40d:Immigration

Immigration can occur during any season. A migrant is a member of a wave of immigration.

Migrants will spawn at the edge of your local zone and move towards any meeting area that you have designated. They will travel single file from this one location until the last one of this wave has arrived.

If there is no meeting zone they will simply sit at the edge of the map until their "migrant" status fades and they find a job. Keep in mind that they can spawn on any open edge of the map, on any Z-axis; if there is no available path to your fortress, they will sit and wait until one is opened up or until they go crazy and die. Additionally, if you change orders so that Dwarves are not allowed outside (o - i) immediately after immigrants begin arriving they will freeze in place, with no path to your fortress. Some players have reported that their migrants spawn in the middle of nowhere. This behaviour is a bug, though an entertaining one.

By default, immigration will stop when your fortress reaches 200 or more, but you can change this in the init.txt file. It will take several years to reach this number, assuming you want to reach it at all. Once your population falls below this number, immigration will begin again.

How immigration is calculated

Immigration figures are influenced by your fortress's total "Created Wealth", probably further influenced by reporting of the yearly dwarven caravan.^[Verify] If, for any reason, the caravan does not arrive, or does not make it off the map alive the first year, no wealth is reported^[Verify], and this will seriously hurt your chances for immigration.^[Verify] Later, if they fail to make it off your map, then the previous year's caravan report is used to determine the next immigration waves.^[Verify]. The other known factor that influences immigration is that dwarf deaths in your fortress will make immigrating dwarves scared, reducing immigrant numbers possibly down to zero. If this reduces the number of immigrants, the message announcing the seasonal immigrants will include comments to this effect.

Created Wealth is visible on the Status (z) screen once you get a broker with the appraiser skill). All objects with any value (including mined-out areas, bridges, and just about every kind of created good) will be included in the total. Artifacts usually are one of the largest influences of fortress wealth. Artifacts made of precious resources and heavily decorated can potentially double fortress wealth early in the game. Forbidden items are included in your wealth "properly" as of 09/02/2008.

It is not a hard formula - identical fortresses with identical created wealth will tend to get more or less based on that wealth, but can experience some differences in the exact number arriving. The wealth seems to create a target number, and the exact number of immigrants varies around that target.

Immigration is rarely greater than 24 dwarves per wave, not including pets, kids and spouses, though rarely larger numbers have been reported.

Immigration will be stopped if your fortress reaches the Population Cap set in the init file, but a given wave may cause your total to exceed that number. If your current population is even 1 less than the Population Cap, a full wave of 2 dozen (or more?) immigrants can arrive.

When does Immigration usually occur?

Usually you have to wait until the dwarven caravan arrives - and leaves alive - in Autumn to start the immigrants on their way. If the caravan reports a high Created Wealth (of perhaps over 60,000? - an approximate number, there is no hard formula or known cutpoint), you can expect to receive maybe eight or more migrants in Winter after the Caravan, and/or more in the Spring following. If your dwarves are extremely productive, immigration can occur before the caravan arrives, in Autumn or even in Summer of your first year. Even with low created wealth, immigration does usually begin in Spring of the second year on.

Migrants seem to have a greater tendency to arrive in Spring and in greater numbers, but can arrive in any season.

Immigrants' skills

Migrants are never very skilled. They arrive with one of the following mixes:

• Peasants - No skills at all
• Novice level (level 6) of two or three related skills from a single profession
• A (no adjective) level (level 7) of a single skill
• A Soldier - Novice level each of wrestler, armor user, one weapon skill (and shield user if not a marksdwarf)

Migrants will sometimes bring their unskilled spouses, children, and even their pet animals. Children can perform some jobs, and will slowly grow to become adults, and any adult dwarf can be given any job, and eventually learn that skill while performing that labor.

How to influence the types of dwarves that immigrate

Note that the greater the number of dwarven civilizations, the greater your ability to influence immigration.^[Verify]

The immigrants' skills/careers might be influenced by the type and number of workshops available, but also might be influenced by the population of the surviving dwarven civilizations. (Similar to that goblins sometimes have dwarves in their armies, that were previously snatched from you!)

Soldiers will only arrive if you have made their type of weapon; if you make one battle axe, you will only get axedwarves. If you make a crossbow and a war hammer, you will get marksdwarves and hammerdwarves. This is not affected by weapons brought to your fort; getting immigrant woodcutters won't let you get immigrant axedwarves. It is not known if the number of weapons created matters.^[Verify]

When you meet certain requirements in your outpost, like population or created wealth, some nobles will immigrate, like the Dungeon master.

Immigrant's equipment

A migrant may not always come with the necessary equipment to perform their jobs. For example, a Wood cutter may or may not come with a battle axe. Soldiers may appear with only the clothes on their back, or geared up in full steel armor and weapon. Rarely, a migrant may come with equipment they don't need to do their jobs - for example, a Carpenter may come with a battle axe.

What are the drawbacks to immigration?

Most of the time, immigration is a Good Thing, and the more, the merrier. More dwarves means more work gets done (especially hauling, since immigrants are basically peasants), more dwarves can be given "luxury" tasks like defending the fortress or making dyed cloth, and some nobles require a certain number of dwarves before they arrive. However, more dwarves also means more CPU cycles eaten up, especially if your fortress is already taxing on your computer.

Of course, additional dwarves also require additional bedrooms, workshops, and booze before they can be properly productive, and some players prefer to increase their population slowly to allow them to add the extra infrastructure at a more sedate pace.

How can I curb immigration?

The easiest method to handle immigration is to change the point when immigration stops in init.txt, under "population_cap". You can first set it low and raise it as you see fit. Note that you may consider this to be cheating, and it also requires exiting the game each time you want more immigrants.

You can also make sure your fort does not produce or build much. Of course, this is not an especially interesting way to play the game. Since artifacts often account for most of your fortress' wealth, killing dwarves that enter strange moods, or turning the moods off entirely in the init file, may be a better option. This can often be accomplished by making sure all your workshops are in enclosed rooms, then locking the door on them until they go insane, then starve to death. This has a drawback in that dwarves that do manage to produce an artifact often gain a desirable legendary skill. Lock the door at your own discretion.

You can also kill the immigrants themselves, deliberately or otherwise. Large numbers of deaths will reduce immigration or prevent it entirely.

Several immigration messages are possible:

• Some migrants have arrived.

This is the normal message.

• Some migrants have arrived, despite the danger.

This occurs if there are many deaths but not enough to stop immigration.

• Some migrants have decided to brave this terrifying place, knowing it may be their tomb.

Appears to be caused by a lot of deaths (80+?) yet with a fortress wealthy enough (2 million?) to attract immigrants anyway.

• No one even considered making the journey to such a cursed death-trap this season.

Very large numbers of deaths at a fortress can cause all immigration (except nobles) to cease for a while: your fortress has gained a reputation as a deathtrap! Killing nobles seems to have a magnified effect here, and killing even a single noble can cause no immigrants to arrive in the next season.

Migrants in Adventure Mode

Roving bands of migrants may be found on the world map. These migrants can be linked to any of the major civilizations found on the world. This includes goblins and kobolds. Such bands will consist of non-specialized adults and children.

Migration Effects on the World

It is possible for migration to change the population levels of settlements on the map over time, and to cause factions of a civilization to merge. This can be discovered through talking to individuals in Adventurer mode, and will subsequently show up in Legends mode.

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