[X] [TOWER] Complete
The actual threats we face are underground within the Karak, where our gyrocopters/cannon/superweapon can't get them. Although even with the tower 'fully finished' I'd be very reluctant to decrease the surface defenses by a lot- there are just too many ways for our defense to be broken if the tower is the only real bulwark.
[] [LIBRARY]
Plan: Finding the Mines
Edit: convinced not worth it.
-[ Skaven: Dwarven Esoteric
-[ Karaz Ankor: Imperial Esoteric, Bretonnian Extensive
[X] [DWARF] No purchase.
[X] [COLLEGE] No purchase.
[X] [PURCHASE] No purchase.
If people genuinely feel their children can survive and prosper they'll raise plenty more than the notional average.
This is partially true (we've seen the reverse on the real world) but I'm not sure how much it applies to dwarves, given its a socio-cultural arguements and we know little to nothing of dwarven families and child rearing.
A Burning Vengence Item.
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(Not entirely a joke, I still think it would be useful for spoiling operations against the other peaks. It would cost College Favour though)
I'm coming around to the burning vengeance item, though if skimp and make it a one-shot. If we can get the Eshin and Skyre expeditionary forces fighting, we'd have reality close enough to leverage into tell our prisoner that one of the two joined up with mor. This would let us use him for info while allowing him to think he was still acting in the best interests of the council of 13 by helping us destroy one of them. Notably, it'll be better to have them actually fighting than lie about them fighting, because reporting conflicts and aftermaths that actually happened is going to be much, much easier than trying to game out what the skaven would do well enough to fool him.
You know how quickly they all bounce back given space and time. The only real way to deal with the problem in a permanent manner is to take the space they need to do so.
They don't bounce back though, that's the fundemental problem. Birth ratios suggest fertility is barely meeting replacement under best case scenarios. Something else needs to change.
I wonder if we can use runes or magic to make dwarfed women more fertile
Alternatively, use them to nudge birth ratios to more women. Id much prefer pushing dwarves to be more like humans than more like skaven.
Crafting something that is as good as possible is the dwarf way.
Which is, as we've seen, a path to grim downward spirals. Im seeing this as a negative, not a positive, given that it takes priority from underground defenses where the actual threats are. Good enough is just that. Enough.
so, low key, but this is big. we might have just stole one of the big reasons the skaven don't starve, and it seems to be self replicating. if we can scale this, and if there is not a kill plague already made, we might be able to massivly increase the amount of food available to dwarvs and humans. Especially if carnivores can eat this ooze.
Assume that the kill-plaugue is released, it'll hurt them WAY more than it'll hurt us. Win-win.
So, last thought on dwarf populations: we already have a book covering one solution: we know chaos dwarves have restored a population at least as late as the Western dwarves twice in the OOC timeline, from a very small base. Therefore, if the difference is biological, we'll find out in the skaven anatomy book. If there isn't anything there, then cultural approaches are much more likely to succeed.
Basically women are the bottleneck here- it really doesn't matter in the end of you lose 4/5 of all men to war as long as polyandry is culturally acceptable (yes, per WoG) but only having one in four live births contribute to the next generation is crippling. It would lead to the actual pattern we see too: slow grinding attrition that can last for centuries but does not meaningfully impact dwarf army numbers, combined with massive irrecoverable population drops when Karags fall and civilians get massacred. More babies overall would help, but a shift to 2-1 instead of 3-1 male/female births would allow compounding forward as the portion of the population which reproduces gets larger.
Tl;dr- for dwarf silver age, they need more daughters.