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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. Some players have reported that their migrants spawn in the middle of nowhere. This behaviour is a bug, though an entertaining one.
The total number of dwarves in your fort is limited to 200, but you can change this in the init file. It will take several years to reach this number, assuming you want to reach it at all. Once you reach the immigration limit, normal immigration will cease.
When does Immigration usually occur?
If your dwarves are very industrious numbers would be helpful here, you can expect to receive ten or more migrants in the first immigration wave, which can occur in autumn or even in summer of your first year. Immigration does usually occur from mid-spring of the second year on.
Migrants seem to have a tendency to arrive in spring but can arrive in any season.
How immigration is calculated
Immigration figures are based on your fortress's total "Created Wealth" (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 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 however are not added to your wealth; it is unclear if they still influence immigration. Toady has said [1] (09/02/2008) that he fixed the problem.
This created wealth will be witnessed and reported back to the world by the yearly dwarven caravan. If the caravan dies before making it back to the dwarven capital (if they fail to make it off your map), then the previous caravan's report is used to determine this year's figures.[Verify]. This is not the only factor that influences immigration though.
Immigration is rarely greater than 24 dwarves per wave, not including pets, kids and spouses.
Also constant sieges by goblins will make immigrating dwarves too scared to move into your fortress.
Immigrants' skills
Migrants come with no skills at all (peasants), novice level of two or three skills from a single profession, or a (no adjective) level of a single skill. Migrants will sometimes bring their spouses, children, and even their pet animals. A migrant may not always come with the necessary equipment to perform their jobs. For example, a Wood cutter may come without a battle axe. Inversely, a migrant may come with equipment they don't need to do their jobs. For example, a Carpenter may come with a battle axe.
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 humans 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 carpenters 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.
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 alter the population cap in init.txt. 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 lead to the event announcement "Some immigrants have arrived" changing to "Some immigrants have arrived, dispite the danger!" Very large numbers of deaths at a fortress, from any cause, (exact number unknown) 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.