40d Talk:Relationship

Experimentation

Ran a small experiment on whether or not relationships are affected by social skills. I assigned the original dwarves various social skills at various levels, and let them sit in a meeting area until the traders came in the fall, no labor assigned. The skills assigned were:

Dwarf 1: Proficient Comedian/Proficient Conversationalist Dwarf 2: Proficient Liar/Proficient Intimidator Dwarf 3: Proficient Judge of Intent Dwarf 4: Conversationalist/Comedian Dwarf 5: Novice Comedian/Novice Flatterer/Novice Consoler/Novice Pacifier Dwarf 6: Control (nothing) Dwarf 7: Control

Results:

Dwarf 1: 1 lover (Dwarf 5), 2 friends (4, 3). Personality types: Likes art, dislikes intellectual conversation, guarded in relationships.

Dwarf 2: 1 lover (3), 0 friends. Personality types: Calm demeanor, Quick to anger, Comfortable in social situations, Relaxed, Not given to flights of fancy, no more work than necessary, given to procrastination.

Dwarf 3: 1 lover (2), 2 friends (1, 5). Personality types: Overindulges, Can handle stress, Prefers familiar routines, Does not go out of way to help others, Not easily moved to pity, very disorganized, strong sense of duty.

Dwarf 4: 2 friends (6, 1). Personality types: Slow to anger, often feels discouraged, thrillseeker, not easily moved to pity, lacks confidence, disorganized, thinks through every alternative and consequence before acting,

Dwarf 5: 1 lover (1), 1 friend (3). Personality types: Calm demeanor, can handle stress, not a risk-taker, candid and sincere in dealings with others, disorganized.

Dwarf 6: 1 friend (4). Personality types: Thrillseeker, Art-lover, Tends not to openly express emotion, slow to trust others, very willing to compare herself favorably with others, not easily moved to pity, does the first thing that comes to mind.

Dwarf 7: 0 friends. Personality types: Slow to anger, cracks easily under pressure, tends to avoid crowds, unassertive, relaxed, art-lover, prefers familiar routines, trusting, guarded in relationships with others, very rarely does more work than necessary, takes time when making decisions.

In order to do this, I classified the skills into three rough categories - beneficial, harmful, and neutral. Beneficial included comedian, conversationalist, flatterer and pacifier. Harmful included liar and intimidator, and neutral included judge of intent and negotiator.

Some things I noticed from this experiment: There is a definite increase in the number of friends that dwarves with social skills have over the controls, with the exception of the one dwarf with harmful skills. However, even this dwarf had a lover - the one who had high judge of intent. Perhaps judge of intent is necessary to establish a positive relationship with a liar or intimidator? Furthermore, the two dwarves that ended up with the most relationships were those who had the most negative personality traits in regard to social situations among those who had social skills.

Furthermore, there seemed to be very little influence in personality types on friend-making. The friendships between 3/5 and 6/4 were the only two that shared any personality types, and those do not seem to be particularly applicable to the situation at hand. It's also worth noting that the only dwarf comfortable in social situations, #2, also only had the one lover - likely due to problems brought about by his social skills.

I will run some more tests to try to flesh out these findings more. Anybody else willing to join in? Some1else 11:22, 19 February 2008 (EST)

Grudges are definately rare. In my fortress with 150 dwarves, only two have a grudge between themselves.ThVaz

I classified the personality types into three rough categories - beneficial, harmful, and neutral. You mean skills? -- Zaratustra 17:11, 19 February 2008 (EST)

Yes. Yes I did. Edited to fix that. Some1else 18:02, 19 February 2008 (EST)

Idea: Social skills generally wouldn't cause increases in physical stats, you'd think... but something like Liar or Intimidator might train up toughness and agility because the dwarf would need to quickly learn how to dodge punches and slaps. :D --Alfador 12:10, 22 February 2008 (EST)

I can confirm that they do cause increases in all physical stats. --Some1else 13:19, 22 February 2008 (EST)

There's another relationship thing of note: If a parent has more than one child, they get titles on the relationship screen, like 'eldest daughter'.

Grudge

'Grudges are definately rare'... my marksdwarf managed to make about 5, 75 population. Thing is, she is 'comfortable in social situations... very friendly...truly fulfilled by helping those in need... modest'. The only bad personality feature is that she is 'guarded in relationships with others'. She's also a 'risk-taker and thrill-seeker','avoids crowds', 'doesnt often experience strong cravings or urges', 'does not have a great aesthetic appreciation' and 'thinks it is incredibly important to strive for excellence'.

she is friends with all her marksdwarves... one of her 'grudges' has a legendary skill... lovers and spouses do not seem to make grudges against the same people... Twiggie 08:07, 16 April 2008 (EDT)

I also had another marksdwarf hold a grudge against another guy, im pretty sure it was an argument about art, becuase, one of them liked art, the other had 'no aesthetic appreciation' Twiggie 12:25, 16 April 2008 (EDT)

Marriage and relationships

Dwarves with spouses or lovers who die, do they ever find another person or are dwarves extremely monogamous? I haven't seen anyone remarry or hook up again, but then again, I think I keep them too busy. I didn't even start getting births until the Countess and her Consort showed up (although the Consort was my most recent death, got caught outside by a Goblin ambush party). Fuzzy 19:29, 27 September 2008 (EDT)

Additional insight

I might have uncovered a little more of the mechanism behind relationships: playing around with Blakmane's "Dark Dwarves" mod, I noticed that dwarfs with the same jobs (not enabled labours, actual occupations) became lovers extremely quickly (within the first season, and in one fortress married within two). It's entirely possible that this is down to a few different parameters, some of which have already been covered in part:

• How much dwarf x socialises with dwarf y or z, etc.
• Differences in personality between dwarfs
• Occupation

Now, if you open the creature_standard raw and take a look at the dwarf entry there, you'll see that dwarf personalites are quite loosely defined:

[PERSONALITY:IMMODERATION:0:55:100]
[PERSONALITY:VULNERABILITY:0:45:100]
[PERSONALITY:STRAIGHTFORWARDNESS:0:55:100]

The reason for this is obvious - dwarfs are presumed to have certain common traits, while still given the "freedom" (of effectively random chance) to have quite individual personalities. Now look at the personality definitions of Blakmane's Dark Dwarfs:

[PERSONALITY:ANGER:0:70:100]
[PERSONALITY:IMMODERATION:25:75:100]
[PERSONALITY:ACHIEVEMENT_STRIVING:25:75:100]
[PERSONALITY:CHEERFULNESS:0:25:90]
[PERSONALITY:DEPRESSION:0:25:90]
[PERSONALITY:ALTRUISM:0:25:50]
[PERSONALITY:SYMPATHY:0:5:10]
[PERSONALITY:VULNERABILITY:0:5:10]
[PERSONALITY:STRAIGHTFORWARDNESS:50:75:100]
[PERSONALITY:SELF_DISCIPLINE:60:85:100]

More set perameters == less scope for random chance, meaning that the dark dwarfs are more likely to be similar to one another than the default noble dwarfs are. But don't think I'm suggesting that this is all down to personality - I'm actually saying the opposite.

If only, say, two dwarfs of opposing gender in an entire fortress have similar personalities, then when they become lovers (or friends) the situation is polarized, because they're the only two dwarfs who are even remotely similar to each other. When all of the dwarfs in a fortress have very similar personalities, lovers are no more common than they are in the stock game - from my experience, rarer.

However, when I embarked with two dwarfs with almost exactly the same skills (each had Metalsmith/Metal Crafter/Wood Burner/Furnace Operator, just different emphasis), and those dwarfs were of opposing gender, they became lovers extremely quickly. Considering that most/all of the dwarfs had similar personalities (and that variable was thrown out of the window in consequence), dwarf lovers of the same occupation were brought out into the limelight.

If the occupation in question allowed the two dwarfs to socialise a lot while at work (ie, Miner), then we'd have that to take into account as well, but when you're talking about craft skills, those dwarfs are usually holed up on their own in workshops (or at least they are in my fortresses).

It'd be interesting to see what modding the game to make all dwarfs identikit (or near enough) would do to relationships. --3 17:29, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

In my observation, couples that form 'Lover' relationship often have the same likes ('likes maces', 'likes Silver' etc). Can anyone confirm from their experience? 212.119.56.254 20:38, 21 February 2010 (UTC)