So, I was thinking about migrants the other day, and came up with this. Some of this is, I think, in the dev notes. But I wanted to expand on my ideas since the dev notes can be pretty sparse on the details.
First off, I'd like to see every dwarf have a screen that shows their basic history. Birth date, Wedding date, child births, date of death, date of migration, born where, migrated where (maybe multiple lines of this), migrated to. You could also have specific notes for Founding Dwarves of a settlement, as well as nobles who are promoted (Baron to Count, say).
Next, it seems strange that the migrants all come in with basically no history. They don't even know the other migrants, unless they're related. So, now that migrations are tracked at a basic level, it'd be nice to have dwarves have relationships held over from previous fortresses. For example, if you get migrants from the fort your original 7 came from, there should be a chance that they know some of the migrants. They might have friends show up, and get a happy thought (An old friend arrived recently) or old grudges may reappear, giving an unhappy thought. Family members may also show up, probably giving a happy thought as well. I don't know if Toady is planning on really tracking every individual in the world, so a lot of that could be faked. Just do some random check whenever a migrant moves, and you see if anyone from his old home is in the new fortress and see if they knew each other.
Also, Migrants have to travel together for some time. Some level of interaction between them should happen, especially if the distance traveled is pretty long. I think I've had dwarves theoretically traveling all the way across the globe to get to my fortresses...long trek, especially on foot.
Since the Army arc also adds in refugees and displaced individuals due to baby-snatching, not to mention conquered sites, it might be nice to give races a level of Xenophobia. Elves, for instance, are probably a bit less tolerant of other races then humans or goblins. Dwarves...I'm not really sure. From the way a lot of players work, highly intolerant, but I don't know how Toady thinks should be. Maybe just have it a social characteristic, so it can be variable form civilization to civilization within a species. Say, give Elves a 9-40-80 rating and Humans the default 0-50-100. That way you can get some variety out of the species and we don't end up with "All humans are the same".
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Topic: Personal histories & migrants (Read 547 times)