I just realised that the founding fathers of our villages is also in the mapseed- that is, with the same mapseed you will get the same people to start with. And I've only been playing some 96 hours...
That's a very interesting find. Hopefully we will get some verification from others on this.
Of course, it might be just chance. Weird if 13 names would be equal at two startups, though. It was two completely identical maps btw- no change in climate, size etc.
I noticed once that exactly the same child came of age at exactly the same time, on multiple restarts with the same seed and conditions.
Interesting find indeed.
I made a who-is-who screenshot of my current town when I started it, and just now restarted the same seed and indeed: exactly identical citizens.
Edit 1: with different Season and Disaster options, it's still identical citizens. They even all start at the same spot on the ground.
Edit 2: if you switch from Valleys to Mountains you get different citizens (and a different map ofcourse).
I just tested it on kee's story challenge, using a different version of the game with his seed and conditions. I got the same names with 1.0.0 and he did with 1.0.3 (or possibly 2).
So, the conclusion is that everything about the map, including people, is in the seed?
That has been my experience, when restarting the same seed
Wow! Very interesting!
Kind of limiting, with only 999,999,999 worlds to play. ;D But seriously, it did surprise me a little bit. Dwarf Fortress generates your starting party independent of the map seed. Of course, Dwarf Fortress gives you a lot of things that are different from Banished, so that's not a big deal. Just a little surprising.