Dwarf Fortress > DF Suggestions

Mating for life & within 10 years...

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Thundercraft:
Doing a forum search, I see that the subject of Polygamy has been brought up several times before in the Suggestions area. However, these conversations and suggestions were made a number of years ago. Two of the most recent topics on the subject date back to 2015:
Where is the Polygamy / Polyandry?
Polygamy

The suggestion of making dwarves capable of being polyamorous (or allowing polyandry / polygyny) seems controversial. However, the main complaint against it seems to be that it would inevitably result in (a lot) more dwarf children, which many players would not like.

Personally, I find this argument weak, considering that we can adjust the [BABY_CHILD_CAP:100:1000] token in d_init.txt. We can adjust both the absolute cap on babies+children as well as the percentage of the fort's adult pop. We could even turn child birth off.

A counterargument would be the possibility of adding a couple more d_nit.txt settings. For one, a new option to switch dwarves between being monogamous and polyamorous (or turn monogamous ON/OFF) could be added. Optionally, another setting might give some control of Fertility. That, or perhaps there could be an option to reduce the requirements of starting (and, thus, increasing the occurrence of) a Relationship or Marriage.

Alternatively, some new tokens in the raws could control such things.

On to my main point: (I only brought up dwarf polygamy because of how it would impact birth rates and because it ties in to my real suggestion below. I otherwise don't much care about dwarf polygamy.)

Why is it that dwarves mate for life? I'd love to see a possibility of a widow or widower remarrying after their spouse dies. Also, I find it silly that dwarves have to be within 10 years of each other's age for a relationship to happen. A dwarf's max age is between 150-170 years, which is about twice that of a human lifespan (IRL). Such a 10 year window severely limits hookups, which I suspect was the main point: It was probably made this way for gameplay reasons - because marriages and births would otherwise occur too frequently for most players.

What about those of us playing Fortress Mode with a modded civ other than dwarves? Must our fortress of humans, goblins, drow or whatever also be limited to mating for life and only marrying with 10 years of age? :(

I've searched the wiki and looked and looked in the init settings and Raws, but I can not find an adjustment to either of these things. :( And when I asked in the modding questions thread, I was told (with 99% certainty) that this was hard-coded. :o

Like Monogamy/Polygamy, I think it would be relatively simple to add a couple of new switches to d_init to adjust whether or not "dwarves" mate for life and to disable the check on age before allowing a relationship. Defaults could be set to leave things at the status quo.

Alternatively, I'd be satisfied if we just had some tokens we could use in the Raws to adjust such things. And I'm certain that I wouldn't be the only one grateful for this, considering how popular mods are that add custom races that are playable (or make other vanilla races such) in Fort Mode. Several of the biggest and most popular mods seem to do this.

Some of us want a higher than usual marriage rate / fertility rate and more dwarf babies - at least for certain experiments or goals. For example, consider Archcrystal: 410 years in a fortress. Everyone currently alive in Sethatos' fort was born there and descended from two dwarves down through 5 generations. He even set up arranging marriages for their descendants with pre-honeymoon suites. Imagine the micromanagement this must have involved, given the aforementioned limitations. (Read the Arranging marriages section of the wiki article on Marriage for details of how slow and tedious this actually is.)

SixOfSpades:
I was under the impression that the issue of polygamy had already been resolved (at least in theory) by deciding to, as you said, do what should always be done in controversial cases: Write it into the game, but leave a setting in the init files that can disable it, if the player desires. It's how Toady implemented varying sexual orientation, and it's pretty much the only way to please everybody, so I think it's safe to assume that's how he would implement promiscuity--if he chose to implement it at all, of course.


--- Quote from: Thundercraft on June 06, 2018, 12:29:45 am ---However, the main complaint against [polyamory] seems to be that it would inevitably result in (a lot) more dwarf children, which many players would not like. Personally, I find this argument weak, considering that we can adjust the [BABY_CHILD_CAP:100:1000] . . .
--- End quote ---
I skimmed back over those threads, and even found an example of this objection in one of my own posts:

--- Quote from: SixOfSpades on July 03, 2015, 12:53:07 pm --- . . . the only real problem with applying [polyamory] to dwarves that I can see is that it has the potential to take the typical dwarven married couple--the equivalent of a constantly repeating baby gun--and turn it into a baby automatic rifle.
--- End quote ---
Let me clarify that when I wrote that, it was with the consideration that if Toady was at the point of tweaking dwarves to have multiple simultaneous sexual relationships, then naturally sexual relationships themselves would naturally have already been fixed. (Meaning, they would actually happen on their own--more on that later.) The baby cap and other raws actually make the situation worse, in my opinion, by allowing a minority of polyamorous males to claim a disproportionate amount of the fort's baby allotment.


--- Quote ---A counterargument would be the possibility of adding a couple more d_nit.txt settings. For one, a new option to switch dwarves between being monogamous and polyamorous (or turn monogamous ON/OFF) could be added.
--- End quote ---
A species-wide boolean would be far too simplistic, IMO. Sure, it's all right for exploring the idea, but I think it'd best be implemented at the Civilization level, as a part of the "randomized civ ethics" package, if / when that becomes a thing. For example, suppose two lines were added to the Init file:
[POLYANDRY:20:20:20:20:20]
[POLYGYNY:0:5:15:30:50]
In each line, the numbers are percentages for the behavior being randomly chosen for each civ during worldgen. They reflect the odds of a society deciding if polyamory (of each gender pattern) is Mandatory, Encouraged, Permitted, Discouraged, or Forbidden. So the settings in the example above reflect a user who wants his dwarven societies to be completely unbiased in the matter of allowing their dwarves to take multiple husbands, but takes a far more conservative view when it comes to dwarves taking on multiple wives. But even this level of specificity can't do the matter justice: It makes no distinction between relationships of Love <> Sex <> Marriage, which I personally consider essential if we want to see this matter really fleshed out. It also makes no mention of homosexual relationships--but then again, it might not need to; a potential lesbian couple might simply make two checks to see if they violate their civ's Polygyny setting, and none against Polyandry.


--- Quote ---Why is it that dwarves mate for life? I'd love to see a possibility of a widow or widower remarrying after their spouse dies. Also, I find it silly that dwarves have to be within 10 years of each other's age for a relationship to happen.
--- End quote ---
I don't think I've ever seen a single user express disagreement with these views. I, for one, would like to see the concept of dwarven divorce, particularly if one partner is convicted of a serious crime or violation of moral standards.


--- Quote ---Some of us want a higher than usual marriage rate / fertility rate and more dwarf babies - at least for certain experiments or goals. For example, consider Archcrystal: 410 years in a fortress. Everyone currently alive in Sethatos' fort was born there and descended from two dwarves down through 5 generations. He even set up arranging marriages for their descendants with pre-honeymoon suites. Imagine the micromanagement this must have involved, given the aforementioned limitations.
--- End quote ---
As Dwarf Fortress stands now, polyamory is not an issue not just because it literally can't happen, but also because even if it could, it still wouldn't. In my experience, dwarves usually don't get married, unless they're practically forced to by the "love prison" setup you mention above. If you took a population-200 fort and then completely sealed it off (locking out all threats and ALL future migrants), you would create an idyllic dwarven paradise, with no work to be done apart from farming, brewing, cooking, and making clothes . . . it's my belief that, if left to its own devices as far as reproduction is concerned, this utopia would die out in only a few generations, because dwarves currently lack any sort of sex drive. Sure, they may "dream of raising a family", and have a Love_Propensity through the roof, but they currently have no mechanism to seek out and woo desirable potential mates. That, even more than "mates for life" and "no more than 10 years apart", is what kills the dwarven race. As long as dwarves consider "a shared fondness for a particular type of leather" to be MORE important than "the survival of one's entire species", dwarven sexual ethics will not represent a sustainable model.

What Should Be Done? In my opinion, love and sex should be long-term needs, that manifest both in a dwarf's Thoughts screen, and in their behavior. Just as a dwarf can feel frustrated over not having practiced their craft(s) in a while, or that it's been too long since they enjoyed their favorite booze, they should feel glum about not having flirted with anyone lately, and actively seek to correct that. (Both feelings & behaviors would be in proportion to their personality traits, of course.) Implement that, and loosen some of their moral strictures, and the average dwarf fort would be a LOT closer to having 30 couples with 3 children each . . . as opposed to the current standard of 3 couples, with 30 children each.

GoblinCookie:

--- Quote from: Thundercraft on June 06, 2018, 12:29:45 am ---Why is it that dwarves mate for life? I'd love to see a possibility of a widow or widower remarrying after their spouse dies. Also, I find it silly that dwarves have to be within 10 years of each other's age for a relationship to happen. A dwarf's max age is between 150-170 years, which is about twice that of a human lifespan (IRL). Such a 10 year window severely limits hookups, which I suspect was the main point: It was probably made this way for gameplay reasons - because marriages and births would otherwise occur too frequently for most players.

--- End quote ---

Mating for life does not actually mean that a creature does not remarry if one of the partners dies.  The reason they presently don't is because the whole system is a buggy placeholder.  The reason dwarves don't marry is precisely to stop them ending up with multiple partners, the system fails to distinguish between living and dead spouses (and relationships in general). 


--- Quote from: SixOfSpades on June 07, 2018, 04:50:15 am ---As Dwarf Fortress stands now, polyamory is not an issue not just because it literally can't happen, but also because even if it could, it still wouldn't. In my experience, dwarves usually don't get married, unless they're practically forced to by the "love prison" setup you mention above. If you took a population-200 fort and then completely sealed it off (locking out all threats and ALL future migrants), you would create an idyllic dwarven paradise, with no work to be done apart from farming, brewing, cooking, and making clothes . . . it's my belief that, if left to its own devices as far as reproduction is concerned, this utopia would die out in only a few generations, because dwarves currently lack any sort of sex drive. Sure, they may "dream of raising a family", and have a Love_Propensity through the roof, but they currently have no mechanism to seek out and woo desirable potential mates. That, even more than "mates for life" and "no more than 10 years apart", is what kills the dwarven race. As long as dwarves consider "a shared fondness for a particular type of leather" to be MORE important than "the survival of one's entire species", dwarven sexual ethics will not represent a sustainable model.
--- End quote ---

They don't really make friends very easily either.  I think that they don't get married for the same reason, once you have dwarves that are friends they seem to get married quite easily, as we see with the starting dwarves.  But given that they live so long, they do not need to be be in any real hurry to get married and reproduce anyway.  The problem is entirely a problem with how dwarves don't form friends because they rarely meet the same person multiple times in a short instance.


--- Quote from: SixOfSpades on June 07, 2018, 04:50:15 am ---As Dwarf Fortress stands now, polyamory is not an issue not just because it literally can't happen, but also because even if it could, it still wouldn't. In my experience, dwarves usually don't get married, unless they're practically forced to by the "love prison" setup you mention above. If you took a population-200 fort and then completely sealed it off (locking out all threats and ALL future migrants), you would create an idyllic dwarven paradise, with no work to be done apart from farming, brewing, cooking, and making clothes . . . it's my belief that, if left to its own devices as far as reproduction is concerned, this utopia would die out in only a few generations, because dwarves currently lack any sort of sex drive. Sure, they may "dream of raising a family", and have a Love_Propensity through the roof, but they currently have no mechanism to seek out and woo desirable potential mates. That, even more than "mates for life" and "no more than 10 years apart", is what kills the dwarven race. As long as dwarves consider "a shared fondness for a particular type of leather" to be MORE important than "the survival of one's entire species", dwarven sexual ethics will not represent a sustainable model.
--- End quote ---

I don't think that sex drive is necessarily even a thing.  I think sexuality may instead work more like "see hot lady, get horny" than "need to meet my quota of sexy times for period X".  Things like food and water work that way, you get hungry or thirsty so you go looking for food and water; but I don't think you inherently go looking for sexual partners in the same fashion.  I think that the whole idea that "I have to go find a partner" is basically either a cultural imperative or a form of addiction. 


--- Quote from: SixOfSpades on June 07, 2018, 04:50:15 am ---What Should Be Done? In my opinion, love and sex should be long-term needs, that manifest both in a dwarf's Thoughts screen, and in their behavior. Just as a dwarf can feel frustrated over not having practiced their craft(s) in a while, or that it's been too long since they enjoyed their favorite booze, they should feel glum about not having flirted with anyone lately, and actively seek to correct that. (Both feelings & behaviors would be in proportion to their personality traits, of course.) Implement that, and loosen some of their moral strictures, and the average dwarf fort would be a LOT closer to having 30 couples with 3 children each . . . as opposed to the current standard of 3 couples, with 30 children each.

--- End quote ---

What is actually wrong with having 3 couples with 30 children each?  Aside from it not being how things presently work, with humans in the real-world. 

SixOfSpades:

--- Quote from: GoblinCookie on June 07, 2018, 06:48:16 am ---Mating for life does not actually mean that a creature does not remarry if one of the partners dies.
--- End quote ---
I poked around and, interestingly, was unable to find a clear answer for this. The phrase "to keep the same sexual partner throughout life" is rather vague unless you actually specify whose life. But I'm sure we're agreed that current dwarf behavior is pretty much the most extreme behavior possible. (My favorite is the story of the Miner who threw a tantrum, and fell in love with a dude while literally beating him to death, thus winning herself perhaps the fastest Darwin Award on record.)


--- Quote ---
--- Quote from: SixOfSpades on June 07, 2018, 04:50:15 am ---In my experience, dwarves usually don't get married, unless they're practically forced to by the "love prison" setup you mention above.
--- End quote ---
They don't really make friends very easily either.  I think that they don't get married for the same reason, once you have dwarves that are friends they seem to get married quite easily, as we see with the starting dwarves.
--- End quote ---
That's largely correct, I would refine it only as "conditions that make dwarves likely to become friends will, on continuation, also make them likely to become lovers and spouses." As for the starting 7, they also benefit from the double-whammy of arriving at the same time (meaning, they all Eat / Drink / On Break at the same time) and having no other dwarves to socialize with, meaning it's far more likely that the same 2 dwarves will interact, over and over. As time goes on, breaks and mealtimes get far less synchronous, and there are far more other dwarves to get in the way. (And also, social gatherings are no longer restricted to the immediate environs of a wagon.)


--- Quote ---I don't think that sex drive is necessarily even a thing.  I think sexuality may instead work more like "see hot lady, get horny" than "need to meet my quota of sexy times for period X".  I think that the whole idea that "I have to go find a partner" is basically either a cultural imperative or a form of addiction.
--- End quote ---
It's both a cultural and biological imperative, with the former of course being based on the latter. DF does currently work on the "see hot dwarf, get horny" model: All relationships are reactions to (essentially) random stimuli. But in the real world, even individuals secluded in sex-negative communities like prisons, same-sex schools, or abbeys are well-known for having strong sexual urges in the total absence of stimuli.


--- Quote ---What is actually wrong with having 3 couples with 30 children each?  Aside from it not being how things presently work, with humans in the real-world.
--- End quote ---
Well, you were the one with the strongest objection to having inherited names, under the logic that it would invariably lead to pretty much every dwarf in the fort all having the same family name. But in more general terms, having 90% of the breeding being done by just 10% of the (otherwise) successful population is (in my opinion, at least) grotesquely disproportionate, not least in the fact that it does not even remotely follow the laws of survival of the fittest. It's more like "survival of whoever happened to bump into each other the most times over the course of a year."

Bumber:

--- Quote from: GoblinCookie on June 07, 2018, 06:48:16 am ---What is actually wrong with having 3 couples with 30 children each?  Aside from it not being how things presently work, with humans in the real-world.

--- End quote ---
Genetic bottleneck. Inbreeding.

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