yours,
Deathworks
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slink

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Re: The dwarven population cap is like the rhythm method
« Reply #6 on: April 23, 2012, 09:57:38 am »

Hello!

Slink: While you are correct about the init file setting, I am not quite sure about your five grow up, five are born example. I was under the impression that, once the cap is reached, no pregnancies are started. Once the number goes below the cap, all married females can and will get pregnant, so that the cap could potentially be breached. However, I have not thoroughly checked this with science, so I may be wrong.... In the last few fortress, I rarely got marriages and I always try to avoid migration, so no way to test this.

Yours,
Deathworks

To which cap are you referring?  The population cap has no effect on births, and is very sloppy with limiting migrants, as we have all experienced.    The baby cap stops the number of babies and children immediately.  You won't get 101 total babies and children with a baby cap of 100.

Edit: I do not know how migrations of historical families interacts with the baby cap.  If, for some reason, you had already reached the baby cap but not the population cap, I assume that the game would not execute children of migrants who were historical.  Thus you could conceivably exceed the baby cap, but not through births.
« Last Edit: April 23, 2012, 10:05:29 am by slink »
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slothen

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Re: The dwarven population cap is like the rhythm method
« Reply #7 on: April 23, 2012, 10:07:51 am »

I'm getting a bit tired of seeing these threads every day.

Every.  Day.
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Deathworks

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Re: The dwarven population cap is like the rhythm method
« Reply #8 on: April 23, 2012, 10:08:36 am »

Hi!

I was referring to the babycap. I know about the unreliability of the population cap (it's behavior in the first year is just an added insult).

So, if five children lose their child status (either through death or adulthood) in a fortress with ten married couples alive, only five pregnancies will occur and not ten, provided that the number before was the babycap? The question would then be how the game selects which couples will have children and which will not...

Yours,
Deathworks
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SRD

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Re: The dwarven population cap is like the rhythm method
« Reply #9 on: April 23, 2012, 10:09:38 am »

Why did you have to say your name at the end of your post? It's not like people are going to have a hard time figuring out who you are.
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Re: The dwarven population cap is like the rhythm method
« Reply #10 on: April 23, 2012, 11:50:32 am »

Hi!

I was referring to the babycap. I know about the unreliability of the population cap (it's behavior in the first year is just an added insult).

So, if five children lose their child status (either through death or adulthood) in a fortress with ten married couples alive, only five pregnancies will occur and not ten, provided that the number before was the babycap? The question would then be how the game selects which couples will have children and which will not...

Yours,
Deathworks

That's a good question.  The oldest children in my current fortress are ten years old right now, so it will be a couple of more years before babies start arriving again.  I am already digging more bedrooms ...

Edit:  I short-cutted that reply.  What I meant to also say is that I have one married couple who arrived too late to have children the first time around.  It will be interesting to see if they ever have any, or if the game just starts at the top of the list of potential mothers every time.
« Last Edit: April 23, 2012, 12:00:53 pm by slink »
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Saiko Kila

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Re: The dwarven population cap is like the rhythm method
« Reply #11 on: April 23, 2012, 12:02:19 pm »

To which cap are you referring?  The population cap has no effect on births, and is very sloppy with limiting migrants, as we have all experienced.    The baby cap stops the number of babies and children immediately.  You won't get 101 total babies and children with a baby cap of 100.

Edit: I do not know how migrations of historical families interacts with the baby cap.  If, for some reason, you had already reached the baby cap but not the population cap, I assume that the game would not execute children of migrants who were historical.  Thus you could conceivably exceed the baby cap, but not through births.

The baby cap stops only new pregnancies, all undergoing pregnancies are not aborted at all if you lower it during play (save-exit-change cap-run DF-load). You can breach baby cap by births in that situation, I did it in my current fort (baby cap set to 30 when there were 20 children, children and babies total count is now 57, less than five of them were migrants, but there were migrant children after reaching the cap).
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slink

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Re: The dwarven population cap is like the rhythm method
« Reply #12 on: April 23, 2012, 12:27:36 pm »

To which cap are you referring?  The population cap has no effect on births, and is very sloppy with limiting migrants, as we have all experienced.    The baby cap stops the number of babies and children immediately.  You won't get 101 total babies and children with a baby cap of 100.

Edit: I do not know how migrations of historical families interacts with the baby cap.  If, for some reason, you had already reached the baby cap but not the population cap, I assume that the game would not execute children of migrants who were historical.  Thus you could conceivably exceed the baby cap, but not through births.

The baby cap stops only new pregnancies, all undergoing pregnancies are not aborted at all if you lower it during play (save-exit-change cap-run DF-load). You can breach baby cap by births in that situation, I did it in my current fort (baby cap set to 30 when there were 20 children, children and babies total count is now 57, less than five of them were migrants, but there were migrant children after reaching the cap).
I guess that means they don't have miscarriages any more.  That used to be how the extra pregnancies were terminated in 40d, wasn't it?
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rtg593

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Re: The dwarven population cap is like the rhythm method
« Reply #13 on: April 23, 2012, 01:00:08 pm »

My understanding is, miscarriages are from trauma, not a pop cap.

Also, he's posting in letter format, greeting, body, salutation, signature. He always does that.

Edit: and I've seen births over my pop cap, but not over my child cap. Before I knew the kiddie caps were not controlled by pop as well, I set popcap to 100, left the default 100:1000 kiddie setting. Pop was 151 that time, 75 adults, 76 kids.

Oh, and I've seen some disagreement. Is the "percentage of adults" number the percentage of adults in the fort, or the percentage of adults that are kids? The wiki and d_init file don't clarify that very well. Seen people saying it both ways.
« Last Edit: April 23, 2012, 01:04:30 pm by rtg593 »
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i2amroy

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Re: The dwarven population cap is like the rhythm method
« Reply #14 on: April 23, 2012, 01:07:43 pm »

My understanding is, miscarriages are from trauma, not a pop cap.
Correct.
Quote
Oh, and I've seen some disagreement. Is the "percentage of adults" number the percentage of adults in the fort, or the percentage of adults that are kids? The wiki and d_init file don't clarify that very well. Seen people saying it both ways.
It's cap=(# of adults)x(percentage). So a cap that is set to 20 will allow for a total of 20 children if you have 100 adults.
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