This looks super cool! I really like the concept. Does this mess with animal-inherited tags like [MEANDERER] or [BENIGN] that can make fortress-mode combat tricky?


Note for other commenters with huge animal person pops: Below is an explanation and a potential fix for the problem you are having.

I will be adding a Discussion topic expanding on other issues that make Animal People uniquely suited to surviving and thriving through a dangerous worldgen with massive populations, but hopefully the solution I present below is sufficient.

For other commenters, here's why you might be having population issues:

Civs with a random species selection, actually place a greater number of starting civs based on the number of available [CREATURE] tokens, so instead of expecting one Animal Person civilisation for every Dwarven civ, you may expect (geography willing) one Elephant Man civ AND one Lion Man civ AND one Wild Boar Man civ etc for every one Dwarven civ.

In addition, all of these animals are part of the same civilisation type with identical ethics and are thus unlikely to go to war with one another, a selective advantage against other civilisations. If their civilisation has the entity token [AT_PEACE_WITH_WILDLIFE], allowing the civ to exist in Wilds areas, they will be unable to fight other animal people who are not already part of a hostile entity/civ. This may compound the above issue with other threats being displaced by the number of animal person civs. (fix below)

(continued from next comment up due to character restrictions)


To fix the core problem explained above, you would simply duplicate the relevant [CREATURE] token for the [MOUNTAIN], [EVIL], [SKULKING], [PLAINS], and [FOREST] civilisations a few dozen times. You could do this in your base gamefiles for that world, but that would get messed up by updates.

In the files for this mod (so you don't have your fix killed by an update), add to the entity file the lines [SELECT_ENTITY:[i]MOUNTAIN/EVIL/etc[/i]] for each entity and, on the line below each instance of this line, hit tab and add something like [CREATURE:DWARF][CREATURE:DWARF][CREATURE:DWARF] like thirty times until you are satisfied that there is a fair balance.

Modding Existing CIvs: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Modding#Modifying_the_vanilla_objects

DISCLAIMER: I am not a modder at all and I have not tried this; I have a basic theoretical understanding of RAW editing only.

Amelio nailed it... This mod would be cool if it could keep the pops down

Have you tried exploring these animal men civs as an adventurer? I tried approaching what i assumed was an elephant man hillock(the only location directly south of me, there was nothing else around so im sure this was an elephant man hillock) and i had to exit travel mode quite far from the location because it wouldnt let me get nearer, and then my fps dropped to essentially 1 once i loaded in. No idea why. Maybe the population is too high? Or maybe its the mass and size of the elephant men needing more resources to calculate with every move?

Could you add frog people to this?

To reduce civilization spawn rate: go to your Dwarf Fortress installation folder, data\installed_mods, look into simple_animal_people folder objects\entity_dedsanimals.txt. Reduce MAX_STARTING_CIV_NUMBER. I changed it from 10 to 7.

Game crash when caravan arrived

Hello ! Do you think you will ever add platypus men to your mod ? It would be really fun, and I can't do it myself, it won't work.

Looks like these spawn in such high numbers that the block out vanilla civs and other modded civs (ratfolk/drow mods etc). I would suggest toning the spawn rate down quite a bit.

Excellent idea for a mod. Love it

animal people civs spawn way to often and expand way too quickly for my taste, are there any way to fix that (playing with the mod files)?
I also want to make a civ in similar fashion with animal people living in towns like human and located potentially everywhere in little communities, based on the habitat of the animal man, but I have to first find a way to make sure it's little communities and not world conquering empires like with this mod

ape men planet of the apes YOU DAMN DIRTY APES ITS A MAD HOUSE A MAAAADD HOUSE

Is there a limit to how many animal civs we will get per worldgen? I'm concerned about the main races being blocked out by the new ones.

Can we have dog men?

@PheredPhantom I second this action

I think i found a bug with the mod. Whenever you embark in a place that is in range of 2 different animal civs only one is showing.

maybe make it so we can choose to play as them? nothing super special just where we can choose them as a race and mine, make armor for size, pretty much dwarf fortress but with animal people

Any chance you could do Olm Men? They're my favorites, personally! I really love the underground race sprites, but Olm Men are so fun to me.

Godly

Updated, and added Lynx Men, Axolotl Men, and Fox Men. Further changes are in the changelog.

Could you please add Axolotl men, they are my favourite UwU.

Yus, please make Foxes too <3 thank you for sharing!

*Fox men*

Hmmm... I kinda would have preferred Lynx Men over Bobcat Men, but I suppose that'll do...

Interestingly you can also allow a civilization to inhabit caves.

@Hyme There's roughly four different kinds of default town set ups for civilizations. Goblin style pits, Elf style tree cities, Dwarven style mountain homes, and Human style towns. Really all it does is determine what kind of layout the computer generated settlements of that civilization has.

Hillocks are the non-standard fifth kind you can set up, where they only build the low level dwarf towns called "hillocks". These are just hollowed out low hills and small underground sections instead of above ground buildings.

hillocks?

@Digganob My plan is to create a more complex version of this mod that gives them some unique workshops and reactions to make playing them different from just a pallete swap of another civilization. That will be a separate mod from this one, as this one is just intended to fill a gap in available mods for the moment while I work on more complex ones.

Any intent to make them playable? If they were made to be so, what technology would they have access to? Same as humans?