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v0.34:Age
| This article is about an older version of DF. |
Age represents how long a creature supposedly has existed (including before year 0). All creatures have an age, but in fortress mode, only your own dwarves will have their ages observable.
Age determines the life stages of creatures and their average body sizes over the years. For example, when your dwarves have a baby it will remain a baby from age 0 to 1, then become a child. Once it reaches age 12, it becomes a full-fledged dwarven adult. This is also true for most of the animals in your fortress. Many pets like cats, cows, sheep and horses will be in their respective child states for 1 year after birth before becoming an adult, but if you manage to capture, tame, and breed elephants1, they will be children for 10 years after birth.
The size of a creature is also dependent on age (as well as basic genetics). Dragons are an extreme example, requiring a thousand years to reach their full size which is not much smaller than an adult giant sperm whale.
Another aspect that is controlled by age is lifespan. Many creatures, like dwarves and humans, can eventually die of old age, but others such as elves, goblins, and some unintelligent or unnatural creatures, will live until killed.
These attributes are defined in the raws: life stage through the use of the [BABY:#] and [CHILD:#] tags and old age death through the use of [MAXAGE:#:#]. [BABY:#] defines at what year the given creature grows from a baby into a child and [CHILD:#] defines at what year it will grow from a child to an adult. The first number given in [MAXAGE:#:#] is the minimum age the creature will live to barring death from some other source while the second number is the absolute maximum age of the creature.
An intelligent civilized creature not vulnerable to death by expiration will not seek necromancy.
1 Tame elephants are currently bugged, and will nearly inevitably die of starvation because they can't eat enough grass in time.Bug:4113