100 years of history, why?

[captainamaziiing]

Another noob question...when I'm setting p my new world I canchoose how old it is. If I choose 5 years or 100 years. Then the game makes up a backstory with a bunch of names. Like 150K of them if you choose a long history.

What function does this serve in game? Is there a practical difference between choosing 5 or 100 years?

[Dragster6681]

There'll be less civilisations on the map, less features like towers and ruins etc. The population of the world will be small so the chance of migrants is decreased. That's what I understand from other people talking about the history.

[Bralbaard]

With 5 years the world will hardly be colonized. There will likely be no necromancers yet, and access to trade partners or enemies on the map will be different. Larger numbers of megabeasts may have survived.

[Diarmuhnd]

Size of all starting civilizations + or - , conquered or destroyed civs , number of created artifacts, towers, forgotten beasts slain and people alive or dead.

Much of this 'history' gets engraved onto walls or put into books to be enjoyed by you and your dwarfs in the library.

[Erei]

The younger the world the less developped it is. This is the kind of stuff that change over time :
-young world have less discoveries. Like dance form, books.... But also you can have a dwarven civ that don't know how to make some armor piece or weapons
-young world have a lot more supernatural beast (they haven't been killed yet)
-some civ tend to disappear (kobold), while other appear after the start and develop from there (necromancer/goblins)
-much less sites. People simply didn't colonize much yet
-much less historical events, artifacts....

[MintiM]

my 5 year old world doesn't even have goblins in it, and there's like 3 mountainhomes and 2 human hamlets. i recommend going for something longer if you want variety, however if you want strong-ass mythics beasts roaming the world go for a shorter history, these beasts (that are generated on day 1) often get killed after a couple dozen years or so (but some of them survive for a long time)

then again if you go for long-ass history, like 500 years, there's often werebeasts and vampires with several hundreds of kills and skills so high they might dunk on you with relative ease.

[captainamaziiing]

TYVM for your replies. I figured there had to be a good reason, it just wasn't obvious just starting out.

[malthenielsen]

It changes with time that's around.

At the beginning there's no necromancers for instance. It takes some time before some dude wants to learn the secret of life and death and sets up shop in a tower.

As it is, necromancers tend to become stronger and stronger as the game runs, it often ends in zombie apocalypse.

On the other hand, the world gets a pool of megabeats at the beginning. Then they gradually die, so they become rarer with each year.

It's kinda different games depending on the age.