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[Urist the CaveBear]

So I've been thinking about the idea of Dwarfish Daycare recently, and I've been considering variations on theme.

For instance, Extreme Dwarf Social Training.  The idea is quite similar, but uses adults rather than children, and rather than training combat skills, it's meant to develop the social skills.  Build a tiny room (1x1 is obviously ideal, but some amenities could potential enhance feasibility) dump the fort's food and drink reserves in it, then dump the fort's Dwarfs in it (in whatever way suits you best).  Confined together in an enclosed space without access to jobs or any potential for solitude, dwarfs would only be able to chat and form friendships (or otherwise).  The whole fort could be socialized rather quickly in this way, I think. 

The main concern for the Dwarfs would be mood - although if you strip away their weapons and armor them up before the training exercises begin, any berserk individual would be quickly beaten into submission by his prison-mates and injuries could be minimized; and frankly, bad moods might even enhance the Training's effectiveness, a few deaths here and there would result in some much needed Consoling.  At any rate, some creative architecture (misting waterfall, make the walls from slabs and statues, so on), combined with sufficiently fine food and drink would likely compensate for most discomfort. 

You might also toss some instruments down there, but to be honest, I haven't really messed with instruments yet, so I don't know about that.

Bringing it back around to Dwarfish Daycare; hell, throw your favorite harmless pet in there (Kakapos for me, McCaveBear likes them for their longevity) and get those Dwarfs some combat experience on the side, plus the fights will give them something to chat about.

Thoughts?

[wierd]

The new social code, as far as I know, checks for available floor space for things like dancing, poetry reading, et al. 1x1 square is insufficient.  Also, I expect that with the inability to "get away" from "Annoying" people, the chances of developing grudges will likely go waaaay up.

[PatrikLundell]

A 1*1 tavern has caused severe stuttering in the past, and I'd provide at least one tile per dorf.

However, I use a somewhat more relaxed version in which the winter is off season where no work beside the essential (animal retraining, etc) is performed. The buggers are still lousy at recognizing beards from the next door bed room they've spent their whole life together with, but at least they satisfy social needs as far as their need satisfaction incompetence allows.

[mikekchar]

Hmm... I just had a thought (insane, though it may be).  What if you built a jail with rows something like this:

Code: [Select]

t  t     t: table
=c =c    =: food stockpile, c: chair
 rb rb   r: restraint,      b: bed
[/font]

And then below you leave a big dance hall somewhere and designate the whole place as a tavern, stocked with tavern keeper and booze.  The food stockpile has to have no barrels set and has to take from a food stockpile with no barrels set.  If you wanted to get really fancy, you could designate the area south of the restraint to be a tavern, and the area north to be a temple (so that people can also pray).

Edit: Those tables should be shifted to the right a bit, but for some reason I can't get the formatter to do it properly.

[Killgoth]

I'd be interested to know if he is perhaps a werebeast?  Please update after the next full moon

[taptap]

You should decide whether you want to torture your dwarves or let them socialise. A few versions back (when people were too shy to marry) I redesigned the whole fort for smaller social spaces to maximise encounters (statue gardens in one tile wide dead ends etc.) and even locked the whole, relatively low population fort in a little bunker with enough food, a dormitory and a happy room (and lead doors) for a few seasons, this and various other experiments got them socialising a bit more and finally marry, but even after 70 years in the fort with a lot of idle time and social experiments etc. I never had a legendary conversationalist (and the social attrribute gains I was looking for, maximum currently is accomplished conversationalist, I still use that fort occasionally). Other people had better designs for honeymoon suites to get two dwarves marry, but I am not aware of any successful massive social training (+ attribute gain) schemes then. (40.x)

With the whole new tavern update, you should simply try to keep a few idle dwarves burrowed without other job in a bustling tavern (incl. necessary supplies) first and compare to skill/attributes compared to running your fortress normally before you do anything else. (That is if you are interested in social training.) Of course it is much harder to track skill gain without DwarfTherapist.

[Urist the CaveBear]

I'd be interested to know if he is perhaps a werebeast?  Please update after the next full moon

To whom are you referring?

taptap:  My only recent playing has been in 43.05, so I've been pleased, more or less, with the rates of marriage and child-birth (although since I tend to play with a pop-cap, I often found my child-birth rate a bit high until I found you could limit that as well.  As to the Purpose of Extreme Dwarf Social Training - the name is on the tin, I suppose; I'm still getting things set up in my current fortress of Udirurdim, so a lot of Dwarven Science is on the back-burner for the time being; but I'll make sure to report back my findings once I get onto it.

My current thinking is to create a sub-fortress, separated by a gate, with a hatch for dropping food and other supplies, and leave a skeleton-crew of craftsmen to operate the fortress proper and truck with traders, which should also allow me to run a Tavern by the front gate.  The two together should offer a fine contrast of social gains in a socialization-focused environment versus those in a (admittedly somewhat underpopulated) regular fortress.

Of course, I'm running purely Vanilla DF here, so like you said, it'll be a chore to properly observe skills gains.

Anyway, first things first, Queen As desires mighty Jabberers from the caverns to serve as warbeasts for the glory of The Black Tower, so I'd better get on that or I'm likely to be Hammered.

[fearlesslittletoaster]

I'm doing some research for a more lengthy post, but I will put this here because it's relevant. I found a flaw with taverns as social spaces where the more occupants they have the less effective they are. It looks like the activities (socialize, tell story, dance, etc.) can be interrupted before completion if another person (visitor or dwarf) starts a differing social activity in the same tavern. I tested this by timing how long jobs should take, and in an 80 dwarf fort with about 20 visitors most social jobs were getting less than 1/3 of the way through.

As a result dwarves will constantly show social activities but never get any of the happy thoughts or fulfilled needs from doing them because they never finish. If this constant interruption extends to making friends it's no wonder dwarves in large old forts hardly know one another. Problem is it's very hard for me to measure that specifically because I play vanilla and frequently take heavy casualties...

As a workaround I have had quite a bit of success setting up several smaller taverns and restricting them to residents only. With five taverns (plus the mega-tavern full of visitors) to choose from the crowds stay small enough that the social jobs usually complete. It also allows for a tavern serving alcohol (the big one) while keeping deaths by alcohol poisoning to a minimum among citizens. Granted mercs still die like flies but nobody cares and it means I get their stuff so I don't mind that so much. 

[Libash_Thunderhead]

I think confining all dorfs(minus a handful of feeders) in one tile alone is something worth trying.
 

[PatrikLundell]

@Libash_Thunderhead: See my previous post and try it out yourself before suggesting it to others.

[Urist the CaveBear]

I'm doing some research for a more lengthy post, but I will put this here because it's relevant. I found a flaw with taverns as social spaces where the more occupants they have the less effective they are. It looks like the activities (socialize, tell story, dance, etc.) can be interrupted before completion if another person (visitor or dwarf) starts a differing social activity in the same tavern. I tested this by timing how long jobs should take, and in an 80 dwarf fort with about 20 visitors most social jobs were getting less than 1/3 of the way through.

As a result dwarves will constantly show social activities but never get any of the happy thoughts or fulfilled needs from doing them because they never finish. If this constant interruption extends to making friends it's no wonder dwarves in large old forts hardly know one another. Problem is it's very hard for me to measure that specifically because I play vanilla and frequently take heavy casualties...

As a workaround I have had quite a bit of success setting up several smaller taverns and restricting them to residents only. With five taverns (plus the mega-tavern full of visitors) to choose from the crowds stay small enough that the social jobs usually complete. It also allows for a tavern serving alcohol (the big one) while keeping deaths by alcohol poisoning to a minimum among citizens. Granted mercs still die like flies but nobody cares and it means I get their stuff so I don't mind that so much.

This is very interesting - I'll have to incorporate testing of Size-differentiation is Social Spaces when I start social testing.
(It's getting kind of Vault-Tech in this fortress).

[wierd]

Arent all science forts basically vault-tec experiment vaults?

I am thinking of doing a falling science fort soon. Considered calling it vault 666.

[Urist the CaveBear]

Yeah, it's kind of like that.  Hmm... I want Heraldry now, that way my clothiers could embroider my fortress uniforms with the Fort's heraldry - you could do vault suits.

[Libash_Thunderhead]

@Libash_Thunderhead: See my previous post and try it out yourself before suggesting it to others.

Sorry, I was not replying to your post. I just got an idea of running a compact fortress.

Anyway, I tried a 1x1 burrow and found all dorfs and animals were actually compressed into a 3x3 space around the burrow.

Edit* It seems, war animals are affected by civ alert too, even if they are assigned to military dorfs.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Urist the CaveBear]

For the record, Kudos on the fortress location - I love a good cave-fort; Dig for Victory and whatnot.