DF2014 Talk:Immigration

Hard-coded Waves

Note that the first two waves are "hard-coded" to appear regardless of fortress wealth, danger, or civilization extinction. Those waves *are* subject to the population caps (and were previously, though with the "liaison information enables the cap feature" it was nearly impossible to enable the cap before the first two waves arrived without setting it directly with DFHack). Now that the population caps take immediate effect it is much easier to block the first two waves, but they still ignore the in-game variables that all other waves use.

Early Immigration

In my new fortress, the first thing I created was a trade depot. Just after finishing the depot, merchants have arrived. Just after the message that they would be leaving soon, the first immigrant wave appeared! Like, two weeks after embarking, 10 dwarves! Although I find it quite a blessing as I'm usually struggling with the low work force of the first seven, I'm not sure if this could be expected behavior. Not a single dwarf, merchant, caravan, etc. has left the map. How could they possibly know? Maybe we should add a paragraph explicitly explaining the danger of early immigration or something, just in case people didn't bring enough food for potentially 17 dwarves. But, is this expected behavior or even an unknown bug? Oh, and to the usefulness of the first waves: it was a legendary shearer, two high master potters and two bone doctors, among other useful skills --Janni (talk) 10:02, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Minimum Migrants for Second Wave?

I just had my second wave of migrants, and got the "The fortress attracted no migrants this season." message. Perhaps the claim that the minimum size for the first two waves is 1 is not true?

This is the 2nd fortress in the world. The first one told me that the civilization was extinct, and I'd likely get high-ranked officials. This was true. I had the King and wasted a lot of resources trying to get fancy enough rooms for the guy... until the fortress fell after a crippling werelizard infection followed by a huge swarm of undead. This fortress gave me on such message, but the first dwarven caravan is still here, without a liason.– unsigned comment by Shane

Did you have a population cap set at or below your current number of dwarves? Or no strict population cap at all? (A bug set the strict population cap to "0" if it wasn't defined in the init file.) Even the "hard coded" migrant waves are affected by the population caps.--Loci (talk) 21:22, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

To chime in, I also had "No migrants this season." for the second wave. I only had 3 dwarves arrive the first wave, and chose a dwarf civilization with very few members. My pop cap is set to 30. There was a seize going on during the second year, so maybe the second wave was blocked, though. --1.175.1.165 10:54, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Migrants even though parent civ dead

I embarked on an island and resurrected a dead dwarven civ. One of my dwarves immediately became the king. After the first two migrant waves, I have noticed that more migrants keep arriving, even though the dwarves were wiped out. Is this a bug, or a new feature? 96.241.60.219 03:21, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Neither? Your civilization was not, in fact, dead. Even without an active site your civilization can live on (think "refugees") for some time. In this quasi-dead state, migrants will be generated "from thin air" to fill your fortress. A truly-dead civilization will produce no migrants beyond the first two hard-coded waves. Unfortunately, determining whether a civilization is quasi-dead or truly-dead isn't straightforward.--Loci (talk) 21:22, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

No Migration

I've run three games now in version 0.40.05, each one lasting 2 to 3 years and in all of them I received no immigrants at all. The first one was on an island, so I thought that was it but the next two were not. In one of them my outpost liaison was a goblin so I thought maybe the civilization was extinct, but even if that had been the case I thought I should have gotten the two hard-coded migration waves. The third one had nothing suspicious about it at all.

The only thing I can think of is that I set my population cap to 100 and maybe there's a bug that causes that setting to prevent any immigration at all, but I've checked and there does not appear to be any such bug listed. Does anyone know what I might be doing wrong, or is this an undocumented bug? 64.180.242.196 14:01, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Version 0.40 added a strict population cap, and changed how the caps work. In early releases of the v0.40 branch there were reports that mods were removing the strict population cap from the init file, causing the game to default to "0" (which prevents immigration). If you have both population caps set correctly then you might have more luck asking on the gameplay questions forum.--Loci (talk) 18:00, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

I thought I was on v0.40.24, but it looks like I'm on v0.40.05. The other thing I've checked is whether there's any migrants hanging out on the edges not able to find my fort as I don't have a meeting hall, just a meeting area. I've double checked the pop cap in the d_init file, but I didn't see one in the init file. You mention "both population caps" but I only see one. I'm using the Mayday graphics set, so maybe that's the issue. The pop cap I see is: [POPULATION_CAP:100] in the d_init file. I'll look for what the second setting should be. Thanks. 64.180.242.196 20:53, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Yup, that did it. I added [STRICT_POPULATION_CAP:150] and suddenly there were 8 dwarves that wanted in (despite the fact that 6 of the starting 7 were slaughtered in an ambush - FUN!!! - even the traders were running away in horror).

Size of first two waves

The article says "The first two migrant waves have a minimum size of 1, if it has a relative in your group already, and a maximum size of 10." To the contrary, the first wave I got had 11 migrants, and the second had 12. Anyone know what could have caused this, or if the article is simply wrong? 2001:4830:2446:EE:A46B:F8CE:C01F:6FBF 20:21, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Well, the first two waves you received may not have been the first two attempted waves (which could have been blocked by a siege or a population cap setting). It's also quite possible that the article is outdated, or that information was simply incorrect when it was added back in 2011. If you're reasonably confident those were your first two attempted waves, feel free to fix the article.--Loci (talk) 23:29, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Necromancers

Do these need their own section? --Garrie 10:24, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Rule B is "Be Bold", so you tell me - do we (and by "we" I mean "you", at least to start) have enough information on "Necromancer immigrants" to, specifically, support adding their own sub-section? (I know I don't. :/ ) But if you do, or think you have enough to just start it, do it! Albedo (talk) 13:29, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

agents bug?

Can we remove the second paragraph in 'Historical migrants' section? According to mantis the first bug has been resolved and the second is related and likely was also resolved. --Jan (talk) 20:39, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

I have removed the paragraph. --Jan (talk) 18:54, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

skill weightings

The lead states that "Migrants will often have skills that match your fortress' needs" referring to this inteview:

Hi. Our first question is 'How are migrants generated? I've noticed that some come in with specific skill sets that could be useful for starting up industries or military early in the game. Is there some mechanic which is supposed to help the player along, or is it supposed to be another one of those things that players have to cope with and adapt to?'

Toady: So, migrants ... It looks at a list of the skills that are currently represented in your fort and there are weightings towards skills that are really important like mining and setting up your food supply and the basic craft industries and stuff, and it'll attract migrants that you are missing, on the other hand if you've used a profession a lot, you'll also get migrants that work in that profession more often. That's the basic idea, but on top of that it then creates a sort of past life for the migrants, so they get jumbles of extra little skills at different levels and sometimes those skills will overcome their current profession and then it'll change their type around, most of the time it gives them the skill that it selected for your fortress, but oftentimes they'll have quite a collection of other skills and sometimes it pushes them over the edge. That's basically what's going on, so yeah there is some mechanics in there to weight what happens, and there's a large random element.

Does this refer to the first two hardcoded reinforcement to your expeditions, or all migrants waves? (historic figures not included) --Jan (talk) 21:56, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Migrant wave sizes

Is there anymore science or Toady commented on what factors in determining group size? --Jan (talk) 20:22, 14 February 2022 (UTC)