Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Dunamisdeos]

So I think I've asked about this before, but it was a while ago.

Have any advancements been made in understanding what makes dwarves write more books? I always get like, two books, and then nobody will write anything else for decades.

I've even made half the fort scribes to see what would happen and didn't get much in the way of results. Any new techniques?

[Atarlost]

Scribes don't write books, they only copy.  A designated scholar can write books.  Visiting scholars can also write books.  You'll get the vast majority of your books from visiting scholars.  I assigned a mechanic as a scholar early on, but only got a few books out of him.  "Visiting" scholars have provided hundreds, though.  Always accept visiting scholars, and have an inn with rooms for long term residents so you can bring them on as full citizens. 

Libraries need chairs next to tables for scholars to sit and write and need boxes to hold writing materials.  You need all your manager production chains in order so your scholars consistently have paper or quires and your scrolls get rollers and your quires get bound into codices. 

[Fleeting Frames]

You can use breakthroughs when pondering in a library to get books - this in my experience can take many years (about half a decade in one embark proficient-scholar test), and you're mainly limited to naturalists and mechanics.

(One arrived migrant, mathematician got one in year 2 iirc in non-test save, but they had contact with outsiders, previous experience and over twice as much skill.)

But that's just one thing; other books need not concern a topic. Looking at Moonhome libray, there are also three books about crafting a masterpiece (two by same author writing on mechanisms and naturalist topics both). But that's just 9 works, using libarian.lua on Mengidash the 1500 dwarf megafortress with numerous libraries I can get more options (with doublechecking that the books don't have foreign flag, though I'm not sure it is reliable), such as books on poetry forms, books on previous sites the migrant stayed in (sadly, most migrants in my experience are not historical, so you'd have to search for them), biographies, cultural histories, value books (huh, thought they'd have to be done by philosophers, but I was wrong), historical events..

Which would mean that immigrant poets are also better options for scholars, and your raiders as well perhaps.

(Of course, three quarters of the books in it are guides or manuals.)


However, that leads to it raiding being a new and quicker ways to get books now. (It may risk save corruption, though). Might also be worth considering estabilishing trade negotiations with libraries by one-time tribute demands for longer-term trading of copies.

[PatrikLundell]

You need something to write on, as mentioned, but you don't NEED to bind written quires into codices (and I' recommend against it because of how quirky codices are). You don't NEED tables and chairs, as I've had quires being written on in a library that didn't yet have any, but you should probably provide some (which inevitably bring in dorfs that eat their lunch in the library, leaving sticky fingerprints all over the books). Chests/bags with writing material is required, though.

As mentioned, visiting scholars tend to write/bring more books than they steal, and trade caravans from human and dwarven civs often bring books (elves seem to be illiterate, judging by their caravans).

[Dunamisdeos]

Ugh but I want my dwarves to write books.

And yeah that was an oops, I did mean scholars :3

I'd be unconcerned with the topics themselves. I'm gonna try some science. See if i can figure out a way to increase writing rates.

[Atarlost]

You need something to write on, as mentioned, but you don't NEED to bind written quires into codices (and I' recommend against it because of how quirky codices are). You don't NEED tables and chairs, as I've had quires being written on in a library that didn't yet have any, but you should probably provide some (which inevitably bring in dorfs that eat their lunch in the library, leaving sticky fingerprints all over the books). Chests/bags with writing material is required, though.

In what way are codices quirky?  I've had no troubles with them.  I haven't seen people eating in the library lately either.  The trick may be having a tavern in between the food stockpiles and the library. 

Ugh but I want my dwarves to write books.

And yeah that was an oops, I did mean scholars :3

I'd be unconcerned with the topics themselves. I'm gonna try some science. See if i can figure out a way to increase writing rates.

The key is still a library open to visitors and an inn open to long term residents with lots of rooms.  It's easier to take a prolific author and make them a citizen than to take a citizen and make them a prolific author.  Also, I think interdisciplinary scholars are more likely to write books than focused scholars because they have more things to write about.  Without getting foreign scholars to take on your dwarves as apprentices it's difficult if not impossible to get skill in most fields of study.  And that requires them to be at least long term residents if not citizens. 

[anewaname]

Furniture is not needed to write the book, but a chair is needed to read. Based on posts other player made, I make my library with one table, one bookcase, and 4 to 20 chairs. No furniture is placed adjacent to other furniture.

I have had poor success with getting dwarfs to quickly write books, but they eventually do. I had this useful link bookmarked.

[Dunamisdeos]

That is all of my questions answered in that thread, fantastic.

I've embarked with all dwarves having max-available levels in writer and a scholarly skill. Hopefully this results in more books written.

[Fleeting Frames]

Sounds like the test I did, plus Writer. You may want to give them each a different library so they don't waste time listening about six different things from their main one. Or maybe not. That is not a thing I tested iirc.

In my experience, dwarves read even without chairs; painting a library zone over book laying on ground has been enough for me (though they need to have arms; an armless I had got stuck on a book in 43.03). There is the exploit though with chair and table with table not inluded in visitor-available 0-books library zone, so they read/write their books and leave them outside the library, free for carrying into fort's private library.

@Atarlost:

Codices have three differences from scrolls/quires:

1. A copy is displayed as decorated bookbinding-material codex rather than Title of the Work (copy)

2. Any extra pages beyond initial one are lost on binding.

3. As a codex requires written-on quire, any original works(with artifact status) cannot be further decorated, while scrolls can be decorated before they're written on (thus allowing artifact scrolls with decorations of your choice).

Presumably the 2 is the quirky part.

[Bumber]

4. http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=9409

[therahedwig]

So, I had been looking into libraries past week, and I realize now this thread isn't so old, so I'll just post what I have learned.

While a lot of info is from the old Halnoth thread, most of it actually comes from looking at the DFHack data structures, so kudos to them.

The way knowledge works is that you have that knowledge tech-grassland, with it's topics. Each histfig keeps track of which topics they do and don't know, as well as which books they've read. It also keeps track of a knowledge goal for the histfig and how many times they've performed a research action(in the DFHack api reffered to as times pondered, but it also goes up when they participate in a discussion regarding their research goal). After a certain amount of research actions (DFhack comment suggests between 40-60, I myself suspect this is tied to academic skill) the scholar gains research points in said topic(the amount of research points is definitely tied to skill level, with dabbling giving in the thousands, and competent/skilled three times as much, but there's no set numbers). According to the DF hack comments, 100K research points is necessary for a topic to be researched, and the histfig will then write a book about it.

There's still a lot I don't understand, for example, there is a certain amount of variance in how much pondering is necessary to get research points, and the research points themselves also vary for a single scholar. One time a skilled (lvl 4) geographer got 4700 research points, and the subsequent time 3700 research points.

As for skill gain...

• From my own experiments, pondering gives 0 to 5 xp in a given academic skill. Weirdly enough I have had dwarves who gained record keeper from pondering as well, but also dwarves who have not gained any. I am still trying to figure out what is up here. From my tests a scholar will gain about 700xp in their academic field a year if they only ponder. Have not tested the effect of skill yet.
• From Halnoth's thread, discussions give 10-30 xp in a given academic skill. Halnoth also notes this trains speaker, I have not seen this, might be related to my recordkeeper weirdness above.
• Writing a book gave Halnoth 12 xp writer and 6 xp wordsmith, my one scholar got 50 xp writer and 12 xp wordsmith. Maybe the values changed between releases of DF, maybe there's another factor. Writing doesn't go up for scribes, it seems to be about composing a text, much like how I am composing this post.
• Books that aren't academic aren't tied to knowledge, your Dwarves will just occasionally write them. No idea what does affect it.
• Dwarves that get started upon embark with academic skills will not know any topics when play starts. Only histfig immigrants and visitors might know topics without reading.

From this, I can say the following:

• More important to buy/raid books than to write them yourself. Because of the bug 10231 scholars won't rediscover discovered topics (though I have not verified this yet), meaning that writing books might prove tricky, and more importantly, buying/raiding just takes far less time.
• Trying to attract wandering scholars might be a better option than to make a starting dwarf a scholar. Wandering scholars often come with a research goal half-completed, so it takes less time for them to start writing. They also know much more topics and have read far more books than any starting dwarf would. Immigrant scholars are also more useful.
• Research takes a long, long, long time. I haven't ever seen the research progress on a legendary something-or-the-other, so no idea how much effect this has. However, as long as the scholar doesn't die, they keep their research progress, suggesting that you could expel a scholar if you think a siege will end your fort, and then start a new one elsewhere and hope the scholar comes to your new fort.
• While discussions may not increase the research progress for the dwarf who doesn't deal with that topic, it does give both far more xp than pondering does. So while discussions are not useful for a hypothetical legendary scholar to research more quickly, they will speed up lower skilled dwarves much more.

With that said, I'll leave you with my DFHack script to get information about the current academic knowledge of a given dwarf:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

-- View knowledge for currently selected unit
--[====[

read-knowledge
==============
View knowledge for currently selected unit

]====]

    local i,unit_name

    local unit=dfhack.gui.getSelectedUnit()
        if unit==nil then
            print ("No unit under cursor!  Aborting.")
        return
    end

    unit_name=dfhack.TranslateName(dfhack.units.getVisibleName(unit))

    print("")
    print("Printing data for "..unit_name)
    print("======================================")
    print("")
   
    histfig = df.global.world.history.figures[(unit.hist_figure_id+1)]

    firstname = histfig.name.first_name
    print("Books Read:")
    print("-----------")
    for _,book_id in pairs(histfig.info.secret.read_books) do
        for id, book in pairs(df.global.world.written_contents.all) do
            if (book.id==book_id) then
                bookName = book.title
                print("")
                print("-\t"..bookName)
                style = ""
                for x, s in pairs(book.styles) do
                    sep = " "
                    if (x>0) then
                        sep = ", "
                    end
                    style = (style..sep..df.written_content_style[s])
                end
                print("\ta"..style.." ".. df.written_content_type[book.type])
                if book.author > -1 then
                    maker = df.global.world.history.figures[(book.author+1)]
                    makerName = maker.name.first_name
                    print("\tby ".. makerName)
                end
            end
        end
    end
   
    print("")
    print("Knowledge:")
    print("----------")
    print("")
    knowledge = histfig.info.secret.knowledge
    if (knowledge==nil) then return end
   
    knowledge_goal_category = knowledge.knowledge_goal_category
    knowledge_goal = knowledge.knowledge_goal
    research_points = knowledge.research_points
    research_percentage = (research_points/100000) *100
   
    print("Times pondered:", knowledge.times_pondered)
    print("")
   
    knowledges = {}
    knowledgeNames = {}
    knowledges[0] = knowledge.philosophy
    knowledges[1] = knowledge.philosophy2
    knowledges[2] = knowledge.math
    knowledges[3] = knowledge.math2
    knowledges[4] = knowledge.history
    knowledges[5] = knowledge.astronomy
    knowledges[6] = knowledge.naturalist
    knowledges[7] = knowledge.chemistry
    knowledges[8] = knowledge.geography
    knowledges[9] = knowledge.medicine
    knowledges[10] = knowledge.medicine2
    knowledges[11] = knowledge.medicine3
    knowledges[12] = knowledge.engineering
    knowledges[13] = knowledge.engineering2
   
   
    for no, knowledge_type in pairs(knowledges) do
        entry = 0
        for name, known in pairs(knowledge_type) do
            entry = entry+1
            if (known==true) then
                print("- ".. name)
            end
            if( knowledge_goal_category==no) then
                for entry_g, known_g in pairs(knowledge_goal) do
                    if (known_g == true and entry_g==entry-1) then
                        print("- "..name.." (Learning: "..research_points.." / 100000 or "..research_percentage.."%)")
                    end
                end
            end
        end
    end
   
    print("")



It might need some tweaking the next DFHack release as I am seeing from the github some names got changed... It's also the first time I've ever written lua, so my apologies if I commited lua-crimes or something.

[Untrustedlife]

So, I had been looking into libraries past week, and I realize now this thread isn't so old, so I'll just post what I have learned.

While a lot of info is from the old Halnoth thread, most of it actually comes from looking at the DFHack data structures, so kudos to them.

The way knowledge works is that you have that knowledge tech-grassland, with it's topics. Each histfig keeps track of which topics they do and don't know, as well as which books they've read. It also keeps track of a knowledge goal for the histfig and how many times they've performed a research action(in the DFHack api reffered to as times pondered, but it also goes up when they participate in a discussion regarding their research goal). After a certain amount of research actions (DFhack comment suggests between 40-60, I myself suspect this is tied to academic skill) the scholar gains research points in said topic(the amount of research points is definitely tied to skill level, with dabbling giving in the thousands, and competent/skilled three times as much, but there's no set numbers). According to the DF hack comments, 100K research points is necessary for a topic to be researched, and the histfig will then write a book about it.

There's still a lot I don't understand, for example, there is a certain amount of variance in how much pondering is necessary to get research points, and the research points themselves also vary for a single scholar. One time a skilled (lvl 4) geographer got 4700 research points, and the subsequent time 3700 research points.

As for skill gain...

• From my own experiments, pondering gives 0 to 5 xp in a given academic skill. Weirdly enough I have had dwarves who gained record keeper from pondering as well, but also dwarves who have not gained any. I am still trying to figure out what is up here. From my tests a scholar will gain about 700xp in their academic field a year if they only ponder. Have not tested the effect of skill yet.
• From Halnoth's thread, discussions give 10-30 xp in a given academic skill. Halnoth also notes this trains speaker, I have not seen this, might be related to my recordkeeper weirdness above.
• Writing a book gave Halnoth 12 xp writer and 6 xp wordsmith, my one scholar got 50 xp writer and 12 xp wordsmith. Maybe the values changed between releases of DF, maybe there's another factor. Writing doesn't go up for scribes, it seems to be about composing a text, much like how I am composing this post.
• Books that aren't academic aren't tied to knowledge, your Dwarves will just occasionally write them. No idea what does affect it.
• Dwarves that get started upon embark with academic skills will not know any topics when play starts. Only histfig immigrants and visitors might know topics without reading.

From this, I can say the following:

• More important to buy/raid books than to write them yourself. Because of the bug 10231 scholars won't rediscover discovered topics (though I have not verified this yet), meaning that writing books might prove tricky, and more importantly, buying/raiding just takes far less time.
• Trying to attract wandering scholars might be a better option than to make a starting dwarf a scholar. Wandering scholars often come with a research goal half-completed, so it takes less time for them to start writing. They also know much more topics and have read far more books than any starting dwarf would. Immigrant scholars are also more useful.
• Research takes a long, long, long time. I haven't ever seen the research progress on a legendary something-or-the-other, so no idea how much effect this has. However, as long as the scholar doesn't die, they keep their research progress, suggesting that you could expel a scholar if you think a siege will end your fort, and then start a new one elsewhere and hope the scholar comes to your new fort.
• While discussions may not increase the research progress for the dwarf who doesn't deal with that topic, it does give both far more xp than pondering does. So while discussions are not useful for a hypothetical legendary scholar to research more quickly, they will speed up lower skilled dwarves much more.

With that said, I'll leave you with my DFHack script to get information about the current academic knowledge of a given dwarf:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

-- View knowledge for currently selected unit
--[====[

read-knowledge
==============
View knowledge for currently selected unit

]====]

    local i,unit_name

    local unit=dfhack.gui.getSelectedUnit()
        if unit==nil then
            print ("No unit under cursor!  Aborting.")
        return
    end

    unit_name=dfhack.TranslateName(dfhack.units.getVisibleName(unit))

    print("")
    print("Printing data for "..unit_name)
    print("======================================")
    print("")
   
   
    histfig = df.global.world.history.figures[(unit.hist_figure_id+1)]

    firstname = histfig.name.first_name
    print("Books Read:")
    print("-----------")
    for _,book_id in pairs(histfig.info.secret.read_books) do
        for id, artifact in pairs(df.global.world.artifacts.all) do
            if (artifact.id==book_id) then
                book = artifact
                bookName = artifact.name.first_name
                print("")
                print("-\t"..bookName)
                if artifact.item.maker > -1 then
                    maker = df.global.world.history.figures[(artifact.item.maker+1)]
                    makerName = maker.name.first_name
                    print("\tby ".. makerName)
                end
            end
        end
    end
   
    print("")
    print("Knowledge:")
    print("----------")
    print("")
    knowledge = histfig.info.secret.knowledge
    if (knowledge==nil) then return end
   
    knowledge_goal_category = knowledge.knowledge_goal_category
    knowledge_goal = knowledge.knowledge_goal
    research_points = knowledge.research_points
    research_percentage = (research_points/100000) *100
   
    print("Times pondered:", knowledge.times_pondered)
    print("")
   
    knowledges = {}
    knowledgeNames = {}
    knowledges[0] = knowledge.philosophy
    knowledges[1] = knowledge.philosophy2
    knowledges[2] = knowledge.math
    knowledges[3] = knowledge.math2
    knowledges[4] = knowledge.history
    knowledges[5] = knowledge.astronomy
    knowledges[6] = knowledge.naturalist
    knowledges[7] = knowledge.chemistry
    knowledges[8] = knowledge.geography
    knowledges[9] = knowledge.medicine
    knowledges[10] = knowledge.medicine2
    knowledges[11] = knowledge.medicine3
    knowledges[12] = knowledge.engineering
    knowledges[13] = knowledge.engineering2
   
   
    for no, knowledge_type in pairs(knowledges) do
        entry = 0
        for name, known in pairs(knowledge_type) do
            entry = entry+1
            if (known==true) then
                print("- ".. name)
            end
            if( knowledge_goal_category==no) then
                for entry_g, known_g in pairs(knowledge_goal) do
                    if (known_g == true and entry_g==entry-1) then
                        print("- "..name.." (Learning: "..research_points.." / 100000 or "..research_percentage.."%)")
                    end
                end
            end
        end
    end
   
    print("")


It might need some tweaking the next DFHack release as I am seeing from the github some names got changed... It's also the first time I've ever written lua, so my apologies if I commited lua-crimes or something.

Awesome science.

Could the xp difference have something to do with logician and critical thinking skill and concentration skill also being different? Also attributes may have an impact.

[therahedwig]

None of my test scholars had logician, and critical thinker was only trained by the guy thinking about philosophy. I have been keeping a close eye on attributes, but it is so much that it is going to take a looooong while before I understand the relationship between academic performance/skills and attributes.

I did some other minor experiments, I started an adventurer in a fort that I knew had a library, and started reading a bunch of books, including one on star charts. Result; my adventurer could now create star charts (Gaze in awe at the effects of the DF techtree, people), the wiki already speculated this, but it is confirmed for me now

Given that I already had access to manual, guide, chronicle, letter, short story, novel (and poem and musical composition), I suspect that a well stocked library, without scholars, will lead to your fortress inhabitants occasionally writing these (while access to the form books will lead to dwarves also writing about those).

I updated the script to ensure that it gets the appropriate written works and it can tell you about it's type and style. Still trying to figure out how to go about getting it to print the actual knowledge inside...

[fortunawhisk]

With that said, I'll leave you with my DFHack script to get information about the current academic knowledge of a given dwarf:

Code: [Select]

    histfig = df.global.world.history.figures[(unit.hist_figure_id+1)]

    firstname = histfig.name.first_name
    print("Books Read:")


I think you might be looking at the wrong historical figure when determining the books read and the artifact maker? Adding the firstname variable to the "Books Read:" print above should dump out the first name of the same unit, but it doesn't (for me).  Here's what worked better for me in 44.12.

Code: [Select]

    histfig = df.historical_figure.find(unit.hist_figure_id)

    firstname = histfig.name.first_name
    print("Books Read by " .. firstname .. ":")
...
    maker = df.historical_figure.find(artifact.item.maker)
    makerName = maker.name.first_name

    print("\tby ".. dfhack.TranslateName(df.historical_figure.find(artifact.item.maker).name, false) .. "(" .. artifact.item.maker .. ")")


...
I updated the script to ensure that it gets the appropriate written works and it can tell you about it's type and style. Still trying to figure out how to go about getting it to print the actual knowledge inside...

If you haven't, you might look at PatrikLundell's "The Librarian" thread. It might save you some work.

[therahedwig]

Yeah, I updated it, the old one was looking at the wrong list(artifacts instead of written contents). There's still some tweaking to do there, as it is being really messy and bad code in places. I'll take a look at Patrick's thread, thanks!

I looked at my two worlds, and it seems that form unlocks are pretty rare. Writing chronicles in adventure mode is pretty fun though. I guess the idea is you collect knowledge of historical events of an entity and then proceed to write a chronicle about it. Pity you can't select which entity you'll write about.

Spoiler: Forms (click to show/hide)

Manual	Teaches a knowledge, eg. Academic topic, poetry form, music form, dance form	Doesn't need unlocking
Guide	Teaches the location of a site	Doesn't need unlocking
Chronicle	Teaches about events associated with a given entity, can have multiple entries.	Doesn't need unlocking
Short story	Creative work, may teach a moral	Doesn't need unlocking
Novel	Creative work, may teach a moral	Doesn't need unlocking
Biography	Teaches about a person and several events happening to that person. "It concerns the method of writing the history of a single individual."	Requires topic.
Autobiography	Biography, but then about it's author. Presumably the idea is that your adventurer should write one of these when they'd done slaying monsters.	Requires topic.
Poem	Teaches the poem	May need poetry to be composed first.
Play	Creative work, may teach a moral	Doesn't need unlocking
Letter	Creative work, may teach a moral	Doesn't need unlocking
Essay	Seems to do multiple things. I have seen it talk about a topic, a value as well as a single historical event.	Doesn't need unlocking
Dialog	? There's stuff like Plato's dialogues, but...	No idea
Musical Composition	Teaches a piece of music	May need to have the piece of music available
Choreography	Teaches a piece of dance	May need to know the dance to begin with.
Comparative biography	No idea, writing this as an adventurer gives an essay... Description of tech: "It concerns the method of compiling several biographies to compare and contrast the subjects' character and to gain insight into history."	Requires topic.
Biographic Dictionary	No idea, writing this as an adventurer gives an essay... Description implies it will write about several figures.	Requires topic.
Genealogy	Results in an essay right now, despite me interogating my fellow adventurer about his family.	Requires topic.
Encyclopedia	Teaches about several notable historical objects in a world, so artifacts, sites, people.	Requires topic.
Cultural History	Teaches about an entity, and several events happening to that entity.	Requires topic.
Cultural Comparison	Teaches about two entities and (maybe) teaches a moral.	Requires topic.
Alternate History	Teaches an event.	Requires topic.
Treatise on Technological Advancement	Results in an essay right now.	Requires topic.
Dictionary	Teaches a language.	Requires topic.
Star Chart	Nothing at the moment, but can be a 'good resource of information'	Requires topic.
Star Catalogue	?	Requires topic?
Atlas	?	Requires topic?