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World History Oddities

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slink:
I ran across a couple of things I found interesting.  I thought I'd share them.

I generated a new copy of a world that I had been playing with a fortress I had gotten tired of.  I made some changes in the raws of some added creatures/civs and added a few new plants.  I used the same seed for the world itself, but left the name and history seed random in the hopes of getting a fresh game to play.  It worked, except that apparently place names are dictated by the general seed and not by the name seed because the place names were identical with my first version even though the name seeds were different.

I settled down to read the world history, and noted that some of the civilizations had no rulers.  I have often wondered why that happens, and wondered if it was because I was having it cull unimportant historical figures.  I regenerated the world with the same three seeds but with culling turned off.  That isn't the cause of having no rulers for some civilizations, but DF has some odd ideas about what is unimportant.

The first ruler of the first Dwarven civilization, under culling, was said to have outlived 4 of his 9 children.  Without culling, this is revealed to be untrue.  He died before any of them died.

One of his culled children was a daughter whose son went on to become Liaison for their civilization, and in fact is the Liaison you will have if you settle from that place.  In the culled version, this Liaison is listed as having a mother whose identity was lost in time.  In the unculled version, he is the grandson of the first ruler of his civilization.  That seems a rather important distinction to me, and not something a Dwarf would easily misplace.

I found it interesting that all the civilizations are founded by 10 couples.  This works because a married female Dwarf can produce at least one baby every year for over one hundred years, and each of those becomes adult at the age of 12.  It's no wonder I feel overwhelmed by 200 immigrants once they start to breed.   :D

SkyRender:
Culling priorities seem to be based on what a specific unit has accomplished.  If you culled based on their connections even at one degree of separation, there wouldn't be many culled historical figures.  Expand it out to about 3 degrees of separation, and nobody would get culled.

slink:
I was surprised because I expected the culled people to be those who had no descendents, or whose descendents had no effect on history.

Lifespan must be considered an accomplishment, because the only thing the Liaison's father had going for him was living longer.  He doesn't have a kill list like some of them do.

Bluenessmirrored: married Boreboot, became a farmer, began worshipping a bronze colossus, had a child, began worshipping a titan, killed by a cyclops (age 45)

Boreboot: married Bluenessmirrored, became a guard, began worshipping a hydra, fathered a child, died of old age (age 164 years)

I suppose culling creates a feeling of mystery and greater antiquity, but I enjoy seeing the exact relationships.  It's nice that I can.  :)

Grendus:
I believe culling is done for speed reasons. If you try to get a large world for a long time, it would be nearly impossible to simulate all the dwarves, elves, humans, goblins, megabeasts, etc that would populate it if you didn't cull the boring ones. In pocket, small, and even normal sized worlds, this isn't an issue, especially if you end world gen after only a few hundred years.

slink:
Culling makes the save directory smaller because of the missing history entries, but it probably generates the world at the same speed because it culls after the Dwarves have been born, reproduced, and died. 

My guess is that the culling is supposed to leave an air of mystery about exactly how many Dwarves were present from the beginning, so that the 200 immigrants in your fortress have a place to have come from without depeleting the parent civilization.  That is not even mentioning the innumerable nobles who might be required if your fortress has a high rate of "accidents".   :D

EDIT: It also seems to limit the total number of children to 10, which makes sense in conserving disk space.  I wish we could put a limit on the number of children any one individual can have, as opposed to a total limit which gives the reproductive advantage to the earliest ones.   :D

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