0005263: Population crashes in human towns - Dwarf Fortress Bug Tracker

Notes
(0020147) Trif (reporter) 2012-02-19 11:32	I've experienced this bug in a 125-year-history world as well, only with people still in town and fewer rooms filled with tables. Table-filled rooms were never inhabited. http://i.imgur.com/MdtY7.png [^] The travel map revealed that the table-filled rooms were abandoned shops. http://i.imgur.com/EEhQq.png [^] Unfortunately, the shop signs were removed, therefore I suspected furniture shops that went out of business when the town stopped growing. To confirm this thesis, I regenned the world and started an adventurer 60 years in the past, when the town was 3 years old. The shopping district was a lot smaller back then, but I managed to find some shops. None were abandoned, but most of them were in some stage of the table disease. http://i.imgur.com/MwPkA.png [^] In a clothes shop, I could ask the shopkeeper to trade, but his side of the trading menu was empty. The tables that filled his shop did not appear as trading goods. When I tried to steal one, I found out why: all tables were constructed. The solution dawned to me when I looked at the goods in a food store: all of the bags were lying on tables, easily discernible from goods on the ground by their colored backgrounds. http://i.imgur.com/CWJO5.png [^] The conclusion is as simple as that: goods in shops are sold on tables. When a shop is abandoned - maybe because the shopkeeper died, maybe economic reasons - the sign is removed and the tables remain. I can't explain the missing population, though.

(0020159) Quietust (reporter) 2012-02-19 12:52 edited on: 2012-02-19 12:52	Perhaps you've located the headquarters of the Royal Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things?

(0020198) NW_Kohaku (reporter) 2012-02-19 17:33	Hmm... some of those shops were overwhelmed with tables. It's possible the shops were permanently abandoned when the tables completely overwhelmed them. But then, I did find one regular shop, a gemcutter's, and it had gems sitting out on tables, but I couldn't find a shopkeeper, either.

(0020255) Granite26 (reporter) 2012-02-20 06:16	Was it the full moon?

(0020601) NW_Kohaku (reporter) 2012-02-24 08:11 edited on: 2012-02-24 08:15	I notice this in every major town I enter in Adventure Mode. The areas that are supposed to be the most busy rarely have anything but abandoned shops - apparently, the shops get so cluttered, they never even get re-occupied. Only a few shops along the edges of the town are open, and the marketplace has its shopowners intact (but they're all meat stands). In a city that supposedly houses 2000, three non-marketplace shops exist, and only a half-dozen houses are actually occupied. Ironically enough, I find the most people living on the parapets of the keep's outer bailey walls. Walking up on the parapets, I suddenly see all the farmers, children, and occasional actual soldier. These people all seemed to be historical figures, however, as they all could tell me about their past and family and worshipped the local fish goddess. Population pool people don't show up except in hamlets. Nearly everything else is an abandoned shop - with only a few abandoned houses flung around.

(0020605) NW_Kohaku (reporter) 2012-02-24 08:32 edited on: 2012-02-24 13:05	I notice this seems to be related to vampires. When a town becomes large enough to start having a sewer, vampires will move in and never leave, racking up kill counts in the thousands apiece. If they are over 600 years old, individual vampires will have kills in the tens of thousands. Because this city had a temple to a fish goddess, it seems that fish goddess went on a rampage vamping about thirty people for profaning her temple, each of which had thousands of kills, and kept the town on a path of constant decline. They seem to have killed the shopkeepers with regularity, forcing the abandonment of the shops, which may have caused a high turnover in shop ownership, causing the table explosion. This is also a likely reason for reports ( http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=102209.0 [^] ) of it being nearly impossible to find a full-sized city. Vampires infest the major cities and kill so many people that it is impossible for cities to ever grow past the point where vampires move in. Here is another savegame for testing from .34.02: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=5682 [^] I made another report for the vampire thing: 0005432

(0020608) Granite26 (reporter) 2012-02-24 09:33	Way less interesting then a bug that allows were-creatures to turn into inanimate objects instead of animals.

(0021107) thvaz (reporter) 2012-03-05 07:51	I have this problem with a town with almost 2000 residents - every single shop is abandoned, but the market isn't marked as abandoned (though here is no one there). Few houses are ruined (compared with an actual ruined city in the same world), though I couldn't notice overflowing of tables or any other time.

(0021327) NW_Kohaku (reporter) 2012-03-09 22:57 edited on: 2012-03-09 23:00	The base problem persists in 34.05. Tables are no longer flooding abandoned shops, but the towns are still all ghost towns, even when they shouldn't be. The problem is that there are no houses in towns that have a long enough history for the original occupants to have died of old age. Shops are set up, but abandoned shops are never reclaimed. Now, there are no more tables and other abandoned furniture lying around everywhere, but the basic problem of shops being abandoned and never reclaimed remains. All buildings in towns are abandoned shops, and none are homes. Population pool characters never appear in towns (while they flood the empty houses in hamlets). Because there are no homes, all the non-shopkeeper historical characters live on the walls of the keep. Animals from the population pools, such as chickens and cats, DO appear, apparently just because they are supposed to appear outside, and not in houses. The only towns I can find that actually have large populations are ones taken over by goblins, largely just because they don't die of old age and don't starve, so if any actually emigrate rather early on, they'll take up 11,000 people in the supposedly human city that only has 100 humans in it. I also put up another problem while testing this: 0005598

(0021328) thvaz (reporter) 2012-03-10 01:10	I hope this one get fixed, its killing adventure mode for me.

(0021346) NW_Kohaku (reporter) 2012-03-10 18:14 edited on: 2012-03-10 23:57	I have an update on 0.34.05 with more information after data-mining my save a bit. First, it's basically impossible to find a town that actually grows up to a respectable size. Most towns that get old have a population crash at some point. I'm not even sure why it's happening, but it may simply be the interference caused by the abandoned shops never being reclaimed and used by new residents. Otherwise, it appears as if starvation is still very much a problem. In fact, the only cities that behave properly are occupied by goblins. In the world I am uploading saves from, goblins happened to move into human civs after a war, and actually took up the bulk of the civilization after a while, simply because all the humans could not survive in the cities. All the hamlets are human, but all the cities are almost entirely goblin. One city has 10,000 goblins, and only a couple hundred humans. This is the only max-size city I have ever seen, and every city that is at "#" in size has a massive goblin population. The northern, human-dominated towns are all stuck at "+" size of only about 100 or so people in general. Goblin cities are overflowing with shops and generally rather bustling. (Goblins don't have furniture, but throw leather goods all over the floor for some odd reason, however...) This appears to be the way that human cities SHOULD work normally, and only works for goblins because goblins never grow old and never starve. These cities, with all the shops available, are overwhelmingly cloth, leather, and clothing shops. A sizable minority exists for food, bonecarver, and general goods shops. Goods made of any sort of wood, stone, or metal are extremely rare. Of roughly a thousand shops I walked past, I only found about ten that had any stone or metal goods. Two were armorsmiths. Both had no goods in them whatsoever. One was a weaponsmith. They only carried silver and copper weapons. Combined with the bug relating to clothes sizes ( 0005598 ) it is nearly impossible to shop for anything of value in these cities. Human towns have around 100 population in spite of having as many as 10 hamlets around them (usually 6), each with 400 people in them, castles with 20 people in them nearby, no major attacks in the recent past. They bloom early on up to "#" size, then have a population crash, apparently from starvation, back to "+" size and never recover any population, possibly because they never reclaim any buildings or perform any economic activities(?) afterwards. On the human towns, also, even the "occupied" shops have nobody in them. (See the second DFFD linked save.) Only the marketplace and the parapets of the castle walls have actual people. These towns also mysteriously have odd "outcasts", such as a "Polar Bear Outcast". Considering as "outcast" seems to indicate bandits or werecritters, the polar bear seems to be some sort of polar bear vampire or bandit or something, which is rather odd, although I haven't traced this one straight to its source as of yet. Bug Saves: All these saves are from the same world, and take place in different cities for comparison purposes: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=5842 [^] - Save with adventurer inside 10,000 goblin city. http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=5833 [^] - Comparison save with a different adventurer in a town with only 300 people from the other end of the region, and no goblin population. (From bug report 0005598 ) http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=5843 [^] - Save with adventurer from first bugged save in a different city, and in an armorsmith shop with no armor for sale. (Bug Report 0005133 ) http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=5844 [^] - Save from the same town, demonstrating that a shop sign is inside of a wall, and visible from the shop next door. http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=5846 [^] - Save from hamlet outside of same town. Has an obvious vampire in it, from bug report 0005603 . The hamlet is entirely human, in spite of goblin city right next to it.

(0028451) Footkerchief (manager) 2014-08-06 07:50	I haven't seen this recently. Please reopen this report or PM a manager on the forums if this problem is still present in 0.40.06+.

(0028485) thvaz (reporter) 2014-08-06 13:41	Yes, this still happens. The root issues NW_Kohaku identified are all there. You can see how the towns rarely get over the "+" sign in world gen.

(0030576) NekoHatsu (reporter) 2014-10-08 05:24 edited on: 2014-10-08 05:34	Happens to me too in 0.40.13 Also, I once spawned in a house with 5 rooms (or so) full of pears and wolf bone jewelry.

(0030577) smjjames (reporter) 2014-10-08 07:47	I've also noticed that when I get near a town that has a symbol other than + will change to the + symbol, possibly the same thing.

Issue History
Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
2012-02-18 08:59	NW_Kohaku	New Issue
2012-02-18 10:07	NW_Kohaku	Tag Attached: 0.34.01
2012-02-18 10:07	NW_Kohaku	Tag Attached: 34.01
2012-02-18 10:07	NW_Kohaku	Tag Attached: city
2012-02-18 10:07	NW_Kohaku	Tag Attached: civilization
2012-02-18 10:07	NW_Kohaku	Tag Attached: towns
2012-02-18 10:07	NW_Kohaku	Tag Attached: world generation
2012-02-18 10:07	NW_Kohaku	Tag Attached: worldgen
2012-02-19 11:32	Trif	Note Added: 0020147
2012-02-19 12:52	Quietust	Note Added: 0020159
2012-02-19 12:52	Quietust	Note Edited: 0020159	View Revisions
2012-02-19 17:33	NW_Kohaku	Note Added: 0020198
2012-02-20 06:16	Granite26	Note Added: 0020255
2012-02-24 08:11	NW_Kohaku	Note Added: 0020601
2012-02-24 08:15	NW_Kohaku	Note Edited: 0020601	View Revisions
2012-02-24 08:32	NW_Kohaku	Note Added: 0020605
2012-02-24 08:39	NW_Kohaku	Note Edited: 0020605	View Revisions
2012-02-24 09:33	Granite26	Note Added: 0020608
2012-02-24 09:37	Footkerchief	Relationship added	related to 0005052
2012-02-24 13:05	NW_Kohaku	Note Edited: 0020605	View Revisions
2012-03-05 07:51	thvaz	Note Added: 0021107
2012-03-09 22:57	NW_Kohaku	Note Added: 0021327
2012-03-09 22:59	NW_Kohaku	Note Edited: 0021327	View Revisions
2012-03-09 23:00	NW_Kohaku	Note Edited: 0021327	View Revisions
2012-03-10 00:33	etherflan	Issue Monitored: etherflan
2012-03-10 01:10	thvaz	Note Added: 0021328
2012-03-10 01:10	thvaz	Issue Monitored: thvaz
2012-03-10 18:14	NW_Kohaku	Note Added: 0021346
2012-03-10 18:28	NW_Kohaku	Note Edited: 0021346	View Revisions
2012-03-10 18:49	NW_Kohaku	Note Edited: 0021346	View Revisions
2012-03-10 23:57	NW_Kohaku	Note Edited: 0021346	View Revisions
2012-03-23 05:01	Buglist	Issue Monitored: Buglist
2014-08-06 07:50	Footkerchief	Note Added: 0028451
2014-08-06 07:50	Footkerchief	Status	new => resolved
2014-08-06 07:50	Footkerchief	Fixed in Version	=> 0.40.06
2014-08-06 07:50	Footkerchief	Resolution	open => fixed
2014-08-06 07:50	Footkerchief	Assigned To	=> Toady One
2014-08-06 12:40	Footkerchief	Assigned To	Toady One =>
2014-08-06 12:40	Footkerchief	Status	resolved => new
2014-08-06 12:41	Footkerchief	Summary	Towns have no residents in spite of Legends listing population in thousands - town overflowing with tables, instead => Population crashes in human towns
2014-08-06 13:41	thvaz	Note Added: 0028485
2014-10-08 05:24	NekoHatsu	Note Added: 0030576
2014-10-08 05:34	NekoHatsu	Note Edited: 0030576	View Revisions
2014-10-08 05:47	NekoHatsu	Issue Monitored: NekoHatsu
2014-10-08 07:47	smjjames	Note Added: 0030577
2014-10-31 18:50	lethosor	Resolution	fixed => open
2015-12-15 20:51	Toady One	Status	new => resolved
2015-12-15 20:51	Toady One	Fixed in Version	0.40.06 => Next Version
2015-12-15 20:51	Toady One	Resolution	open => fixed
2015-12-15 20:51	Toady One	Assigned To	=> Toady One
2015-12-16 04:44	thvaz	Issue End Monitor: thvaz
2016-06-20 12:35	NekoHatsu	Issue End Monitor: NekoHatsu