Editing Faction

{{Quality|Exceptional|16:20, 8 September 2013 (UTC)}}

'''Factions''' govern how [[creature]]s will react in each other's presence. The world is full of dangers for your unfortunate dwarves, and it seems that nearly everything is trying to kill them; fortunately, said dangers are also hostile to each other most of the time. Confrontations between such opposed factions happen in both fortress and [[adventurer mode]]; the wise player will see to it that they weaken each other instead of ganging up against one's fort or adventurer.

In the [[object testing arena]], each creature created can be tied to a faction (referred to in-game as a "side"). Creatures will be friendly to other creatures within their faction, and will be hostile to any other creature. There are a total of 99 factions, and an "independent" option which is hostile to all other creatures.

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²<small>Cave civilizations are always friendly toward adventurers and they can be either hostile or friendly toward your dwarves. They often become friendly when confronted with a [[megabeast]]. Note that this behavior does not apply to most [[animal people]], who are simply treated as wildlife.</small>

There are four entity 'factions' that can be created in ''Dwarf Fortress'', although vanilla only uses three of them.  These factions are determined by the presence or absence of the [BABYSNATCHER] or [ITEM_THIEF] tags, so the four factions can be called the Civilized (with neither tag), the Babysnatchers, the Item Thieves, and the Babysnatching Item Thieves.  Members of the same faction will trade with you in fort mode, and members of all other factions may invade you.  This is separate from civs at [[war]], which is determined by having opposing [[ethics]].

Generally, civilization relationships override whatever loyalty a creature may have to begin with. Most notably, foreign creatures kidnapped by goblins and raised by them will be loyal to their goblin civ and hostile against non-goblin civs, including your fort. This also includes their descendants, which means some goblin civs can be potentially ''depleted'' of goblins, but still send sieges (composed of humans, dwarves, elves, etc.) and ambushes to your fort. More amusingly, foreign creatures occupying a [[noble]] position in a civ for whatever reason (e.g. demons that have impersonated a god to take control of human civs, demon law-givers ruling goblin civs, or necromancer kings) will behave the same way any other civ member would toward your dwarves or adventurer. Hence the ludicrous possibilities for a demon to visit your fortress as a [[diplomat]] (or join you in your adventures) or a friendly necromancer inadvertently wreaking havoc on your fortress by raising corpses whenever they can.

Some caveats: creatures without the ability to communicate will always be hostile, even if they technically would be considered the same faction.  They will also wage endless wars, since they lack the ability to form treaties.  This includes creatures without CAN_SPEAK (or INTELLIGENT, which is functionally CAN_LEARN and CAN_SPEAK combined).  Creatures with UTTERANCES cannot communicate with other civs, however, if they have both UTTERANCES and CAN_SPEAK, they will be able to communicate. For instance: [[kobold]]s are unable to speak besides in [[Creature token#UTTERANCES|utterances]] and are thus at war with everyone else - note that if you start as a kobold in adventure mode when they are available, you will be unable to speak to anyone, and other kobolds will attack you on sight because they won't be able to talk to you either.

==Undead and night creatures==

The rule of thumb is that [[undead]] creatures will attack every creature that is living. This is due to their {{token|OPPOSED_TO_LIFE|c}} tag, which overrides all other relationships.  [[Undead]] just ignore [[necromancer]]s or fellow undead, but the necromancers themselves will lash out at each other if they belong to enemy [[civilization]]s or [[Tower (necromancy)|tower]]s. This is because necromancers and other night creatures such as [[vampires]] are consided {{token|NONLIVING}}, but their civilization overrides whatever relationships they have with other civilized nonliving beings (namely fellow night creatures). The exception is [[werebeasts]], that do not count as undead. Werebeasts are hostile toward each other (and everyone else) except if they belong to the same were-species (except baby werebeasts, which are generally neutral with everyone).  

This is important in adventure mode - should you learn the secrets of life and death or become a night creature yourself, all zombies will become neutral to you, letting you seize the opportunity to make short work of their squishy and unarmed masters. Undead you raise will follow you as if they were companions; however, they will '''all''' turn neutral if you purposely attack one of them. However, apart from the aforementioned caveats, there seems to be a worldwide solidarity among night creatures, and becoming one will allow you to just chat with various necromancers or [[mummy|mummies]], take quests from them, and taking them as companions.  

In fortress mode, [[vampire]] dwarves (and humans) will also be neutral toward undead even when not exposed. You can take advantage of this, ordering your vampires to kill necromancers when facing a siege; a vampire can and will path toward a necromancer unhindered and usually beat him to death. You can also order vampires to kill zombies one by one as they won't react unless attacked.

==Bandits and criminals==

Outlaws (called [[bandits]] when harassing [[town]]s from [[camp]]s in the countryside, and [[Town#Criminal_organizations|criminal organizations]] if harassing them from the town's [[dungeon]]) form groups that are hostile toward most of their parent civ itself. Bandits may lay small-scale sieges to you in fortress mode and are often given as quest targets in adventure mode. However, as they effectively own sites (camps and dungeons) with a [[boss]] acting as its lord, it means you can try and de-escalate any [[level of conflict]] you may have with them, talk to the boss and join them as [[Hearthperson|lieutenant]], effectively shifting your loyalty.

[[Insanity|Berserk]] dwarves are hostile to everyone, including each other.  

[[Demon|Demons]] that didn't escape from the [[Underworld|Underworld]] are hostile to every non-demon, and [[Angel|angels]] are hostile to every non-angel. This obviously does not apply to demons your adventurer has bound into servitude though.

 

[[Visitors]] side with their parent civ if it goes to war with you.

If you use [[cage]] [[trap]]s against goblin sieges, you are likely to capture [[Giant bat|a]] [[Cave crocodile|few]] [[Giant cave swallow|mounts]] [[Rutherer|from]] [[Jabberer|various]] [[Voracious cave crawler|species]]. You may assign them to your [[animal trainer]]s and attempt to tame them, thus gaining a few facts about each specific species; but under no circumstances should you ever release them from their cages, as they are always considered enemies to your civilization and will wreak havoc as soon as they are free. Not only that, but they will trigger a similar loyalty cascade as soon as they attack your citizens, leading your fort to its demise through a never-ending civil war - as well as some copious jabberer-chomping. The best course of action is to keep re-training the mounts in their cages over and over again, thus facilitating future taming of their '''wild''' counterparts.

If one of your dwarves turns into a [[werebeast]] and you send your military to kill them while shapeshifted, failing to kill (and allowing the dwarf to revert to normal) may cause a loyalty cascade.

To prevent the cascade from spreading, order the original separatists away from the fortress and let them fight amongst themselves. If the results are renegades, it is okay to allow other dwarves to kill them (by stationing them nearby). If the results are separatists/loyalists, then you will need to separate them somehow.

 

Dwarves from these different "factions" will cancel jobs if they ever come across one another, each running away. This will likely lead to a massive number of job interruption announcements reading ''Urist McDwarf cancels Eat: Interrupted by Farmer''

For those who are using [[Utility:DFHack|DFHack]], the command {{DFtext|fix/loyaltycascade|white}} can be used to immediately end a loyalty cascade.