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History
Written By: DF Wiki
Fiction
"This is the (maximum) length of pre-generated history." The number of years for the currently selected length will be shown in the lower right. A longer history allows more time for civilizations to grow, attack each other, and starve to death before the player can start playing. It also determines the amount of time that megabeasts will have to roam and kill things, get killed, etc. The longer the history, the more historical events will be generated by the time gameplay begins.
Note that history generation can be interrupted and the world saved far short of the selected history value. (Players might choose to do so if they are trying to reach a certain age, if they want to embark near a tower, or if worldgen has slowed to a crawl, for instance). The actual length of history generation determines the details of the world; the history configuration setting only establishes a maximum year at which generation will stop automatically.
Longer histories will cause world generation to take longer, both because there are more years of events and because there tend to be more events in subsequent years. Conversely, shorter histories will take much less time to generate, but may limit some features (civilization size, sites, knowledge, historical artifacts, and necromancer towers).
Longer histories will also increase the number of abandoned (sacked) towns and fortresses which can matter for adventure mode, but doesn't matter that much for fortress mode. Recommended value for worlds you plan to use for adventure mode are Short or Medium.
History will still progress after world generation, concurrently with normal gameplay, but this will, of course, be much slower (around two weeks per session start in either fortress or adventurer mode). Therefore, it is recommended to set the history length so that the number of sites, megabeasts, and historical events is roughly what one wants it to be during gameplay.
For more information on the history aspect of the game, see Legends and Ages.
Note that history generation can be interrupted and the world saved far short of the selected history value. (Players might choose to do so if they are trying to reach a certain age, if they want to embark near a tower, or if worldgen has slowed to a crawl, for instance). The actual length of history generation determines the details of the world; the history configuration setting only establishes a maximum year at which generation will stop automatically.
Longer histories will cause world generation to take longer, both because there are more years of events and because there tend to be more events in subsequent years. Conversely, shorter histories will take much less time to generate, but may limit some features (civilization size, sites, knowledge, historical artifacts, and necromancer towers).
Longer histories will also increase the number of abandoned (sacked) towns and fortresses which can matter for adventure mode, but doesn't matter that much for fortress mode. Recommended value for worlds you plan to use for adventure mode are Short or Medium.
History will still progress after world generation, concurrently with normal gameplay, but this will, of course, be much slower (around two weeks per session start in either fortress or adventurer mode). Therefore, it is recommended to set the history length so that the number of sites, megabeasts, and historical events is roughly what one wants it to be during gameplay.
For more information on the history aspect of the game, see Legends and Ages.