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[Mimodo]

With the addition of orientation in the recent versions of Dwarf Fortress, the process of creating babies to populate the fortress in the future has become much more difficult than previously.

This is a thread devoted to finding out the exact science behind what will cause a dwarf to marry or not, how to encourage or discourage such events, and all things reproduction related.

There has been some science undertaken on this, however, much more is needed to be done. Tacomagic has been a key contributor to this cause, although I'm certain there have been other people who have put forth valuable information.

What we know so far:

Note: I'll update this as new information comes to light, and when I get home and can find previously discovered conclusions and hypotheses.

- only heterosexual marriages can produce offspring
- once married, so long as the related population cap hasn't been reached (strict pop cap?), a baby will pop out each year (is the availability of beds a factor here?)
- marriage relationships much progress through the stages: friend -> lover -> husband/wife
- a dwarf can be heterosexual, homosexual, or asexual
- dwarves can be uninterested in marriage, but still form "lover" relationships
- homosexual dwarves can be involved in heterosexual relationships
- personality traits has a significant effect on whether a dwarf will form positive relationships, including marrige
- mood has a significant effect on the formation of relationships
- idle time is required for relationships to form, although parties are not

There's still a lot to discover on this topic, which will hopefully assist in any dwarven breeding programs people create, and if anyone has questions, theories, or contributions, post them here

[Ravendarksky]

I found that if you dump 200 or so booze and food into a small room and then trap all your dwarfs in there then they will quickly form friend/lover/marriage relationships.

I was doing a 7 dwarfs only embark and no children were born in the first 13 years because I had all the dwarfs working very efficiently in different areas with separate break rooms.

Within 1 year of trapping everyone all together for 2-3 months we had 3 babies.

[Tacomagic]

I found that if you dump 200 or so booze and food into a small room and then trap all your dwarfs in there then they will quickly form friend/lover/marriage relationships.

I was doing a 7 dwarfs only embark and no children were born in the first 13 years because I had all the dwarfs working very efficiently in different areas with separate break rooms.

Within 1 year of trapping everyone all together for 2-3 months we had 3 babies.

I noticed something similar.  Keeping your meeting areas sized to roughly the same number of squares as the idle popultion increased the speed at which they formed relationships.  The theory behind that is that a dwarf must be adjacent another dwarf for them to talk, so forcing them together into tight groups increases the interractions; possibly allowing 1 dwarf to talk to many others all at the same time.

[Dirst]

- a dwarf can be heterosexual, homosexual, or asexual
- dwarves can be uninterested in marriage, but still form "lover" relationships
- homosexual dwarves can be involved in heterosexual relationships

Dwarves have a chance of being disinterested, interested in lovers, or interested in marriage with each gender.  The probabilities are different for own-gender and opposite-gender, but the rolls are independent of one another.

So, you can get a bisexual dwarf interested in taking own-gender as a lover and marrying one of the opposite gender.  Whichever happens first will be the Dwarf's permanent relationship.  (The opposite is also true, but less likely... that the Dwarf might take an opposite-gender lover but be interested in marrying own-gender.)

[Nikow]

Sadly, this did not work for me, how can i check my dwarfes preferences without using DFHack? I have small rooms, like 5x5 well room, dinning hall 5x10,  statue room with only 10 wallkable tiles (one statue on middle, and all around walls). At the moment i have 20 dwarves, only one courple of migrants is married (they came maried), no babies, only one child (he migrated here).

[Tacomagic]

Sadly, this did not work for me, how can i check my dwarfes preferences without using DFHack? I have small rooms, like 5x5 well room, dinning hall 5x10,  statue room with only 10 wallkable tiles (one statue on middle, and all around walls). At the moment i have 20 dwarves, only one courple of migrants is married (they came maried), no babies, only one child (he migrated here).

Couple of things to note here: the statue in the middle is going to hinder relationship formation because it bottlenecks how many dwarves can be ajacent at any one time.  Better off to build it in a corner and extend the zone out into the room; this allows maximum dwarf overlap.

Further, using multiple rooms spreads out the idle dwarves (assuming all 3 you mentioned were set up as meeting areas), which further limits the number of conversations taking place.  Optimal setup is with only a single, small area to idle.  With 3 areas like that, you're splitting your idle population 3 ways.

Also, how much idle time are you allowing?  I noticed that relationships form faster when dwarves are given moderate labor rather than being allowed to fully idle or being kept fully busy.  My guess is that the conversation timer is checked/reset each time they start to idle, and then only infrequently while idling.  Fully idle and fully busy dwarves made relationships much, much more slowly than dwarves who only idled about half the time.

There is no way to check the realtionship and marriage flags without third party tools.  Therapist has a somewhat general way to check them, but DFHack is really the only way to get the precise flags.

[Urist McVoyager]

Also, you're running 20 dwarves but your spaces are all a good bit larger than 20 spaces (other than the statue garden). You need your rooms to be 4x5 at most.

[YHVH]

Well, time to kill the dwarves that won't marry 

[Ravendarksky]

I now set-up dining halls to maximise dwarf interaction. I find this to be the best layout:

Table,Chair,Chair,Table
Table,Chair,Chair,Table
Table,Chair,Chair,Table
Table,Chair,Chair,Table
Table,Chair,Chair,Table

etc. This gives each dwarf a chance at 5 interactions unless they sit on the edge where the chance is 3. I will create a setup like this for 20 dwarfs with walls all around it. Statues and artefacts can replace parts of the wall to try and encourage in more idle dwarfs. Note that I intentionality deprive my dwarfs of a table/chair each to encourage them to bunch up as much as possible.

I've not done the science into what happens if dwarfs share tables. If you don't need one table per chair then there is room for a LOT of improvement on this.

I've also setup a series of "social traps" where dwarfs are trapped in pits with exits hooked up to a timing belt. This forces the dwarfs to interact for a set period of time on a 1x1 tile. You can set up some tunnels over multiple z levels to link the social traps to various dwarfs bedrooms to increase social interaction of certain dwarfs. Basically my leader gets intentionally dropped down there a lot which is useful to actually train his social skills (does anyone else find their leader never increases social skills?).

This table design becomes more efficient over larger rooms in theory, but in reality more dwarfs end up sitting alone so you want to limit the size of the room. There is probably a good equation between average distance between all possible spaces, number of dwarfs and number of possible interactions but I'm not going to take it to that level

[Sus]

I found that if you dump 200 or so booze and food into a small room and then trap all your dwarfs in there then they will quickly form friend/lover/marriage relationships.

Works for humans, too.

[taptap]

I would like to see more of this thread incl. architectural solutions and more about skill (conversationalist)/attribute (empathy) gain. I made a 11-month experiment in my fortress, simulating the fortress being taken over by "Mebzuth's Science of Happy" cult winding down all other activity, focus on the meeting area and finally retreat into a smallish bunker - meeting area size 12 with 24 dwarves (with locked lead doors) and small adjacent stockpiles and dormitory. I creeped out (deconstructing the depot and let the traders linger around outside in the evil rain wasn't the best idea) for now and broke off the experiment. But Mebzuth's Science of Happy has scored a great success (no marriages yet, but more talking than ever, but still <50xp per month, a few new relations, long estranged couples feeling tenderness again) and has taken hold as the official religion.

[KingofstarrySkies]

Bay12, where we do research on how babby is formed with dwarves by locking them in rooms and doing god-knows what else.

[taptap]

Bay12, where we do research on how babby is formed with dwarves by locking them in rooms and doing god-knows what else.

The future of dwarvenkind is at stake.

[SharpKris]

ptw

[King Kravoka]

The data isn't complete until we use genderbending on gay marriages to see if they will still love each other, same for hetero marriages.