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Author Topic: Stop a tantrum spiral?  (Read 6565 times)

thistleknot

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Stop a tantrum spiral?
« on: October 08, 2011, 07:04:29 pm »

So my fortress is about 100 dwarves.  About 5 years old.  Survived a few sieges.  I never really thought much about dwarven personalities when assigning labors.  Just looked at the skills of my immigrants and assigned from that.

Now I'm having tantrum spirals.  About 8-10 are really pissed.  One has deconstructed two bridges.  Thankfully because of my advanced concept of defenses, the bridges are not a problem.  I have about 95% of the map walled off (I literally walled it off as close to the edge as I could).  However, I'm finding that despite the sieges I'm capable of holding back, I'm losing the efficiency of my fort to tantrums.

So.  How do I mitigate it?

I'm going to look into reserved barrels and ensure I have alcohol (I've been working on a second farm so I can make other alcohol than from plump helmets).

I first started with my nobles, and started re-assigning my mayor to someone who is helpfull, same with my Chief Medical Dwarf.  Then I started assigning rooms to the most pissed of dwarves.

I have a justice room.  I have a few statues (4), my dining hall is smooth and engraved.  I engraved the big noble's rooms.  I'm working on more rooms other than for just the nobles and a dormitory.

I'm thinking it might be because my dwarves are really busy right now.  I have a recent caravan that got slaughtered so I got a lot of loot to collect, and a former siege where I'm reclaiming a lot of the ammo.  When my dwarves are busy, they don't have much time for recreation (such as organized parties).  I'm hoping I can catch back up to that, but I fear the next raid might pop up before that.  Anyways, any ideas?

Anything else?
« Last Edit: October 08, 2011, 07:14:24 pm by thistleknot »
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thistleknot

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Re: Stop a tantrum spiral?
« Reply #1 on: October 08, 2011, 07:28:17 pm »

wow, my baronness is in jail!

Sutremaine

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Re: Stop a tantrum spiral?
« Reply #2 on: October 08, 2011, 07:52:46 pm »

Lack of organised recreation is good. If your dwarves have decent rooms, they'll hang out in those and not socialise. (Just for kicks I took on some powerful enemies to see what would happen (result: close combat is a cinch. Fireballs are not. The stairs were a bad idea). Pretty much the whole military plus a couple of random civilians died, so that was a quarter of the fortress gone in a month. Only one dwarf even dipped to Unhappy after his mother rotted, and he quickly returned to being Fine.)

If you do have a tantrum spiral going, make sure you have enough chains. Otherwise, any imprisonments automatically convert to beatings. The Guard will hit criminals with training weapons or crossbows if they have them already; otherwise they'll administer beatings before picking up those more harmless weapons. To avoid that you can draft them into a regular squad, order them into a room with their nerf weapons, lock the door, and only then promote them to the Guard.

And do make your jail cells so that imprisoned dwarves can get their own food and drink. Other dwarves will happily haul the food and drink there to be picked up, but they're very slow at attending directly to prisoners' needs. The easiest way to do this is to have a three-level jail. On the middle floor are the chains and beds, and on the other two floors are a food and a drink stockpile taking from whichever one gets filled first by the kitchen and still.
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Leonidas

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Re: Stop a tantrum spiral?
« Reply #3 on: October 08, 2011, 07:53:35 pm »

Look at the details for your angry dwarves. What are they angry about?
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thistleknot

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Re: Stop a tantrum spiral?
« Reply #4 on: October 10, 2011, 10:22:29 am »

So I abandoned that fortress.  Not because of the spiral but because I was an idiot and opened up my wall so I can pilfer a massacred caravan (and boy do they have a lot of loot).  Anyways.  A siege came right by that wall and that was that.

But I have learned a bit w my new fort and how to avoid tantrum spirals.

One, assign ur nobles to personalities that fit (lawfulness for sherriff, helpful for mayor & cmd).

Second, make toys for the kids.

Third, assign angry dwarves rooms.  Check their status, sometimes the rain pisses them off and u might need to turn on/off some labors.

Fourth, and the most important.  Smooth stone to ur dormitory, workshops, dining hall, and then start on the living quarters. 

Lastly (but prolly should be done early on).  Place some statues in the dining hall, dormitory, and near the main stairwells.

Quietust

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Re: Stop a tantrum spiral?
« Reply #5 on: October 10, 2011, 10:44:14 am »

Second, make toys for the kids.
How exactly would this help? The only way toys can give happy thoughts is if a dwarf buys one ("He made a satisfying acquisition lately."), and that doesn't happen unless the Economy is active (which doesn't happen anymore in version 0.31.xx).

Fourth, and the most important.  Smooth stone to ur dormitory, workshops, dining hall, and then start on the living quarters. 
If you want to keep your dwarves happy, don't use any dormitories - every single dwarf should have a personal bedroom, ideally made of smoothed (and possibly engraved) stone.

Also, smoothing workshop areas doesn't really do anything - dwarves only notice smooth/engraved walls/floors when they are part of designated rooms (activity zones don't count), as they increase the value of the room.
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thistleknot

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Re: Stop a tantrum spiral?
« Reply #6 on: October 10, 2011, 11:04:24 am »

Well I had a dwarven baby that was miserable after a parent died and after making some toys he was happy.  I know the economy isn't working, but I fiigured that helped.  So the smooth stones doesn't work in workshops huh?  It seems to work in the dining hall as reports say the dining hall is magnificient or something to that effect.  I know about assigning dwarves rooms but it takes time to excavate and that's in process, which is why I smoothed the dorm while I'm creating rooms and assigning the angriest dwarves (and nobles) rooms first.

Telgin

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Re: Stop a tantrum spiral?
« Reply #7 on: October 10, 2011, 11:32:56 am »

How exactly would this help? The only way toys can give happy thoughts is if a dwarf buys one ("He made a satisfying acquisition lately."), and that doesn't happen unless the Economy is active (which doesn't happen anymore in version 0.31.xx).

Incidentally, can anything else cause this thought?  I had a dwarf with this thought recently and I was under the same impression that it wasn't possible in the current version.

Quote
Well I had a dwarven baby that was miserable after a parent died and after making some toys he was happy.  I know the economy isn't working, but I fiigured that helped.  So the smooth stones doesn't work in workshops huh?  It seems to work in the dining hall as reports say the dining hall is magnificient or something to that effect.  I know about assigning dwarves rooms but it takes time to excavate and that's in process, which is why I smoothed the dorm while I'm creating rooms and assigning the angriest dwarves (and nobles) rooms first.

Smoothing and engraving the dining hall would definitely increase its value, since you're designating it as a room from one of the tables.  Workshops are different in that you don't designate a room for them and thus the smooth walls don't get factored into the value of any room.  Now, I'm fairly sure that engraving such a wall will still give a happy thought if a dwarf happens to wander by, it's just less likely to happen than in say the dining hall.

I'll also second that decent personal quarters and a nice dining hall are pretty much all you need to keep the dwarves happy.  Each of my dwarves has a 2x3 smoothed bedroom with a bed, chest and cabinet.  I believe the tutorial I followed to get into this habit was written while the economy was still active and such containers actually made a difference, but it seems to keep them happy.  Constructing 3 pieces of furniture, a door and digging out a room for each migrant doesn't take all that much time really.

The dining hall is filled with enough tables and chairs that I don't see any bad thoughts about crowding or lack of chairs, and I smooth the entire room.  I engrave all of the walls except one, which I reserve for future expansion of the dining hall (mining through a master work engraving will tick off whoever engraved it).  When I get a chance, I throw in some statues to increase the value of the room some more.

Interestingly, my dwarves don't seem to make many friends, even though many of them do hang out in the dining hall.  I suspect the large size of the dining hall keeps them from socializing too much.  Thus even though 99% of my dwarves stay at ecstatic, even if a few started tantruming it would likely be contained with little effort.
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Sutremaine

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Re: Stop a tantrum spiral?
« Reply #8 on: October 10, 2011, 11:34:22 am »

Well I had a dwarven baby that was miserable after a parent died and after making some toys he was happy.
Those two things were unrelated. What were the differences in the baby's thought screen before and after you made those toys?

Quote
So the smooth stones doesn't work in workshops huh?  It seems to work in the dining hall as reports say the dining hall is magnificient or something to that effect.  I know about assigning dwarves rooms but it takes time to excavate and that's in process, which is why I smoothed the dorm while I'm creating rooms and assigning the angriest dwarves (and nobles) rooms first.
Smoothing the dorms helps only if there aren't enough beds to go around. Dwarves won't admire engravings or smoothed walls by themselves, and they only care about the value of their own rooms. Since the dorm doesn't belong to anyone, its value doesn't matter. If you're really desperate and there are enough beds for everyone, you can assign each of them to a dwarf and they'll have their own room. It won't be enclosed, they'll be sharing the space with other dwarves, and there won't be any other furniture, but hey, it's technically a room and it's theirs.

Workshops and dining rooms are different. A workshop is a self-contained building which can be admired if it needs an Architect (ie. furnaces), and a dining room is a room (that's a technical term). Rooms are created by placing an appropriate item of furniture and then using it to set the size of the room. A room takes into account all the architecture and built items within its particular area of effect, which is why the dining room becomes more valuble when you smooth or engrave the tiles it covers.
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I am trying to make chickens lay bees as eggs. So far it only produces a single "Tame Small Creature" when a hen lays bees.
Honestly at the time, I didn't see what could go wrong with crowding 80 military Dwarves into a small room with a necromancer for the purpose of making bacon.

Quietust

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Re: Stop a tantrum spiral?
« Reply #9 on: October 10, 2011, 12:26:00 pm »

How exactly would this help? The only way toys can give happy thoughts is if a dwarf buys one ("He made a satisfying acquisition lately."), and that doesn't happen unless the Economy is active (which doesn't happen anymore in version 0.31.xx).

Incidentally, can anything else cause this thought?  I had a dwarf with this thought recently and I was under the same impression that it wasn't possible in the current version.
I'm guessing that said dwarf decided to claim some new clothes (most likely goblinite) due to the old ones having been worn out.
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thistleknot

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Re: Stop a tantrum spiral?
« Reply #10 on: October 12, 2011, 11:56:53 am »

TIL dwarves automatically assign themselves rooms.

"Bedrooms are automatically claimed by dwarves (or families of dwarves)"

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Bedroom

i2amroy

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Re: Stop a tantrum spiral?
« Reply #11 on: October 12, 2011, 12:34:39 pm »

Large (I use like 21x21) engraved dining room + lots of tables and other things to take it to "legendary" + lots of food/drink/prepared meals = ecstatic dwarves. I have even had times where dwarves have plunged all of the way down to "miserable" due to losing like 5 cat pets simultaneously and within about a month they were back up to ecstatic. Also personal bedrooms for all that are engraved to make up for small sizes helps a bunch too.
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Re: Stop a tantrum spiral?
« Reply #12 on: October 13, 2011, 03:18:52 am »

Lack of organised recreation is good. If your dwarves have decent rooms, they'll hang out in those and not socialise. (Just for kicks I took on some powerful enemies to see what would happen (result: close combat is a cinch. Fireballs are not. The stairs were a bad idea). Pretty much the whole military plus a couple of random civilians died, so that was a quarter of the fortress gone in a month. Only one dwarf even dipped to Unhappy after his mother rotted, and he quickly returned to being Fine.)

i tried that once as well, each dwarf his/her own room, no common areas. no parties keeping dwarves from work, no marriages, no kids, all dwarfs were fine/content and life was good. at least until the migrant wave that brought me a married couple. they started producing kids at record speeds, the wife became a legendary intimidator and became the fortress' mayor, continously demanding candy stuff.

everything has a downside :(
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