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[Lytha]

I have a fortress with 2 original dwarf breeding pairs. The other 3 of the starting 7 are apparently just gay and not interesting in marriage, and I got rid of the immigrants a long time ago.

When the 3rd generation started to arrive, I thought that I was in trouble, because they recognized that they were all in a "cousin" relationship with each other. Well, with a baby_max set to 10 or so, there weren't enough of them to come to any conclusions though. The only possible targets for marriage for this generation, from their point of view, appeared to be the 3 gay dwarves from the embark.

Then, two interesting events happened. Two "aunts" insta-married their nephews, as soon as these had come of age. "Nephew" and "niece" aren't relationships marked in the relationships of aunts and uncles; but aunts and uncles are marked as relationships in the younger generation.

So, I now have the interesting situation where 2 females have a husband, but these husbands don't have a "wive". They still consider their partners to be their "aunts".

The baby_max kicked in again before they had the chance to breed (I'll fix that today by lowering the [child:] tag and the baby_max), but I am curious if these weird couples still can breed.


So, here are the questions:

- Can "cousin" dwarves get married with each other?
- Does a female dwarf need to be tagged as "wive" on a living male dwarf, so that she can breed, or does she only need to have tagged a living male dwarf as "husband"?
- Do you think that the 5th or 6th generation will show up with the first genetic anomalies?

[Lytha]

Nobody else interested in dwarven hillbilly breeding projects? 

Anyway:

- yes: cousins can marry. They're still tagging each other as "cousin" though, not as "husband" and "wife". No idea if these couples are fertile though.

- One of the aunt/nephew pairs has started to breed, the other is still infertile. The children of the breeding pair are oblivious to the fact that they're also related to breeding pair "B" and their offspring (great-grandparents + I don't know how you call this relationship normally "grand-aunts" and "grand-uncles"). So, this will open up the way for "non hillbilly" mating in the future.

So, I am happy to report that 2 breeding pairs are indeed enough to repopulate the world.

I'll keep the experiment running for another while and report and genetical anomalies, if they should appear.

[Acperience]

I bet if this were posted in Dwarf Mode discussion it would have more comments.
Never really had an interest in dwarven genetics until now.

For the genetic anomalies, note their traits, toughness, strength etc.

iirc children should partly inherit their parents' traits so if inbreeding doesn't have any side effects maybe you could pseudo-clone military-grade dwarves with their children. (after modding babies to grow up instantly)

by iirc, i mean, i read it somewhere on the forum and now i believe it with no evidence

[Rowanas]

They don't inherit. It's a myth.

[Acperience]

They don't inherit. It's a myth.

saaaaaaaad face

[Lytha]

Yep, they don't even inherit the eye, skin or hair colours from the parents, it seems. They only inherit the superstitious belief system.

They just created breeding pair #i, and that's a lot of dwarves for a fortress where not much is happening at all except some bored strip-mining of the lowest few levels.

I think I really prefer fortresses with just 10 adult dwarves. Sure, they need ages to dump some thousand rocks, but at least there aren't 30 bored idlers around.

[Namfuak]

This is very useful for !!SCIENCE!!.  I once had a fort like yours, but I had only 1 breeding pair, and I could get the rest to breed no matter what I did.  That's interesting that aunts and nephews will get together, but not the same generation.

[Lytha]

Oh, that's a misunderstanding.

- "cousins" (same generation) can marry. They will be as fertile as the other breeding pairs. However, to identify them as a married couple, you have to check out the relationships of the children, or to tag them with a "family name" right after they got married. The relationship status of the couple will remain "cousin" for all times, instead of "husband" and "wife". That doesn't stop them from sharing a room or from impregnating the female with spores though.

- Once the family trees become sufficiently confused, I should see "proper" married couples again: "Grand-uncles" marrying their "grand-nieces" should register as "husband" and "wife" again, because they are oblivious to the fact that they are related.


I am a bit saddened that the normal results of inbreeding don't show up in this game. No deformed hands with 6 digits, no hemophilia, no nothings. Just a bunch of the usual fat or thin dwarven children.



I think this is more disturbing to me than it would be normal, because I personally am a child of two single-children parents. No aunts or uncles. The only uncles and aunts I knew were those 75+ year old "grand-aunts". Imagining a coupling between those and their 12 year old "grand-nephews" is a very disturbing mental image.

But of course, in DF, these generation-jumping couples are all of the same age, because the great-grandmothers never stop the breeding.

[Mantonio]

They don't inherit. It's a myth.

Does that mean that my dwarfs will ALWAYS have stupidly tanned skin?

Because I'd like some pale as Circus dwarfs for my underground empire

[Lesconrads]

This is very useful for !!SCIENCE!!.  I once had a fort like yours, but I had only 1 breeding pair, and I could get the rest to breed no matter what I did.  That's interesting that aunts and nephews will get together, but not the same generation.

I feel bad now... my first thought? "Why is "science" on fire?

[Ratbert_CP]

This is very useful for !!SCIENCE!!.  I once had a fort like yours, but I had only 1 breeding pair, and I could get the rest to breed no matter what I did.  That's interesting that aunts and nephews will get together, but not the same generation.

I feel bad now... my first thought? "Why is "science" on fire?

But that's the BEST kind of science!  I mean, isn't that why Mythbusters is so successful (yes, there is a female on the show that likes to blow things up and generally wreak havoc, but I consider her to be icing on the cake)?

[Nilik]

They don't inherit. It's a myth.

What? Yes they do. I don't know about skin, hair and eye color e.t.c because I don't pay any attention to that stuff, but you can definitely see traits inherited between generations. We had a thread just a week or so ago where someone had a near-perfect female dwarf, and was attempting to breed an army of super-babies. It worked! You can also breed animals for muscle and fat, and you will definitely see a change in the amount of meat returned on the larger animals.

[Hurgal]

In reading this thread, am I the only one who thought of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0s5Kn9QXtU

[Acperience]

I was actually thinking of the Benny Hill theme, but i do that a lot.

[Aner-Dyfan]

That's because Yakety Sax makes EVERYTHING funny, of course for best effect what ever it is being played to needs to be sped up.