Bay 12 Games Forum

Dwarf Fortress => DF Suggestions => Topic started by: NW_Kohaku on July 15, 2010, 08:13:16 pm

Title: Class Warfare: Internal politics, scaling difficulty, and personalities
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 15, 2010, 08:13:16 pm

On Eternal Voting (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/eternal_voting.php#vote74), search for "Class Warfare".

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This time, I will try something new.  Rather than create a massive thread and a TL;DR version, I will instead create an abstract version of my suggestion, with links to new posts that extrapolate upon the details of what I am saying.  This should hopefully give people who are curious an overview while giving all the details for people who want to chew on the meat of the idea. 

Click the yellow link headers to go to the full article on each segment of the idea.  (Still currently a work-in-progress.)

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Sliding Scale of Difficulty (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61620.msg3298158#msg3298158) -
First and foremost, the problem that this suggestion tries to overcome is the problem of the "learning cliff".  Many of the problems or challenges to overcome in the game are fairly easy to solve, they are simply all presented to you at the same time, with few clues as to how to solve them.  That is, the game is "hard" only in the sense that it is confusing to learn how to play, and easy (if unforgiving) once you have learned the basics, to the point of boring once you have explored every menu fully. 

I see it pretty often: Players just run out of steam to enjoy the game (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=109244.0) because they feel they've done it all.  The game isn't hard for them, it isn't challenging as a game anymore.  Meanwhile, we can't make the initial game harder for new players. 

The solution, of course, is to make a game that gets harder the further on you go.  We already have this to a degree with sieges and Titans, but we can go further than this: We can make the game come in stages of complexity and difficulty from the domestic and basic self-sustaining society front, as well.

The game will be segregated into different fort "stages" that increase in complexity and responsibilities, but also overall power for the player, while also giving the player a greater bureaucracy with which to automate control of the fortress functions you are moving away from.

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Social Classes (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61620.msg3318297#msg3318297) -
In the vein of the Sierra City Builder series or City Life games, as the game goes on, dwarves will segregate into different social classes that have different demands upon you as a city planner.  Not just nobles will immigrate or arise to/from your fortress, but also more well-to-do guild members of different artisan classes or merchant or religious classes. 

As your fortress turns from an outpost to a small city, the complexity of social classes compounds.

Different guilds and religious factions might have political brokering, including cloak-and-dagger warfare if their rivalries are not kept in check, and peasants may uprise against the nobility and renegotiate their rights. 

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The Noble Tree and Fortress Governance Structures (Part 1 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61620.msg4025969#msg4025969), and Part 2 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61620.msg4047656#msg4047656)) -
At the same time, the manner in which your fortress is governed may change from your current Communist dictatorship where you have full control to a feudal split control between nobles or religious enclaves or even making a mercantile republic where you have less direct control over the actions of your dwarves. 

The way that you build up your fortress power structures allows you to also control what form of nobles you get.  Since the game is played from the perspective of the-player-as-the-nobles, this, in turn means that as you develop different structures of your fortress at different rates, you gain further control over different aspects of fortress or areas outside of the fortress at different rates depending on what nobles you have control over.

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Fortress Power Structure Mechanics -
Guilds bring with them knowledge and technologies that allow your fortress to build more advanced workshops, which allow for more complex and advanced goods to be produced, which in turn are demanded by more discerning nobles, or else allow for production on a greater scale to allow for greater trade with the outside world.

To help implement what this means, a potential and affinity system (to work with the personality rewrites) can be worked into the game, which makes getting to legendary without having the teaching opportunities a guild brings more difficult.  (Excepting, possibly, moods.)

The politics of guilds, churches, nobles, and the military themselves, however, create a whole new web of internal stresses in the fort that complicate the capacity for a player to control everything in their fortress, as their own dwarves may start to work at cross purposes to one another in pursuit of their own goals as your fortress starts to prove that mere basic survival has already been accomplished.

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Personality Rewrites -
Dwarves will need to have more autonomy to make these different forms of governance possible, and that means using the Personality Rewrites to bring about changes in dwarven AI to make them less stupid and more capable of doing things for themselves. 

With the Perosnality Rewrites, Toady is doing away with the old happiness system and personality traits, and is introducing a new system that is as yet undefined but would result in characters having emotional needs and desires that cause them to have ambitions to get into different types of jobs, from being a cook to being a brigand to trying to take over the world. 

These wants and needs can also be used to help make dwarves more autonomous by giving them all different ways of acting in response to different situations, and this, in turn, will let us have a much better "narrative" in the game for people who enjoy playing DF as a narrative creator.

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Internal Fortress Economics -
I have spent some time going over how money and debt were handled in the medieval world, and they actually didn't use metal coins for the overwhelming majority of their village life.  Coins were, in fact, a rarity outside of trade with the outside world. 

Inside of a town, credit, tabs at local shop, and local money made of IOUs that could be redeemed at the local general store or blacksmith were the most common form of money. 

Dwarves could do the same - just as the old economy could function on nothing but the invisible credit lines, we could do this purposefully, rather than having dwarves actually carry physical coins around that they likely would not have had in a realistic setting, anyway.

Likewise, I want to cover the ways in which dwarves will be able to participate in the local economy using the Personality Rewrites.  Dwarves may be able to purchase certain goods to decorate their rooms, or have dreams of upward mobility, or otherwise having more control over their own destiny economically.

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Macroeconomics -
Too often, "Supply and Demand" ignores the "Demand" half of the equation. 

There are multiple models that should become a part of this game, such as substitutes, and why Demand is as variable as Supply.  Likewise, Relative Advantage, and why trade is beneficial to both parties. 

Further, I want to talk about Taverns, Caravans, and ways to streamline trade so that players can simply put goods up for trade, ask for certain goods to be purchased from caravans, and generally not have to micromanage crazy amounts of time in the trading menu.

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Martial Law -

Part of the reason that dwarves are not autonomous now is that, in Toady's words, your orders are generally presumed to be a matter of life-and-death.  This thread seeks to change most of that, and make much of fortress life not revolve solely around survival, and to also give dwarves more autonomy. 

However, at some points, there really can be reasons to break down the social order and start giving direct orders to get things done right away because the lives of the population of the fortress depend on it. 

Martial law, seizures of property, and generally "undoing" many of the structures of an autonomous dwarf society would then be potentially reasonable, or in other situations, a despotic abuse of power. 

The game needs mechanics for emergencies to let players override dwarven rights, but also the penalties and potential backlash or uprising to make players not do so lightly.

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Sliding Interfaces -
In this section, I will want to talk about ways to present all this information to the player in the most useful way possible.  Complexity in gameplay should be met with ease of control, and as Interface is always a point of problem with DF, going through some steps to make the Interface more easily handled may show some good guidelines for Toady.   

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The following is a spin-off discussion on the nature of dwarven autonomy: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=63109.0

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 15, 2010, 08:21:44 pm

This is the old original post of the thread, preserved for reference.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There's a joke that goes around the DF forums that goes something like this:  "Dwarven psychology is a funny thing.  Something negative, like, say, "my family was just murdered by a rampaging elephant" can be completely canceled out by something positive, like, say, "I ate at a REALLY NICE dining room recently!""

I have said before that there are really two major aspects to Dwarf Fortress, the construction and engineering aspect, and the military aspect.  This is due largely to the way that the game is presented: You can't really see much beyond walls and individual units running around.  You can also largely divide DF players along which one of those two aspects they tend to prefer.  These two things are not, however, the only play styles DF has to restrain itself to catering towards.  Rather than focusing on the macro, the game can focus inward on its own the micro where so much of the detail is currently ignored.

I've made some suggestions, and commented on suggestions based around trying to make dwarven life a little less about having the bare necessities for survival, and make it start to involve some higher quality furniture, hobbies, games, and leisure activities, decorative objects (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=50284.0), varying quality levels of food (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60681.0) or booze (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61345.0), but the same problem comes up:  It's impossible to make people care about improving the quality of life for the dwarves of your fortress until you first fix the happiness system (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60463.msg1363636#msg1363636) and institute a social class system. 

As such, this is (yet another) suggestion that is very broad and sweeping, attempting to make large structural changes that would enable a great deal more customizability, fun, and Fun in Dwarf Fortress, rather than anything that makes incrimental changes.

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Class Warfare:

Whenever someone is trying make any suggestion for something new to add into the game, it will, almost by definition, create additional complexity, simply by the nature of having more information, objects, and options, which will always stir up the cries that it is "unfair on newbies" or that "it is hard enough to set up a farm and get your dwarves fed, we don't need something else to worry about".  This stems from the largely front-loaded nature of Dwarf Fortress's difficulty - the vast majority of threats to a fortress exist before a fortress is properly set up, in its first two years of existence.  Any fort that survives five years is almost guaranteed to continue existing unless brought down by HFS, tantrum spiral, extreme player stupidity, like magma-flooding his whole fortress, or abandoning caused by FPS drops or sheer boredom.

What this game really needs is a (better) system that gives players a reason to start simple, but build towards more complex systems to feed more complex demands.  Nobles are largely the only thing that exist as an incriment in difficulty as your fortress becomes more densely populated.  Higher-ranking and more numerous nobles with greater demands arrive as your fortress becomes a more populous community, but nobles are rarely a serious concern for the players who get them - after all, any noble that really causes a fuss is just one Unfortunate Accident away from no longer making any more mandates.

Aside from nobles, the only dwarves that stand apart are legendaries, which are just normal dwarves that are exempt from the economy.  All other dwarves are essentially just normal dwarves who will be perfectly content with uncooked plump helmets and a bed in a rough-cut communal sleeping area (although appointed positions do get to demand minor things like a desk to do their work upon) whether they are the starting seven roughing it, and glad to have a bed at all to sleep in, or the third generation denizen of a 25-year fortress whose hallways are litterally paved in gold.

What needs to change is that dwarves need to start being able to look around themselves, and realizing just what kind of slice of the pie they actually deserve, and start demanding their fair share. 

As fortress wealth, age, and/or population increase, dwarves need to start rising up out of a mere expectation of bare-knuckle drudgery just to make do on subsistance to having expectations that their great Mountainhome is surely the greatest city in the world, and that as its citizens, they are privalidged to expect a certain baseline quality of life, including fine food, fine booze, fine housing, and fine entertainment. 

Of course, no society has perfect equality, and so what this leads to is the need to build a mechanism for socially stratifying your dwarves.  The mechanic for doing this may be a bit difficult to nail down to a specific ideal set of mechanics, but there are a few guidelines to follow: 

• First, there should be a social standing ceiling based upon the overall size and wealth and security of a fortress.  Early fortresses should be restricted from having social mobility until they can settle in, generate some fortress wealth, and get some migrants so that the initial seven can lord their veteran status over them.  With incrimental gains in your fortress size, new social classes will start to be unlocked.  This would probably be best handled in a similar manner to the way that fortresses upgrade from simple outposts to baronies to mountainhomes, with each level introducing new maximum social classes.
• Dwarves need to have some sort of social mobility.  Unlike nobles, who are basically born and will die nobles, dwarves need to move between these statuses.  One obvious criteria would be to track the wealth that a dwarf has accumulated.  In times when the economy is turned off, using a counter for the number of jobs he/she has done in the past year or so, or a running total averaged over the time that he/she has been in the fortress could be used.  Perhaps a simpler method would be to simply multiply the ranks someone has in their skills by a value that is placed on each skill to dwarven society (preferably modifiable by the player), so that legendaries are the dwarves that rise to the top.  Multiple criteria can be used, however, and I think that aside from wealth and job status, a good criteria would be a dwarf's connections with the rest of the fortress - the more the social standing of a dwarf rises, and the more friends he has, and the better positioned his family/clan is, the more of a bonus to his social class he has.  Finally, there might be a convenience bonus on social class - since dwarves of higher social classes will expect better goods, if a dwarf already has access to better goods and amenities, he will recieve a boost to move to a higher social class.
• Just as an example list, I would say that classes could go like this:
  • Subsistance (only concerned with immediate survival - food, danger, shelter)
  • Lower Class (wants relatively comfortable beds, likes nicely decorated public spaces, likes socializing and some gambling or other lower-class specific entertainments)
  • Lower-Middle Class (expects private rooms excepting immediate family members, wants decent clothing, rooms that are nice, possibly containers, enjoys zoos, socializing, statues and engravings, gains happiness for better-quality prepared foods, may take up hobbies with small amounts of free time)
  • Upper-Middle Class (will buy personal luxury items and decorations, feels great bonuses for having decent housing to prove their status, will be unhappy to eat low-quality food but delighted with high-quality prepared meals, higher-quality (more comfortable?) clothing, will take up hobbies that may take up more of their time, and take time off rarely to enjoy entertainment avenues or parks and zoos for their own enjoyment, and expect medical treatment for their injuries or illnesses, and are more upset when they are put in direct physical harm)
  • Upper Class (Expects plenty of luxury goods to be available for purchase, to be kept completely safe, want to have extravagant goods to assure them of their status, have access to high-class leisure pursuits, such as watching plays, will want beautiful surroundings, both in their private areas, and in the fortress in general, such as admiring all the doors or statues in the hallways.)
  • Plutocrats (Basically, the nobles.)
• Dwarves of different social classes have different expectations for how they can live their lives.  This isn't the same as a noble's room demands per se, but rather a baseline level of quality they expect in their living arrangements (not having to sleep in the same room with strangers, having a better-quality bed, whether that is a simply better-carved bed, or one with fur blankets and bird down mattresses, and more valuable homes overall), and whether these expectations are met or exceeded are the basis for the power of the thoughts that dwarves have.  Dwarves can also have new expectations open up the chance to get thoughts on certain subjects at all - subsistance-level dwarves might not care how nice their dining hall is, they just want not to be eaten by wild animals and have any kind of food at all.
• Dwarves can have some limited recognition of the differences in social class as part of their behavior - dwarves can be motivated by the temptation of rising in social class, and enjoying the benefits of having better quality of life, and if they feel that this is possible, will become more motivated, happier workers.  If they think this is impossible, or realize that there aren't the goods to improve their lives, even if they raise in class, they lose their motivation, (this is a specific break from the "Perfect Communism" that the game currently runs on) and become lazier workers, and are dissafected with their jobs.  If nobles have access to wonderful goods and lifestyles, but common dwarves can never hope for more than living in a communal flophouse and raw plump helmets for dinner, Class Warfare can start to happen, creating the potential for riots or brutal crackdowns from fearful nobles, sicking the Hammerer on whoever they feel is a "threat to the state".

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The Pursuit of Happiness (the system):

Cribbing some bits shamelessly from the Dwarven Psychology Thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60463.msg1363636#msg1363636) (I should also point out this thread also showed up while I was still hammering this post out (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61540.0)), I am re-proposing that happiness be broken up into individual mood and perspective elements.  It also breaks up the effects of having low values in specific desires to have different negative consequences, so that not all happiness is measured in terms of "X units away from going nuts and killing people".

I'll just copy some bits about those other two threads I linked to above: There should be a set of Sims-like needs and wants that dwarves can have.  I like the notions of having a "Security" desire that takes hits as dwarves are terrified by things like amphibious zombie elephants popping up out of the cistern while the dwarf was bathing.  Most of those suggestions are good, and I'd just say I want to copy them as ideas, including having specialized negative effects for "zeroing" on specific desires, rather than making everything result in potential tantrum spirals.

Another good idea is a "Job Satisfaction" desire.  Dwarves already feel satisfied with doing their job, but this could become a much more fleshed out mechanic.  In a sense, a person's job is one of the most important definitions of who a person is (especially for males, psychologically speaking, whereas females tend to define themselves more by relationships with others), especially in a game where, after all, job title is the biggest, most commonly seen thing about a dwarf besides name, and which is the only thing visible about the dwarf when you aren't looking in a menu (as it determines token color).  Job Satisfaction is about more than just liking what you do, though.  It's also one of the key measures of how much control one thinks they have over their life.  Someone will be happy with horrible pay or conditions if they think that they are the masters of their own destiny, and so will stick with being a "small business owner" (or just an outright freelancer) and be happier than having an easy, good-paying desk job that makes them feel insignificant.

The difficult part here is translating this into game terms.  I think that what we already have might work in some degree - that giving dwarves the ability to work in jobs with a material they like is a good idea, but that it needs to be expanded with a general personality type matching between how a job is done, and whether it suits them.  I.E. creative types like engraving, and uncreative types hate it.  Strong, agressive, or impatient dwarves prefer things like woodcutting and would be bored with delicate gemsetting.

Another dimension I would put as a "Standard of Living" desire, which is largely related to the expectations of their class.  This is the desire to live in a nice home, in a relatively mud-free, decent-looking neighborhood.  They would want to eat well and drink well in a nice environment (it would be nice if they didn't have to drink in the booze stockpiles, but in some kind of salon or lounge area), and have beautified hallways, free of naked, vomit-and-blood-soaked hobos.  They would want the ability to bathe if/when they get dirty.  They generally want to know that where they live, in their dwarven way of life, is a superior way of life to those filthy humans and elves, and even other dwarven cities. 

To turn Dwarf Psychology's Frustration and Stress around, "Leisure" should be a desire for dwarves.  As dwarves get stressed out by finding their paths frequently blocked by heavy traffic, having to path great distances to get logs from outside instead of at the nearby stockpile because there aren't enough haulers, or get tired of eating plump helmets every day, or being threatened by a wild beast, or generally just the monotony of doing the same effin' job in the same tiny burrow day in day out with no hope of advancement, they will turn to your fortress's leisure halls for relief.  Leisure is all those wonderful things like music or art or gambling or zoos and parks or tame animal races that distract dwarves when they are stressed and frustrated, and make them feel more at home in their fort.

Dwarf Psychology's Greed, I will rebrand as the desire for "Ego Appeasement".  Dwarves want other dwarves to recognize just where the belong in life (which is, quite obviously, a higher status than they are in, as they have earned everything they have, and everyone else is just a freeloader), so they would prefer to put out their own works on display.  SEE the magnificence of Urist McEngraver's masterpiece work of himself carving out another masterpiece of himself carving something else!  If high-quality work of theirs is on display (even better, if SOMEONE STOPS AND APPRECIATES THEIR FINE DOOR!) they get bonuses to their pride.  Alternately, if they OWN the fine door, they get bonuses to their pride.  If the artwork (like a statue or engraving) is OF a dwarf (like the mayor), then they get pride if people admire their likeness in statue form.  This desire, however, takes hits as dwarves with senses of entitlement find out that someone of lesser rank than them DARES have a nicer facade for their home (what? TWO windows facing the pitch-black wall?  How DARE they flaunt their ability to get pointless windows installed!) then this desire takes a massive turn for the ugly.

More specifically to relate to the Class Warfare section, however, I would like to see a sort of "Patriotism" measurement.  This reflects general satisfaction with the government, with low patriotism meaning they are harboring thoughts of treason or rebellion against the ruling class.  When a fortress is wealthy enough to enable certain social classes, but few dwarves can rise up to that class (or have the expectations of that class met), then dwarves start to wonder why they are working so hard when they never wind up getting to enjoy the fruits of their own labor.  Likewise, when there is a disproportionate number of lower-class dwarves, no middle class, and a small number of super-elites like nobles or very wealthy and pampered upper-class champions or legendaries, there becomes resentment at the social divisions, and patriotism suffers.  Propoganda (statues and engravings, or the like) can alleviate this to a degree, if it is specific to raising pride about the fortress, as can major victories in the likes of seiges or even better, turning back the HFS with minimal casualties.

When patriotism drops unacceptably low, dwarves who have like complaints will band together, and start riots if they are of lower classes, fighting against the noblility or upper classes, or else possibly just looting the goods they believe are rightfully theirs.  Upper classes that are unpatriotic will instead become more callous towards their "lessers", spending more time gathering goods for themselves personally, and having lower classes hammered for their own amusement.  (Which would probably make patriotism of the lower classes drop like a rock.)

Also related to this thread would be a "Socialization" desire, as I had said in the "Harder Happiness" thread.  Dwarves will want to have some connection to other dwarves simply as a means of preserving their sanity (with dwarves that have specifically reclusive personalities being possible exceptions, for the purposes of keeping "Hermit Fortresses" still possible).  This would mean that, as opposed to the current system, where socializing is seen only as a liability, it would actually be more damaging to avoid socialization. 

As a dampener on the possible damage, dwarves who are more friendly and popular may be less potentially depressed by the loss of a fellow dwarf, as they can be consoled by having more friends willing to dampen the blow with them.  An isolated dwarf who loses his only friend, who might also be a family member (such as a dwarf who came with a child, had made no friends yet, and saw their child die), might be utterly unconsolable and immediately launch into depression, but dwarves with many friends may have a bigger safety net to fall back on.

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Clans:

First, while it may overlap somewhat with the upcoming Guilds portion of the devpage, I would like to suggest that dwarves start becoming a little more... Clannish.  Dwarves come from extended family lines, rather than having simple immediate family, and new migrants have a growing random chance of actually being a relative in the same clan as existing dwarves. 

These clans bind dwarves into distinct social cliques. 

Dwarves in a clan can vie for rank within their clan, with the same general measures of what raises them in social standing as what I detailed in the earlier parts of this thread.

Dwarves can be more or less "Clannish", diving into their clans (or their guilds) internal politics, and not wanting to socialize with others, unless those others specifically become "friends of the clan", where there are friendship (and enemy) measurements for every other dwarf in the fortress.  Socializing with high-ranking members of a clan, or being politically convenient to a clan, can help raise someone's rating overall with the entire clan.

Clans can also have inter-clan politics.  Clans will want to elect their own mayor, or at least ally themselves with the mayor's clan.  Guilds might also become heavily influenced or even taken over by certain clans, and leverage those guilds to their clan's ends. (Or, if mechanics make it willing, even make clans specifically better suited to certain job types, or start with better skills in that particular job type, making those clans more likely to join those guilds, although figuring how to get dwarves to want specific jobs without forcing the player's hand would be tricky.)

Clannish dwarves will, however, take care of their own, showing charity to their clanmates who fall on hard times, and helping clan members avoid becoming dissaffected with lower social standing by giving a sort of clan pride bonus if their clan gains influence or prominance.  The more clannish they are, however, the less happy they become about having to help others outside their clan (or at least, their guild).

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The Pursuit of Happiness (as a replacement for "Property" from Locke):

Dwarves can decorate their rooms themselves.  This means that, instead of renting rooms based on the value of the furniture built there, and the decorations of the walls, dwarves rent just the rooms, and will buy (or lease) the beds, cabinets, luxury goods, decorations, etc. for their own rooms.  They will sell old beds or luxury goods back, and buy better ones, and build them in their rooms on their own.

In conjunction with clans, this can become even more elaborate, however.  Dwarves can be designated with not just rooms, but essentially clan holdings in the fortress.  Essentially, a sort of burrow that designates that the area is the residential area of that one particular clan, and where dwarves of that clan automatically pick rooms to be their own private rooms, to be decorated as they like, but also to have clan-public rooms.  These would be social gathering points for just the clan in particular, and having a specific clan legendary dining hall would provide far more pride than merely eating in a public legendary dining hall to a dwarf. 

This means that, instead of having to house dwarves yourself every time new migrants come, they will instead flock to their own clan's halls, try to find new housing for themselves inside said hall, and purchase beds and furniture for themselves, decorating it as they want.  No player micromanagement required.  (Although the more OCD players might want some sort of manual override in decoration choices.)  The major concern for players will simply be carving out enough rooms off of a clan's hall to house all their citizens, and occasionally needing to perhaps knock down a wall to join rooms so that you can create single large rooms for particularly wealthy dwarves.  If it becomes possible, dwarves might even be able to call in for smoothing or even engraving of the walls all on their own.

In addition to all the things I said in this post, I'd like to also link to the previous thread I had on this topic again here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=50284.0

That thread contains much on ways that dwarves can create new crafts that are essentially just luxury goods, as well as entertainment venues, such as art galleries, music halls, auditoriums for plays, libraries, etc.

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Children Are Our Future - The Orwellian Mind Control Scheme

Dwarven child-care centers!  (Wait, wait, this one's diffirent from the others!)  (OK, maybe nenjin (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=54809.msg1178092#msg1178092) was close to this one...) Anyway, rather than having a system where we can force the early assimilation of dwarven children into our workforce as willing two-year-old drones, we can instead use dwarven childcare as our way of impressing certain values upon our dwarves' children, altering their preferences, their traits, possibly even getting a chance to alter their (currently set at birth) baseline attributes, so that they have higher maximum attribute caps (which are double your baseline attribute). 

We could be able to expose children to different environments to get children used to those environments and living conditions, so, for example, children near plenty of flies (who put the school next to the refuse stockpile?!) will likely not develop aversions to flies.  They can be stratified by the class of their parents (and their parents may demand their children recieve education appropriate for their class), to help children develop class-appropriate affinities for different objects, materials, leisure activities, and other likes. 

We can also use teachers/caretakers who are given certain stories or games to push onto the children in their care to enforce certain personality traits, and can heavily douse children in the form of propoganda you feel best for controlling your happy little populace, ensuring more loyalist patriotic adults later on.

We could also potentially give children religion, or make them more secular/humanistic, as long as the parents aren't looking too closesly (or you don't mind the hit to their happiness for your evangelizing upon their helpless children) as that is now supposed to have actual impact in-game.

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Interface Improvements:

As I'm talking about having dwarves become more involved in their socialization, I think it becomes more important that you can... well, SEE that's what's happening. 

Currently, the interface is extremely limited as to figuring out what a dwarf is doing.  Basically, you can try to infer from what direction a dwarf is moving, or you can guess when they are sitting at a workshop that they are working there, but it is essentially impossible, without (k)-looking at them (which requires stopping the game, and pointing at them, and specifically them to find out) to see what they are doing.

I know it's too much to ask for the "Complete Interface Overhaul", at least any time soon, but I think that with the graphics improvements we have had recently, it should be at least possible to do a few new things with symbolically representing actions and dwarven states on the map.

For one thing, rather than having icons that are simply a dynamically bitmap icon and a background color for the "transparent" part, we can start using transparency layers on top of icons.  Rather than only seeing flashing icons when dwarves are either really hungry or really upset by having it alternate between their normal dwarf icon and the "down arrow" icon, we could have a semi-transparent patch of color overlayed on top of the dwarves.  This could be used in conjunction with a special viewing mode that could be toggled, so that you could instantly see dwarves color-coded according to their happiness levels by punching the button to enter the overlay mode. 

Additionally, rather than completely occluding view in miasma clouds, using transparency with the miasma clouds would let you be able to find the #@*$ dead rat causing the miasma more easily, rather than having to hunt through each covered tile for what is causing the miasma, and if it is even still there.

Even better than this, however, would be a system where you could tell what dwarves are doing in the world without using the (k)-look to specifically target each dwarf by instead using mini-icons.  This could be drawn from what essentially amounts to another graphics/icon sheet that would be smaller than the main graphic/icon sheet of 255 characters.  These miniature icons can then be placed at the corners/along the borders of tiles, (that is, require icons to not always take up exactly one tile on the grid) to show when dwarves are interacting along those tiles.  Naturally, the sheer tiny nature of the icons we already have would dictate that these mini-icons be fairly small, possibly even only 4 pixels wide, but could at least be full-color (that is, not all painted one color, the way that standard icons, excluding expanded graphics sheets, currently are) and basically make something like a "dust cloud" or a "hammer" to represent that a dwarf is working, a "speech bubble" to represent conversing with a creature along the border between the two creatures talking.  Likewise, a "sword" icons or the like might indicate fighting between two creatures (although this is typically more apparent).

The following is a spin-off discussion on the nature of dwarven autonomy: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=63109.0

The origin of this thread is in a previous thread, found here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=50284.msg1057639#msg1057639

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: FreakyCheeseMan on July 15, 2010, 08:31:45 pm

So, first thing... you might modify that and use spoiler tags to make a collapsing index, just to make the length manageable.

I like a number of your ideas, though I don't know how many of them meet the "Player Value / (Toady Time + Learning Curve + System Resources) test.

Clans strike me as interesting, and not too hard to implement... and having the social fabric break down in a more complicated way than just "Tantrum Spiral" would be cool. I'd like to see a foodworkers strike once in a while, but... the complexity of doing that is incredible, let alone making it work in a balanced way.

Personally, I'd like to see disease as the next big thing to get fleshed out, but that comes back to what you were saying about the learning curve... I'm actually in favor of difficulty settings at this point, or maybe having some "init" features be off by default.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 15, 2010, 08:39:31 pm

The next big things are the things on the devpages, as far as I know, excepting fixing up the things that were introduced in .31.01.

This probably qualifies as another save-breaker (although it isn't as certain as the "Volume and Mass (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61215.0)" thread to do this), so I have no expectation that this will be coming any time soon.

Instead, I'd like to see this as a longer-term arc, which would probably fit in with an economy arc that would follow the caravan arc...  So yeah, this is shooting pretty far down-field.

I like to think in terms of systems, however, so I've never been particularly interested with the small change threads.  I rather prefer things be made open and moddable as much as possible, so that the little suggestions would just go away as they all become possible to add in through mods, with Toady maybe adding in particularly good mods as standard.  That way, Toady can focus on the "Opening up possible new avenues of play/developing the complexity and immersion of systems and new play avenues"

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: FreakyCheeseMan on July 15, 2010, 08:46:03 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on July 15, 2010, 08:39:31 pm

The next big things are the things on the devpages, as far as I know, excepting fixing up the things that were introduced in .31.01.

This probably qualifies as another save-breaker (although it isn't as certain as the "Volume and Mass (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61215.0)" thread to do this), so I have no expectation that this will be coming any time soon.

Instead, I'd like to see this as a longer-term arc, which would probably fit in with an economy arc that would follow the caravan arc...  So yeah, this is shooting pretty far down-field.

I like to think in terms of systems, however, so I've never been particularly interested with the small change threads.  I rather prefer things be made open and moddable as much as possible, so that the little suggestions would just go away as they all become possible to add in through mods, with Toady maybe adding in particularly good mods as standard.  That way, Toady can focus on the "Opening up possible new avenues of play/developing the complexity and immersion of systems and new play avenues"

The reason I'm so obsessed with syndromes is that they offer so much to modders- there seem to be places where he could do *very* little, and give modders the ability to take it to incredible places. In particular, if he added just a tiny bit more, the modders could start playing with disease, hammering out how it will work and finding what's needed, saving us all time and effort later on.

Most of the other minor-change stuff doesn't interest me, either... though once in a while something seems to fit in with a larger system. Some small changes, though, seem like they add a lot of complexity and depth to the game, without making the learning curve or system requirements that much greater.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: ChickenLips on July 15, 2010, 08:47:49 pm

Okay, okay, I'm fairly new to the game and community (started on .03), but, for what it's worth, I heartily second this framework of suggestions.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Grendus on July 15, 2010, 10:34:24 pm

I heartily endorse this. I'd love to see more focus on dwarf happiness, right now you carve out a 31x31 room (which six competent miners can do in a week or so), set up rough tables, and they walk around ecstatic all the time. Although the class warfare thing I'm not quite as keen on until we can see dwarves training themselves (somewhat similar to modern society, you can go back to school or do private study and work your way up), currently I think they only do this occasionally with military skills. But I would like to see dwarves be more demanding about their lifestyle.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 15, 2010, 10:37:30 pm

Quote from: ChickenLips on July 15, 2010, 08:47:49 pm

Okay, okay, I'm fairly new to the game and community (started on .03), but, for what it's worth, I heartily second this framework of suggestions.

While it may be a little bit poor form to push this, since you say you are new, it may be worth pointing out, I linked to Eternal Suggestion Voting (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/eternal_voting.php#vote53) so you could vote for it if you liked it.  (You get three votes, but remember that the top 11 suggestions are now part of the devpage, so should be skipped over, as they are already planned on being included.)

Quote from: FreakyCheeseMan on July 15, 2010, 08:46:03 pm

The reason I'm so obsessed with syndromes is that they offer so much to modders- there seem to be places where he could do *very* little, and give modders the ability to take it to incredible places. In particular, if he added just a tiny bit more, the modders could start playing with disease, hammering out how it will work and finding what's needed, saving us all time and effort later on.

Most of the other minor-change stuff doesn't interest me, either... though once in a while something seems to fit in with a larger system. Some small changes, though, seem like they add a lot of complexity and depth to the game, without making the learning curve or system requirements that much greater.

I agree, but as I said in that thread, I just assume Toady's going to put that in, anyway.  I try to push for the open frontier.

Likewise, the dwarf scripting thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61610.0) is there to enable players to solve a great many of their problems by giving players the tools to rework dwarven behavior.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: ChickenLips on July 15, 2010, 10:40:34 pm

A grander revolutionary arc would be incredible, though probably a lot of work.  The fortress, taken over by revolutionary forces, could move to seize control of the capital, with Unfortunate Accidents occurring all over the place!  Vive les Dorfes!

(After the caravan arc and other such expansions make this even remotely viable.)

(Just caught the response: Gotcha -- thanks for the link.  Already put in some votes a while back, though they were on stuff far more humble than this, like an end to self-replicating contaminants, deceased beings disappearing from the unit list, and ...  something else.)

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 15, 2010, 11:05:21 pm

Quote from: ChickenLips on July 15, 2010, 10:40:34 pm

(Just caught the response: Gotcha -- thanks for the link.  Already put in some votes a while back, though they were on stuff far more humble than this, like an end to self-replicating contaminants, deceased beings disappearing from the unit list, and ...  something else.)

If you don't remember, there are links at the top of the page to what you have already voted for.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: ChickenLips on July 16, 2010, 02:03:21 am

Yes, thank you.  I just didn't consider it essential to remember the precise ones at the moment.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Brandon816 on July 16, 2010, 03:54:24 am

-Class Warfare
"Perhaps a simpler method would be to simply multiply the ranks someone has in their skills by a value that is placed on each skill to dwarven society (preferably modifiable by the player), so that legendaries are the dwarves that rise to the top."

Just a suggestion, maybe the values of those skills could have some sort of supply and demand dependancy, either in whole or in part along with player settings. For instance, if you only need 1 or 2 masons at any one time and have 30 legendary masons, they don't really have job security. Just because they are legendary doesn't mean anything because they are still hardly working, if at all. Therefore, the fortress wide value of that skill should drop, and if the demand is far higher the opposite the value should raise.

The demand chould be based on 'x' jobs fortress-wide per 'y' time with either an added or multiplied value input by the player for that specific job, and supply could be to add the fortress-wide total of ranks for that skill (for those who don't currently have the skill enabled, their ranks count for either less, since they aren't being used but are available). 'Demand * (some constant) * (player constant) / supply' would give the value for the job itself, which would then be multiplied, or otherwised combined with, to the dwarf's rank for that job. Since this is with economics turned off, certain injuries (blind, missing limbs, paralyzed) could detract from this value, since the society would be basing the dwarves' value on a forecast of what they can do rather than the economic monetary system that rewards what they have done.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 16, 2010, 07:27:14 am

Well, I was thinking more along the lines of having values that were based not so much upon "demand" but upon, I guess, an overall potential value to the fort and difficulty to train specific skills.

I.E. Weaponsmiths, armorsmiths, and doctors who are highly trained (due to the difficulty in training, and the potential damage an untrained doctor can do) are worth more than legendary lyemakers.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: FreakyCheeseMan on July 17, 2010, 09:55:11 am

The big problem I see is that dwarves are currently under the players control, mostly, until they go crazy. Adding more complicated behavior for them makes that tricky... you said something along the lines of "Happiness is just a measure of not-crazy"; to a certain extent it needs to be.

So, what other sticks and carrots can you use to encourage players to keep their dwarves happy?

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 17, 2010, 10:56:55 am

Quote from: FreakyCheeseMan on July 17, 2010, 09:55:11 am

The big problem I see is that dwarves are currently under the players control, mostly, until they go crazy. Adding more complicated behavior for them makes that tricky... you said something along the lines of "Happiness is just a measure of not-crazy"; to a certain extent it needs to be.

So, what other sticks and carrots can you use to encourage players to keep their dwarves happy?

Ultimately, dwarves are just plain going to need to have a little more autonomy if we are going to get more sophisticated behaviors out of them.

I kind of skimmed over it, but I wanted to take from the dwarven psychology thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60463.msg1363636#msg1363636) that different types of happiness have their own individual sticks that are less severe than outright insanity leading to inevitable death. 

Stressed dwarves, for example, stop working and go to do leisure activities to reduce their stress.  The better and more suited the leisure activities you provide your dwarves (and dwarves should have leisure activity preferences, so that you need variety to fully serve your fortress), the less this puts a strain on production.

Dissafected, unpatriotic dwarves, however, are going to be more leery of, or outright hostile to the whole "Communist Utopia" thing, and decide to just mooch off the benefits of society without contributing - they simply work less and less, and try and steal when they can.

I also want to work a better economic system into this, one where the government is actually taxing and paying for things, but I'm a little shakey on the mechanics of how this could work, so I'm witholding on that for now.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: FreakyCheeseMan on July 17, 2010, 12:22:02 pm

I was thinking you might work Art into this. Happy dwarves would be more inspired... you'd get a higher chance of artifacts that way. Or maybe do a little of what I said- have the quality of art be influenced by the mood. That would be good if Toady brings in some of the magic stuffs he mentioned... pissed off dwarves make artifacts that are more likely to unleash zombies.

Or maybe give them some more autonomous actions, and some "free" time. Neutral dwarves will spend their free time at the zoo or statue garden, doing nothing. Unhappy dwarves might start smaller fights (have some notion of a little brawl, as opposed to something that results in flying limbs), or go around ranting at people and pissing them off. Happy dwarves might work on their free time (with a skill bonus, leading to higher quality goods), seek out an unhappy person and cheer them up, play music in the great hall, clean a section of the fort, fix things that need to be repaired, study random skills, or produce some independent artwork.

I keep coming back to Art now... it would be cool if it reflected more. Like, the current mood of your fortress, as well as the dwarf doing the work, maybe with links to other dwarves... art types would hang out together, make friends, imitate one another... maybe have Art be a skill in itself, that can only be trained during free time.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: nuker w on July 17, 2010, 12:38:37 pm

I really, really like this. Alot. If I hadint used my votes, i'd put it into this. With guilds on the dev list, you never know, this stuff may be taken into consideration.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: FreakyCheeseMan on July 17, 2010, 12:40:44 pm

I like the idea, but...
This is going to take *so* much playtesting to get it anywhere near to balanced and bug-free. Dwarves go batshit at the drop of a hat as is, with a system orders of magnitude simpler than what you're proposing. I wouldn't look to see this until much more of the game is in the RAWs, so that modders can work out the kinks...

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: nuker w on July 17, 2010, 12:43:46 pm

And you thought tantrum spirals were bad...

ALL NEW RIOT SPIRALS! Coming to a fort near you.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Daetrin on July 17, 2010, 02:00:33 pm

I really like this, and it seems to me that social stratification introduces the capacity for class-specific workshops. For example, your uber-elite could perform plays or similar at a "workshop" you'd make a room from. Have it act like a short party.  Your elite armorers might get a forge that has better tools so you can inherently decorate or color the output and so on.   

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 17, 2010, 02:47:19 pm

Well, I went into it during the "Pimp My Fort" thread, but...

Currently, nobles are "do nothing" dwarves because they are exempt from "menial labor".  As part of a design of social classes, and generating hobby-type jobs, or even just plain high-class enough jobs that nobles would deign perform them.

For example, if one of the medical positions is considered highly prestigious, and a noble is interested in something related to medicine, they might work as a doctor.  Alternately, the "hobby-jobs" like being a poet or artist might interest them.

You could think of it as being similar to games like Ceaser or City Life, where you need to have people from certain social classes to fill certain jobs.  To help keep the peace, you need some (lower-class) cops, but also some (higher-class) judges to run the courts.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: marcusbjol on July 17, 2010, 03:34:10 pm

Huge ideas.  Very modern thought.  This is not a modern game.

I am not sure a class structure, beyond what it is, will be easy to define.

Social mobility did not exist in the middle ages.  Once a peasant, always a peasant.  There are exceptions, but they are few and far between.  I think this had something to do with Plato (one should know the place god gave him and be happy there) and defending the social structure (if a peasant can become a noble, couldn't that mean a noble become a king?).

In the persuit of happiness it is mentioned that the lower classes would riot.  I would bet that England viewed the American Revolution as a riot, but that was lead by the upper classes.  Socialization, by in large in the medieval age, was done on occasion, but work, as it is today, is more in demand.  Today's socialization is met for most by working and family meals.  Most people do not go out in a social fashion more than twice a week.

Couldnt clans just be as simple as preassigned relationships?  Maybe there should be more than aquantance, friend, lover.  That could be the ciqueish behavior sought after.  The help friends behavior is already coded

Property - Yes it would be awesome to have a room defined in someway besides an item in that room.  Yes, the dwarf should be albe to buy furnature, clothes, etc.  Changing it to zone designations might work.

Remember when making these suggestions:  Toady already has 20 years of coding ahead of him.  His previous posts have indicated he is not looking to share the workload.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 17, 2010, 04:10:15 pm

Quote from: marcusbjol on July 17, 2010, 03:34:10 pm

Huge ideas.  Very modern thought.  This is not a modern game.

I am not sure a class structure, beyond what it is, will be easy to define.

Social mobility did not exist in the middle ages.  Once a peasant, always a peasant.  There are exceptions, but they are few and far between.  I think this had something to do with Plato (one should know the place god gave him and be happy there) and defending the social structure (if a peasant can become a noble, couldn't that mean a noble become a king?).

In the persuit of happiness it is mentioned that the lower classes would riot.  I would bet that England viewed the American Revolution as a riot, but that was lead by the upper classes.  Socialization, by in large in the medieval age, was done on occasion, but work, as it is today, is more in demand.  Today's socialization is met for most by working and family meals.  Most people do not go out in a social fashion more than twice a week.

Couldnt clans just be as simple as preassigned relationships?  Maybe there should be more than aquantance, friend, lover.  That could be the ciqueish behavior sought after.  The help friends behavior is already coded

Property - Yes it would be awesome to have a room defined in someway besides an item in that room.  Yes, the dwarf should be albe to buy furnature, clothes, etc.  Changing it to zone designations might work.

Remember when making these suggestions:  Toady already has 20 years of coding ahead of him.  His previous posts have indicated he is not looking to share the workload.

So we should never suggest anything again, so that we don't accidentally give Toady an idea that he likes, which he might then have to impliment?  Maybe you misunderstand the nature of a "Suggestions Forum"? 

Yes, this is a big change, because this game needs a big change in this area for players to have the freedom to perform the actions they want to perform.  This game would be severely crippled if it was merely a place for dwarves to train between seiges, before quickly sluaghtering the seigers, then going back to training. 

As for "society is too technologically advanced for this time frame", tell me when the notion of goblins kidnapping people of other cultures, and seeing which ones rose to the top was part of the historical timeline, or the elven hippy culture, for that matter.

There is nothing technological stopping such societies from forming, and further, while only a very small percentage of the population did live in cities, cities did attract what could be called a middle class of tradesmen and merchants.  Until we get the adventurer mode update where we get large zones of rural agrarian people, DF is almost totally focused upon cities.

I proposed the system as it is because it fulfills the purpose that is needed to be fulfilled - giving players a reason to avoid letting their dwarves live a purely hand-to-mouth existence.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: FreakyCheeseMan on July 17, 2010, 04:20:58 pm

I'm trying to think of what changes this would make, in terms of what the play could really *see*. A lot of it looks like... deep current stuff. It's going on, it's influencing your play, but all you see is ripples until you fire the wrong person and a few seconds later, blood  shoots up out of your fortress entrance like a geyser.

So... sell me on this one. What really cool, fun to play with stuff would we see? How would your fortress design change to match it?

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 17, 2010, 04:59:43 pm

Quote from: FreakyCheeseMan on July 17, 2010, 04:20:58 pm

I'm trying to think of what changes this would make, in terms of what the play could really *see*. A lot of it looks like... deep current stuff. It's going on, it's influencing your play, but all you see is ripples until you fire the wrong person and a few seconds later, blood  shoots up out of your fortress entrance like a geyser.

So... sell me on this one. What really cool, fun to play with stuff would we see? How would your fortress design change to match it?

Like I said before, I considered it a "redefinition of scope" of the previous suggestion, whose first post is spoilered in the second post of this thread. 

In many of the suggestions that people have been having regarding general "quality of life" mods or mods that would require giving dwarves more goods or more care or attention, the argument is always "That's completely pointless, I don't care about my dwarves now, why should I care about dwarves with more complex amenities, when all I need is a legendary dining hall?"

In threads like the "More Reasonable Food System (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60681.0)", this was likewise a major part of the problem.

Essentially, this suggestion is meant to turn the game into having a system for dwarves to start requiring or giving additional benefits for having more complex social services and goods for sale. 

While I don't particularly like comparing DF to other games, I guess a metaphor is the best way to go... Games like Sierra's Citybuilder series (Pharaoh, Emperor, Ceaser) give good examples of having escalating requirements for more sophisticated populations in more densely inhabited cities.  In Pharaoh, you could only have a few scattered nomads in tents unless you are willing to supply homes with access to water.  To upgrade homes further, you needed to supply people with food.  To hit the fourth level, you needed pottery and beer.  Then you needed access to religious services, courts, and least one other type of food.  The list goes on quite extensively, and the challenge of the game was in finding ways to pack all those services in efficiently, so that there was no drop in coverage (which could lead to housing suddenly devolving, which would lead to people leaving to find better housing, which would mean they weren't doing their jobs, which could mean services would no longer be fully staffed, potentially causing a chain reaction...)

What I'm selling is what I said at the very start of this thread: This game essentially only sells potential players two attractions: Combat, and construction.  If DF were made to have a much more complex social interaction system, then civil engineering could become a real third draw for players, who obviously want things like having taverns with fireplaces, or gardens, or more complex food systems with greater variety of food qualities (such as "Thirty Year Whiskey (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61345.0)" and the "More Reasonable Food System"), or public arenas, or dwarven sports, or libraries or any of the hundred or so things that keep being suggested, but have little room in a game where the needs of dwarves are so utterly limited to "food, booze, and decorations".

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Deteramot on July 17, 2010, 05:06:40 pm

I really like this idea. The current Dwarf Society is overly simplified, and a proper society is, well, mind numbingly complex. Social motivation is the reason we have proper societies today, and what with Toady wanting to make a simulation and builder of fantasy worlds, we need fantastic societies. I'd like to see a merit based Caste system.

The problems come from the pre-economy system. In that case, there is no functional difference between a legendary miner and some peasant, except that the great guiding spirit may favor the miner over the peasant. The peasant has no real motivation to move up (which is why true communist countries tend to fail) and the miner has no real motivation to maintain his position because, well, he has everything he needs already. This is fixed when the economy comes along, because then the miner has to work in order to keep his position and the peasant can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The Patriotism facet should help keep the pre-economy problems from crushing your fortress, because a person who believes what he is doing is for the good of the country fortress is going to be more than happy to do it, even if he functionally gets nothing additional for it.

Post-economy, I think upper-class anti-patriots should also become lazy and complacent. If, for example, they are favored by the King and he says that they're exempt from taxes and they don't have to pay rent on their nice home, why would they bother working? It would also cause the lower classes to become less patriotic and eventually cause the class wars which were mentioned.

I fully support this idea.

+1 Support.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: FreakyCheeseMan on July 17, 2010, 05:11:53 pm

*Nods* I used to play Pharaoh a lot, and if there were a game I'd compare DF to, it would be that.

That explains... some of what I'm looking for, but I'm not sure if I made my question clear. The system you're proposing- what exactly do you see it adding to play? Give me specific examples- new things players would need to take into considerations, new things you would do in your fortress to adjust for such, new cool phenomena/events you think you'd see?

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 17, 2010, 05:58:53 pm

Quote from: Deteramot on July 17, 2010, 05:06:40 pm

The problems come from the pre-economy system. In that case, there is no functional difference between a legendary miner and some peasant, except that the great guiding spirit may favor the miner over the peasant.

The problem is, (as FreakyCheeseMan said) this is a matter of finding a balance between making dwarves more autonomous, with deeper personalities (I really want personality traits to actually matter in dwarves, altering how they prioritize some behaviors, or in how they do certain things), and generally more like individuals that will take actions in their own best interests, and the God-like control over the lives of the quiverring sinners dwarves in the hands of an angry God player.

It would make sense if a dwarf assigned to nothing but drudgery hauling for all eternity would decide that he wants to make something of himself, and decides to go buy a stone out of the stockpiles, make a workshop, and start a career for himself as a craftsdwarf.  It would also, however, fundementally break player control over the fortress, and turn it into a game of herding cats.  (And players currently enjoy herding cats only as far as the nearest magma pipe.)

Quote from: Deteramot on July 17, 2010, 05:06:40 pm

Post-economy, I think upper-class anti-patriots should also become lazy and complacent. If, for example, they are favored by the King and he says that they're exempt from taxes and they don't have to pay rent on their nice home, why would they bother working? It would also cause the lower classes to become less patriotic and eventually cause the class wars which were mentioned.

I would actually additionally like for legendaries and most nobles to actually have to start paying for things.  Legendaries might be simply paid more (heck, all dwarves might get a percentage "raise" for having exceptional skill), and nobles are essentially the beneficiaries of most of the tax money, but still have finite pool to spend. 

The nobles that supposedly are the government (the baron on up) might have as their money supply the bulk of taxes and the rent of the rooms (as the landowners, they are the ones renting the rooms out, right?), and technical ownership of the stockpiles, but in turn pay the salaries of all the dwarves for all their work. 

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 17, 2010, 06:28:52 pm

Quote from: FreakyCheeseMan on July 17, 2010, 05:11:53 pm

*Nods* I used to play Pharaoh a lot, and if there were a game I'd compare DF to, it would be that.

That explains... some of what I'm looking for, but I'm not sure if I made my question clear. The system you're proposing- what exactly do you see it adding to play? Give me specific examples- new things players would need to take into considerations, new things you would do in your fortress to adjust for such, new cool phenomena/events you think you'd see?

Well, let's say you have a fairly simple fortress.  The lower-class dwarves would want at least some variety in food (not all plump helmets all the time or only ever meat, especially from just one animal), would want a dining hall that may have some nice decorations, and would want some simple entertainments.  For example, simple gambling entertainments can be provided by simply building a "dice table" out of a regular table in the dining hall along with some dice made of carved bone (simple craftsdwarf stuff), or a "card table" with some paper (or possibly just bark strip) cards (because paper is a common enough request to warrant an inclusion in "most common requests" on the wiki), or possibly even some variant on "cockroach racing" using some tamed creatures and a small track.

Higher-class dwarves would want plays and access to art rooms (with canvass and paint supplies requiring building) to paint as their muse directs, and art galleries to show their work.  Likewise, engravings can become frescos or murals, and music halls could be the destination of musicians that have perfected their craft at the dirty hallway-corner music stands, getting pennies from passerby, or the place for delusional nobles with no talent to make fools of themselves with their utter lack of talent, but insistance that they get on stage, anyway.  (Be sure to save your laughter at them for the parts you are supposed to laugh at, or the hammerer will be coming your way.)  They would demand very complex foods made of recepies that demand a half dozen ingredients plus spices or salt, and to be served in high-quality surroundings.  Heated bathhouses.  Fur carpets. Embroidered clothing dyed in multiple colors. Menageries with rare creatures or even enslaved enemies trapped in cages.  The dwarven equivalent of chariot races.  A "mechanical play" system that uses water and gears to have automated clockwork "actors" perform famous plays that display the mechanical sophsitication of your civ (based on real ancient mechanical plays). Working waterworks supplying running hot/cold water and a plumbing system.  60-z level statues built as a tribute to the badassery of their elven king! Anything Rome or Greece can do, dwarves can do better!

If we want to be even more complex, we can actually do what Pharaoh does, and actually involve a "neighborhood desirability" mechanic, where low-class dwarves "lower property value", and have to be kept swept clear of the high-class neighborhoods of your fortress.  Nobles would want to not just have beautiful and impressive rooms, but have beautiful rooms surrounded by beautiful (sculpted mushroom) gardens, or the royal throne room to show just how close they are to the seat of power.  (The same mechanic that Pharaoh uses can even be applied - like noise, nice things exude a cube of influence that makes neighborhoods nicer, and ugly things (like flophouses or magma smelters) exude cubes of undesirable influence.)

Doing that, we would eventually involve players carving out early, flophouse-style arrangments for their dwarves, having to building bigger, more complex and interdependant systems as the fortress moves further along, while the old dives become the homes of those left at the lower rungs of the social ladder, serving the higher rungs.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Kilo24 on July 17, 2010, 11:16:34 pm

I like the idea.  It's a lot of work, but something of this nature will be flat-out necessary for a competent social model for DF.

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on July 17, 2010, 05:58:53 pm

It would make sense if a dwarf assigned to nothing but drudgery hauling for all eternity would decide that he wants to make something of himself, and decides to go buy a stone out of the stockpiles, make a workshop, and start a career for himself as a craftsdwarf.  It would also, however, fundementally break player control over the fortress, and turn it into a game of herding cats.  (And players currently enjoy herding cats only as far as the nearest magma pipe.)

I think you could get a working system out of this.  Only let the dwarves choose their own activities if they otherwise would be idle (and give them a minor happiness boost for doing so.)  If an intelligent prioritization was managed, we might be able to get a fortress running automatically without any need for player intervention (something I'd love to have happen, since it would lessen what the player flat-out *needed* to do and also would make implementing automation of NPC sites and abandoned fortresses much easier.)  If there was an intelligent supply-and-demand economy model, the raising prices of scarce resources would influence dwarves who weren't apathetic about money into producing those scarce materials (like, say, a once-a-year check to switch careers, taking into account current skills.)

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: marcusbjol on July 17, 2010, 11:43:57 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on July 17, 2010, 04:10:15 pm

So we should never suggest anything again, so that we don't accidentally give Toady an idea that he likes, which he might then have to impliment?  Maybe you misunderstand the nature of a "Suggestions Forum"? 

Not at all.  These suggestions amount to a major redesign of the game, and will add on years to the development cycle. 

Quote

Yes, this is a big change, because this game needs a big change in this area for players to have the freedom to perform the actions they want to perform.  This game would be severely crippled if it was merely a place for dwarves to train between seiges, before quickly sluaghtering the seigers, then going back to training. 

To go beyond that should be the users choice.  If you want, by all means, go ahead and do it.  But please, dont force me to.

Quote

As for "society is too technologically advanced for this time frame", tell me when the notion of goblins kidnapping people of other cultures, and seeing which ones rose to the top was part of the historical timeline, or the elven hippy culture, for that matter.

I am not sure what you are referring to here.  As far "hippy" elves go, the "elf" archetype is very similar to hippies, so that fits.

This is a medieval game.  Please keep in the medieval mindset.  Social Mobility does not fit this.

Quote

There is nothing technological stopping such societies from forming, and further, while only a very small percentage of the population did live in cities, cities did attract what could be called a middle class of tradesmen and merchants.  Until we get the adventurer mode update where we get large zones of rural agrarian people, DF is almost totally focused upon cities.

I proposed the system as it is because it fulfills the purpose that is needed to be fulfilled - giving players a reason to avoid letting their dwarves live a purely hand-to-mouth existence.

This is not giving them a reason, it is forcing them to change their play style.  DF is largely about freedom, and this forces them to play the way you envision.  These would be great options to add to the game, as options only. 

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: FreakyCheeseMan on July 18, 2010, 12:25:29 am

Hrrm.

I like some of this idea, but other parts seem like they'd just get in the way. Or, rather, it seems like some of the time everything would get in the way. Sometimes I want to build a realistic, grand fortress with all of the things dwarves would want and need, as you describe. Other times I want to build a monastery, or a glacial shrine to engineering brilliance, or a massive torture chamber, or any number of other things that added complication would render unfeasible.

Also, I know you dislike arguments like this, but we are talking about a *lot* of time and investment to make this happen- for that much programming and balancing work, we could get disease, better pathfinding, fresh forms of insanity, improved sieges, maybe even a start on world interactions or the magic system.

I do like the idea of dwarven riots, though... hrrm.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: marcusbjol on July 18, 2010, 12:33:44 am

Quote from: FreakyCheeseMan on July 18, 2010, 12:25:29 am

Also, I know you dislike arguments like this, but we are talking about a *lot* of time and investment to make this happen- for that much programming and balancing work, we could get disease, better pathfinding, fresh forms of insanity, improved sieges, maybe even a start on world interactions or the magic system.

But this is the reality that we deal with.  Our coding team for the project consists of just 1.  He has a finite amount of time.  Case in point, I started playing .31.03 and have been waiting for 3 months for the crossbows to work (yay they do :))

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: FreakyCheeseMan on July 18, 2010, 12:54:24 am

Quote from: marcusbjol on July 18, 2010, 12:33:44 am

Quote from: FreakyCheeseMan on July 18, 2010, 12:25:29 am

Also, I know you dislike arguments like this, but we are talking about a *lot* of time and investment to make this happen- for that much programming and balancing work, we could get disease, better pathfinding, fresh forms of insanity, improved sieges, maybe even a start on world interactions or the magic system.

But this is the reality that we deal with.  Our coding team for the project consists of just 1.  He has a finite amount of time.  Case in point, I started playing .31.03 and have been waiting for 3 months for the crossbows to work (yay they do :))

Yeah, I'm not saying "Nothing that takes time or resources should get done", I'm saying we should consider the time and resources necessary for a suggestion, compared to what it adds to play.

Value To Player/(Toady Effort * Learning Cliff Height * Hardware Burden)

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: nuker w on July 18, 2010, 02:32:34 am

Yes its medieval. Is it the one WE know of in THIS world? Nope. It could be anything in that one. Dont let past human history cloud yer mind.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 18, 2010, 04:29:36 am

Quote from: marcusbjol on July 17, 2010, 11:43:57 pm

Not at all.  These suggestions amount to a major redesign of the game, and will add on years to the development cycle. 

As will virtually every other worthwhile programming arc ever concieved for this game.  Once again, this argument is the all-purpose "because I don't like it" argument.

Quote from: marcusbjol on July 17, 2010, 11:43:57 pm

To go beyond that should be the users choice.  If you want, by all means, go ahead and do it.  But please, dont force me to.

...

This is not giving them a reason, it is forcing them to change their play style.  DF is largely about freedom, and this forces them to play the way you envision.  These would be great options to add to the game, as options only.

Fine, you want an init option?  Ask for an init option for this, like just about everything that will ever be put into the game from this point on...

Still, just turn that argument around - why should there be hostile creatures in this game at all?  That's just forcing me to have military dwarves, and that's forcing me to play the game in the way that someone else envisioned.  Hey, why should the new version have underground caverns? That's just forcing me to play with someone else's vision of an underground world with fantastic underground biodiversity.

Quote from: marcusbjol on July 17, 2010, 11:43:57 pm

I am not sure what you are referring to here.  As far "hippy" elves go, the "elf" archetype is very similar to hippies, so that fits.

This is a medieval game.  Please keep in the medieval mindset.  Social Mobility does not fit this.

This is a game with vomit demons lying 150 feet below the planet's surface behind narrow slivers of unobtainium bridges straight into Hell.  Goblin civilizations are built around the leadership of demons, who lead them to torture for fun.  Goblins do not really fit any "realistic" Medieval world, now do they?

For that matter, we have a dwarven civilization that is capable of living indefinitely underground, which is completely beyond the means of Medieval society.

Suddenly, the society dwarves builds has to conform exactly to not just "Medieval society", but the specific form of medieval society you envision.

As I've said, there actually were divisions of social class, even among the peasantry, and among city-dwellers (when fortresses are, effectively, cities) there was such a thing as a middle class, and people could rise up to it by taking on the more prestigious jobs as apprentices.

The entire argument that the society of underground urban centers based around mining and smelting metal must be modeled exactly upon the social mores of a surface subsistance agrarian society is, frankly, pretty flimsy.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: marcusbjol on July 18, 2010, 08:50:06 am

Fair enough, I do like historical bent to my fantasy. 

So the choice becomes to use modern economic theory instead?  Then use a relativistic comparison of owned wealth, because "class" distinctions are no longer the norm.

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on July 18, 2010, 04:29:36 am

Still, just turn that argument around - why should there be hostile creatures in this game at all?  That's just forcing me to have military dwarves, and that's forcing me to play the game in the way that someone else envisioned.  Hey, why should the new version have underground caverns? That's just forcing me to play with someone else's vision of an underground world with fantastic underground biodiversity.

That's the game Toady gave us.

Quote

Suddenly, the society dwarves builds has to conform exactly to not just "Medieval society", but the specific form of medieval society you envision.

Or yours.

Quote

As I've said, there actually were divisions of social class, even among the peasantry, and among city-dwellers (when fortresses are, effectively, cities) there was such a thing as a middle class, and people could rise up to it by taking on the more prestigious jobs as apprentices.

My issue here is the idea of any society based on class, other than inherited (kings, nobility).  What we look at as middle class, lower, etc are not clear distinctions IRL, but a generalization so we can analyze it after the fact. A relativistic comparison of wealth would more realistic as most micro economic decisions are based on "keeping up with the Jones'".

Quote

The entire argument that the society of underground urban centers based around mining and smelting metal must be modeled exactly upon the social mores of a surface subsistance agrarian society is, frankly, pretty flimsy.

But that is what it is.  And that is the basis for most fantasy based games.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 18, 2010, 11:46:13 am

Quote from: marcusbjol on July 18, 2010, 08:50:06 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on July 18, 2010, 04:29:36 am

Still, just turn that argument around - why should there be hostile creatures in this game at all?  That's just forcing me to have military dwarves, and that's forcing me to play the game in the way that someone else envisioned.  Hey, why should the new version have underground caverns? That's just forcing me to play with someone else's vision of an underground world with fantastic underground biodiversity.

That's the game Toady gave us.

Yes, that's exactly my point: Toady gave us a game which forces people to play in certain ways.  For example, you have to train a military to not get killed by wild creatures or invaders.  This military probably should have weapons and armor.

Toady made liquid mechanics such that you should really, really stop and double check everything before you start opening the floodgates, because the way liquid mechanics and your control over individual dwarves work, you will likely not be able to evacuate your fortress before the flood hits, and it will be extremely difficult to undo the damage after it has been done.

Heck, Toady made the game construct things in LIFO order, with a preference for standing on the left side of a construction.  That forces you to consider what order you are going to build your walls in, and possibly use tricks to avoid dwarves walling themselves in.

Toady forces you to at least once muddy any tiles you are going to use for farming (with one exception), forcing you to use at least a little of the fluid system before your fortress really gets going.

Toady made this game have various aspects that you really have no choice but to react, because that's what games do.  This suggestion forces you to use the things I want people to use because that is the only way that people will see a use for them.  Forcing people to react to the game mechanics is not a bad thing - it is essentially required to make people even care that they exist.  That's why I used those parts of the game that Toady gave us as examples - you can't possibly make a game that doesn't force you to avoid negative consequences of careless actions without the game being little more than a physics simulator at best.

(I would also like to pre-empt any argument that it might somehow be OK for Toady to set up the game to force you to play a certain way, but that it is not OK for me to suggest ways that do the same thing - underground caverns are not "just the game Toady gave us", it was also the subject of the massive Underground Diversity thread that Toady took and ran with.)

Quote from: marcusbjol on July 18, 2010, 08:50:06 am

My issue here is the idea of any society based on class, other than inherited (kings, nobility).  What we look at as middle class, lower, etc are not clear distinctions IRL, but a generalization so we can analyze it after the fact. A relativistic comparison of wealth would more realistic as most micro economic decisions are based on "keeping up with the Jones'".

I remember once watching an episode of Terry Jones's Medieval Lives (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Jones'_Medieval_Lives) where he was talking about the actual lifestyles of medieval peasants.  In one part, he went talking about how much they were involved in learning Latin (so that they could argue in court to try to settle land disputes or who owned livestock that crossed farms in the middle of the night), and especially that the wife of the more important peasants in the village (since villages had to exercise some autonomy just by nature of being so distant from the lords, this was essentially the mayor) would have shelves constructed so that when you came into the house of the peasant, they would be immediately confronted with her ceramic jug collection, as a way of showing off (as Terry Pratchett put it,) "how nice and big her jugs were".

So yes, there is a desire, even in fairly impoverished times, to show that you are of at least a little higher standing than the other poor sods around you.  Likewise, the artisans, tradesmen, guildsmen, and other higher-paid, often city-dwelling people would often be considered of a higher social standing, even if there was always a wall between them and those of noble birth, which this suggestion doesn't even attempt to challenge.

Quote from: marcusbjol on July 18, 2010, 08:50:06 am

But that is what it is.  And that is the basis for most fantasy based games.

So what?  If other fantasy games jumped off a cliff, would we jump off a cliff too?

Dwarf Fortress shouldn't do things because other people did it that way, Dwarf Fortress should do whatever makes it a better game.  This system is the simplest, most realistic and intuitive way to accomplish the goals that I set out to accomplish, which is to give a gradiated level of difficulty based upon the size of the fortress, re-invent the happiness system so that it is not so utterly ignorable, and give people the space for the many, many "creature comfort" suggestions that have been proliferating in the suggestions forum.

Whether that conforms to fantasy stereotypes or not is irrelevant.  Whether or not that conforms to the notion that dwarves are actually Western-European Christian farmers in disguise or not is irrelevant.  What matters is that it satisfies the goals that I believe (and apparently, at least some other people believe) need to be satisfied to make DF a better game.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Deteramot on July 18, 2010, 12:26:38 pm

Quote from: marcusbjol on July 18, 2010, 08:50:06 am

Fair enough, I do like historical bent to my fantasy. 

So the choice becomes to use modern economic theory instead?  Then use a relativistic comparison of owned wealth, because "class" distinctions are no longer the norm.

Just wanted to nitpick this: The class system still exists, and is still decidedly distinct. The lines may have blurred slightly, and Social Mobility exists, but a class system does exist.

The richest 10% is the High Class, the next highest bracket (say the upper 20 or 30%) is High-Middle class, the above-average group is the Middle Class, the median group is the middle-low class, and then we have the people even lower on the bracket, the bottom 10-20%, who are Low Class to Sustenance class to even lower.

Don't try to pretend that they don't get treated differently, either. I guarantee you, if you did half the things people in Hollywood get away with, you'd be in prison before you knew it. It's because the richest people can afford the best lawyers, while you or I could afford a lawyer maybe, and people lower than us would be getting a public defender. And people like Prostitutes, Hobos and people in ghettos are basically "the usual suspects."

So, yes, there is a class system. It sucks, but it's what we have to work with.

Perhaps you were thinking of a caste system? That has mostly died out by now, because governments with a strict caste system tend to get unbalanced after a long time.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 18, 2010, 02:01:19 pm

Quote from: Deteramot on July 18, 2010, 12:26:38 pm

Don't try to pretend that they don't get treated differently, either. I guarantee you, if you did half the things people in Hollywood get away with, you'd be in prison before you knew it. It's because the richest people can afford the best lawyers, while you or I could afford a lawyer maybe, and people lower than us would be getting a public defender. And people like Prostitutes, Hobos and people in ghettos are basically "the usual suspects."

Actually, it's more than that.  People just plain respect the wealthy and the powerful more, and expect them to get away with it.

Consider the trial of Martha Stewart, it was just shocking that she could even be put on trial, period, and that discomfort with even accusing her of a crime is something no wealthy lawyer could buy.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: marcusbjol on July 18, 2010, 02:09:47 pm

The problem is the edges of any predefined bracket.

Quote from: Deteramot on July 18, 2010, 12:26:38 pm

Just wanted to nitpick this: The class system still exists, and is still decidedly distinct. The lines may have blurred slightly, and Social Mobility exists, but a class system does exist.

If it does its all based on relative wealth.  A lottery winner goes from any class to the upper.

Quote

The richest 10% is the High Class, the next highest bracket (say the upper 20 or 30%) is High-Middle class, the above-average group is the Middle Class, the median group is the middle-low class, and then we have the people even lower on the bracket, the bottom 10-20%, who are Low Class to Sustenance class to even lower.

Don't try to pretend that they don't get treated differently, either. I guarantee you, if you did half the things people in Hollywood get away with, you'd be in prison before you knew it. It's because the richest people can afford the best lawyers, while you or I could afford a lawyer maybe, and people lower than us would be getting a public defender. And people like Prostitutes, Hobos and people in ghettos are basically "the usual suspects."

I could do what I wanted in Hollywood, if I had enough money.  Its wealth based, not on ones profession. 

If we are talking about happiness, then it should be benchmarked on the wealth of the individual compared to the wealth of the richest individual, not to the wealth of the fortress as a whole.  Designating classes with arbitrary needs seems unnecessary unwieldy.

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on July 18, 2010, 11:46:13 am

This suggestion forces you to use the things I want people to use because that is the only way that people will see a use for them. 

That is my problem here.  You play your way, I will play mine.

Quote

Forcing people to react to the game mechanics is not a bad thing - it is essentially required to make people even care that they exist.  That's why I used those parts of the game that Toady gave us as examples - you can't possibly make a game that doesn't force you to avoid negative consequences of careless actions without the game being little more than a physics simulator at best.

(I would also like to pre-empt any argument that it might somehow be OK for Toady to set up the game to force you to play a certain way, but that it is not OK for me to suggest ways that do the same thing - underground caverns are not "just the game Toady gave us", it was also the subject of the meassive Underground Diversity thread that Toady took and ran with.)

Its is OK for Toady to setup the game and force people to play it his way.  He wrote the damn game.  If you want all this, write yours.

Toady did it because he saw value in the suggestion (assaulting hell sounds really fun).  Its hard to see value in a suggestion that amounts to a rewrite of 8 years of work.  Yes, your ideas would make an interesting game.  Please tell us, line by line, code wise, how to implement it, balance it, and make sure it remains fun.  And how one person can do these recommendations in a timely fashion.

Do realize your suggestions have more in them than Toady's outline for the entire game.  This is a one man show.

Happiness is found in many different ways, limiting it to just "dwarven consumerism" would be worse than leaving it alone.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 18, 2010, 02:18:30 pm

Quote from: marcusbjol on July 18, 2010, 02:09:47 pm

Happiness is found in many different ways, limiting it to just "dwarven consumerism" would be worse than leaving it alone.

Unfortunately, that isn't the sort of system I was talking about at all.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Deteramot on July 18, 2010, 06:32:58 pm

Lotto winners go from their bracket to a higher one, but they usually end up spending all their money and falling down into an even lower bracket, because they don't learn how to earn and keep money when they win the lotto. They think "Oh, I won! I'm a millionaire! I'm going to go buy a porsche, and a mansion, and a double wide trailer for Cousin Bob*." Then in four months, when they get hit with the bills, they soundly find everything they own repossessed and all their money audited because they treated the money they won like it was chump change.

*Note: This is obviously a caricature. Not everybody who wins the lotto is a hillbilly, although they do tend to play more often than anyone else.**

**This is based on speculation and no actual proof. Hillbillies may not play the lotto more often than anyone else.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 19, 2010, 09:57:14 am

Quote from: Deteramot on July 18, 2010, 06:32:58 pm

Lotto winners go from their bracket to a higher one, but they usually end up spending all their money and falling down into an even lower bracket, because they don't learn how to earn and keep money when they win the lotto. They think "Oh, I won! I'm a millionaire! I'm going to go buy a porsche, and a mansion, and a double wide trailer for Cousin Bob*." Then in four months, when they get hit with the bills, they soundly find everything they own repossessed and all their money audited because they treated the money they won like it was chump change.

*Note: This is obviously a caricature. Not everybody who wins the lotto is a hillbilly, although they do tend to play more often than anyone else.**

**This is based on speculation and no actual proof. Hillbillies may not play the lotto more often than anyone else.

If you're going to backtrack and qualify your statments that much, maybe you should just say something you're comfortable with saying in the first place?

Anyway, this is part of why I don't want money alone to determine how high a dwarf rises in their social class.  I really do think that a very major factor should be a part of socialization, where a dwarf has to convince others that he/she really has made it, and needs to be capable of "walking the walk" of being a higher-class dwarf.  (Of course, we're still talking about dividing dwarves who just barely subsist from lower-class dwarves, so the distinction at points may just be "is not naked and covered in blood and vomit while muttering to themselves".)

As dwarves get into upper classes, they might perhaps need to rely upon the social skills as a means of "convincing" others they deserve their high social standing.  Dwarves may gain status, for example, by impressing nobles with their social skills, and having that publicly recognized.

Of course, this all relies upon dwarves actually being able to take time out to socialize, and that is part of why I say we need to have a "Socialization" desire so that letting dwarves talk to one another isn't seen as something that only brings negative consequences of making dwarves more vulnerable to tantrum spirals.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 22, 2010, 09:07:33 pm

I updated the Pursuit of Happiness section in the OP, which I had previously left somewhat sparse, expecting people to just read the other two threads.

If you read it already, here's what I added (although it might be good to just re-read the whole Pursuit of Happiness section):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Another good idea is a "Job Satisfaction" desire.  Dwarves already feel satisfied with doing their job, but this could become a much more fleshed out mechanic.  In a sense, a person's job is one of the most important definitions of who a person is (especially for males, psychologically speaking, whereas females tend to define themselves more by relationships with others), especially in a game where, after all, job title is the biggest, most commonly seen thing about a dwarf besides name, and which is the only thing visible about the dwarf when you aren't looking in a menu (as it determines token color).  Job Satisfaction is about more than just liking what you do, though.  It's also one of the key measures of how much control one thinks they have over their life.  Someone will be happy with horrible pay or conditions if they think that they are the masters of their own destiny, and so will stick with being a "small business owner" (or just an outright freelancer) and be happier than having an easy, good-paying desk job that makes them feel insignificant.

The difficult part here is translating this into game terms.  I think that what we already have might work in some degree - that giving dwarves the ability to work in jobs with a material they like is a good idea, but that it needs to be expanded with a general personality type matching between how a job is done, and whether it suits them.  I.E. creative types like engraving, and uncreative types hate it.  Strong, agressive, or impatient dwarves prefer things like woodcutting and would be bored with delicate gemsetting.

Another dimension I would put as a "Standard of Living" desire, which is largely related to the expectations of their class.  This is the desire to live in a nice home, in a relatively mud-free, decent-looking neighborhood.  They would want to eat well and drink well in a nice environment (it would be nice if they didn't have to drink in the booze stockpiles, but in some kind of salon or lounge area), and have beautified hallways, free of naked, vomit-and-blood-soaked hobos.  They would want the ability to bathe if/when they get dirty.  They generally want to know that where they live, in their dwarven way of life, is a superior way of life to those filthy humans and elves, and even other dwarven cities. 

To turn Dwarf Psychology's Frustration and Stress around, "Leisure" should be a desire for dwarves.  As dwarves get stressed out by finding their paths frequently blocked by heavy traffic, having to path great distances to get logs from outside instead of at the nearby stockpile because there aren't enough haulers, or get tired of eating plump helmets every day, or being threatened by a wild beast, or generally just the monotony of doing the same effin' job in the same tiny burrow day in day out with no hope of advancement, they will turn to your fortress's leisure halls for relief.  Leisure is all those wonderful things like music or art or gambling or zoos and parks or tame animal races that distract dwarves when they are stressed and frustrated, and make them feel more at home in their fort.

Dwarf Psychology's Greed, I will rebrand as the desire for "Ego Appeasement".  Dwarves want other dwarves to recognize just where the belong in life (which is, quite obviously, a higher status than they are in, as they have earned everything they have, and everyone else is just a freeloader), so they would prefer to put out their own works on display.  SEE the magnificence of Urist McEngraver's masterpiece work of himself carving out another masterpiece of himself carving something else!  If high-quality work of theirs is on display (even better, if SOMEONE STOPS AND APPRECIATES THEIR FINE DOOR!) they get bonuses to their pride.  Alternately, if they OWN the fine door, they get bonuses to their pride.  If the artwork (like a statue or engraving) is OF a dwarf (like the mayor), then they get pride if people admire their likeness in statue form.  This desire, however, takes hits as dwarves with senses of entitlement find out that someone of lesser rank than them DARES have a nicer facade for their home (what? TWO windows facing the pitch-black wall?  How DARE they flaunt their ability to get pointless windows installed!) then this desire takes a massive turn for the ugly.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 23, 2010, 12:07:23 pm

I've also been thinking about dwarven independence quite a bit, recently, because of this post:

Quote from: Kilo24 on July 17, 2010, 11:16:34 pm

I like the idea.  It's a lot of work, but something of this nature will be flat-out necessary for a competent social model for DF.

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on July 17, 2010, 05:58:53 pm

It would make sense if a dwarf assigned to nothing but drudgery hauling for all eternity would decide that he wants to make something of himself, and decides to go buy a stone out of the stockpiles, make a workshop, and start a career for himself as a craftsdwarf.  It would also, however, fundementally break player control over the fortress, and turn it into a game of herding cats.  (And players currently enjoy herding cats only as far as the nearest magma pipe.)

I think you could get a working system out of this.  Only let the dwarves choose their own activities if they otherwise would be idle (and give them a minor happiness boost for doing so.)  If an intelligent prioritization was managed, we might be able to get a fortress running automatically without any need for player intervention (something I'd love to have happen, since it would lessen what the player flat-out *needed* to do and also would make implementing automation of NPC sites and abandoned fortresses much easier.)  If there was an intelligent supply-and-demand economy model, the raising prices of scarce resources would influence dwarves who weren't apathetic about money into producing those scarce materials (like, say, a once-a-year check to switch careers, taking into account current skills.)

Basically, I'd like to know how long a leash you would let your dwarves have, as players...

I've already started talking about dwarves that can furnish their own rooms.  If they built their own workshops, capitalist style, and you basically just "zoned" for industry or commerce, and dwarves were more autonomous in what they did, would you be more content to sit back and watch the ant farm, or demand more control?

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: nuker w on July 24, 2010, 01:16:12 am

BURN THE CAPITALISTS! Bahahahaha...... Yea, I like it alot my self but it would need an init file and it would be one of the very un-important updates as such.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 24, 2010, 08:41:08 am

Un-important updates, huh?

Funny how people have accused this of being everywhere from inconsequential to "completely upsetting everything, and rewritting the whole game".

Is there something I'm not being clear enough about, here?  I'd be happy to explain parts that make people confused.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: nuker w on July 24, 2010, 11:13:07 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on July 23, 2010, 12:07:23 pm

I've also been thinking about dwarven independence quite a bit, recently, because of this post:

Quote from: Kilo24 on July 17, 2010, 11:16:34 pm

I like the idea.  It's a lot of work, but something of this nature will be flat-out necessary for a competent social model for DF.

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on July 17, 2010, 05:58:53 pm

It would make sense if a dwarf assigned to nothing but drudgery hauling for all eternity would decide that he wants to make something of himself, and decides to go buy a stone out of the stockpiles, make a workshop, and start a career for himself as a craftsdwarf.  It would also, however, fundementally break player control over the fortress, and turn it into a game of herding cats.  (And players currently enjoy herding cats only as far as the nearest magma pipe.)

I think you could get a working system out of this.  Only let the dwarves choose their own activities if they otherwise would be idle (and give them a minor happiness boost for doing so.)  If an intelligent prioritization was managed, we might be able to get a fortress running automatically without any need for player intervention (something I'd love to have happen, since it would lessen what the player flat-out *needed* to do and also would make implementing automation of NPC sites and abandoned fortresses much easier.)  If there was an intelligent supply-and-demand economy model, the raising prices of scarce resources would influence dwarves who weren't apathetic about money into producing those scarce materials (like, say, a once-a-year check to switch careers, taking into account current skills.)

Basically, I'd like to know how long a leash you would let your dwarves have, as players...

I've already started talking about dwarves that can furnish their own rooms.  If they built their own workshops, capitalist style, and you basically just "zoned" for industry or commerce, and dwarves were more autonomous in what they did, would you be more content to sit back and watch the ant farm, or demand more control?

I meant THIS specifacly. Jeez, dont go out and start getting angry at me for liking what your saying, beside one part which I think isint as important as other parts.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 24, 2010, 12:37:04 pm

Quote from: nuker w on July 24, 2010, 11:13:07 am

I meant THIS specifacly. Jeez, dont go out and start getting angry at me for liking what your saying, beside one part which I think isint as important as other parts.

Sorry if I gave that impression, but I'm not angry with you at all.  I just thought it somewhat amusing that there is so much in the eye of the beholder that one part or another involves too much or not very dramatic changes.  (And I was thinking that if there is that much that is a matter of perception, that maybe it means something is too vague.)

As for the zoning for commerce part, that was simply an example of "loosening the leash", something else we could do, for example, is simply not assign labors to dwarves, and just have job requests which dwarves fill based upon what job they want to perform that day.  If dwarves own their own workshops, that would be significantly changed by what they own. 

It could even be a model where dwarves own the resources they harvest or create, and you have to "buy" it from them with fortress funds, and they can simply start setting up their own industries based on their own preferences, and you just post "contracts" to buy certain amounts of products or materials, and let the dwarves do the rest as they see fit, while paying them in money that presumably must be taxed of them.

That would be SIGNIFICANTLY slipping their leash, to the point where dwarves are total free spirits that you have very little direct control over.  I'm asking for a matter of degree players would want their dwarves to become autonomous.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Kilo24 on July 24, 2010, 02:05:42 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on July 23, 2010, 12:07:23 pm

Basically, I'd like to know how long a leash you would let your dwarves have, as players...

I've already started talking about dwarves that can furnish their own rooms.  If they built their own workshops, capitalist style, and you basically just "zoned" for industry or commerce, and dwarves were more autonomous in what they did, would you be more content to sit back and watch the ant farm, or demand more control?

Well, I was kind of reluctant to go into it on this thread because it's a significant yet fairly separate system from the topic, but I'll try it.

Getting dwarves to place workshops was a bit beyond what I had in mind (though I hadn't thought of zoning.)  More like they'd enable tasks and do jobs automatically if they didn't have any player-mandated work for the last month or so, and if they got said player-mandated work they would finish what they were doing and then do the player task automatically.  It would certainly be a better way to spend the time rather than endlessly partying.

One major problem with it would be letting them choose their own materials, and thereby wasting all the steel or adamantium on little metal figurines.  Adding a similar marker to all resources like the economic versus non-economic stone could help, and/or the Eternal Suggestions standing orders request could also include some limitations on using materials (such as only allowing dwarves to use materials that you had 100 or more of in the stockpiles.

I could foresee it being an init option, or maybe a toggleable function of a dwarf noble once the population hits 50 or so.  It could be a pretty big help in large fortresses  in order to not need to worry about finding sustainable work for 100+ dwarves.  And it would dramatically enhance the ant-farm nature of DF (like this topic's suggestion would too.)

It would also provide a much-improved default behavioral model to AI-controlled fortresses when you visit them in Adventure mode, and the job prioritizations could be coded in such a way that that would be useful to run for fortresses/towns that were not actively being monitored (just abstract out all the movement required to do the job.)

To return a bit closer to the OT, the comments about class mobility in medieval societies are a bit fuzzier than "lots of mobility" and "no mobility" (not that anyone was making quite those claims.)  Wealth could get you far, but there are several laws like the sumptuary laws, some of which were intended to stop wealthy people from dressing themselves up like royalty (limiting purple-dyed clothes for example.) And there are also noble marriages to secure wealth for an otherwise impoverished noble.
Wealth is a facet of the class determination, but I'd prefer to see a system that weighted wealth and other factors based on the society's ethics in order to determine class.  (Wealth's effect on status should probably also be measured logarithmically, not linearly.)
It would also be fitting to not have discrete classes but to rather have a continuum determined by the weighted sum of those factors.  Whether or not two dwarves considered themselves "equal class" would be defined as the difference being small enough.  How much royal blood and reputation would be other societal ethics, and the differences between status could be generalized to be a large factor in whether orders are followed or not, if they can commandeer stuff rather than paying for it, and other matters where status would be important  (the privileges of the King, of nobles over peasants, and of legendary dwarves/heroes could be therefore handled with the same code.)

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 24, 2010, 02:38:58 pm

Well, I ask this about how much autonomy you would be willing to give your dwarves because, frankly, the idea that wresting control from the player, and giving it to dwarven autonomy is the main limiter on what I can do in making this suggestion. 

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on July 24, 2010, 12:37:04 pm

As for the zoning for commerce part, that was simply an example of "loosening the leash", something else we could do, for example, is simply not assign labors to dwarves, and just have job requests which dwarves fill based upon what job they want to perform that day.  If dwarves own their own workshops, that would be significantly changed by what they own. 

It could even be a model where dwarves own the resources they harvest or create, and you have to "buy" it from them with fortress funds, and they can simply start setting up their own industries based on their own preferences, and you just post "contracts" to buy certain amounts of products or materials, and let the dwarves do the rest as they see fit, while paying them in money that presumably must be taxed of them.

That would be SIGNIFICANTLY slipping their leash, to the point where dwarves are total free spirits that you have very little direct control over.  I'm asking for a matter of degree players would want their dwarves to become autonomous.

If dwarves were all suddenly total capitalists, like in that last post I made, and you had only indirect incintive-based control over dwarven actions, and the little idiots basically were on their own, aside from how much you manipulate their mining habits, or make public works projects, and zoning ordinances, then the system itself has to become much smarter, which means I have to start thinking through many more of these things.

But this would also make the entire class system much less a function of "this dwarf is poor because the player never enabled any labors on this dwarf", and much more a function of "this dwarf is poor because he tends to be lazy, or he was poorly educated, or he was the victim of a workplace accident, poor healthcare, and a lack of a social safety net, or he is struggling against some form of institutional disadvantage."

---

When we are talking about sumptuary laws, I think it's actually a point for the sort of thing I am talking about - the nobles were actually so scared that the middle class would rise up not in anger, but in wealth that they would be able to effectively replicate the noble's lifestyle, and eliminate the gulf that they wanted between the classes on their own.

(Sumptuary laws included the likes of forcing laborers to eat less refined foods, because laborers were less refined, and their foods should match, while nobles were more sophisticated, and as such, required more sophisticated foods, which is why their multi-course meals were actually a dietary necessity.)

Of course, at the same time, notions of dwarven delicateness, even among nobles, still sounds like so much elf talk, so it's perfectly fine to have a more dwarven social system.  The question then becomes "what is a dwarfy social system"?  Do I get to arm-wrestle you for advancement in rank?  I put up one's skill as a craftsman (in terms of skill rank) as a means of advancment, such that the most skilled craftsmen would be among the highest social rankers, aside from nobles.  How much does making an artifact help, or do we go by number of masterworks created?  etc.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Kilo24 on July 26, 2010, 12:11:36 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on July 24, 2010, 02:38:58 pm

Well, I ask this about how much autonomy you would be willing to give your dwarves because, frankly, the idea that wresting control from the player, and giving it to dwarven autonomy is the main limiter on what I can do in making this suggestion. 

I'm aware of that, and don't like shifting it around too much.  Allowing autonomy only for idlers means that they wouldn't be doing anything that got in the way of the player giving orders as currently happens.

It can also be a nice way to test those behaviors for use in AI towns, because Toady will need something like them to make NPCs actually do stuff in Adventure mode.

It could also make personalities actually have an effect in the game...

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on July 24, 2010, 02:38:58 pm

When we are talking about sumptuary laws, I think it's actually a point for the sort of thing I am talking about - the nobles were actually so scared that the middle class would rise up not in anger, but in wealth that they would be able to effectively replicate the noble's lifestyle, and eliminate the gulf that they wanted between the classes on their own.

Absolutely. 

...and I can't think of anything else to say about that.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: James.Denholm on July 26, 2010, 02:03:45 am

I really, really like this idea. True, it'll be difficult to decide on a level of automation that will still allow player control - Indeed, I would think this would end up requiring a re-think of the exact level of control that a player has - But that might not be a bad thing. Indeed, I often find myself thinking about the poor level of class separation in Dwarf Fortress as it currently stands, and most of my pie-in-the-sky fortress ideas involve some sort of manual class system (Miners live like Kings! Farmers live in gender-separated dorms!).

Also, posting to follow.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 26, 2010, 12:35:41 pm

Quote from: Kilo24 on July 26, 2010, 12:11:36 am

It can also be a nice way to test those behaviors for use in AI towns, because Toady will need something like them to make NPCs actually do stuff in Adventure mode.

Which reminds me, I need to post my suggestion for making modular cities in the raws so that you can design worldgen-created cities for any custom race.  (Although I've been putting that off for until after I finish refining the liquids model in Volume and Mass.)

Quote from: Kilo24 on July 26, 2010, 12:11:36 am

I'm aware of that, and don't like shifting it around too much.  Allowing autonomy only for idlers means that they wouldn't be doing anything that got in the way of the player giving orders as currently happens.

The more I think about it, though, the more I start to like it, as it would help several of the things I want to push for in DF.  The problem with it, though, is that dwarves generally need to be smarter overall for it to work, and that you need to have some sort of player control over how a dwarf thinks that might possibly be raw-editable.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 28, 2010, 09:19:13 am

A recent spat of "make daycare for kids" got me realizing I left this aspect of life out of my original proposal, and so I decided to make a little adjustment for how my new scheme would be able to adjust the potential purpose of a dwarfy daycare.

Children Are Our Future - The Orwellian Mind Control Scheme

Dwarven child-care centers!  (Wait, wait, this one's diffirent from the others!)  (OK, maybe nenjin (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=54809.msg1178092#msg1178092) was close to this one...) Anyway, rather than having a system where we can force the early assimilation of dwarven children into our workforce as willing two-year-old drones (plenty of time to hit Legendary when they're adults), we can instead use dwarven childcare as our way of impressing certain values upon our dwarves' children, altering their preferences, their traits, possibly even getting a chance to alter their (currently set at birth) baseline attributes, so that they have higher maximum attribute caps (which are double your baseline attribute). 

We could be able to expose children to different environments to get children used to those environments and living conditions, so, for example, children near plenty of flies (who put the school next to the refuse stockpile?!) will likely not develop aversions to flies.  They can be stratified by the class of their parents (and their parents may demand their children recieve education appropriate for their class), to help children develop class-appropriate affinities for different objects, materials, leisure activities, and other likes. 

We can also use teachers/caretakers who are given certain stories or games to push onto the children in their care to enforce certain personality traits, and can heavily douse children in the form of propoganda you feel best for controlling your happy little populace, ensuring more loyalist patriotic adults later on.

We could also potentially give children religion, or make them more secular/humanistic, as long as the parents aren't looking too closesly (or you don't mind the hit to their happiness for your evangelizing upon their helpless children) as that is now supposed to have actual impact in-game.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: nbonaparte on July 28, 2010, 09:41:23 am

I like a lot of this, and think it would make a great late-development goal, but I think that, for instance, having multiple classes of school or entirely different decorations (as opposed to different qualities on the same type) for different social classes makes it hard for the player to manage. the solution is automation, but I don't think players are fond of too much of that either. At the very least, this would be great to see in NPC settlements, but I think it's hard to get it to a good balance in fortress mode.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 28, 2010, 09:47:58 am

Quote from: nbonaparte on July 28, 2010, 09:41:23 am

I like a lot of this, and think it would make a great late-development goal, but I think that, for instance, having multiple classes of school or entirely different decorations (as opposed to different qualities on the same type) for different social classes makes it hard for the player to manage. the solution is automation, but I don't think players are fond of too much of that either. At the very least, this would be great to see in NPC settlements, but I think it's hard to get it to a good balance in fortress mode.

One wouldn't need a different school for every class.  Actually, nobles might just have "nannies" that they demand for their children, and you could stuff most of the lower classes into the same school, with only a better school for the middle or higher classes, when you actually develop them.  So I'd only see two or three being required, and even then, when it's in the "mature fortress" stage, when you've got time to work with things like this.

(Of course, in order to work with all these social changes, migrants need to be cut to a trickle from the current flood.)

I do think it would be amusing to give players the ability to manipulate dwarven personalities, tastes, and desires, however, especially if we then give dwarves more "autonomy" to choose their destinies based upon their manipulated tastes and desires.  It's one of those things that are added complexity only for those who really want them.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: nbonaparte on July 28, 2010, 09:56:56 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on July 28, 2010, 09:47:58 am

Quote from: nbonaparte on July 28, 2010, 09:41:23 am

I like a lot of this, and think it would make a great late-development goal, but I think that, for instance, having multiple classes of school or entirely different decorations (as opposed to different qualities on the same type) for different social classes makes it hard for the player to manage. the solution is automation, but I don't think players are fond of too much of that either. At the very least, this would be great to see in NPC settlements, but I think it's hard to get it to a good balance in fortress mode.

One wouldn't need a different school for every class.  Actually, nobles might just have "nannies" that they demand for their children, and you could stuff most of the lower classes into the same school, with only a better school for the middle or higher classes, when you actually develop them.  So I'd only see two or three being required, and even then, when it's in the "mature fortress" stage, when you've got time to work with things like this.

(Of course, in order to work with all these social changes, migrants need to be cut to a trickle from the current flood.)

I do think it would be amusing to give players the ability to manipulate dwarven personalities, tastes, and desires, however, especially if we then give dwarves more "autonomy" to choose their destinies based upon their manipulated tastes and desires.  It's one of those things that are added complexity only for those who really want them.

the schools were an example, but I can see how that would be fairly simple.

I heartily agree that migrants need to be reduced. I can't be arsed to build beds for those 20 new dwarves, much less more in-depth stuff.

On the third not, maybe, but it may not be in the style of DF. For instance, Runesmith. Other than a debugging tool and for use in stories, it's generally frowned upon as cheating. I mean, occasionally, I'll make superdwarves if I'm just there for the megaproject, but not for the kind of play that's in the spirit of DF. the player isn't supposed to be a god.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 28, 2010, 11:17:41 am

Quote from: nbonaparte on July 28, 2010, 09:56:56 am

On the third not, maybe, but it may not be in the style of DF. For instance, Runesmith. Other than a debugging tool and for use in stories, it's generally frowned upon as cheating. I mean, occasionally, I'll make superdwarves if I'm just there for the megaproject, but not for the kind of play that's in the spirit of DF. the player isn't supposed to be a god.

I'm sorry, I'm not getting this reference... what are you comparing Runesmith to?

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: nbonaparte on July 28, 2010, 11:18:46 am

Manually editing dwarves' personalities.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 28, 2010, 02:35:27 pm

There's a difference between manually rewritting the values in a dwarf's profile through a memory hack, and modelling in social pressures that reinforce personality traits in one way...

That's like comparing memory hacking to give yourself extra skill ranks to specifically training dwarves to have better skills by focusing that dwarf on using that skill until it levels up - they might accomplish the same end goal, but one is a hack, and the other is using the game as intended.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Ghoulz on July 29, 2010, 01:06:47 am

Under your system, would it be possible to embrace the teachings of Urist McLenin and simply abolish the class system (or more realistically, the upper classes) through means that are more complex than simply throwing them all into a pit of magma? Perhaps enabling a revolution to happen, which could lead to both positive (no more annoying nobles) and negative (failing infrastructure) effects.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on July 29, 2010, 09:06:18 am

Quote from: Ghoulz on July 29, 2010, 01:06:47 am

Under your system, would it be possible to embrace the teachings of Urist McLenin and simply abolish the class system (or more realistically, the upper classes) through means that are more complex than simply throwing them all into a pit of magma? Perhaps enabling a revolution to happen, which could lead to both positive (no more annoying nobles) and negative (failing infrastructure) effects.

I would have to say that this goes beyond the scope of what I have really been talking about, but my having read Animal Farm and generally enjoying history and news tells me that Urist McLenin really DID get rid of the upper classes by effectively tossing them in magma (well, firing squads, anyway) and that they then didn't so much abolish the upper classes as declared themselves to be the new nobles, instead.

In fact, that's probably the best way to model a successful "Communist Revolution" or revolution from the lower classes in general - once the upper classes get butchered, the people who were major leaders in the revolution then turn against one another to become the new nobility, using politics or violence to drive the others off.  Then their friends get to become the rest of the nobles or get enough wealth to become the upper class.  After that, the new nobility has to open up some sort of public resource for free or heavily subsidized consumption by the public as a means of mollifying the rest of the lower classes, which are exceedingly difficult to take back once given out freely (as it is the basis of their support from the masses), but can ultimately cripple their long-term economic viability if allowed to stay in place.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on August 04, 2010, 04:25:54 pm

Some relevant comments from Toady One:

Quote from: Toady One on August 04, 2010, 08:00:04 am

The introduction of sprawl around the fort could change the rental situation drastically, but the overall price setting would apply there, assuming rooms in your fortress aren't so rare and the outside population so vast that they aren't all the exceptions you mentioned.  It's hard to say how it'll turn out.

Quote from: Toady One on August 04, 2010, 08:00:04 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku

Would you even consider changing the relationship that the player has with the dwarves right now (as unquestioned overlord and direct allower and denier of all things dwarves can and cannot do), so that dwarves can become more autonomous and individual, and possibly create a better simulation, while on the other hand, potentially dramatically upping the potential for Fun because dwarves are stupid and very likely to hurt themselves unless continually babysat, or perhaps more importantly, if it meant that the player had less direct control over his fortress, and had to rely more on coaxing the ants in his/her antfarm to do his/her bidding?

Our eventual goal is to have the player's role be the embodiment of positions of power within the fortress, performing actions in their official capacity, to the point that in an ideal world each command you give would be linked to some noble, official or commander.  I don't think coaxing is the way I'm thinking of it though, as with a game like Majesty which somebody brought up, because your orders would also carry the weight of being assumed to be for survival for the most part, not as bounties or a similar system.  Once your fortress is larger, you might have to work a little harder to keep people around, but your dwarves in the first year would be more like crew taking orders from the captain of a ship out to sea or something, where you'd have difficulty getting them to do what you want only if you've totally flopped and they are ready to defy the expedition leader.

The first actually has the longest-range implications for this suggestion: If dwarves will emmigrate away from your fortress if conditions become poor, this actually starts to make an even bigger impact upon concepts like social classes, as we have to attract higher-class (higher skill-rank), more productive citizens, and use rewards to retain our increasingly valuable skilled dwarves, or they will leave for jobs in part of the sprawl where they can get the sort of lifestyle that they demand in return for their skills.

It would also mean that your fortress could wind up the dustbin of refugees, all hoping to get a job even though they have no experience in any useful field.  (Well, OK, it's pretty much that now, but this time it would be on purpose, and a reference to places like "The Big Apple" or "The Big Easy", where people flocked to major cities for jobs when they lost everything in their rural life.)  Tragedies like having villages wiped out could send sudden influxes of refugees to your fortress (and we could correspondingly shut off the flood of migrants that come in normally), or we could simply start opening up "job openings" that would tempt more workers to come in.

Especially if turning the economy on can have a real governmental budget - we would actually be able to influence immigration and emmigration simply by adjusting wages above or below the "national average".  We would want higher-class dwarves (even "useless" ones) because those higher-class dwarves have more money, which means more tax revenue, which becomes more important as more of the economy gets switched on, and we have to handle our fortresses more like a government, and less like a dictator with mind-control powers.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: nuker w on August 08, 2010, 12:38:36 am

I find this STILL very cool. The things Toady has said about such things is even better. Yay for this.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on August 14, 2010, 09:24:23 am

I'm trying to push a new kingdom mode suggestion (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=76667.0)

For additional fun, if we are going the route of "being" the nobility, we have even more reason to want to mess with social classes.  I rather like the idea of mixing this in with some RoTK themes.  That way, some of the higher-ranking dwarves we cultivate may eventually become the agents we send out to see our will done on the world map...

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Dagoth Urist on August 28, 2010, 05:20:09 pm

Would it be feasible to maintain a successful community not on the verge of revolution without propagating patriotism, according to your system? It isn't universally seen as something positive to everyone in this world, after all. If the patriotism in your fort reaches the maximum limit, you'd get a bunch of jingoistic nationalists, wouldn't you? It would be a somewhat dwarven opinion, I guess. But I don't like the idea of the game's mechanics forcing you to take that path in order to not get uprisings in your fortress.

Oh, and before I forget: You make excellent suggestions.  ;)

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on August 28, 2010, 08:13:47 pm

Ah, you made me go back and re-read to figure out what the heck I was talking about in the first place, again.  It's been a few weeks since I've seriously gone at this thread, I'd pretty much abandoned this one to focus on Farming.

Anyway, I threw in the weasel words about it being a "sort of "Patriotism"" metric in the first place, because I knew that I was walking into a loaded term, but had difficulty coming up with a better one-word label for what I meant in the positive sense (so that high numbers intuitively correlate to good).

What I'm really talking about is what amounts to how dissafected someone is with their society - it's, in some ways, the class-based strife metric.  The way to truly solve the problem caused by that stat is to ensure that there is social justice in your fortress - that workers are rewarded fairly and that harder or better work correlates to better rewards for their work, that at least some degree of social mobility exists, and that social safety nets exist for those who need it (which, in DF, would almost entirely consist of making sure that you don't go long periods of time without letting your lumberjacks do nothing and not having any fallback jobs for them to gain money from, as well as having a hospital that can provide healthcare).

Patriotism and jingoism are basically the "opiates of the masses" to patch up the holes when systemic problems exist, but that's not to say we couldn't model in some negative side-effects to such measures, especially when they become extreme.  (Heckling the caravans, even dwarven ones, to try to get rid of the "foreigners", pressing for wars, possible "racial" tension against dwarves of different hair/eye/skin colors when certain types have a majority, that sort of thing.)

edit: and thanks for the encouragement.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Andeerz on September 07, 2010, 10:26:14 pm

I've been thinking a bit after reading this thread about implementing a class system of sorts.  I like the general idea of the OP and like some of the ideas that have been posited.  I wanted to present some ideas to ponder which I think would help guide this idea towards a more "procedurally generated" approach than it is now, though the idea already has some of it in there.  The ideas I present are as follows.

Social mobility is something that I think technically exists in all cultures, it's just that in some cultures and governments social mobility was much harder than in others (i.e. in a caste culture, social mobility outside of a caste would likely be nigh impossible vs. something like the meritocracy of Venice throughout the High Middle Ages and Renaissance ).  What were the factors that underlay this phenomenon?

http://econ161.berkeley.edu/pdf_files/Princes.pdf  <---I encourage people to read this.  It's a scholarly article on economic prosperity and its relationship to government and has a lot of bearing on the topic at hand.  It gives some ideas about some of the underlying factors.

Some other factors to consider are things like the Black Plague in the mid 14th century, where so many people died that the cost of labor of many things went up and, in many respects, the social mobility and living conditions of peasants improved because of that (and vice versa perhaps.  I'm not entirely well educated on the matter, but check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_Black_Death

If we can understand and model factors like these among the likely many others I haven't covered, we can make more credible models of things like social mobility, class warfare, population contentment and prosperity that reflect the progression of things IRL in a way that's procedurally generated, without having to resort to game mechanics (not saying they're necessarily bad!!!) like having sort-of arbitrary events like a king coming to your fort to determine how wealthy people in a fort or city can be.

Basically, the presence of this, that, or the other class in whatever proportions and what defines this, that, or the other class should have proximate, observable causes that are believable and compelling.  And I think the best way to do this is modeling real-life sorts of causes as well as possible.  I think these causes would largely fall under stuff that can be controlled and observed by the player, though perhaps not all would be at a timescale observable in most forts as the game is now , and some major things might be outside of a player's control.  Some of these factors (or what I think with my current knowledge are factors) have already been suggested, like patriotism and stuff, and the causes of these might be model-able, too.  :D

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: TolyK on November 05, 2010, 07:15:59 pm

 :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o
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 :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o
 :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o

amazing. if this forum had karma I'd give you some damn carma.
i currently have nothing to add as I have lost 4 hours of sleep reading this net of strings. threads. I am really tired...

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: ScriptWolf on November 08, 2010, 12:54:35 pm

Bump, I have to say that they have this right on spot and I really would like to see different clans and dwarf classes when the economy kicks in and before ofcourse

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Neonivek on November 08, 2010, 01:43:49 pm

Personally I don't think we should have hardcoded classes as such.

But then again the classes while always economically influenced weren't always economically based.

Many "classes" and "Castes" of people had to do with people's races, origins, or even jobs.

Anyhow I do think that the game should extrapolate seperations of society in each city so as to have revolutions become possible or class warfare.

Quote

Would it be feasible to maintain a successful community not on the verge of revolution without propagating patriotism

Isn't Patriotism something that is rather recent and completely out of place in a medieval game?

Though... Completely IN place in a Fantasy game.

Fantasy games seem to support modern ideals quite often...

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Andeerz on November 08, 2010, 08:02:39 pm

Hmmm... patriotism's meaning can vary on context.  I will assume that what you mean by patriotism is patriotism in the sense of loyalty and pride for one's own country.  I will have to look into this some more another time, but I'd be willing to bet that patriotism is something that existed well before the modern era.  In order to have patriotism as defined here, you have to have a country, as opposed to a loose confederation of city states, feifdoms and the like which were prevalent throughout the medieval era.  A nation in the modern sense in Europe didn't come around until the Renaissance with the rise of nationalism and stuff. However, I wouldn't be surprised (and this is purely speculation) that there existed patriotism in solid, unified empires like the Roman Empire, and the Persian Empire which I would argue fit, at least in many respects, the modern definition of a nation. 

Patriotism is dependent on a sense of unification across a large geographic area, something that I think couldn't happen without a strong, unifying government able to effectively make its presence felt across a large area; you couldn't really have a nation in the modern sense nor patriotism in the way defined here.  Persia and Rome did have such governments, and I'd be willing to bet that this was due to a thriving economy, solid infrastructure, and a strong professional volunteer military to keep destabilizing agents out of the areas. 

I bring this up, because I think this could give an idea of how to deal with the idea of "nations" in DF.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Neonivek on November 08, 2010, 08:13:14 pm

So in otherwords...

A "Nation" doesn't exist in feudalism so to speak.

Quote

Persia and Rome did have such governments

Not so much Rome. In fact that was one of the contributors to their eventual downfall.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Andeerz on November 08, 2010, 08:31:25 pm

Quote from: Neonivek on November 08, 2010, 08:13:14 pm

So in otherwords...

A "Nation" doesn't exist in feudalism so to speak.

Yeah!

Quote from: Neonivek on November 08, 2010, 08:13:14 pm

Not so much Rome. In fact that was one of the contributors to their eventual downfall.

Yeah, the eventual fall of the Republic after over 400 years... and the eventual fall of the empire after another 500 or so... :P

Agh... never mind.  I don't wanna derail this.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Neonivek on November 08, 2010, 08:35:22 pm

It is hardly derailing anyhow since for the most part the lower classes have often been used as fodder for the upper classes.

Nationalism is just another way in which this takes form.

Though I am not sure on all the reasons why the lower class are manipulated as such nor am I sure on the effectiveness. I've heard of both the lower classes treating those higher as "stupid" and I've also heard of the upper classes being able to use their lower classmen (heh) as puppets.

Where exactly does the truth lie?

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: TolyK on November 09, 2010, 10:42:43 am

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

the truth lies?   

anyways...

how would you define a nation then? you could have "influence" (as from Civ 3) but that might be a bit too much...

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Andeerz on November 09, 2010, 04:05:10 pm

Hmmm... I think an "influence" sort of representation like in Civ 3 might be a good idea provided that this "influence" is generated from very real and observable interactions between individual entities in the game.  Ultimately, I think a nation is defined by peoples' attitudes, and not some sort of magical line in the dirt.

I would model it based sorta like how it's done now.  Dwarves, elves, humans, etc. right now have their allegiance to a nation already represented, which could serve as a framework for this.  I'll need to use a made-up example to show how I think this idea ideally would work.  But I'm going to have to think this one through pretty hard before I post it.  Basically, here are some of the things I need to figure out:

1. How someone can establish their relative dominance and influence over people
2. How to model to what degree other entities (either subject or dominant over someone) respect this dominance
3. How (from #'s 1 and 2) a hierarchy of power can be established and recognized as a government as a sort of individual entity itself
4. How this network of power and respect and government can influence people to identify themselves as belonging to the same group, which would in essence be a nation
5. How to have people recognize the idea of a nation as an entity separate from government (for example: Japanese still identified themselves as Japanese even after the collapse of their monarchy's power after WWII)

So, sorta what I'm thinkin' (and I'm no sociologist/poli-sci person or anything, so I'm not the best authority on this)... What initially makes a people united (as a nation, province, tribe, whatever) are, I think, two things (and I could be wrong!!!) a. having something in common (culture, lineage, etc.) and b. essentially a recognition of authority/government/social order of some sort; they have to recognize each other as being "family" sort of, and agree in general to work together somehow for the survival and common good of a people.

I think that these two things are what basically should operate at the base level of how entities in the game recognize things like different civilizations, nations, fiefs, provinces, etc, and belonging to such things.  Hmmm... any sociologists, political scientists, or historians got any useful models?
 

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Andeerz on November 09, 2010, 09:45:28 pm

Also: I suggest the OP author and everyone else for that matter check this out:  http://www.boisestate.edu/courses/westciv/medsoc/

This is a pretty enlightening essay written by someone who knows their stuff.  It seems like social stratification could be rather nebulous, and the sense of patriotism and nationalism wasn't really a part of most peoples' lives until the rise of powerful centralized governments.  Hmmmm a LOT of food for thought there that I will undoubtedly post about later.

EDIT: ALSO COOL!  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commune_(medieval)  <--- ties in VERY nicely with the discussion at hand.  :D

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Neonivek on November 09, 2010, 10:12:39 pm

Which of course Centralised Governments tend to exist quite often in Fantasy fiction.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 19, 2012, 02:44:24 pm

The Sliding Scale of Difficulty:

There has been a recurring theme among those talking about the way in which DF is played, which is to say that DF is not hard, it's simply complex.  It's hard to learn, but once you have learned it, it's rather easy. 

In fact, very few things in DF are hard to accomplish once you understand the mechanics of how to do so, the difficulty largely comes from the fact that the game throws a hundred different things you can do in your face, and lets you drown in the choices you have to make.  Many people lose a fortress simply because they forget to set up a farm, not because setting up a farm was something they were incapable of doing.  People lose a fortress because they lost track of how their brewing job was canceled because of a supply chain hiccup, rather than because of a poor decision per se.

This is partly because DF has lost some of its "game" features, as discussed in DF Talk 17 (http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_17_transcript.html).  Where once there was a progression in the 2d game where the player moved to different roadblocks from the underground river or chasm or magma river, and new and more powerful enemies appeared at each point along that progression, along with more valuable materials to mine, now realism and simulationism have replaced this with a game where almost everything worth having is available from the start.  There are caverns, but they are no roadblock - they are easily bypassed, and the magma sea can be easily reached while avoiding them. 

My proposed solution is to make the solution to this problem go hand-in-hand with another problem people had with dwarven autonomy (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=63109.0) when I was trying to push for that idea a while back:

Spoiler: Long Toady quotes (click to show/hide)

Quote from: Toady One on August 04, 2010, 08:00:04 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku

Would you even consider changing the relationship that the player has with the dwarves right now (as unquestioned overlord and direct allower and denier of all things dwarves can and cannot do), so that dwarves can become more autonomous and individual, and possibly create a better simulation, while on the other hand, potentially dramatically upping the potential for Fun because dwarves are stupid and very likely to hurt themselves unless continually babysat, or perhaps more importantly, if it meant that the player had less direct control over his fortress, and had to rely more on coaxing the ants in his/her antfarm to do his/her bidding?

Our eventual goal is to have the player's role be the embodiment of positions of power within the fortress, performing actions in their official capacity, to the point that in an ideal world each command you give would be linked to some noble, official or commander.  I don't think coaxing is the way I'm thinking of it though, as with a game like Majesty which somebody brought up, because your orders would also carry the weight of being assumed to be for survival for the most part, not as bounties or a similar system.  Once your fortress is larger, you might have to work a little harder to keep people around, but your dwarves in the first year would be more like crew taking orders from the captain of a ship out to sea or something, where you'd have difficulty getting them to do what you want only if you've totally flopped and they are ready to defy the expedition leader.

---

Quote from: Toady One on September 19, 2010, 09:44:15 am

Quote from: NW_Kohaku

Toady, where do you see the ability of players to affect AI behavior?  Will we see something that goes more towards having the ability to directly script dwarven AI to use certain items or take certain actions using some logic operations or a rudimentary scripting ability?  Or do you see this as being more a matter of dwarves having to somehow learn how and when to properly perform actions or use items from the properties they have in the raws alone?  While I'm obviously interested in the effects this can have, I'm also interested in what sort of game design philosophy you have about what level of control you want players to be exerting over their dwarves.

At the extreme end of the potion/material discussion, out beyond what maybe anybody was asking for, I'm absolutely against having to master some sort of scripting language just to get dwarves to poison their weapons.  At the same time, it'll be difficult to get dwarves to use certain exotic syndrome-causing materials in a reasonable way that satisfies a player, especially one using potion mods.  Maybe it'll end up being usage hints in the raws and classifications in-play for use in the military etc. with some sensible defaults.  Ideally they'd be able to handle it like food, water and alcohol (to the extent those aren't broken), and perhaps those would be brought into the same system.  For more exotic actions and random weirdness, maybe there are cases in the mods where you'd really want to write some kind of script down, especially for a non-dwarven mod race that does something or other, but that level of support is pretty hard to prioritize when I don't really need or want it for dwarves.

On the other hand, writing from the perspective that every command the player gives will be credited to fortress position holders, if an appropriate official were to order that a liquid, with usage hints/whatever in the raws, will now be used for something entirely outside those bounds (like coating a weapon with syrup), that action might be anything from brilliant to quirky to wasteful to tyrannical to suicidal, depending on the situation.  The dwarves aren't currently capable of judging their officials and it's a very difficult problem most of the time.  If a randomly-generated creature has a weakness to syrup, maybe coating the weapons with syrup is simply a practical strategy, and in that case syrup wouldn't have the "weapon coating" usage hint in the raws.  That coating action is entirely up to player ingenuity, much like ordering the creation of a complicated machine, and it's a reasonable thing to allow.

Manually ordering a dwarf to perform a specific series of actions that can't be presaged in the raws/code might be the only way to save your fort and might be a reasonably orderable action made by some official, but that kind of power can degrade the atmosphere we want to build.  It's going to depend on the specific cases, but for the sake of guiding discussion on a wide range of future topics, I think it's best that the player feels that a dwarf's autonomy is being respected.  The thing that makes dwarf mode not strictly a hands-off simulation is that you are allowed to compromise dwarves' autonomy if they hold fortress positions, to the extent that you are selecting actions that fall within their position's purview.  If an order typically makes it feel like the dwarves are being controlled like marionettes, forced to do things against their will, etc., the order should probably be altered or removed.  Presently, there are a ton of things that dwarves don't care about that they should care about, but this is the overall idea.

So the idea here is to make the game more difficult in stages by making your dwarves more autonomous and demand more of the player in stages, as well. 

Spoiler: Making progression a challenge (click to show/hide)

In the game Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom, a great example of how to make a City-Building game a challenging game with progressive levels of difficulty, there were multiple stages of housing, each one packing more people into denser space as the city you were building became more urbanized, and requiring more services to be available in the city before they could evolve again (http://emperor.heavengames.com/gameinfo/buildings/gameinfo/tables/housing). 

This started with basic water and food, but moved up to having access to a shrine, then having hemp for clothing and oil, then having basic entertainment and medicine, then multiple types of food, then pottery, then advanced entertainment and religion, acupuncture, tea, luxury goods and spices at the top.  Each successive service you needed to provide took workers, funds, and space. (Each building took up space, and each building had limited range of effect, so more buildings meant it became progressively harder to plan for having the space to build the next type of building you needed.)  More than this, every new stage of development took higher "Desirability" ratings for that property - locations near glamorous buildings like courthouses or the palace or a temple would become more valuable, while industries like kilns dropped values like a rock.  In order to get the highest quality housing, you would have to surround it with expensive and spacious parks or statues to boost their property values enough for the truly wealthy to see fit to live there.

Emperor itself had a progressive challenge in the sense that your building sites were smaller and smaller and had less resources to build with (and hence, you had to import more of your goods) as the game got into the difficult challenge scenarios, but the same basic progression model can work for DF: As your fortress wants to move up, you need to provide more services to your dwarves, which provides that natural progression in forts, provided that the actual building of these services is made a challenge in their own right.

That doesn't mean that building a tavern (as an entertainment venue) all by itself should be hard in a tedious sense, but that running it properly should be an involving process that adds some depth to the game and challenges that go beyond simply spending a single stone to construct a new workshop and then making a new finished product out of one unit of raw material. 

The ways in which I've talked about farming (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=76007) are ways in which we can make "provide food to your dwarves" a deeper and more complex experience.  Using minecarts and the complex logistics system we just got along with perhaps the rubble system (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=108713.msg3276592#msg3276592) that had been discussed and a "make mining more dangerous" scheme, including not just cave-ins but also coal dust explosions or exploding natural gas pockets to be avoided. 

Maybe we can have a requirement for well-lit areas in housing.  You can fuel lamps out of rock nut oil (assume it's just a wick on a sconce carved in the wall), but it's stinky, so dwarves don't like it if they can avoid it.  Maybe there's a more difficult to grow, but sweet smelling oil you can trade for that will increase the local residence's property values or satisfaction with their housing or whatever you want to call it.  Rich families might want gem lanterns that operate on alchemy, and require multiple fancy component plants to be mixed under certain conditions to be made.  Other advanced achievements might include setting up pipes to a natural gas pocket, and tapping it carefully through a plumbing system to allow for a city-wide natural gas-lit streetlight system.  Such an achievement could add prestige to a whole city as well as raise the desirability of any such lit residential or commercial district.

Entertainment, likewise, could require building proper venues and getting proper traffic flow, or good accoustics in the venue, as well as potentially managing the talent.

Hospitals might be made more interesting with common comunicable diseases, with a nutrition model that makes keeping dwarves eating right (see the farming thread again for making a balanced diet more difficult) also give them better resistances to diseases, and hence less sick days at work.  Hospitals might also be expanded to provide alternate health services, such as apothecaries or potion-makers that provide both magic potions for warriors in battle, but also potentially medicines for more domestic troubles (like dwarf viagra potions) that would be a economic service a healthcare professional could provide.

Religious institutions could be made more interesting by making the priests have to cater to the whims of their gods, which may require festivals in their honor (which are like parties that take away laborers, but also require material sacrifices to the gods) and where the priests gain political power that may rival your own, and will require you to keep them in line.

Economics in general can be made more interesting, although I'm dedicating a whole section to that.

Spoiler: The "Noble Tree" - Mo' Nobles, Mo' Problems (click to show/hide)

The concept of the "Noble Tree" will be explained more in depth in the Social Classes section, however, for this section, some basic things about this concept should be explained:

The noble tree concept tries to bring back fortress specializations like what the game had back in the 2d era when there were fortress nobles that you gained based upon guilds - a smithing-heavy fortress would get a special smith guild noble. 

As part of the notion of a sliding scale of difficulty, the Noble Tree will involve letting the player branch out into gaining different nobles that bring about different in-game rewards to the player for having that type of noble (in the form of new menus that let you exercise that noble's political power for your benefit), but also challenges associated with keeping that noble (not just normal noble demands, but infighting among the nobles).

A player might have a strong religious base, or a strong economic base, or military base, and these would bring about religious nobles (making up a religious hierarchy) as the church becomes larger and more powerful in your fort, while a powerful economic base would see heads of more and more trading houses become functional nobles in the form of trade barons, who try to purchase their influence in the fort with money.  Military nobles would give you access to more armies marching across the map after the army arc. 

Since gaining more nobles gives you more access to menus or edicts or agents that give you different controls over your fortress or the worldmap, you can choose to go down different "branches" of growth in your noble structure.

In this way, different nobles are like a "tech tree" without having it be based upon technology.  You gain access to more advanced control over creating and chartering caravans as you gain merchant nobles to run them, or the ability to do more things with your soldiers on the worldmap as you gain higher-ranking military commanders.

---

Spoiler: "Seven sods in a hole" stage - (Simpler controls for the new people) (click to show/hide)

At the outset of a new fortress, every dwarf will be content with just plain survival, and will follow every order as though you are directly controlling everything they can and cannot do, as much as the game allows you to do now.

In fact, to help new players acclimate to the game faster, some features of the game may be "blanked out" at first, in order to help new players focus in on what aspects of the game they should focus upon (such as getting that farm up).  This might be optionally disabled through modding or some init option for those who "know what they are doing" and don't want those limitations, but it would be a good step towards making the game a little easier for new players to understand what they must do early on.

I would think most specifically about shutting down most of the non-crucial workshops or constructions that one could build until after one hits a certain stage of the game, such as having a working farm and still and at least one bed.

In real-life, almost all small, early societies were "True Communist" - they all shared and shared alike because that was the only way they could survive, and also because they were communities that were small enough that everyone knew each other, and in established villages, everyone was probably at least a cousin of everyone else. 

Throughout most of human history, most humans lived in communities of less than 100 people, almost all of whom were related to each other at least as cousins.  Money wasn't strictly necessary in most interactions because they would spend their whole lives with one another, and as such, all debts would eventually be paid back.  They, in fact, wouldn't even keep track of debts, the same way we probably don't think much of sharing things with our own family members.

Spoiler: Town stage (click to show/hide)

As the fortress progresses, however, (around the time of becoming a "town" with a mayor), dwarves will start having greater demands of their leadership.  They will no longer be such happy little communists that share and share alike with everything in the fortress, they will start demanding personal quarters, and the ability to keep at least some personal trinkets. 

As survival becomes more assured, there will no longer be the threat of imminent death to keep the workers going at maximum work capacity, and giving workers a share in the stake of the fortress in return for their work (that is to say, pay for services rendered) becomes necessary to keep the dwarves working, especially later-comer dwarves.  While the Starting Seven may be assumed to all have a personality skewed towards diligent work, later dwarves may be more opportunistic, and seeking a place in the fort only for their own personal betterment, and will work only for pay.

This, in turn, will open up the need to have an internal economy for dwarves to spend their money within, so that you will need to focus at least a small amount of your industry upon giving them things they can buy (for example, crafts,) as well as starting to need to build entertainment venues or nicer housing for your dwarves.  These will be modest at first, but as your fortress advances, they become more complex, and more difficult to satisfy.

Dwarves will also have preferred professions based upon their personalities in the Personality Rewrite.  As the fortress becomes more populous, and dwarves can afford to be more specialized, then dwarves will be more likely to want to go into jobs they want to do, rather than the ones you arbitrarily assign them.

Because managing the individual personalities of different dwarves would be a massive micromanagement headache, however, the game will need to enable a "Dwarven Resources" manager, which would be an appointed noble that takes care of assigning dwarves to your different jobs.  I'll go into this topic more, later. 

Spoiler: Barony Stage (click to show/hide)

As the fortress becomes more wealthy and more secure, the actual nobility may show up.

The noble will still demand a nice room and all, but they'll start demanding more, but also start giving the player more in return.

I think it best to keep the notion that we have some sort of dwarf we can choose from among our fortress to elevate up to nobility - this will give us players a better buy-in to help us feel that it's "our baron", rather than something foisted upon us.

Barons give players access to the barony, which is how we gain access to the world map, and control over sending out hill dwarves to start off-map actions.  Barons can also give us access to a "political intrigue" game, where the baron is trying to build up prestige for their title and their fort by engaging in the rivalry between nobles for power.  At a basic baron level, they won't have much capacity to affect much, but it will be there. 

Barons may still make demands, but rather than simply being something you have to do or else a dwarf is executed, demands could be means of adding to the prestige of your noble.  When barons are more fleshed out, rather than just being arbitrary and random, they could be made to have more rhyme and reason.  Barons might ban exports of goods to hurt a political rival, for example, or drive of prices of goods by causing a shortage of supply.

If a baron ever dies, we can still get a new one, but they have to start all over again from square one with no prestige.  Worse, a different noble may try to take control of your fort, and force you into vassalage, where you would lose control of your fort if you aren't capable of resisting.  This would give players a strong incentive not to have Unfortunate Accidents - the baron is not just a reward, it's the player's avatar in a sense, and if they get killed, they lose a lot of their progress forward in the game. 

In the political intrigue game, you have a court (a special menu) and the ability to make decisions about your land holdings, and different nobles of the same civ are constantly spying on each other's court to gain advantages over the others.  Gaining enough prestige to climb in ranks through nobility means gaining more and more noble tree nobles under your banner, expanding the number of hill dwarves under your command, and gaining economic, military, or religious influence by running trade caravans that bring profits to the kingdom (that are taxed by the king)

For that matter, the king will have their own court, and will be ordering you as a vassal to provide for the kingdom in some way.  This means that you may be given directions to generate more wealth (through trade) and paying up some of that wealth in taxes, more soldiers or to fight and gain military victories, or to simply train troops and lend them to the armies of more powerful military dwarf nobles, or to appease the gods or seek their favor for religious forts.  Fulfilling these royal demands gives you more prestige and failing them harms your prestige, and may get your noble stripped of his title if they lose it all.

The fortress you are running, then, will have a debt to (or possibly from) the kingdom that must be paid off where there is a continuous burden of debt in the form of taxes being added on proportional to the size and splendor of your fort.  It is demanded of the fortress that you pay for your keep, so to speak, within the kingdom.  (Loaning troops or brining victory or showing signs of pleasing the gods can count as "payment" of this debt in order to make non-economic fortresses have an equal standing.)

The fortress running into debt to the kingdom will result in penalties to prestige and losing status and the ability to further advance, while paying off more than your fair share leads to increases in prestige.

Your prestige, in turn, can "buy" advancement through the ranks of nobility, and give you a chance to advise the king on what it is the kingdom as a whole should do, or at least, what your part in it should be.  With little prestige, you are simply spoken down to.  With tremendous prestige, you can convince the king to send the kingdom off on wars of your own choosing for your own noble's more personal gain, or otherwise work to influence laws and edicts to be passed that grant your fortress or noble more power and influence and wealth.

---

In the fort itself, the economy should come into mostly full swing - many dwarves would still know each other or be family members of the starting 7 or something, and be generally willing to help the community, but dwarves working for a noble will generally expect to be paid from their work, and you will start having an actual treasury. 

You don't need coins except for if you are going for high mercantilism, but there will need to be an accounts book, where nobles owe the workers of their land money for the services they render, and the workers can demand goods and housing in exchange for these debits that they have built up.  Dwarves pay for their rent and food and clothing and pay for entertainment venues like taverns.  Dwarves will get angry if they start to have a net positive debit balance that goes very high, as this means they are owed money by the noble and not being payed.  They might just start "buying" property you have available for internal sale, but generally, the more debit they have in their favor, the less they will feel that they have to work, so they will take more and more breaks the "wealthier" they are in terms of being owed money for their services.  They will spend these breaks on hobbies or recreation instead of working, so giving dwarves plenty of expensive treats to keep working in order to obtain is a way of ensuring that dwarves are motivated to keep working hard.

The degree to which "motivation" is a big deal in how often they work hard is a factor of how well they know the other dwarves in the community.  Someone with a lot of friends or who feels a large amount of investment in the community in general (like the starting seven) is going to be motivated just to help the community in general.  Newcomers and loners are going to be more likely to be motivated by their own personal interests (although some loners may be altruistic or naturally diligent workers), and as such, need more personal financial motivations to work hard.

Conversely, dwarves can also fairly easily go into debt.  They can continue to buy many things on credit, so that they owe more work back to their noble to pay it off.  If they go sharply into debt (typically because of not having enough work, or unfair economic conditions), then they might face repossession of property or demotion of social status down to the likes of slaves or beggars.  This, obviously, would make them quite angry, as well. 

Spoiler: County/Duchy Stage (click to show/hide)

At this point, you will need to continue satisfying all the demands of citizens from earlier on, including the need for a more robust economy. 

Few, if any dwarves will be working for the common good out of just loyalty anymore, as there will be so many dwarves they don't know that motivation should come mainly from the economic incentives.

This means that you'll need to start supplying more and more advanced amenities, which in turn, raise property taxes, which in turn are paid by those dwarves, and inspire them to work harder to be able to afford their comfortable lifestyle.

---

At around this point, you should also be able to start just plain zoning land for sale.  Dwarves would be able to buy their own land out of your hands, and set up their own homes (which they pay property taxes on instead of renting) and set up their own workshops (where they buy raw materials from the fort but own the finished product), and have the ability to sell those products back to the fortress or to any travelers. 

The dwarves that do this are those of higher social classes that have obtained enough status and wealth to be free of serfdom, and are mini-capitalists in their own right.

They will start taking jobs according to what guild they are a part of (if any), what jobs they like doing due to their personality, and according to what jobs have plenty of raw materials available

They would obviously need to have some decent AI in order to learn how to take care of themselves, generally.

If dwarves are not capable of reaching the status they deserve (because you are not allowing for zones for them to buy and set up decent shops), they will become less happy with the fort and generally work less, since they don't have a reason to strive.  The advantage is that capitalist dwarves are motivated to get as much profit as possible, and as such are going to be harder workers than the still communist dwarves that don't have potential death of the fort motivating them. 

All transactions inside the fort could be taxed, and as such, you get a decent cut for simply letting dwarves churn out huge numbers of rock crafts to pawn off on the random travelers. 

Alternately, you could simply buy those goods from your dwarves to be put to public works use, which functionally means you are still paying a dwarf for the goods they produce and the fortress can own the goods afterwards, but that the quality and supply/demand mechanics come into play determining how much that dwarf is getting paid for their goods, and it will likely be more expensive to buy from the private sector than it is to simply have the public sector workers make things for you.

If you simply set up an automated "I will buy ___ amount of ____ item for ____ price per ____ period of time" as a system, you will no longer need to schedule individual jobs or workshops.  If you are paying enough to make it worth their while, dwarves that own commerce zones will simply set up a shop, buy the raw materials, and sell you the goods you are willing to buy automatically.  This can be linked with the Standing Orders concept to make it so that you automatically start setting buy orders as your fortress runs low.  You could even start setting different price gradients of what you are willing to pay the more low your supplies get.  ("I'll pay you double, just somebody make some booze before there's a riot!")

Spoiler: Kingdom Stage (click to show/hide)

At this stage, you have the king's court and the noble's court in your control.  (Depending on how you get control of the kingdom, your noble may also be the king, or the noble may simply be so powerful that they can influence everything the king does almost automatically.)

This means that you'll gain control of the king's court interface as well as your standard noble court interface options.  Lesser nobles will lobby the king, and you will have to keep different nobles (or factions of nobles) from getting too grumpy and possibly trying a coup against you.  Their loyalties and respect for your reign will be one of the things you have to control.  Letting them do as they wish or doing things that get them rich or more powerful make them more loyal, while forcing them to go against their wishes or having their standing drop causes them to become less loyal and more resentful.  If nobles turn traitor, they'll take their lands with them, and become enemies, unless you can manage to capture the noble and accuse them of treason (which other nobles won't like) before they can do so, and put a new noble in their place. 

---

The way you run the fortress itself should be simply the logical extreme of the changes already happening at this point - almost everyone is a dirt-poor beggar or serf, or else a wealthy capitalist or noble with tons of demands. 

Your fortress is at its highest peak, and should be dizzyingly complex networks of residences, zones for capitalism, marketplaces, transit systems, farms, industry, religion, military barracks, etc.

Odds are, you aren't going to be able to manage individual dwarves at all anymore, and as such, will be relying upon assigned noble middle-management and dwarven resources to control everything going on.  The idea is that by this point, you should be far removed from much besides designating what work needs to be done, and letting the game worry about how it actually gets carried out.

Spoiler: Zwergedämmerung Stage (click to show/hide)

A half-serious proposal, this would be the Kingdom equivalent of hitting the HFS - a sort of grand crescendo for the game at its final stages, where, if your dwarven kingdom looks poised to take over the entire world or region, a coalition of every remaining power (including, perhaps, releasing the HFS or some divine intervention that seek to destroy the dwarves for their hubris or upseting the divine balance) rise up to confront the dwarves. 

The main purpose of this would, of course, be to give players a way to either go down in a glorious blaze as everything they created is destroyed, or else to give players the ability to make "beating the game" in the Kingdom Mode by conquering the whole map a more challenging, and hence, more bragging rights-worthy.

---

By adding back in more clear progressions of challenges based upon how developed the player's fortress has become, we can add back into the game that "game-like" notion of progression and achievement and scaling difficulty, and do so in a way that enables

Further, we can allow players who only seek "constructionist" gameplay a chance to simply opt-out of the whole system if they are only interested in building large monuments, and not playing the game-like features that the "gamist" players are seeking.  They need merely not climb the "noble tree".

Spoiler: Means by which stages are advanced (click to show/hide)

Simply put, the mechanism by which fortress advancement is dependent upon fortress "created wealth" simply does not work. 

I believe that a general population size-based trigger for advancement through different stages of fortresses should still be available, but population based upon created wealth should be scrapped entirely.

In the first "7 sods in a hole" stage, we need to make it clear the objective is simple survival.  A hidden "score" for how well you are doing in this regard should exist where you get points for just not dying and for securing food (preferably enough to feed more than just your initial dwarves) as well as preparing beds and a meeting hall for your fort will add to the score, as will killing some dangerous creatures.  Deaths will significantly subtract from the score and heavily discourage new migrations.

In this way, instead of having massive migrations the instant you start making rock crafts, you should hopefully have to spend about 2 game years as a pre-town fortress, just getting your basics in order, and letting players prepare for migrants instead of being drowned in them.

Advancement from town to barony should require having more "nice" things, not simply value.  Villagers could have a satisfaction rating for the amenities that a town has, and that adds to the town success score that brings in new villagers.  They may want access to a hospital, a shrine or place of worship to at least one major deity of your culture, or a tavern with some basic entertainment.  Safety would, of course, still be a concern with deaths driving away migrants, but so would loss of basic needs, like not producing enough food or running out of alcohol. Gaining the actual noble would require gaining enough population but also gaining some of the "noble tree" nobles to give your fort enough of a political influence to justify elevating a noble from your ranks.

Advancement from barony on up to duchy would require having your baron gain in status, which would also require satisfying demands for the baron, but also would require you raise the profile of your fortress through beautification projects, through military achievement, through economic dominance, or some other means of showing that you are a powerful and contributing member of your kingdom in general.  Basically, gaining county or duchy status is not so much a factor of population anymore (although it does help) as it is a matter of political clout, which is influenced by how much economic, religious, military, or other clout you can throw around.

Advancement up to obtaining the seat of the monarchy, obviously, would mean either a coup of the violent sort, or of the political sort where you can dramatically shift the political winds so as to make your duchy the center of political might in the whole kingdom.  It would mean that your political pull (or that of your coalition of supporters) is more powerful than all opposition to your rule.

Advancement to the Zwergedämmerung would be upon some sort of "too greedy" use of expansionistic policies once you were in control of the full kingdom.

---

Oh boy, when I was starting this, I thought this was going to be a relatively simple thing to explain.  6000 words and a couple days later...

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Tierre on May 19, 2012, 05:41:29 pm

Where do you find time to write all that? :):):) Adding some kind of challenge except for HFS and goblins is a good idea. There should be non-military channenges in vanilla too - but your idead are a bit too advanced for development yet. If some of this is done it will be in some years from now:(

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 19, 2012, 05:51:24 pm

Quote from: Tierre on May 19, 2012, 05:41:29 pm

Where do you find time to write all that? :):):) Adding some kind of challenge except for HFS and goblins is a good idea. There should be non-military channenges in vanilla too - but your idead are a bit too advanced for development yet. If some of this is done it will be in some years from now:(

I write it in spurts over a couple days.  Frequently, I do most of my writing later at night, when I'm winding down, since I most of my focusing then.

I don't think this is too advanced for what Toady is going into, since I've gone over a lot of the things he's written or talked about.  Yes, it's going to take years, but this involves many of the things he's going to be heading into, anyway.

He's already going to be working on caravan arc (traders and economy) and army arc (the military things) and Personality Rewrite and taverns and those quotes of him wanting to work towards the player being administrators of a fortress, and the DF talks about where he wants the game to go, and how he wants to add the "gamey" challenges back into the game. 

In a sense, I'm just trying to unify a really wide net of ideas all under a single focused narrative in this suggestion, along with bringing out some of the ideas I liked about other City-building games to flesh out the "game" part of the advancement of a fort.

In another sense, Toady wants to scrap the current Happiness system, and do Personality Rewrites, but hasn't really come up with solid ideas of what they're going to entail, so I want to try getting out ahead into that idea so that I can try pushing the idea Toady is forming towards the things that will work well with all these other changes I'd like to see coming.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: GreatWyrmGold on May 20, 2012, 07:50:41 am

On one hand, the idea of escalating desires and demands, and that of a "noble tree," seems senible and good enough for me.
I don't have much to add, except to suggest that "needs" be mainly a factor of personality and the fort's status, plus some stuff based on social status. Of course, that might have been mentioned, but...geez, that's a well-organized wall of text.

To note about your posting style: That's not much like how  do it. I let ideas ferment in my head for a few days, type, organize as I go, and post. Of course, my ideas usually don't go into as much detail of EXACTLY how it should be as others' usually are...

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 20, 2012, 02:35:33 pm

Well, I tend to write as it comes to mind, myself.  I have to keep things sort of organized, because I'll stop mid-sentence when an idea strikes me, and run off to write another section. 

If I didn't keep section tabs through those spoiler's I might forget where I stopped a paragraph at a "The importance of "

Besides that, I tend to rearrange segments.  In fact, depending on how long this noble tree thing gets, I might put it as its own unique post, and put it in the OP. 

And I've been meaning to rewrite this idea for a year or so, now... It's less fermenting, and more turning to vinegar if I wait much longer.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Waparius on May 20, 2012, 03:57:28 pm

Quote

The Sliding Scale of Difficulty:

Impressive. I especially like the point that dwarves at the "7 Sods In A Hole" stage should be hardworking and more tolerant of adverse conditions, with the lazier dwarves showing up later.

Barony Stage -

Quote

At around this point, you should also be able to start just plain zoning land for sale.  Dwarves would be able to buy their own land out of your hands, and set up their own homes (which they pay property taxes on instead of renting) and set up their own workshops (where they buy raw materials from the fort but own the finished product), and have the ability to sell those products back to the fortress or to any travelers. 

This may be too hard, though it would be appealing to zone levels 6-8 to a dwarf who loves natural beauty and find he's built a big, breakable window in the side of his cavern-top dining room. If that's the case, perhaps this could tie into interacting with hill-dwarves - you plan and command the fortress, but you can send nobles into the hills to dig as they like, and zone their lands via a map screen. Of course they'd demand apartments, offices and other space in the mountain home. In the fortress itself you could probably get a compromise by digging out the needed space and assigning a noble to run a burrow, at which point the noble is responsible for enticing a population.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 20, 2012, 04:35:36 pm

Quote from: Waparius on May 20, 2012, 03:57:28 pm

Quote

The Sliding Scale of Difficulty:

Impressive. I especially like the point that dwarves at the "7 Sods In A Hole" stage should be hardworking and more tolerant of adverse conditions, with the lazier dwarves showing up later.

Barony Stage -

Quote

At around this point, you should also be able to start just plain zoning land for sale.  Dwarves would be able to buy their own land out of your hands, and set up their own homes (which they pay property taxes on instead of renting) and set up their own workshops (where they buy raw materials from the fort but own the finished product), and have the ability to sell those products back to the fortress or to any travelers. 

This may be too hard, though it would be appealing to zone levels 6-8 to a dwarf who loves natural beauty and find he's built a big, breakable window in the side of his cavern-top dining room. If that's the case, perhaps this could tie into interacting with hill-dwarves - you plan and command the fortress, but you can send nobles into the hills to dig as they like, and zone their lands via a map screen. Of course they'd demand apartments, offices and other space in the mountain home. In the fortress itself you could probably get a compromise by digging out the needed space and assigning a noble to run a burrow, at which point the noble is responsible for enticing a population.

The major problem Toady had with earlier ideas to dwarven autonomy was that the early game needed to be easier to have more direct commands, so, the way to achieve that was to make the early game about direct commands, and make the later game about just zoning things and taking a more hands-off approach with more autonomous dwarves.

Part of how the zoning idea is supposed to work, though, is that they can't actually mine anything without your designating it for safety purposes, but they can furnish things. 

In fact, some people may not even like dwarves furnishing their own rooms, and so part of when I get to that is covering a system where you can sub-zone out where the bed goes, just to appease the people who aren't going to be happy if they lose interior decorating control. 

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 25, 2012, 10:46:58 pm

Social Classes:

In the previous section (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61620.msg3298158#msg3298158), I talked about a general overview of how we could have a distinct gradient of difficulty in the game through using the already extant differentiation in the evolution of a fortress from a mere hole when you first strike the earth to a fortress worthy of a monarch. 

In this post, I want to talk about the internal politics that can be used to make that gradient of difficulty possible. 

Part of the point of this is that, in a sense, having the ability to take on the next challenge will be the reward of overcoming (at least, temporarily) the previous challenge.  Difficulty, in a sense, is its own reward, because it comes with a rank up in status. 

Spoiler: Dwarven non-noble social "classes" (click to show/hide)

I am borrowing somewhat from this page (http://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/123/123%2013%20Society.htm), which should also serve as a refutation of the notion that, as was expressed earlier in this thread, there were no social classes or social mobility.

Social class in this game besides nobility is based upon wealth and debt.

The top of non-noble dwarven society are the freedwarves.  Freedwarves are dwarves who own their own land and livelihoods, and as such, owe no debt to anyone.  They are free to come and go as they please.  This means, in game terms, they own their own housing and a zone for at least some sort of shop for them to run.  Some freedwarves will naturally get wealthier than others, but any dwarf that achieves this level will at the least be afforded some measure of respect, and have a degree of autonomy from the player. 

Freedwarves are not under ordinary compulsion to follow orders by the overseer (the player), although you might be able to impress their service under extraordinary circumstances  (if the fortress feels threatened from external forces, and the fortress naturally bands together), or they may be motivated to follow orders on their own.  However, in general, "Motivation" becomes a problem for freedwarves, as they have minds of their own and agendas of their own, and they may not be inclined to follow you, and regard themselves as free, and therefore not beholden to the government.  They follow if they are convinced to follow because they agree with your policies, but if they don't feel like doing it, they won't. 

Freedwarves can eventually become wealthy enough to form a class of pseudo-noble, or with enough wealth, may become an economic noble in their own right. 

Even though freedwarves have enough wealth to live on their own, they are still usually connected to the fortress through the fact that they often compete with other freedwarves in terms of wealth - they want to have all the nice things their neighbors have, and then some.  Freedwarves buy goods from the economy of the fortress to increase their own status.  At the same time, they must work for the money to buy these goods, and so help further the economy at both ends.  Because they are motivated by profit, you can usually motivate them by simply paying more for the work you want them to do.

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Boarders/Peasants/Villeni are a "standard" type of dwarves.  They may have some wealth or may be slightly in debt, but they do not own any significant property, and as such, must pay rent for their housing.  This rent comes in the form of working for the fortress for amounts that are at least roughly equivalent to the rent of their homes and the cost of their food and drink. 

Boarders should make up the bulk of the working class of your fortress under normal circumstances, and generally just want to be kept safe from the outside threats and have a stable home with regular access to food, a warm, dry place to sleep, and someplace to raise a family without too many accidents, Unfortunate or not. 

Boarders would be impacted by the same general motivation types, but as an in-between class, they have no special function of motivation.  They are quick to rise up under perceived threats to the fortress, and will generally be responsive to anything that is perceived to the wellbeing of the fortress and to being payed, as they want to keep their status as keeping ahead on their debts, and hopefully moving up to being freedwarves. 

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The lowest classes of society are those which are impressed into service for their lords.  These are functionally debt slaves.  Not to be confused with slaves of war, debt slaves consisted throughout most of history, and was the most common form of slavery.  Debt slaves were once farmers or peasants who borrowed money for seed grain or for other reasons, and because the crop failed, or for other reasons they could not pay back their loan, they were impressed into slavery to work for their debt-holder until they had paid back what they owed.  During this time, they would have to pay for their food and rent at the rates that their debt-holder charged, and as such, could be impressed into slavery for life.  Unlike the war slave types, it was often looked upon as "fair" by others that these slaves were kept, as they had failed to pay back their debts, and were probably lazy, and therefore, deserve it. More commonly, however, we think of this form of slavery as "Indentured Servitude".  This form of debt also historically took children away from families to be used as indentured servants, as children could be forced to pay the debts of their parents.  It was historically a source of significant social strife when families were broken up as payment for debts, and caused severe anger from the lower classes.  Most peasant uprisings, in fact, involved demands for the clearing of debt and the redistribution of land back to the lower classes.

So as not to have terminology wars, however, I think it best to just call this class "Serfs".

Serfs are dwarves that have gone some significant degree in debt to the fortress - be it because of high rents or food costs, or because they either could not find work, or they were simply lazy enough that they didn't do enough work to buy their bread. 

Serfs may be motivated by desire to become Boarders again, but others may be content with falling through the cracks or relying upon begging or even theft.  The fortress has the legal right to impress service from serfs against their will, although this may require the use of the fortress guard. 

Serfs, it should be noted, are not particularly loyal to the fortress that has let them fall through the cracks, and as such, having a decent set of guards to keep them in line may be necessary.  (I'm sure some players will find a "beat that serf and tell him to get back to work" button quite enjoyable...)

However, motivation can become a serious problem for those who have fallen enough through the cracks to become jaded at the whole system, and they may easily turn against the fortress - working only when they will be punished for not working, and potentially turning to crime or at least vandalism when they think they can get away with it.  In other words, they may start to see the whole fortress as a prison, and the setup as the fortress against them, and act as if the fortress is their enemy, undermining it from within however they can, if they have a chance.  In this sense, they may become something like vampires in the current game - superficially working for the fort, but having a secret agenda against it.  (This should, however, only be in the cases when those dwarves can't just move out, or are otherwise routinely mistreated by the fortress administrator, although certain personality traits can certainly put one at a more likely disposition to be jaded and rebel against the system in general.)

Beyond that, you can have more control than normal over serfs, provided you have a town guard to enforce it.  You can order where they stay and what foods they are allowed to eat, either to make it cheaper stuff so that they can pay off their debts quickly and become boarders again, or to make it extremely expensive so that they are trapped in perpetual debt cycles (which will make them quite angry if you don't keep discipline).

In terms of progression of a fort, wealthy freedwarves add to the prestige of a fort, and cause the desire of potential migrants to immigrate to go up, while serfs are a significant drag on the prestige of a fort, and heavily discourage migration (as they tend to indicate there are no jobs to be found there). In this way, migration to a fort is determined, in part, by the fact that there are enough jobs available to a fort for the dwarves that are already there to be working at least most of the time, while idlers that fall into serfdom are a warning sign that no jobs are going to be found there.

Spoiler: Class politics (click to show/hide)

As the fortress develops, each class will become more and more divided from one another.  By nature, your legendary armorsmiths and metalworkers and even carpenters are going to become filthy rich while your haulers rot in squalor. 

Again, the funny human (and by extension, dwarven) nature of this is to have each class disdain the others that are less like themselves.  The rich freedwarves despise the poor debtors for not being as cultured or refined or educated as them, and for being "lazy" and not working themselves out of their debts the way they did.  The relatively poor despise the rich for looking down on them and despise those even less fortunate than themselves for being lazier than them.  So on down the chain.  (Nevermind how much overseer policies may have had a role in one dwarf arbitrarily being selected as the lucky one who got the job that made them rich in the first place.)

As such, each class will generally have different demands upon the fort for them. 

Lower classes like the serfs will simply want plenty of work to work off their debts, and want the provision of adequate amounts of relatively safe to eat foods that are cheap and a safe place to sleep. 

Higher classes like the freedwarves and nobles, meanwhile, will demand housing in nicer areas.  This can be achieved through a "desirability" system like the one that the City Builder games like Emperor had.  Beautification projects can improve desirability, as well as entertainment venues within walking distance or libraries or monuments or parks or zoos or other suitable places for dwarven leisure time, while the living areas of lower class dwarves impair desirability.  This, in turn, can (partially) replace room value as a means of what areas dwarves of nobility or higher social status want to live in. 

Lower classes, in turn, can desire different types of amusements, often ones that are more visceral.  The perennial arena suggestions, as well as gambling, sports and other games that are more unpredictable and exciting for them. 

Management of a fortress includes keeping these different classes separate from one another, and not at each other's throats.

---

There are, however, more factors to consider in politics than mere class differences, and as such, the player will be subject to ever-growing divides in their populace that they will have to manage in order to keep a successful fort that doesn't fracture into multiple warring factions.

This is achieved through different forms of loyalties that each dwarf has.  They have a sense of identity through each distinct group within a fortress that a dwarf belongs to, and each one of these groups vie for the loyalties of that dwarf. 

These loyalties are key to the identity of a dwarf: It represents how they see themselves as individuals, such as if they see themselves as a dwarf first, and therefore defined by their reaction to save their fellow dwarves from the external threats that barrel down on them, or do they see themselves more defined by their jobs as carpenters as opposed to the stoneworkers or something else?  Are they defined by being one of the wealthiest and most respected dwarves in the community, a pillar of society?  Or do they see themselves more as servants of Asmelnish, the goddess of trade? 

When threatened, which are they most loyal to?  Will they help their fellow dwarf first, or will they see their social or political or religious rivalries as more important a difference between themselves and other dwarves such that they would rather let goblins have a chance at getting into the fort rather than cooperate with their hated rivals.

Successful fortress managers keep all these vying powers in harmony with one another, and focused upon the common need for survival and communal prosperity, while unsuccessful fortress managers see their fortresses divide into bitter partisan warfare and civil wars that tear apart fortresses from inside that could have withstood any external siege easily.

Spoiler: Guilds and guild politics (click to show/hide)

As your fort grows in economic power, and your dwarves specialize in various types of production, specialists may seek to either join or form trade guilds around their crafts.

As your fort becomes more economically powerful through gaining greater and greater profits through specific types of economic activities (for example, a steel-producing fort becoming rich off of trading away steel arms and armor generating a powerful metalcrafter's guild,) guilds can gain significant political power in your fort, and the leaders of the guild can become nobles in their own right.

Guilds can spawn minor nobles, which are merely titles and prestige added to a dwarf, and a rise in social status, although they may confer some new menu to the player to control guild activities, and major nobles, which go largely beyond your control the way nobles like the old Dungeon Master did.  These major nobles represent managers of more powerful economic interests, and will probably spend their time in managerial duties for their guild.

Major guild nobles can become major financiers of "hill dwarf" activities in the surrounding area of a fort, and manage economic activities beyond your fortress as a whole.  They might also manage trade caravans that your fortress sends out, itself, in search of more trade opportunities.

As such, even if your guild members become major nobles that no longer work directly for the fortress, they can still indirectly bring great wealth into the fortress, and can work together with the fortress administration to further the economic and political interests of all parties. 

Guilds, however, can cause problems, as they are focused mostly upon their own economic gain, and can see other guilds or non-financial matters as unimportant in their quest for the bottom line.  Guilds will oppose taxes or limits on their trade, even if they may be risking the security of the fort or its financial well-being.

Spoiler: Religious factions (click to show/hide)

Different religions can be set up in the fortress, as well. 

Basic amenities for a fort can be a simple shrine, but as more religious dwarves demand better religious services, and nobles who want religious pilgrims to arrive or the prestige religion brings to their fort.  (Not to mention potential access to religious magic or miracles from sufficiently pleased gods when the magic/sphere/gods system kicks in...)

Temples can become guilds in their own right, but with the mission to convert others to their cause and evangelize, as well as to ensure that their deity's wishes are followed, and no action is taken against the edicts of their deity. 

Rival temples can spell trouble as they vie for converts.  Even without rivaling religions, however, religious traditions may be in opposition to the economic interests of guilds or nobles or the fortress as a whole.  (Such as the Christian ban on Usury, which forbade interest-charging consumer loans that would drive citizens into debt.  This, obviously, got in the way of profits, and many means were contrived to evade the ban.) 

Members of religious orders may be faithful upholders of their religion's moral purity, and cause problems if they oppose some of the less moral actions of other members of the fort.  Alternately, they may be led by more corrupt leaders, and cause problems when the faithful are at odds with their leadership.

Either way, religious leaders can claim a spiritual authority that is above mere fortress overseers, and as such, can demand loyalty from the faithful in a way that undermines your own authority.

Spoiler: Clans and family politics (click to show/hide)

Clans can also play a part in DF culture.  As families are often large and extended, families that have obtained great political power can often extend and maintain that power through the use of their relatives. 

These clans often have a noble somewhere in their midst.  As nobles have rivalries, so too, will their clans.

Of course, not all members of an extended family feel much of a kinship for one another.  The poor cousin of a wealthy and powerful noble who never receives aid for his poverty is likely not to feel that their blood runs thicker than water. 

However, more corrupt nobles that like to give kickbacks to their kin in order to buy their loyalty often can ensure that they have loyal allies that can be trusted to be put into positions of power for a political edge - when the cops are all your loyal kinsmen, there's no crime you can be arrested for.

In a small fortress, stacking the political landscape with your kin and lackeys is a primary means of edging your rivals out of power, and keeping it all for your own clan.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: aka010101 on May 27, 2012, 03:09:45 pm

Okay, I've been reading over this (a feat in and of itself, as no one can throw up walls of text like kohaku...) and while all the stuff that's been posted looks good so far, i have two questions about stuff that hasn't quite been posted.

The first is about the inherent differences between dwarves, and our only historical race of reference (I.E. Humans). Dwarves behave very differently than we do, and i'm wondering how that's going to affect politics and the system of government. For exmaple, for humans, the feudal system is based on land and it's ownership. The king gives land to his barons, barons rent it to lords, ect. For dwarves, who live underground, that sort of thing will have to be handled VERY differently, and i'm wondering how you plan to do that.

The second is a question of options. Do you want players to have a CHOICE in what kind of government their fort or civ has. For instance, what if i want to run my fortress as a republic, roman style? Or perhaps a straight up dictatorship, do what the overlord says, or face the hammer. How would that be handled, and how would one go about changing the government of a fort or civ that already exists. Will revolution and secession be possible. That sort of thing.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 27, 2012, 09:33:39 pm

Quote from: aka010101 on May 27, 2012, 03:09:45 pm

Okay, I've been reading over this (a feat in and of itself, as no one can throw up walls of text like kohaku...) and while all the stuff that's been posted looks good so far, i have two questions about stuff that hasn't quite been posted.

The first is about the inherent differences between dwarves, and our only historical race of reference (I.E. Humans). Dwarves behave very differently than we do, and i'm wondering how that's going to affect politics and the system of government. For exmaple, for humans, the feudal system is based on land and it's ownership. The king gives land to his barons, barons rent it to lords, ect. For dwarves, who live underground, that sort of thing will have to be handled VERY differently, and i'm wondering how you plan to do that.

The second is a question of options. Do you want players to have a CHOICE in what kind of government their fort or civ has. For instance, what if i want to run my fortress as a republic, roman style? Or perhaps a straight up dictatorship, do what the overlord says, or face the hammer. How would that be handled, and how would one go about changing the government of a fort or civ that already exists. Will revolution and secession be possible. That sort of thing.

Well, thank you for challenging the feat.  It takes some building to construct those walls, as well.  It's the sort of work for late nights, when my restless morning mind has gone into the focused stares of the half-asleep, and half-driven.

I actually split this post in two for length, so as to keep it more manageable.  The next post is on government types and how the player controls which one they develop.  (The noble tree and government types.)

At a certain level, I do think the current system of just plain being prompted, "do you want a noble", however, is kind of the way to go.  Beyond that, however, I think a setup that is reactive to your playstyle and the context of your fort (like starting scenarios) is best.

I'd say more, but I'm going to just put it in the next major post, anyway. 

---

Because it doesn't really fit in anywhere else, though, I've been playing some other games recently, in between spats of writing, as a means of priming the creative pump, looking for good ideas to swipe. 

I've been playing Patrician III, a game I nabbed over a Steam sale a couple years ago ($2 on sale, and it's at only $5 regular price - worth a try if you're at all interested in the genre), and only now started playing. 

The game is at once pretty simple, but actually very subtle with some complex mechanics under the hood. 

On the surface, it's a naval trading game like the old Uncharted Waters/New Horizons games, but where you just sit in an office the whole time and tell other people to sail your ships for you.  Typical trading game mechanics - buy low, sell high, each town has specialties where they manufacture 4-6 out of 15 or so goods, and need to import the rest. 

The difference is, you actually have a large degree of control over the towns, themselves.  Trade with them so that their needs are supplied, and their surpluses are sold for a profit, and their economy improves, which brings more people into town, which increases their demand for goods, which increases the amount of goods you can sell them in a go around for a high enough price to be worth trading. 

As you build up cash, you can build your own workshops in the town, which not only lets you get goods directly at a stable price, but also employs the town's working classes, which further improves the economy in the region, and you can build and own townhouses for your workers to rent out rooms. 

You can then build improvements that you "donate" to the town in your name.  This doesn't profit you directly, but it improves your good name, and it improves the economy further to have infrastructure spending on the roads and wells.

The more and more of a town that you wind up either owning or having your name carved upon as you donated it as a civil work, the more power and influence you have in town until you can get yourself declared Lord Mayor, and eventual Alderman of the whole merchant guild over the Hanseatic League. 

Basically, it's all a matter of just keeping the wheels of commerce spinning ever faster and making a profit on every spin of the wheel.

At the same time, there are a dozen or two other rival trading companies, all doing their own thing, building their own industries, and potentially helping you by also building up the economy in their own way, even as they slice out a share for themselves. 

---

Also of note, this game has a low/middle/high class system, as well - Low class citizens only buy cheap goods, but buy in bulk, eating up grain, beer, fish, and timber mostly, but also a little leather, cloth, whale oil, and pottery.  The rich, meanwhile, consume meat, wine, furs, iron goods, honey, and spices.  The middle classes consume a little of everything but the highest-end goods like spices and furs. 

Each class has its own happiness meter, and can riot or vacate the city when they are dissatisfied, such as when they cannot have the foods of their price range available.  Each class has its own housing types, as well, and the balance of who moves in is based upon how you are satisfying those basics.

The lower classes do the work in your facotry, but aren't very profitable customers.  The rich do no work for you, but they are the customers for the high-profit goods you make your living supplying.

---

Steam is completely changing the way I play games - I used to play games for hundreds of hours and tried to find every last thing I could find while exploring a game for all its content.  Now, I buy games for $2 and play for just a few hours, just to get a grasp of what basic concepts the games use and what unique gimmicks they can cram in.  It's a real sampler platter. 

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Waparius on May 27, 2012, 10:23:31 pm

Quote

The second is a question of options. Do you want players to have a CHOICE in what kind of government their fort or civ has. For instance, what if i want to run my fortress as a republic, roman style? Or perhaps a straight up dictatorship, do what the overlord says, or face the hammer. How would that be handled, and how would one go about changing the government of a fort or civ that already exists. Will revolution and secession be possible. That sort of thing.

Seems most likely, given Toady's approach, that it'll just run generic-fantasy style, with a monarch who is periodically assassinated.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Phlum on May 27, 2012, 10:30:21 pm

I think that it should be decided how the world works and what dangers the dwarfs will face before worrying about the dwarf social life. For now, they are too mentally backwards to think about this, "politics." t

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea, But dwarf fortress doesn't have the foundation and mechanics to allow for this complexity, yet. I mean that not even the physics of the world have been finalized. Much less the complexities of society.

I would guess that there is a long term plan for something like this. Just based on some of the traits that seem without much purpose, IE. rebelliousness and the like.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 27, 2012, 11:10:42 pm

Quote from: Phlum on May 27, 2012, 10:30:21 pm

I think that it should be decided how the world works and what dangers the dwarfs will face before worrying about the dwarf social life. For now, they are too mentally backwards to think about this, "politics." t

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea, But dwarf fortress doesn't have the foundation and mechanics to allow for this complexity, yet. I mean that not even the physics of the world have been finalized. Much less the complexities of society.

I would guess that there is a long term plan for something like this. Just based on some of the traits that seem without much purpose, IE. rebelliousness and the like.

Well, these major threads I write are all severely long-term.  Part of the reason I'm writing this is to make an argument for the things I think should be in the Personality Rewrites, which are coming up "soonish". 

Basically, I'm laying the groundwork for arguing for certain traits being put in during the Personality Rewrites (like the motivation meters, the loyalties, for example,) as well as the Standing Production Orders. 

In order to argue for what these "foundational" changes Toady is coming up upon should include, I have to start by talking about where I think we could be building. 

Further, it's not like Toady hasn't been tinkering with ideas of how guilds work or nobles and he's going to include some economic system eventually for the Caravan Arc.  About half of this is something Toady's already planning to do, and I'm just trying to show how the other half will tie in with the stuff he already wants to do to make a grand simulation and management game.

Part of the point of the severe complexity and rising challenge with how far you develop these ideas - like farming, or mining, or military, or economic or other forms of social power in this thread - is that it makes it so that there is a natural divergence in how different players will experience the game. 

That is, the idea is that farming can be simple, and produce little, and players will have to somehow find a way to trade for most of their food, which in turn means they are more vulnerable to sieges, and need to focus more on a proactive military.  Alternately, the player can go for a complex and advanced farm, and players can focus in on farming and mining, and because they don't rely on trade, can ignore social and military development.  Hence, specialization in handling one field of the game's complexity allows you to have more slack in the other areas of the game.

Between the mining (stone, metal, coal, and gems), farming (food, cloth, wood, leather, bone, oil, and spices/decorative goods), and social changes (the labor supply to use these things), the idea also is that all the major "raw materials" of the game will become more challenging and deep across-the-board, meaning that you can't just assume an infinite supply of stone or metal or food or labor - you have to actively plan for all these things in advance.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: RanDomino on May 29, 2012, 12:11:46 am

I have to say, I hate money both irl and the concept of it in DF, and I hope it will be possible to at least turn it off without destroying the rest of these ideas.  Viva Communist Fortress!

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 19, 2012, 02:44:24 pm

In the political intrigue game, you have a court (a special menu) and the ability to make decisions about your land holdings, and different nobles of the same civ are constantly spying on each other's court to gain advantages over the others.  Gaining enough prestige to climb in ranks through nobility means gaining more and more noble tree nobles under your banner, expanding the number of hill dwarves under your command, and gaining economic, military, or religious influence by running trade caravans that bring profits to the kingdom (that are taxed by the king)

For that matter, the king will have their own court, and will be ordering you as a vassal to provide for the kingdom in some way.  This means that you may be given directions to generate more wealth (through trade) and paying up some of that wealth in taxes, more soldiers or to fight and gain military victories, or to simply train troops and lend them to the armies of more powerful military dwarf nobles, or to appease the gods or seek their favor for religious forts.  Fulfilling these royal demands gives you more prestige and failing them harms your prestige, and may get your noble stripped of his title if they lose it all.

There should definitely be a 'military prestige' branch, rewarding you for making your baron into a front-line fighter.

And maybe if the King issues edicts that are impossible or suicidal ("Destroy the entire Giant civilization singlehandedly by year's end, using only weapons engraved with my face!"), you could have the option of seceeding, which would probably prompt a civil war invasion of your fort by the kingdom (or a coup, if there's existing dissent against a mad king- which could even result in your baron/count/duke being made king, if his prestige is high enough... of course, having the cojones to seceed or declare a coup should mean a hell of a bump to it).

Quote

potential death of the fort motivating them

If your dwarves aren't staring death in the face every waking moment (and every sleeping one, in their endless nightmares), you're not having fun.

Quote

You could even start setting different price gradients of what you are willing to pay the more low your supplies get.  ("I'll pay you double, just somebody make some booze before there's a riot!")

This might just be my pervasive anticapitalism talking, but why would 'you' (the embodiment of the noble class, or maybe the State) need to comission that (or practically anything, really) if the economy is as demand-oriented as you describe?  Shouldn't they just automatically price-gouge?

Quote

Means by which stages are advanced

If every character now has personal power and motivations, isn't "advancements" as discrete stages a vestigal way of thinking about it?

Quote

(I'm sure some players will find a "beat that serf and tell him to get back to work" button quite enjoyable...)

I'm having trouble reconciling your general vision of DF with players who aren't sociopaths.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Waparius on May 29, 2012, 02:40:37 am

Quote from: RanDomino on May 29, 2012, 12:11:46 am

I'm having trouble reconciling your general vision of DF with players who aren't sociopaths.

Sociopathy=/=sadism.

Besides, I love making chickens explode in Dungeon Keeper precisely because I doubt I could kill a chicken (in non-desperate circumstances, etc) in real life.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 29, 2012, 04:17:30 am

Quote from: RanDomino on May 29, 2012, 12:11:46 am

I have to say, I hate money both irl and the concept of it in DF, and I hope it will be possible to at least turn it off without destroying the rest of these ideas.  Viva Communist Fortress!

I am going to talk about it more in the next major post, but...

Communism only particularly works when you have a community small enough that nobody can free ride without drawing the ire and retribution of others in the community, which in turn means it has to be small enough for everyone to know everyone, and where everyone has a shared, united identity.  This could be religious in nature (the so-called religious communism, like the Catholic Church orders where people forswear all personal property, and live purely off church money, but where everyone is explicitly there because they chose to be there), or because of a desperate enough situation against an external threat that all members are motivated to work together for the common good for survival's sake, or because everyone is known and either at least distantly related or friends with everyone else. 

The way that this is enforced is through the "motivation" mechanic I'm going to get into with the Personality Rewrites portion - the more your fortress becomes large, wealthy, impersonal, and factionalized, the less motivated your dwarves will be to work for a communal good when they don't feel any particular communal identity.  Hence, you have to supplement that lack of motivation to act for the common good with a motivation for personal gain through offering a share of the wealth of the fortress to them in the form of functional store credit to buy some of the things your fortress has produced. 

If you want to have a permanent communist outpost, it should be possible (after all, many actual villages were functionally communist or anarchistic or even democratic at the time, but only on a small scale of a single village) but it would require finding ways to minimalize the factionalism and size of a fortress.  That would mean, for example, making your fortress an "abbey" or something where everyone is there for a common (in this case, religious) purpose so as to give them a better communal shared identity to work towards collectively.

Meanwhile, reveling in capitalism would more quickly allow for rapid growth, but expose serious social fissures that the player must manage. 

At least, in theory...
Hope that gives you an idea of where I'm going with this.

Quote from: RanDomino on May 29, 2012, 12:11:46 am

There should definitely be a 'military prestige' branch, rewarding you for making your baron into a front-line fighter.

And maybe if the King issues edicts that are impossible or suicidal ("Destroy the entire Giant civilization singlehandedly by year's end, using only weapons engraved with my face!"), you could have the option of seceeding, which would probably prompt a civil war invasion of your fort by the kingdom (or a coup, if there's existing dissent against a mad king- which could even result in your baron/count/duke being made king, if his prestige is high enough... of course, having the cojones to seceed or declare a coup should mean a hell of a bump to it).

This basically sounds like we're talking about Mount&Blade (http://www.taleworlds.com/), now. 

Quote from: RanDomino on May 29, 2012, 12:11:46 am

If your dwarves aren't staring death in the face every waking moment (and every sleeping one, in their endless nightmares), you're not having fun.

I guess my forts don't have much fun outside the first year, then... but then, that's kind of why I'm making these "make the game harder as you go on for greater periods of time" suggestions in the first place.

Anyway, the idea is that if you have serious external threats like military invasions and FBs and it's causing deaths that make dwarves seriously aware of how easily their society could collapse, they will "rally around the flag" and be more motivated to work together in spite of their differences.  If not, then they can descend more into factionalism, and you have to find ways to deal with inter-factional diplomacy or motivate your dwarves more with money than communal good.

Quote from: RanDomino on May 29, 2012, 12:11:46 am

This might just be my pervasive anticapitalism talking, but why would 'you' (the embodiment of the noble class, or maybe the State) need to comission that (or practically anything, really) if the economy is as demand-oriented as you describe?  Shouldn't they just automatically price-gouge?

That depends on what setup your fort has.  If the price of their finished product is going up, but because of the arrangement the fortress has, they are paid a salary instead of owning their final product, then they'd not be more motivated to work until the price of their finished goods goes down.  (The same as a real-life factory worker who is paid by the hour instead of owning the goods they have a hand in producing...)

Quote from: RanDomino on May 29, 2012, 12:11:46 am

If every character now has personal power and motivations, isn't "advancements" as discrete stages a vestigal way of thinking about it?

It's an advancement for the fortress, not the individual characters. 

The idea is, however, that immigration to the fortress is controlled by things other than just plain wealth that you can produce quickly and easily right at the start, and hit 200 dwarves by year 2.  If, instead, you have to work on getting more "fortress prestige" to get more than 30 dwarves who directly know your starting seven to sign up to join your fortress, it will both stretch out that unfortunate flooding effect of immigrants, as well as make immigrants a reward, rather than a challenge or punishment for having too much fort wealth, and also add some sense of realism that dwarves aren't just waiting in the wings to join the first fort that isn't dying on its first couple months.  If you feel like dwarves will only join your fort when you've proven something about it - that it's safe, and wealthy, and not really a squalid little hole where there's nothing to eat but just plump helmets, then the game feels less gamey to have these limitless supplies of cannon-fodder showing up.

Quote from: RanDomino on May 29, 2012, 12:11:46 am

Quote

(I'm sure some players will find a "beat that serf and tell him to get back to work" button quite enjoyable...)

I'm having trouble reconciling your general vision of DF with players who aren't sociopaths.

I think my statement, with emphasis on the word some, stands pretty much incontestable. 

Let's face it, some players want to be bastards.  There's no point fighting it - just give them the chance to do it, but the reason people aren't absolute bastards in real life is that it often has consequences, and if you can model realistic consequences to psychopathic behavior, then it feels more justified to the playerbase as a whole than some arbitrary game mechanic limiting you to only certain actions. 

That said, some players may not want to play that way, and there are mechanics for not having to play that way. 

That's the whole point of the noble tree and government structures - to give you a little creative expression over what sort of fortress internal structure you are going to build. 

---

Oddly, even though I chose the name "class warfare" as a tongue-in-cheek joke reference to the simple fact that I was suggesting rich dwarves, it seems like I've somehow gotten into an argument on the merits of Communism, anyway. 

Who knew Occupy Wall Street would come along and make the whole concept relevant in the intervening years?

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: RanDomino on May 29, 2012, 02:17:57 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 29, 2012, 04:17:30 am

The way that this is enforced is through the "motivation" mechanic I'm going to get into with the Personality Rewrites portion - the more your fortress becomes large, wealthy, impersonal, and factionalized, the less motivated your dwarves will be to work for a communal good when they don't feel any particular communal identity.  Hence, you have to supplement that lack of motivation to act for the common good with a motivation for personal gain through offering a share of the wealth of the fortress to them in the form of functional store credit to buy some of the things your fortress has produced.

That might be true for Human Town, but I think Dwarves are generally considered to be more stoic, impersonal, and collective-minded.  DF Dwarves may be a little scatterbrained but I don't know how much of that is programming/processing limitations and how much is intended.

Quote

If you want to have a permanent communist outpost, it should be possible (after all, many actual villages were functionally communist or anarchistic or even democratic at the time, but only on a small scale of a single village)

well, I have to say, that's the idea- the most advanced contemporary conceptions of communist society for large populations use network theory and overlapping memberships in multiple small groups to have potentially very large populations with a similar 'cousins' connection, though not actually family.  But of course this is not "anarchocommunist fortress" either.  Although it should be observed that the population of forts generally top out at 200 or so, well within the 'small village' scale for communist society.

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Hope that gives you an idea of where I'm going with this.

I agree with the goals but I'm not sure introducing real-world economics (well, mainstream economic theory) is right for DF.  From what I understand the last implementation of the economy was a huge mess.

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Anyway, the idea is that if you have serious external threats like military invasions and FBs and it's causing deaths that make dwarves seriously aware of how easily their society could collapse, they will "rally around the flag" and be more motivated to work together in spite of their differences.  If not, then they can descend more into factionalism, and you have to find ways to deal with inter-factional diplomacy or motivate your dwarves more with money than communal good.

well, what seems like 'easy mode' to players (walls and deathtraps) might still be terrifying to the dwarves.  With Fortress Defense, you can easily have a siege every year, which is a ton really.

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Oddly, even though I chose the name "class warfare" as a tongue-in-cheek joke reference to the simple fact that I was suggesting rich dwarves, it seems like I've somehow gotten into an argument on the merits of Communism, anyway. 

Who knew Occupy Wall Street would come along and make the whole concept relevant in the intervening years?

bah, they're a bunch of noobs; I would have had this same argument a year ago.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: dizzyelk on May 29, 2012, 09:33:28 pm

Quote from: RanDomino on May 29, 2012, 02:17:57 pm

Quote from: NW_Kohaku on May 29, 2012, 04:17:30 am

The way that this is enforced is through the "motivation" mechanic I'm going to get into with the Personality Rewrites portion - the more your fortress becomes large, wealthy, impersonal, and factionalized, the less motivated your dwarves will be to work for a communal good when they don't feel any particular communal identity.  Hence, you have to supplement that lack of motivation to act for the common good with a motivation for personal gain through offering a share of the wealth of the fortress to them in the form of functional store credit to buy some of the things your fortress has produced.

That might be true for Human Town, but I think Dwarves are generally considered to be more stoic, impersonal, and collective-minded.  DF Dwarves may be a little scatterbrained but I don't know how much of that is programming/processing limitations and how much is intended.

That depends entirely on how dwarves are defined as. In literature they range anywhere from gruff but kindhearted workaholics who put the well being of the clan above personal considerations to outright jerks who work hard simply to gain more money, and are insanely tight-fisted and violent. Who's to say that the current impression of DF dwarves is nothing more than a placeholder while Toady fixes all that was (so very) wrong with the economy.

Title: Re: Class Warfare: Internal politics, scaling difficulty, and personalities
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 30, 2012, 11:09:44 am

The primary problem with economics is that the entire actual field of economics is no longer mainstream, and people listen to business school majors and political operatives while demonizing the actual economists as not knowing economics. 

We've had some of these debates before, and trust me, I doubt many of the things that I'm going to be suggesting are actually going to be controversial in the least (as in, it's mostly what you'd find in every Macroeconomics 101 textbook, including notions like substitute goods and the like).  Further, nothing I'm using hasn't been "theory" for at least a hundred years.

As for what dwarves are like "canonically" in DF, I'd just point to the fact that whenever you start DF.exe, then the game will put up randomly selected words to fill the following subtitle: "Histories of [synonym of greed] and [synonym of industriousness]."  Given the generally LotR nature of dwarves in this game, "digging too greedy and too deep" is basically the whole nature of dwarves Toady is going for as the reasons for their downfalls.

Title: Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
Post by: Bohandas on May 31, 2012, 10:29:54 pm

Quote from: RanDomino on May 29, 2012, 12:11:46 am

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(I'm sure some players will find a "beat that serf and tell him to get back to work" button quite enjoyable...)

I'm having trouble reconciling your general vision of DF with players who aren't sociopaths.

Such a feature isn't actually so far fetched. I believe the game Dungeon Keeper actually had a button like this; And Evil Genius had a button to have minions summarily executed.

Title: Re: Class Warfare: Internal politics, scaling difficulty, and personalities
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 12, 2013, 04:12:23 pm

Noble Trees and Fortress Governance Structures - Part 1:

While I mentioned in the Sliding Scale of Difficulty section that the scale of the fortress would have multiple stages, and that fortress governments would grow in relation to that, the concept of the Noble Tree is to allow for players to choose which type of government they want their fortress to have through a gradual development of their noble tree. 

Spoiler: The stems of the branches (click to show/hide)

Currently, we have appointed nobles like the militia commander, the chief medical dwarf, and the bookkeeper.  We can appoint them basically whenever we want, but bookkeepers have some (minor) prerequisites.   

At the same time, your nobles are promoted when certain milestones are crossed.  Barons become counts then dukes. Bookkeepers can also get nominal promotions, and these are also based upon crossing certain milestones of fortress size.

The proposition here is to make how you climb each branch on this tree more specific.

That is, to bring back the notion of the guildmasters, you start out with the ability at a very early point in the game to start declaring people things like "farming foreman" or "carpenter foreman".  Like bookkeeper, this would only take maybe a basic office at first, and some minimum number of dwarves with labors of that type enabled.

This foreman is the first stage in the growth of the guild of that labor type.  Hence, they're like how the Expedition Leader is a forerunner of a mayor, and their position, as it grows in power, will grow into being this fortress's guild leader for that type of job.

At this point, they gain a minor noble status, and can make some minor demands. At first, probably only for what their minimum necessities to do their job would be, like keeping that office, although they may also demand more pay than a standard laborer, or a salary, once the economy is turned on.  The point is, this is the start of a new noble-like position, and your first guild leader in this new guild.

Notably, you don't exactly have to promote anyone to this job (just like you don't have to promote a militia leader) so that you never have to start down the path of this growth.

It would also be up to the dwarf in question whether they accept the job, as well.  Dwarves might not be qualified to take up a job as a foreman of a certain type of labor.  Taking up the job might require having at least one labor of that guild activated, and having at least some bare minimum skill in that job.  It could also require a personality suited to (affinity for) both doing the job of their trade (I.E. not hate mining if they are going to be appointed to head the mining guild) and for the actual tasks of management (which may require being willing to do deskwork and responsibility over other workers, so lone wolf types may not be suited to it).

---

It's worth pointing out at this point that the guilds should probably be reshuffled from the way they were in 0.23 - throwing all craftsdwarves into a single guild would make them far too valuable once this suggestion gets going with the value of ceramics, glassblowers, and other types of dwarven jobs that will be more valuable than just trappers.  Mixing mining in with the architecture and masonry may also be advisable.

---

This would just be the industrial end of the scale, of course.

For religions, starting with any time some set number of people of a given religion are in the same fortress, there may be pressure for at least some kind of temple, and a particularly devout member of a religion may start lobbying for a chance to start their own temple. 

This would primarily require designation of a sufficient space for the worshipers to congregate, and possibly a table for an altar or something, and maybe a statue at a later date. 

Military "nobles" would start with the militia commander, and with the captains of each squad.

Commerce nobles could start with the creation of the trading depot or tavern (with the fortress negotiator and tavernmaster being appointed nobles) and involve the actual work of doing the negotiation.

Governmental nobles would be largely as they are now - appointing a bookkeeper to gain access to accurate stocks information.  Mayors appearing as your town gains in stature.  (Players might have more influence over who becomes mayor, however, or choose not to have a mayor.)

The difference in government nobles would become most apparent when it came time to have a baron - a town fortress may be capable of choosing not to have a baron, and having either a military command (especially if it was a starting scenario to that effect), a free city's lord mayor (elected mostly by the guilds or trade unions), an abbot of a more strictly religious fortress (especially for starting scenarios revolving around building a great church in the area), or other appropriate central authority (if there is one).

---

One of the key reasons why you would want to create these nobles is because it creates the interface of that noble for you to better administer the fortress.

Continuing on from the thread's original intent to make the player take a far more managerial role as the game goes on, zooming back out of a micromanagement role to a macromanaging one, the appointed nobles you institute take over some of the micromanagement as you give them macromanaging commands.

Similar to what has been suggested in the Improved Farming thread, rather than requiring players to micromanage the steps to achieving some end-product, you merely order of your guild leaders the finished products you want, and they will place the orders into the queue for the intermediate products after telling you what they are ordering, provided that they are authorized to use those materials.

Spoiler: Authorizations (click to show/hide)

Authorization would allow players to declare certain types of materials off-limits.  This would mean that, in a sand-less map where you have to trade for scarce amounts of sand, you could declare automatic glass-ordering off-limits.  You would then be specifically warned when sand would be required to make a product, and have to manually order those specific jobs done.

Authorization could also have limits - you "budget" a specific number of items they can order per year or other unit of time.  (As per the permissions of the farming thread, where they have permission to use a budget of so much fertilizer per field per harvest.) Hence, you could "budget" only 80 logs be harvested to the carpentry guild master in order to prevent

What having the intermediate products automatically ordered would do would be to allow, for example, the player to tie in a burrow to where woodcutters are allowed to chop down trees, and then have the carpentry or metalworking guild leaders order the cutting of more trees as your fortress needed them.  For another example, more steel could be ordered automatically when you order a new steel breastplate to be made, and if that requires ordering more charcoal be made from wood, then that is ordered, as well.

Hence, rather than bogging the player down in work cancellation catching, you can have a player only getting notified (probably with a much more notable warning) when you hit some sort of absolute barrier to getting a job done (such as running completely out of trees to chop down).

This also is a crucial step in allowing for more advanced workshop types, where advanced products might require more than a single raw material, or require multiple intermediate stages of production, and the advanced workshops that produce advanced finished products may require multiple products more complex than merely a single stone block to produce the workshop. 

Threads such as this one on more complex workshop types (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=106586.0), and even more specific ideas like this one on furnaces particularly (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122415.msg4020705#msg4020705), and this mod in progress (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=99465.0) all involve ways in which people are trying to do what SirHoneyBadger is calling "micro-detailing" of the game.  However, because of the current interface, it requires micromanagement, as well.

Hence, with a carpentry foreman, if creating an advanced carpentry workshop requires a serrated steel disc and you don't have one, rather than manually ordering one in order to upgrade your workshop, so long as you have given permission for them to use steel bars, they can order a new serrated steel disc and install it in their workshop.  If given permission, workshops can be upgraded automatically.

This also means that ordering an exquisite enameled chalice could require just a single order - the order for the metalsmiths to make a goblet, and the order for glassblowers to start preparing the enamel (which could mean grinding metals to powder if you go that path), and for the orders to improve the goblets to all go to their respective specialists by the order of the official, rather than the player.

Spoiler: Non-guild Authorizations (click to show/hide)

This also applies to churches - as they grow, they can start ordering statues of their deity added, or have donated statues to their church placed automatically within their own zones inside the fort.

To apply this to military organizations, this would mean that if you had a uniform for a given squad of speardwarves, then, if there were a deficiency of any piece of equipment, then the armor in question would be automatically ordered to equip any soldier who was missing equipment.

A mandating noble, for that matter, may go ahead and just plain order their mandated goblets themselves.

---

Traders, for that matter, could automatically trade the goods they are authorized to trade, and purchase the goods they are authorized to purchase.

More specific authorizations would be in play here, used to automate the trading process. 

Rather than having to wait for goods to be delivered to a trade depot before being able to move your own goods to the depot, then having to manually select each individual item for trade from what can be dozens of pages of trade goods, players can simply set criteria for what trade goods they want to buy and sell in exchange. They can also set a certain amount of goods be set aside as tribute to the trade partners.

What's more, they can order goods brought to the depot at a period of time before the actual traders arrive, keeping goods there waiting for the trade to take place.

Trade depots could also be set up for different potential trading partners, each with a trader in charge in order to set different authorizations for trade. 

This would also assist in the Tavern-style trading of individual visitors, where you cannot ask players to manually involve themselves in the sale of each individual flagon of ale - you simply set prices for the ale, and what you'll accept in lieu of cash.

Players will want to trade based upon raw material types alone (players always want to buy things like steel bars), but also set criteria like "anything made of steel", or "anything made of steel not costing more than 1,000☼" since they will want to melt that steel down.  They may also set specific criteria - "buy exactly 50 logs of wood per year". Or have something more fanciful, such as, "buy a trade good with decorations of at least exceptional quality", especially as having higher-quality goods becomes a more important part of later aspects of this suggestion.

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As a matter of interface, it would also make sense for the authorization of automatic ordering to include an option to tell dwarves to prefer a specific type of material - that is, if you need a new box ordered, you could tell them to prefer to make boxes out of stone because you have plentiful stone, and not to prefer making it out of steel because that's relatively rare.  Some players may prefer glass, for example, since sand is at least currently infinite, while others would just want to eliminate the stone.

There would be advantages to having a guild interface beyond just the capacity to have orders automatically authorized and carried out. 

This is in following with the notion that Toady had about our positions as players being reflections of some appointed noble in your fortress - as you appoint nobles, you gain access to the commands they can give, and also to the information they collect.  You have to manually look all over your fortress for a log if you have no bookkeeper, but with a bookkeeper keeping track of everything, you can instantly look at the stocks screen to see how many logs you have, and then zoom on the map to a specific log if you so choose.

Likewise, nobles can give more data on your fortress as certain aspects of your fortress become more complex and have more layers of bureaucracy - the advantage is that you have more bureaucrats that can just give you information rather than requiring players fish it out, themselves.  (Or through memory-hacking tools...)

Spoiler: Appointed Noble Information Pages (click to show/hide)

Each guild's interface page could convey information pertinent to its own operation. 

Currently, it's hard to get a real sense of what has been done over a period of time in a fortress, and there have been threads requesting a "yearly report (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=24789.msg280730#msg280730)" for a fortress. Guild nobles can fill in that void by giving reports on their particular guild's productivity, giving players a better understanding of how their fort operates.

The mining guild, for example, could display the number of picks, available miners (and what tasks they are on, with color-coding indicating if they are doing something other than mining) and a total count of what amount of area is designated for mining, as well as a count of how much area has been mined that year, and a break-down of what boulders have been yielded through that mining.  (Plans to introduce an auto-mining feature for specific minerals would fit in nicely at this point, as well.)

A "hiring" tab would also be a useful addition - dwarves that have personalities or affinities that lend themselves well towards mining (or, in the case of advanced enough personalities, dwarves that volunteer themselves for the job) can be listed, along with guides to what other labors they are doing (or not doing) so that players can easily find new dwarves to fill a position if you need more labor.

The screen could also show information on how productive the dwarves of that guild have been, so that players can know when it's time to release a dwarf from that guild and put them in a new line of work, or else to up the work load.

---

The carpentry guild, meanwhile, could display current wood stock, current jobs queued, raw materials consumed, intermediate and finished goods produced, and time spent at each of the workshops.

You could also assign specific orders, standing orders, and authorizations to the guild at the menu.  Ordering the guild keep producing beds for as long as there are less than 10 unassigned beds in the fortress, for example.  Likewise, the previously-mentioned ability to authorize the automatic felling of trees, (within a specific burrow,) rather than manually having to order felling, whenever the log stock gets below a certain number, and possibly only up to a specific number per year.

Other industry-type guilds could show similar specific things to their types of crafts.

The farming interface detailed in the Improved Farming thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=76007.msg1920010#msg1920010) would take up most of the actual job of controlling the farms if implemented as I detailed in that thread.  However, for the farming guild page, the setting of hiring policy for farms, and how dwarves might be taken on to work the fields during a harvest could be set.  Likewise, it would be a good place to give breakdowns of which farmers have been working the most, and how much farm yield you have gotten for the year.

The taming guild (which may swallow up the old dungeon master noble concept) could also have the list of tamed creatures, and which ones are in danger of losing their taming.

---

Religious noble pages could involve an interface for the amount of faithful in the area (meaning beyond the fortress as it grows in power), and what services the priests may provide (including divine magic or prayers for intervention, if applicable).

Trade noble pages can be used to set the previously mentioned trade policies and authorizations, but also be used to launch new caravans that actively seek trade with other towns or villages.

Military noble pages could being showing the local area, and what threats might be marched upon, opening up the Fortress Mode portion of the military arc.

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Noble-noble pages (heh) that involve having a baron with control over the surrounding land would similarly show a map of what territories are a part of the barony/county/duchy and involve your noble's diplomacy to the other nobles in the kingdom, and standing with the monarch. 

Separately the kingdom's interface opens when you get the monarch. This would be the opening of the Monarchy Interface (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=76667.0) that lets you set whole kingdom-wide policy, but at the same time, be involved in noble politics.  The "council of nobles" that could occur at some specified time each year might convene in your fortress, then, creating the orders for each fiefdom in the kingdom and how they will behave for the coming year.

These nobles might appoint new agents, such as diplomats or spies or the like to be sent out into the field to make their will manifest throughout the land.

Spoiler: Advancement up the branches (click to show/hide)

Several features of the guilds may not be immediately available.  The ability to track yearly status reports, for example, may require a secondary noble appointed through the guild just for bookkeeping on the guild's specific affairs.  (The task might not be as laborious as the normal bookkeeper, and allow for still performing other tasks besides bookkeeping.)

Splitting off benefits of the interface (or technology or respect and power over the surrounding lands) provides a clear distinction between and incentive to advance up the branches.

The actual act of advancing up the branches would depend upon demonstration of your fortress's reliance upon, and mastery of, the specific branch you are climbing. 

For a guild to be promoted from merely a collection of workers with a foreman to an actual guild branch, you might need to export a certain number of goods of above-standard quality to the mountainhome in order to be recognized as a branch of that guild.  (Some guilds, like the mining guild, would need different standards, like excavating sufficient quantities of ore or gems, and trading items made of mined materials back to the mountainhome, or having sufficiently domesticated a type of animal to prove the worth of your animal tamers.)  This would be the first step in gaining real recognition for your fortress as a place of business for that specific field of work.

Successive steps would involve making your guild have a chapterhouse for your guild, which could be where you gain the bookkeeper of the guild, as well as hold guild meetings and perform training by guild members.  Advancing beyond that point would require a minimum number of beyond-expert craftsdwarves in that field as a starting point, but also building of advanced workshops, and trading of advanced finished products, as well as enough volume of trade to actually bring more caravans into your fort specifically requesting your specialized goods.  Trade would be important enough to require a monetary economy to advance beyond that point, as well.

Beyond that point, your guilds would become economic entities of their own right, becoming more autonomous, and buying and selling things directly from your fort through the menu interface. The guild would compete monetarily with its fellow guild chapters for dominance, and as such, advancement depends more upon how the guild is capable of advancing in prestige through the capacity to trade its goods and grow in wealth and influence.

---

Trade (and tavern) organizations grow with power into full-fledged merchant houses. As they gain wealth and power, they gain some degree of autonomy, and are more and more capable of using the money they bring in from outside to buy goods directly from your fort, rather than as a part of your fort. 

Trade caravans may be launched from your fortress that are independent traders seeking out their own fortunes, and grow in power and wealth on their own. 

Fortress-financed traders that specifically are owned by the noble or other governing body of a not-entirely-mercantile fort will merely have clout as far as they have money, influence in the fort, and a length of leash to spend on their own.  (Military forts under the king's financing may strictly regulate what is traded.)

Regardless, they grow in power as they grow in both their own personal wealth and capacity to trade larger numbers of goods at any given point in time, but also with how respected and welcomed they are to either foreign traders (if they remain as just a stationary trading post) or to foreign markets (if they drive a caravan).

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Religious organizations, meanwhile, grow both with respect to gaining divine favor, (which may require the concepts of Contract Magic (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=109726.0) or something similar to flesh out deities to make their demands and mechanics of gaining favor meaningful) as well as gaining enough believers and political clout within the hierarchy of the church, itself to start garnering ordinations to higher orders.

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Military organizations grow in recognition both through training a sufficient number of sufficiently disciplined troops, and also through the fame they achieve in their kills.  Advancing a lieutenant up to general is a process of acquiring more soldiers, and garnering sufficiently legendary kills, including not just taking on goblin sieges, but also Forgotten Beasts or Megabeasts with relatively few losses of soldiers.  (Having a soldier with an actual claim to the kill in the army helps with getting the promotion.)

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Titled Nobles, meanwhile, need to gain standing in the court to gain higher titles.  This would mean using the noble's page for diplomacy with other members of the court, and finding ways to raise their personal court favor.  This could mean tons of gifts, sending military aid to other nobles, sending a particularly skilled craftsdwarf to a different court, or using specially-trained "agents" to cause trouble for others (potentially weakening or eliminating those who stand opposed to their rise to power).  Again, I point to this thread for examples of what agents could do outside the fortress (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=76667.0).

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Since this post is getting tortuously long, I will make this a two-parter, instead.

Title: Re: Class Warfare: Intenral politics, scaling difficulty, and personalities
Post by: Putnam on February 12, 2013, 07:35:51 pm

...Intenral?

Title: Re: Class Warfare: Intenral politics, scaling difficulty, and personalities
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 12, 2013, 10:43:26 pm

Quote from: Putnam on February 12, 2013, 07:35:51 pm

...Intenral?

I have no idea what you are talking about, but it is surely a campaign of outrageous deafmation defamation!

Title: Re: Class Warfare: Intenral politics, scaling difficulty, and personalities
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 21, 2013, 12:40:29 am

Noble Trees and Fortress Governance Structures - Part 2:

The development of these power-bases within your fortress can shape very different types of fortresses. 

In a manner of speaking, you can consider it like choosing "classes" or skills from a skill tree for an individual character in a more traditional RPG.  The noble tree branches you head down changes the character of your fortress, and how it governs itself. 

As the player is the representative of government, this, in turn, means that the players powers (as expressed through what orders can be given to subordinates) changes with how their government is set up.  Reaching the tips of these branches can mean having strict, regimented control over their fortress, or watching a nearly-autonomous set of individual actors vie for power in which you are merely an arbiter of power at best.  Starting scenario might change which one you head towards, but it would ultimately be a player choice of dictator vs. spectator.

Bureaucracies at the highest levels:
As the fortress moves out of its seven sods in a hole stage and gets larger, the different types of noble branches can start to take over the fortress. 

This section skips over the intermediate states, and describes what it would mean to allow a "pure" government by a single branch.

Spoiler: An Unopposed Guild (click to show/hide)

Or, perhaps guilds, but the point is fairly the same...

Guilds would naturally need a fully-functional internal economy to survive.  Guilds would no longer just take direct manual orders to a workshop, but you would go to the guild's page, and order all your products from their guild page.  For fortress money. 

The workshops would be under the ownership of the guild, itself, and the guildmaster would functionally be an entrepreneur who just "rents" space from your fortress.  You zone areas for the guilds to be able to build their workshops in a sort of Sim City type of manner, and they build what they need when they need it, and purchase materials from your fortress when they need it.  (Unless they are purchasing their materials from another guild, which would also be partly-autonomous and have their own financial situation.)

In fact, "Sim City" is a good comparison to a guild-dominated town, as players will give most of their direct control of day-to-day operations of the economy of the fortress over to the guilds, themselves.  Players would instead focus upon either keeping the external threats to the fortress (like Forgotten Beasts or goblins) out, while keeping the peace in the internal stresses of the fortress.

High-ranking guild members (or just those legendaries that get rich enough) could even buy up (or rather, lease) whatever land you offer on the market, and use it for their own purposes, within your zoning restrictions. 

This could mean they handle their own guild's housing requirements on some level, and will buy from your fortress or external traders such goods as they desire.  Part of the point of such wealthy citizens, however, is that they desire expensive goods, and will buy those goods for themselves, use their guilds to manufacture them, or trade those goods they manufacture for things they want from other guilds. 

Guilds are also crucial for the storing and dissemination of technology - both the information resources for training a guild member, but also the actual tools of their trade, and guilds are capable of building higher-tier workshops on their own than the player may be capable of building.  This means they are capable of building higher-quality goods that are in demand by higher-class citizenry and the nobles. 

If you have multiple very wealthy guilds trading goods between one another, you can also gain great wealth not just through the leases they pay money for, but also through taxes upon what they are buying and selling - even if modest, you can tax quite a bit of money on the frequent exchange of goods worth hundreds of thousands of dbs. 

Guilds peddle not just goods, but also influence, and their vast wealth from trade can be used to leverage changes throughout the game world - buying favors of nobility and entities that would otherwise be enemies.  You can finance the building of roads and sea trade, and push for advances in the cultures of the entities you interact with.

The nobles that the guild can spawn when fully in bloom would involve not just the guild master, but also mid-level managers, including, probably, one that manages just your fort, or nearby hill dwarf settlements, and one that manages far-off guild halls, and commutes back and forth, carrying out directives.  (During the growth of your guild hall, you will get a guild diplomat who comes to you from the home office of the guild - when you become the home office, the diplomat is now going back to the old home office to manage affairs there.)

Guilds would also have sub-appointed nobles in charge of more mundane tasks in the guild, like buying or ordering the collection of supplies for use by the guild, and sales to merchants, or else the training of guild workers.  A guild might have its own personal bookkeeper, as well, and be in charge of managing orders.

All told, a single guild might take up 30 dwarves at full size, with perhaps 10-15 constantly going off-map (plus guards) as agents or managers of off-map sites.  A half-dozen managers plus the guild master as mostly managerial staff and part-time workers, and a dozen or so full-time craftsmen.

Spoiler: Great merchant houses (click to show/hide)

Functionally similar to guild houses that merely trade goods rather than buy them, merchant houses and guilds may well blend into one another so well as to be indistinguishable, and a guild master may also be master of a merchant house. 

The difference would largely be that merchant houses would probably hire more guards (possibly renting them from your military) and be focused more upon expansionary trading.  Rather than make their own goods, they would buy all their goods from your fortress (or a guild you have), and just focus upon making profit through trade. 

As such, merchant houses would probably have a smaller footprint on your fortress - a large warehouse, some trading depots, and a few offices and housing leased, and most of their staff would be off trading most of the game time.

Spoiler: Strategic Military Stronghold (click to show/hide)

In these, you would be expected to be a commanding general, and as such, have far more direct control over your fortress.

In a fortress with no major guild presence, and merchants largely still under your heel (or as a military quartermaster role), you would still retain most of the

Meanwhile, however, you would be far more active on the world stage as a military force, frequently requested to dispatch troops out to various portions of the map.  The king or high-ranking nobles would frequently request dispatches of soldiers.  Military nobles would give the player military intelligence on enemy troop movements, and you would be expected to keep whole areas of your kingdom safe.

Alternately, recruits could be sent to your fortress for training, and being sent back within a certain period of time at a given combat skill level.

Generals would be similar to how nobles behave currently, besides being moved with their whole unit, and being military-active.  General spouses would be nobles of their own sort, and have noble demands to be met.  (Which would mean a need to build or import high-quality things to keep them happy.)

Generals grow out of increases in rank that occur from not just obtaining a large number of troops and a legendary combat skill, but also proving the mettle of the troops against significant foes (by direct combat, not just kills on the map that may be from anything), as well as, especially at the higher ranks, a talent for earning favors from the nobility (possibly by supporting claims or performing military tasks for nobles who are in a position to support you) in order to gain the higher postings and responsibilities.

Below them, a military command structure would exist, but so would civilian staff of the military, including the likes of a quartermaster, mid-level supply procurement officers, combat engineers, logistics staff, and possibly a military police.

A military fort would necessarily need the capacity to field a very large number of troops - probably at least 100, but could keep the actual on-map fortress population down through having constant rotating deployments.

Spoiler: Religious Holy Cities (click to show/hide)

The primary advantage of a fully-fledged religious noble tree would probably be in the capacity to acquire the favor of a divine being or powerful spirit.  The Contract Magic thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=109726.0) covers concepts of how rituals, prayers, and sacrifice might allow for dwarves to call upon miracles in their aid. 

For as far as what it plays out to have one, a religious order would probably be largely autonomous from the state.  Like a guild, they demand a large area that is leased from the fortress, and in that area build their temple(s), quarter their nobles, and order/purchase religious icons/statues, goods for services, as well as goods for quartering their clergy.

The institution itself pays for itself through donations or fees associated with certain favors from the church or gods.  These may be legitimate or corrupt as per the particulars of the church in question - a church of a childbirth goddess may legitimately prescribe that they charge wealthier clients a fee for their blessings in childbirth, but work for free for the destitute, and use the proceeds to further the works of the church as a whole.  A corrupt church might charge everyone to the maximum extent they can get away with it, and pocket all the money for their clergy, itself. 

A more decadent and corrupt church may bring down divine wrath, rather than divine favor (although it may also be more profitable to your fortress as a whole).

Because it is more autonomous, you wouldn't have a capacity to directly fire a church leader, (or, for that matter, a guildmaster, although it's a subtler thing to tell if they are "corrupt" or just merciless businesspeople, and they aren't as likely to bring down divine retribution,) and as such, it can take diplomatic efforts on the part of your fortress nobility (or a series of Unfortunate Accidents) to try to make sure that more honest brokers get elected to the head of the churches.

If your church is among the greatest in the kingdom (or at least, of a given religion), then it may have a head priest that is head of a given deity's clergy, and they will have wide-ranging powers.  If you negotiate it with that head priest, they may be able to make orders to the lower branches of their church around the world.  (A smaller church may still enable indirect negotiations with the main branch of the church, but will be more circuitous and likely to be shot down if the request doesn't already align with the leader of the church's current desires.)

These may include declaring pilgrimages, holy sites, new temples built, sermons that praise or condemn certain people or organizations, that rites or rituals be performed, that prayer for a specific miracle take place, or even that a holy war be declared.

Churches would be composed of priest nobles, but also scholars and theologians/philosophers, as well as possibly absorbing the hospital into the church. 

Assuming we have no such thing as a dwarven wizard, all magic use, and possibly even alchemy could be absorbed into the church noble tree, as well, and that would mean that they effectively become a "guild" of doctors, spellcasters, and alchemists that the fortress would need to trade with on a mercantile basis. 

A fully-fledged church might also have its own templar as guards and possible enforcers of their holy law.

Such a church may take up as many as 30 dwarves if you include templar and religious miracleworkers or doctors.

Spoiler: Royal Palaces (click to show/hide)

The highest rank of the government would continue to be the monarch. Depending upon how we want to organize the kingdoms, there may still be a duke/duchess, and the monarch simply stays at the palace of the most favored and most opulent duke/duchess, or the monarch has their own lands and other nobles have to get their own fiefs. 

The monarch would offer the player direct control over the council of nobles, and would allow for nobles to convene in a meeting once a year wherein you could give commands to those nobles (or diplomats that convey those orders for you) so that you could control the goings-on of the whole kingdom.  This council is detailed more thoroughly in this thread based upon making "Kingdom Mode" a playable part of Fortress Mode (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=76667.msg1951940#msg1951940).  (The player could also participate in the council when just a baron, but have nothing more than an ability to offer advice at the cost of spending influence to try to get what they want through, and mostly just takes orders from the monarch.)

Below the monarch would be a much-expanded apparatus of state. 

Besides the already-present mayor, manager, and bookkeeper, there would also need to be an assortment of appointed nobles for the purpose of administrating agents.

Agents are things like spies, scouts, secret police and assassins (for Unfortunate Accidents to be carried out in an official capacity), as well as mundane diplomats that can be dispatched throughout the kingdom to enforce your will upon the world.

The manager, in particular, could have an expanded role, as guilds, merchants, and churches are semi-autonomous entities, and requests must go through their own managers before they can be enacted. 

An economic advisor to the monarch may be another important role - they would be responsible for watching the prices in the kingdom, setting the rate at which currency is minted, adjusting the rates of inflation/deflation, as well as imposing tariffs and advising on economic policy to the monarch.  (This will be covered in more detail in the economic sections, later.)

Likewise, with the economy coming back, so, too, would the tax collector.

There may also be social nobles that are appointed as the course of the personality-related changes take place, and a social planning noble may be used in order to plan and prepare state parties and celebrations, as well as, possibly, sports matches, music festivals, gladiatorial games, or just plain banquets for the purpose of socializing.  As well as raising fortress morale, it is a way to allow the player to manually manipulate who is meeting with who and socializing over what. 

Such a government would involve 15-20 positions, but also possibly entail the capacity to hire dozens of agents that spend much of their time off-map.

Since reaching the pinnacle of one noble branch doesn't necessarily preclude going down any other branch to an arbitrary degree, you can easily wind up with more nobles than you can handle.

The point of the system is to allow players to focus their fortress on the type of jobs they want to do, rather than having a set, linear path.

By having a branching structure where the player can pick any path they want, but where the only real limit is the number of dwarves it takes to fill up their guilds or governments and the FPS costs of having so many dwarves, it creates a situations where, rather than having the game randomly determine what elements of the game they are allowed to play, the player chooses what elements of the game they are willing to build up towards playing.

Further, by making the fortress either more autonomous within itself, or by exposing the player to the world outside the fortress over which they have less control, it allows the player to start focused on their little slice of land, and then gradually build outwards towards things they have far less control over, and where the systems are much more complex.

This achieves the overarching goal of re-introducing the concept of a difficulty slope, rather than simply forcing the player into a cliff.

Title: Re: Class Warfare: Internal politics, scaling difficulty, and personalities
Post by: DrPoo on February 21, 2013, 05:04:02 am

This would make sense if EA owned the rights for the game..

Title: Re: Class Warfare: Internal politics, scaling difficulty, and personalities
Post by: assasin on February 21, 2013, 07:02:34 pm

Quote

development of these power-bases within your fortress can shape very different types of fortresses. 

In a manner of speaking, you can consider it like choosing "classes" or skills from a skill tree for an individual character in a more traditional RPG.  The noble tree branches you head down changes the character of your fortress, and how it governs itself. 

As the player is the representative of government, this, in turn, means that the players powers (as expressed through what orders can be given to subordinates) changes with how their government is set up.  Reaching the tips of these branches can mean having strict, regimented control over their fortress, or watching a nearly-autonomous set of individual actors vie for power in which you are merely an arbiter of power at best.  Starting scenario might change which one you head towards, but it would ultimately be a player choice of dictator vs. spectator.

I can definately agree with player choice.

I'm not going to comment on the whole thread so I'll just post my own opinions in a more general way.

What I'd like to see with regards to:


politics

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

whether or not you set up some sort of senate or houses of parliament where the dwarves appointed by you or by vote decide based on each dwarves personalities on certain policies [ eg. whether or not the fortress can declare war on elves] and laws [eg. what is the punishment for thievery]. If you don't have such a council there would be a lot more unhappy dwarves and hopefully some more complicated rebellions than tantrums and insanity. If you do have one you'd have to play with the members fears and hopes through the Game of Scones. For example if a senator did not want to go on an offensive after goblin raids [assuming attacking other sites has been added] have a goblin "assassin" [spoiler]ie POW

hide in his room.[/spoiler]


Crime and Law

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If theres a lack of anything some starving dwarves might decide to steal it. Other times they just might get greedy and steal it anyway. Not to mention elves bribing dwarves to pull levers to bridges in the ecoterrorists paths [assuming the ai can handle it]. Noble possitions like magistrates could be set to deal with it and either it could be based solely on player decision or that magistrates personality or a vote between a council of magistrates or just normal dwarved based on their personalities. Lwas could be made by the politicians in the previous section or if there are no politicians devised by the player. Too many laws makes dwarves unhappy to the point of rebellion, too little causes some chaos when everything disappears and there ar brawls in the streets.

Guilds

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Guilds should not be a source of annoyance. They should pretty much act as civilian versions of your milatary. Each guild is divided into work crews like squads are and these work crews can be assigned shifts. If they are late for their shifts or don't show up they could be punished, increasing unhappiness in your fort but making them more likely to listen to you. I guess I wouldn't mind more automation but if a player wants to remain in control guilds should still be a part of the game. A more militant dictator might just make laws removing whatever decision making abilities he wants from the the guildmasters.

I'd also like to see some flexibility in how guilds are defined. Instead of one premade guild for each proffesion a player could create custom guild for groups of proffessions, eg. If a player wanted he could have a guild for weaponsmiths, blacksmiths, metal refiners, etc. Or he could yank them all into one metalworkers guild. Having them separate might limit the political influence any one guild could have [especially if strikes or similar sanctions are added], but it might be impractical if some of your more important proffessions only have four or five practitioners and you'd be forced to group them

What I don't want to see is difficulty added for the sake of difficulty. Guilds shouldn't call strikes just to add an extra annoyance you have to deal with. Instead player decisionmaking should require more depth in order to keep the fortress stable and happy [or just keep your milatary stable and happy and write the large number of rebellions and deaths off as overhead], and if the player decided on a wrong course of course the problems would start piling up. Difficulty for the sake of fun is fine, but what is added should be chosen wisely so it is fun and not just plain annoying.

Title: Re: Class Warfare: Internal politics, scaling difficulty, and personalities
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 21, 2013, 08:25:48 pm

Well, the idea is that challenges are what help make the fun.

The problem with the game right now is that there's nothing to challenge the player beyond initial survival. 

Compare this to the original 2d version of the game, where each time you cleared one of the three obstacles, (underground river, chasm, and magma river,) you obtained more materials, had more options with what to do like access to magma forges, but also faced new challenges because you were exposed to monsters inside your fort from those rivers and chasms that you couldn't completely block off.  That created a clear scaling of difficulty.

In the current game, however, there's no real mechanical reason to do much in a fort besides wall yourself off and grow just enough food and clothing to not die while you have a legendary dining hall to keep everyone happy.

The point isn't to make the game harder just for the sake of getting harder, but to re-introduce the notion that as you clear the "level one" of the game that involves just fending off dying, you have a more challenging "level two" and "level three" you can advance to.

It also introduces a purpose for a lot of the currently-useless items like trade goods. 

One of the initial reasons for this thread was that I realized all the old threads on making books and carpets and more fancy living quarters and the like have no point if there's no mechanic for them to actually be necessary in the game, and adding more "happiness" alone isn't really enough.

---

A citizen's meeting mechanic is a good idea, and would be a good warm-up for having a council of nobles, as well. 

It could also serve a useful purpose in giving players a chance to look at the current mood of their fortress.  One of the problems with the current DF is that there's basically no way to tell the current happiness level of the fort without individually looking at the thoughts pages of every single dwarf or using Dwarf Therapist. 

Having a periodic council meeting where the game just up-and-tells-you "Urist McHauler is unhappy with all the miasma" can be a valuable mechanic just for telling the player where the problems are.

---

On crime, yes, that's basically part of what I was going to work towards.

It would be one of those "this is a new level of difficulty" things that crime would start being introduced once your fortress advances beyond the pure communism stage.  The idea being that, like with those frogmen attacking your fort from within via the underground river before, it would be a means of requiring a police force in your fort.

---

It's a balancing act with guilds.

Part of what I want to do with them is to make them operate semi-autonomously, if only for the appeal of having the ant farm run itself, which I'm sure some players really would like. 

Hence, I want to try to come up with guilds that can take away from some of the boring annoyances, like having to re-issue work orders on their own, but replace that with a problem that takes more serious thought to solve. 

Also, you don't have to make a totally independent guild... but there's a reward for letting it happen. 

That's sort of the idea - you give up your direct control over the dwarves (something players probably won't necessarily want), and let them have more pull and demand (this creates some of the difficulty because you then have to manage them), but at the same time, they provide a benefit that empowers the whole fortress.  (They produce better or a greater quantity of goods, make the fortress wealthier, create an outlet for advanced trade goods, add to fortress prestige and let your noble advance faster, giving you more political power, and simply having a "fully maxed-out guild" is itself a source of pride for a player.)

You can choose to keep things state-run, but you don't get the benefits (or lose the control) of a guild.

They don't go on strike (at least, probably not often, and it would take serious mis-management for them to do so...) so much as they simply start requiring the player to manage the fortress in a less direct way. 

A lot of this depends on the economy being up and running (and I'll get to that section later...) because part of the point is that you have to start actually paying the guilds for the items you request of them (and they pay you for resources, and pay their workers). 

There could also be some sort of emergency mechanic, like declaring martial law, for example, however, to help get through emergency situations.  Maybe I should write a full section on that, now that I think about it.

Title: Re: Class Warfare: Internal politics, scaling difficulty, and personalities
Post by: SirHoneyBadger on February 22, 2013, 06:18:25 am

I haven't quite absorbed all of this yet in it's entirety, but I'd like to make a start, because I feel this is a fantastic way to broaden the game, and also the game's audience base.

Firstly:
I would love to see this incorporated into migrant waves, so that the social classes that your Fortress most appeals to, will be attracted to it.

To give some simplified examples of this: If you have a primitive economy, where you mostly produce and sell raw resources, you should attract large amounts of unskilled laborers, because they're seeking jobs--any jobs at all.

If you make and sell a lot of toys, you should be attracting younger couples, and dwarfs with children, along with skilled artisans.

Making weapons and armour should attract grim veterans and mercenary-types. If you then export those arms, you may also attract less savoury characters interested in arms-dealing, but you would also be increasing the strategic value of your Fortress, and that should alter the landscape, too.

Wealthy Fortresses would naturally attract the rich, and those seeking wealth. If you make the streets safe to walk down at night, you'll attract permanent merchants and business-folk, and they'll bring their families.

If it's not that safe, internally, you'll still attract tourists, and those on temporary business, but you're going to also attract crime.
If it's not that safe, externally (in other words, you're attracting seiges and titans, and not dealing with them quickly), you may start to attract a larger military presence, and that outside military may not be under your direct authority, so it may function like caravan guards. In practice, these military detachments may cause you social problems that reach across social class boundaries--could be something like having a whole squad of Hammerers show up out of the blue, that you have even less direct control over. 

They would be a well-equipped veteran or elite squad, so they could help you defend your Fortress, to a point, but they might only show up if your Fortress is considered strategically worth it, they might not be worth the internal social upset (and you ofcourse would have to feed, house, and pay them), and they might be a one-time deal.


Secondly:
I think divisions of social castes could allow you to create conditions where your Nobles become real assets, rather than annoyances.

If you use a historical model, then the nobility was responsible for protecting their lands, as much as ruling them.

That was the arrangement that they made with the peasants--the peasants would work to provide food, and they would submit to the rule of the noble classes, but in trade, the Nobles were (atleast in theory) required to produce elite warriors to protect those lands and the people on them, and these elite warriors were each expected to spend atleast a full third of their time training, and an enormous amount of wealth on armour, weapons, atleast one carefully bred and well-trained warhorse, and to provide atleast one fighting squire, and then hire or train from several to as many as a few hundred men-at-arms, to back them up, in times of war.

There may be a sort of social "economy", where, once you fill all of a Noble's needs (furnished room, furnished office, etc.), you are then presented with some kind of a Noble "wishlist", and if you fill that, the Noble starts fulfilling obligations to you, in return. They may start by purchasing their own weapons and armour, and move on to training in martial skills, and then to equipping, educating, and training a small "household" of other dwarfs, and their own children.

If you create conditions that are favorable to rich, noble, elite dwarfs, those dwarfs should be atleast partly responsible for the defense of that Fortress, so you should be getting something out of the arrangement.

Thirdly:
A person's social caste should realistically be as important as their species, in many ways. It wouldn't decide their fate, but it would greatly influence where they start in the world, who their parents were, how they view money, and how much money was spent on raising them, what people and what skills they were exposed to, their feelings on religion, politics, and outsiders.

It's more than just social status, it would strongly influence every aspect of their everyday life--food, bathing, prayer, romantic relationships, entertainment--and the reactions of everyone they meet.

To start with, I'd personally like to see it be very difficult for someone who isn't a member of the "rich noble warrior/knight" caste to train in the following skills:

Armour User
Shield User
Fighter
Dodger
Sword User
Pike User
Bow User
Leader
Negociator
Reader
Weaponsmith
Armourer
Alchemist
Record Keeper
Military Tactics

I think that peasant castes should learn these skills at maybe 1/4th the normal speed, until they reach Professional level, at which point they could be considered professional soldiers, and would then progress normally.

Conversely, those born into other castes could also learn skills at different rates, to simulate limited or specialized training, access to or denial of resources, information, and money, how exposed the caste would be to outsiders, etc.

There would be tools that peasants would naturally have access to, ofcourse, and be able to train on and use, and many tools can easily be weaponised, but chopping down a tree shouldn't be computed in the same way as dueling with a goblin. 
A peasant and a knight would view each of those tasks from very different perspectives.


As far as concerns about social climbing: I think that should be modifiable under the Entity tag. Some civilizations are going to be more flexible than others. Some allow peasants to own weapons for hunting and self-defense, while others don't allow any weapons at all--Japanese martial arts were very directly influenced by social castes, and the need for those castes to interact.

Aikido and Karate, for instance, were both invented as a result of laws about who could and couldn't use weapons.

The crossbow was viewed as a coward's weapon, because any peasant could hide in a bush and kill an armoured knight with one. Swords became iconic with war, in part because it specifically was not a tool--it was the opposite of a plowshare.

Farmers weren't always on the lowest rung, either, and the wealthy weren't always on top. To go back to Japan, the farmers were right below Samurai, socially, and it was the wealthy merchants who were actually the lowest of the low, forbidden from spending their immense wealth on basically anything other than food and entertainment.

Entites could have "ethics" dictating:

Which castes can own, purchase, or even handle, which items--weapons would be obvious here, and a member of the wrong caste just touching a sword could be grounds for execution.

Which castes could perform certain tasks (India had a caste system that designated certain populations as the only ones allowed to touch corpses, in order to bury the dead and prepair for funerals, for instance, and descendants of that caste still suffer persecution today.), and learn which skills, including who could learn to read and write, who could be a metalsmith, who could be a doctor, who could be a priest, etc.

Which castes could eat certain foods and drink certain beverages (eating hearts of palm was punishable by death unless you were royalty in Polynesian culture, and hot chocolate was, famously, a drink fit for an Aztec emperor, and only the emperor),

Who could wear certain clothing, and certain weaves of cloth (There's a special weave of cloth that only the royalty of Ghana is permitted to wear). Clothing styles would ofcourse say a lot about social caste, but this may be more stylized in some cultures than others,

Where you could live, where you could worship, where you could be buried, who could kill you and get away with it, and your supposed status in the afterlife.

Dwarfs are not humans though, and there's no reason to assume that such a strongly craft and tool oriented culture wouldn't naturally gravitate towards a government of meritocracy, where the most skilled dwarf rules, so they may have no strict policy against social mobility.

Ofcourse, in modern society, it's not easy or cheap to become a neurosurgeon, or an astronaut, and both require a lot of intense training and study, so there's no reason to assume that social mobility would still be fast or certain.

High (er...low?) dwarf society families may horde libraries, import foreign tutors, enforce strict Guild requirements (and outright bribe the Guilds), or even create secret Greek Mystery and Mason-type societies--mystically steeped shadow guilds-behind-the-Guilds, designed to obscure technical know-how, and make sure "only the right dwarfs" make it to the top of their professions.

There's also the question of exactly how many social strata there are in a single society, and where each caste comes from. Is a peasant considered to be a slave, a serf, a yeoman, a freeholder, a citizen-soldier?  Does a peasant have rights? Does a slave have rights? Which one is more likely to climb, socially, and why? Are these castes "the will of the gods", or are they just practical means of making sure that society keeps on ticking?

Thirdly:
I feel that migrants coming into your Fortress would be looking for a better life for themselves.

It would be great if you could fulfill their hopes or shatter their dreams by deciding to enforce the traditional status quo, significantly alter it, or even develope a significantly different society than that of the Mountainhome--you could even decide to break off from the Mountainhome, in a glorious rebellion.

I think it would be important for the game to have a more robust legal system in place, and also of religion, and then tie them both into the social order (Where do priests fit in? Where do the police fit in?), the economic environment (including Guilds, which should be very important and powerful entities of society), and politics, and tie all of them together; so that you can't tug--atleast not without employing a lot of political delicacy--on any one of these "strings", without pulling on all of the others at the same time.

Once that's reached a point where it's a more holistic web, you could then figure out how every person fits on that web, what everyone's checks and balances are, and how they all connect, from the king on down. 

Title: Re: Class Warfare: Internal politics, scaling difficulty, and personalities
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 23, 2013, 11:00:49 pm

Well, first, I think that people move to a city because of the jobs that are there, not the products that are made there.

That is, people with children don't move to a toy factory to buy all the toys, they move to a factory because the parents want to get jobs in the factory with which they can buy toys that might need to be imported from elsewhere.

If you're making all those toys from wood using craftsdwarves, then that means that the crafts guild would set up shop there (provided the player lets it), and all the people who want to be craftsdwarves move there. 

---

I agree at least somewhat with the notion of a more useful noble class, but that it should be more a result of them actually having tasks that are associated with new menus and interfaces that the player finds useful, or else being a vicarious mechanism by which players can get to experience their conquests.

One of the things that gets talked about often in one of the books that really helped inspire this thread, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years), is how the nobility actually formed as a result of bandits coming to steal the food of the farmers.  Over time, they came up with a standard, specific amount of food that could be taken without actually killing the farmers, so as to keep the food coming.  The bandits would "protect" the farmers (in the sense of a protection racket), but only as a means of keeping the farmers part of their "turf".  And the parallel to organized crime is not exactly avoidable.  St. Augustine relating the notion of Pirates and Emperors being a difference only in scale comes to mind.

When this became formalized into kings and fiefs, then it was described as, "The peasants provide the food, the nobles provide protection, and the priests pray for everyone."  But it was never described how much food would be worth how much prayer or protection.

When nobles (descended of the bandits) tried to "tax" the farmers more by demanding more food, the argument for why they shouldn't wasn't based upon justifying how much protection they were getting for their food, but upon the tradition of how much food was given in the past.  "It's unfair to tax us more," would be the cry, when nobody questioned whether it was a fair deal that had been established originally.

Actually useful-in-their-forts dwarves should actually be something more of a "middle class" dwarf that rises up because either they trained the dwarf and gave them the chance to get rich through becoming highly skilled and producing goods that demand a high salary, or getting into a guild as a merchant, or else by simply being such an affluent fortress with such great amenities that rich and important freedwarves would want to migrate there on their own.

That provides a lot of the motivation for making "nicer" fortresses - only peasants are happy eating mushrooms in damp rooms and impressed by how that sure is a nice dining room.  The more skilled and important dwarves will move out as they become valuable enough that if they don't get what they demand, they can just move out, and get what they want elsewhere.

This kind of bleeds in with the notion of having a dwarf that has a social status that determines so much of the rest of their lives, since being highly trained and skilled means being wealthy, and being wealthy means you get to be highly trained and skilled. 

You could live in a town with a powerful guild, and get your children into the schools or apprenticeships that get them trained to become valuable and highly-trained members of society that can become wealthy, themselves, if you have money. 

At the same time, I think that dwarves would be more open to the notion of climbing the social ladder based upon demonstrable skill.  Hence, artifact-making dwarves might be sudden jumps up the social ladder if they keep the instant-legendary-just-add-mood nature of artifact moods.

(But, along with xenosynthesis, I think that moods should be potentially rarer, and only be as common as now when there are more magical surroundings (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=109726.msg4043426#msg4043426).  As it stands, it's just a "free legendary" button that helps contribute to the overabundance of legendaries in this game.)

Part of making that all make sense, though, is making legendaries harder to have - there might be a ceiling on how much can be learned without a guild (or mooding) that gives guilds more reason to exist, and makes getting a fortress full of legendaries cranking out constant masterworks a long-term project, rather than just setting a stonemason to make doors, tables, and chairs on repeat until the end of time, and coming back a year later to find (s)he's a legendary.

If we make attracting or building your own guildmasters and schools of crafts or engineering (or even farming or the other more mundane jobs) or else military schools a major component of getting to the top tiers of skill in any reasonable amount of time, (Again, the purpose of potential and affinity (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=122376.msg3994657#msg3994657),) so that legendaries are even more valuable, but also much more rare, then we have an in-built mechanic for a great many stories of internal dwarven upheaval, social mobility, and challenge for the player.

Title: Re: Class Warfare: Internal politics, scaling difficulty, and personalities
Post by: Nicolo on May 25, 2013, 03:12:16 pm

Bumpign this thread because I feel crime is underrepresented in DF

We have law enforcers, and we have a value tracking system both for items and the wealth of each dwarf, so I'd like to toss out some ideas in my head:

1) Reading Thinking: Fast and Slow (http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374275637), it makes the argument that 'poverty' is felt not by any objective value but as a shifting 'reference point' of being well-off in relation to ones' peers. In Dwarf Fortress, this could be done by summing up the value of the possessions of every dwarf and creating an average, and dwarves would feel negative thoughts if their wealth fell below that value. And be motivated to steal from the community in order to get rid of those feelings. Perhaps the value of public spaces could offset the sensation of inequality among commoner dwarves, while at the same time super-valuable public spaces give noble dwarves negative thoughts the same way wealthier lower-ranking nobles do. A zero-sum game of unhappy dwarves.

2) Toady mentioned in the latest DF Talk that one of the reasons for getting rid of the dwarven economy was that underemployed/idle dwarves could not earn enough money to buy beds or food. What if this created underclass was reintroduced (to prison/corporal punishment) and a constant effort for the law dwarves to stop?

3) We already have a 'Thief' class inside DF, and a way of generating false identities (for vampires and other infiltrating monsters) - what if there was a class of dwarf that also took on a fake identity and travelled from tavern to tavern as 'Honest Urist McTrader' while bouncing from site to site in his civilization swiping anything he can get his hands on?

Title: Re: Class Warfare: Internal politics, scaling difficulty, and personalities
Post by: Gargomaxthalus on September 10, 2016, 09:01:30 am

<(<_<)> <(>_>)>..............


Yeah, I've been going back over these threads since the farming one popped back up, so I figured that I'd get this a little more recognition than the links in that thread will get it. No sense in letting it stay dead, giving everything that went into it and could go into it.

Title: Re: Class Warfare: Internal politics, scaling difficulty, and personalities
Post by: Wyrdean on September 12, 2016, 05:01:29 pm

Quote from: Gargomaxthalus on September 10, 2016, 09:01:30 am

<(<_<)> <(>_>)>..............


Yeah, I've been going back over these threads since the farming one popped back up, so I figured that I'd get this a little more recognition than the links in that thread will get it. No sense in letting it stay dead, giving everything that went into it and could go into it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/028/433/ThreadNecromancer.png)

Nice Necro Dude!
Though this topic is outdated it is may-be still valid.
(though what I read seems gamey)

Or you might say nice bump!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(http://i2.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/000/861/frog_bump.jpg)

Title: Re: Class Warfare: Internal politics, scaling difficulty, and personalities
Post by: Qyubey on September 13, 2016, 07:21:45 pm

I think the reason everything in the game currently is very 'communistic' in a sense, is because it's literally a Fortress. The game treats it like a military outpost under constant attack, so everyone roughly has equal weighting. Now, obviously this makes little sense once you start factoring in literal nobles that you can order to haul dirt and rocks, but I believe that was the original intent.

I'm not a personal fan of city builders with the beautification and class requirement options. I remember playing Anno and thinking "The nobles want chocolate, I can't make chocolate without losing a shitton of money on shipping and production, those nobles can go fuck themselves."
Basically, if it becomes too much of a chore to care for nobles, I imagine most players are going to either ignore or purposefully kill them off, just to stop their whining. Which begs the question of what role the player takes in the game- currently it's just abstracted as the 'communal will of the dwarves' or such, but if you implemented a system where certain dwarves govern themselves, that's no longer the case and we'd have to define who the player is and what power they actually possess. It's a weird metaphysical question.

Guilds I'm for - because it makes sense that dwarves with similar interests, hobbies, beliefs, and such would band together in little groups. There's already code to underline groups of dwarves, so this wouldn't be that much of a stretch. I imagine Guilds could have different desires and designs for the fortress, kind of like mandates but with less of an obligation to complete them. Make the guilds happy, and their work output and quality might improve. Ignore them, and their work effort will suffer. They might even go on strike or rebel and assume control of the fortress, forcing you to try and reclaim it later.

I suppose the Upper Class and Lower Class could be similar as well, but then you'd have to define personal wealth. We all know coins turned out...

I get the feeling that, in this thread, there was a leaning towards the player actually BEING a dwarf that controls the fortress. Notably, when talking about family groups and 'your' clan. Now- I'm not actually against this. I kind of think it'd be cool to have a kind of avatar character running around the fortress, but that does raise a lot of questions like- how am I giving these orders and what happens when I die? I suppose the easy option is 'you switch to whoever controls the fort now', so the only failstate is the complete destruction of the fort.

The citybuilder stuff maybe could work (dwarves getting paid for their work, owning property, being divided into classes), but I feel like you'd need a specific 'Town' mode there - separating out a dictatorial Fortress and communal Town modes.

Title: Re: Class Warfare: Internal politics, scaling difficulty, and personalities
Post by: NW_Kohaku on June 18, 2017, 08:11:18 pm

Because I like conversing with people 10 months after they replied...

Quote from: Qyubey on September 13, 2016, 07:21:45 pm

I think the reason everything in the game currently is very 'communistic' in a sense, is because it's literally a Fortress. The game treats it like a military outpost under constant attack, so everyone roughly has equal weighting. Now, obviously this makes little sense once you start factoring in literal nobles that you can order to haul dirt and rocks, but I believe that was the original intent.

That is the case now, but it isn't meant to always be the case.  Toady has stated that the game can also be a "Wizard Tower" or "Elven Retreat" instead of just "Dwarf Fortress", and things like taverns, and adventurer-created sites that can just be farms, plus all the adventurer roles and such all point towards a giant sandboxy "do whatever you want" mindset.  Saying that the game can only be set around the notion that all things are always fortresses is too limiting. 

Quote from: Qyubey on September 13, 2016, 07:21:45 pm

I'm not a personal fan of city builders with the beautification and class requirement options. I remember playing Anno and thinking "The nobles want chocolate, I can't make chocolate without losing a shitton of money on shipping and production, those nobles can go fuck themselves."
Basically, if it becomes too much of a chore to care for nobles, I imagine most players are going to either ignore or purposefully kill them off, just to stop their whining. Which begs the question of what role the player takes in the game- currently it's just abstracted as the 'communal will of the dwarves' or such, but if you implemented a system where certain dwarves govern themselves, that's no longer the case and we'd have to define who the player is and what power they actually possess. It's a weird metaphysical question.

As if "unfortunate accidents" over nobles making demands players didn't want to meet haven't been a thing since the game started...

Anyway, part of this is, again, that it's a bit versatile.  You don't want to do city management and worry about nobles?  OK, then don't expand into upper-class housing.  You can stay as "just a fortress" if you want.  You can choose not to play a fortress, and play as a city-builder, instead.  A part of the point of having a "sliding scale" is that you can add on pieces of interface and complexity gradually or individually so that some things aren't an issue to you.

Quote from: Qyubey on September 13, 2016, 07:21:45 pm

I suppose the Upper Class and Lower Class could be similar as well, but then you'd have to define personal wealth. We all know coins turned out...

Which is why I dedicate a significant amount of time to talk about coinage, and its meaning.

Quote from: Qyubey on September 13, 2016, 07:21:45 pm

I get the feeling that, in this thread, there was a leaning towards the player actually BEING a dwarf that controls the fortress. Notably, when talking about family groups and 'your' clan. Now- I'm not actually against this. I kind of think it'd be cool to have a kind of avatar character running around the fortress, but that does raise a lot of questions like- how am I giving these orders and what happens when I die? I suppose the easy option is 'you switch to whoever controls the fort now', so the only failstate is the complete destruction of the fort.

Toady has said (I have the quote somewhere back there) that he wants to tie every command that players can give to a specific position of authority within the fort.  You aren't playing a specific dwarf, but you're the sort of zeitgeist of the will of the town council or the like. 

Title: Re: Class Warfare: Internal politics, scaling difficulty, and personalities
Post by: GoblinCookie on June 22, 2017, 01:12:03 pm

Quote from: Qyubey on September 13, 2016, 07:21:45 pm

I think the reason everything in the game currently is very 'communistic' in a sense, is because it's literally a Fortress. The game treats it like a military outpost under constant attack, so everyone roughly has equal weighting. Now, obviously this makes little sense once you start factoring in literal nobles that you can order to haul dirt and rocks, but I believe that was the original intent.

As far as I am aware the reason the game is like that is because all attempts by Toady One to make it work in a less communistic fashion ended in disaster.  Combined with the fact that it was not possible for a different system to create a playable dwarf fortress in the first place. 

Quote from: Qyubey on September 13, 2016, 07:21:45 pm

I'm not a personal fan of city builders with the beautification and class requirement options. I remember playing Anno and thinking "The nobles want chocolate, I can't make chocolate without losing a shitton of money on shipping and production, those nobles can go fuck themselves."
Basically, if it becomes too much of a chore to care for nobles, I imagine most players are going to either ignore or purposefully kill them off, just to stop their whining. Which begs the question of what role the player takes in the game- currently it's just abstracted as the 'communal will of the dwarves' or such, but if you implemented a system where certain dwarves govern themselves, that's no longer the case and we'd have to define who the player is and what power they actually possess. It's a weird metaphysical question.

Guilds I'm for - because it makes sense that dwarves with similar interests, hobbies, beliefs, and such would band together in little groups. There's already code to underline groups of dwarves, so this wouldn't be that much of a stretch. I imagine Guilds could have different desires and designs for the fortress, kind of like mandates but with less of an obligation to complete them. Make the guilds happy, and their work output and quality might improve. Ignore them, and their work effort will suffer. They might even go on strike or rebel and assume control of the fortress, forcing you to try and reclaim it later.

I suppose the Upper Class and Lower Class could be similar as well, but then you'd have to define personal wealth. We all know coins turned out...

I get the feeling that, in this thread, there was a leaning towards the player actually BEING a dwarf that controls the fortress. Notably, when talking about family groups and 'your' clan. Now- I'm not actually against this. I kind of think it'd be cool to have a kind of avatar character running around the fortress, but that does raise a lot of questions like- how am I giving these orders and what happens when I die? I suppose the easy option is 'you switch to whoever controls the fort now', so the only failstate is the complete destruction of the fort.

The citybuilder stuff maybe could work (dwarves getting paid for their work, owning property, being divided into classes), but I feel like you'd need a specific 'Town' mode there - separating out a dictatorial Fortress and communal Town modes.

Thing not mentioned here is that dwarves, as they are generally depicted in fantasy since Tolkien and the Norse myths are pretty much the most inhuman humanoids ever to be invented.  They simply choose to live in a fashion in which no human population has ever chosen to live.  Yet precious few authors actually seem to realize just how strange the beings that they are writing about really are, they simply impose on them all manner of historical institutions (kings, clans, guilds, nobles etc) because they are basically unable to actually relate to how a dwarf civilization would actually develop socially.  A dwarf fortress is perhaps far more similar to an anthill than to a human city. 

The question of 'who is the player?' is the pertinent one.  In most games the player either plays as the upper class directly or as one of their economic dependents (think the knight/mercenary role the player has in most rpgs).  From this perspective the class division 'makes sense, either because you are at the top yourself or because you are an economic dependent of those at the top; you need them to survive, have wealth and have need of you.  But once we progress to becoming the spirit of the collective, as we are in the dwarf fortress then we get the situation where the only way the player with bother with those distinctions is if we force the player, directly or indirectly to have them.  Having a pampered elite is rarely going to 'make sense' unless we are ourselves very much *are* said elite.