Huge unexplained fights (that seem to be recurring)

[❤]

I just had a huge brawl that involved seemingly half the fortress or more, and I don't know if there was a particular reason or if it was the result of one or more tantrumming dwarves. Basically it started abruptly, with a ton of sudden fighting notifications[i.imgur.com], and within seconds I had about 5 or so deaths. Blood and teeth were splattered[i.imgur.com] all over the main stairwell. The hospital[i.imgur.com] soon filled up with a third of the fort.

This is the second time it's happened now, in pretty much the exact same fashion (ton of fighting notifications, blood/teeth all over stairwell, ton of injured dwarves pouring into hospital). Is there a way to get to the bottom of this? Usually when I get brawls it results in one death maximum and maybe a few injuries, but these are like massive bloodbaths and it seems to be recurring.

[Fel]

In order to investigate the cause we would need to know who started to fight first, the combat notifications can usually give you clues about that.
The entries closer to the top are older (unless that changed in the latest version, I haven't played it much yet) so opening the details of those would most likely tell you who attacked first.

It's clear that you have at least some visitors in your fort, usually they are the root of the problem.
You also have a ton of angry dwarves, not sure how it looked before but right now you are on the border of the good old "tantrum spiral" that more or less ends forts.

[❤]

Originally posted by Fel:

In order to investigate the cause we would need to know who started to fight first, the combat notifications can usually give you clues about that.
The entries closer to the top are older (unless that changed in the latest version, I haven't played it much yet) so opening the details of those would most likely tell you who attacked first.

It's clear that you have at least some visitors in your fort, usually they are the root of the problem.
You also have a ton of angry dwarves, not sure how it looked before but right now you are on the border of the good old "tantrum spiral" that more or less ends forts.

Hmm okay. So I actually reloaded an older save to check on a different issue, but the very same fight started up again and I was able to see who started it. Apparently it was one of my military dwarves (a Hammer Lord) who all of a sudden attacked "the wrestler". He then proceeded to grab and punch a child. Everything seemed to devolve from there, with everybody else getting involved. Who is "the wrestler" and why are they being referred to as "the wrestler"?

Also the current activity for the Hammer Lord is "Mercenary (no activity)". This dwarf has been in the military for a long while now, I'm not sure why they are a mercenary, or what that means in this context.

I didn't get any tantrum or brawl notifications though, just combat right from the start. Shouldn't I get some sort of notification if it was a tantrum? Seems like this military dwarf just decided to started a fight for no apparent reason. They are not even in a bad mood.

The location at which it started looks to be the main stairwell, which has a ton of traffic. It's also just outside the barracks, and I can see that the fight-starter was very recently sparring. Could it have been an accident where during a sparring session, a nearby third party got hit, which started everything? Considering the first time the fight location seemed to be similar, I really wonder if it has to do with the barracks being so close to the main stairwell and something going awry with that.

[Fel]

Wrestler is one of the military job titles, like hammer lord.
What title a dwarf gets when in active military service depends on their highest "offensive" skill.
When it's a weapon skill you get "sword dwarf" or "hammer lord" ("lord" being when the skill level gets high enough) but you can also have the other skills to give them the title, especially when they are at low skill.
Wrestling skill gives wrestler, kicking gives kicker and so on.

I don't think accidents can still happen during training, they do "lightly tapping the target" during spars instead of real blows and that's the only case where they even fight.
Plus it's under sparring and not fighting for notifications.

If it's vanilla, could you share the save before the fight started perhaps?

[❤]

Originally posted by Fel:

Wrestler is one of the military job titles, like hammer lord.
What title a dwarf gets when in active military service depends on their highest "offensive" skill.
When it's a weapon skill you get "sword dwarf" or "hammer lord" ("lord" being when the skill level gets high enough) but you can also have the other skills to give them the title, especially when they are at low skill.
Wrestling skill gives wrestler, kicking gives kicker and so on.

I don't think accidents can still happen during training, they do "lightly tapping the target" during spars instead of real blows and that's the only case where they even fight.
Plus it's under sparring and not fighting for notifications.

If it's vanilla, could you share the save before the fight started perhaps?

Oh I see, thanks for the explanation!

I have a save *right* before the fight started. I can see that it started inside the barracks, where the hammer lord was sparring alongside a wrestler (not sure if it's the same wrestler). Somehow this turned into an actual fight? I have no idea. There's a ton of traffic around the barracks area where the sparring is taking place. But no combat notifications had popped up just yet.

Anyway here is the save: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a50K13PyHyA6QrfGFESn_tNngddSoxPU/view?usp=sharing

If you unpause, the fight should start within a couple of seconds. I'm also wondering if one of the children was causing mischief during the sparring, which caused the hammer lord to retaliate. I have a lot of misbehaving children in my fort.

[Fel]

The fighting had already started when I loaded the save (blood on the ground, a few injured dwarves).
Not sure I can investigate the cause without spending quite a bit of time on it, sorry.

For future forts, perhaps try not to allow visitors to come to your fort unless you know how to handle them properly, on top of the whole children chores thing we discussed on another thread.

Not all visitors are bad but there are ones that hide their true identity and that are not there for good reasons.
They can cause fights, thefts and other similar things if left unchecked.

Any zone that you set as a "location" (inn/tavern, temple, library or hospital) are set to "all visitors welcome".
You can still get a few people showing up to fight in your caves but you can easily turn them away.

Long term residents are visitors that petitionned you to stay for a while.
Citizens are either your dwarves or long term residents that petitionned again to gain full citizenship.
So usually "citizens only" is a good setting for not having visitors.

[❤]

Originally posted by Fel:

The fighting had already started when I loaded the save (blood on the ground, a few injured dwarves).
Not sure I can investigate the cause without spending quite a bit of time on it, sorry.

For future forts, perhaps try not to allow visitors to come to your fort unless you know how to handle them properly, on top of the whole children chores thing we discussed on another thread.

Not all visitors are bad but there are ones that hide their true identity and that are not there for good reasons.
They can cause fights, thefts and other similar things if left unchecked.

Any zone that you set as a "location" (inn/tavern, temple, library or hospital) are set to "all visitors welcome".
You can still get a few people showing up to fight in your caves but you can easily turn them away.

Long term residents are visitors that petitionned you to stay for a while.
Citizens are either your dwarves or long term residents that petitionned again to gain full citizenship.
So usually "citizens only" is a good setting for not having visitors.

Hmm I see. I was having some trouble with visitors at the beginning, where thieves kept trying to steal my artifacts. Eventually the theft attempts stopped though, so I decided to keep things open to visitors. I like having them since I get a lot of entertainers for the tavern and it creates a lively atmosphere. But anyway yeah this fort might be reaching the end of its lifetime haha definitely have gotten some good notes for the next one!

[Fantastic Fwoosh]

They could have been co-erced to try and assassinate a individual using your dwarves as a proxy agent. A number of deaths in my fortress where artifacts were on show drawing attention of criminals were discreet for no reason (no alcohol poisoning triggering my hospital, no age related deaths) or random short lived fights not connected to tantrums.

Interrogate the victims and the proxy perpetrator or any suspiciously outlined criminals/representative/leaders if you can. All of the assassination plots youv'e successfully discovered through interrogating key people can be seen from (justice -> plots)

[❤]

Originally posted by Fantastic Fwoosh:

They could have been co-erced to try and assassinate a individual using your dwarves as a proxy agent. A number of deaths in my fortress where artifacts were on show drawing attention of criminals were discreet for no reason (no alcohol poisoning triggering my hospital, no age related deaths) or random short lived fights not connected to tantrums.

Interrogate the victims and the proxy perpetrator or any suspiciously outlined criminals/representative/leaders if you can. All of the assassination plots youv'e successfully discovered through interrogating key people can be seen from (justice -> plots)

That's another thing, there are no criminal reports with this whole thing, that I can tell. The only reports are of misbehaving children. That's my best guess atm, some kid was harassing the military during their training which ended up causing a huge fight due to the barracks being so close to the main stairwell.

[Fel]

I also tried to run the dfhack command for loyalty cascade just in case but it didn't find any so it shouldn't be that either (unless the command couldn't detect it for whatever reason of course).