Dwarf Fortress > DF Dwarf Mode Discussion

how to defeat the per-species reproduction cap?

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Salmeuk:
unless I am mistaken, each given species will only reproduce up to 50 examples before the game shuts down the reproduction of these animals. Is there a method of increasing this hardcoded population cap?

anewaname:
50 is the "new pregnancy" cap, but if animals are already pregnant, they will still give birth, so if you cull the herd to 1 male animal and 49 (or 48?) females, then all of the females can become pregnant and you can have 100 or more of that type of animal.

Eric Blank:
You can also seek out species that have multiple children per litter. If the average litter is three and you do the above, then you could end up with up to 197 individuals.

Many egg layers average quite a few eggs per clutch. That can take more micromanagement though, like setting up your food stockpiles to exclude eggs of that species and pasturing them in a room with no egg boxes for three months or so then installing them en masse, so they all have the opportunity to mate before laying eggs at the same time. Dealing with 200 goslings at once is a bit of a nightmare, but not as bad as 1500 cave crocodile hatchlings. But a few hundred cave cro cs makes a pretty intimidating defense against intruding goblins or other animals.

You can also raise multiple similar species, like sheep, alpacas, and llamas for wool and milk. Import as many species as you want, and there are already like a dozen domestic animals that can produce some combination of meat, milk and hides.


You could also trap wild animals in an enclosed area and capture/cull sections of their population periodically. Wild animals ignore the population cap and food needs, and you can even use them to train your militia by having them do the culling. You won't get products like eggs or milk, but you do technically get animal hair from butchering
 Not that there are any wild animals that have wool in vanilla. I did this with giant chipmunks. Even after training them, as long as they aren't properly tamed then they'll lose their training and go wild after a few years. They might try to kill each other when some are trained and others wild though.

Salmeuk:
cheers for the responses


--- Quote ---50 is the "new pregnancy" cap, but if animals are already pregnant, they will still give birth, so if you cull the herd to 1 male animal and 49 (or 48?) females, then all of the females can become pregnant and you can have 100 or more of that type of animal.

--- End quote ---

this is exactly the kind of shenanigan for which I have come to love Dwarf Fortress.. thanks


--- Quote ---You could also trap wild animals in an enclosed area and capture/cull sections of their population periodically. Wild animals ignore the population cap and food needs, and you can even use them to train your militia by having them do the culling. You won't get products like eggs or milk, but you do technically get animal hair from butchering
--- End quote ---

you know, this is a fair strategy in many instances, but unless premium changed things, there is ANOTHER disappointing / needless cap on total visiting groups of creatures at a time. so you end up locked in with say a herd of deer and a troupe of badgers or whatever but nothing else can arrive.

though. I wonder if you then cull all the original parents, so that the game perceives the original visiting group as no longer existing, if you could then raise a variety of wild populations with zero repercussions beyond FPS

Eric Blank:
I'm not certain, but I think wild animals that get caught in cage traps still don't count towards that cap after being released again. I bet killing the parents after they produce at least one mating pair of offspring would indeed work if they are tracked on release

I've got some captured elephants that have already given birth in their cages actually. I should try releasing their calves and see if I still get more wild groups. And then I don't have to feed the elephants, since wild animals don't graze.

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