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Dwarf Fortress => DF Modding => Mod Releases => Topic started by: Meph on March 22, 2019, 08:12:07 am

Title: [44.12] Meph's Fortress Defense III - 60 civs to siege, trade, steal.
Post by: Meph on March 22, 2019, 08:12:07 am
(https://i.imgur.com/K7lDRLQ.png)
by Meph

<<< Download Fortress Defense III  >>> (http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=14306)
- Win/Mac/Linux - V.1.0 - For DF.44.12 -

Sixty civs making your worlds a bit more lively. Be it as allies, invaders, thieves or hunting the caverns below... all based on vanilla DF creatures and entities, compatible with every other mod and every tileset. Just drag&drop, gen a new world, and you are good to go.

Fifteen new trading partners; fifteen new sieging armies to fend off; fifteen sneaky thieves plundering your riches; fifteen groups of hunter-gatherers in the caverns.

Different civilizations come with different strengths, anywhere from unarmed, unarmored cannon-fodder to steel-clad, war-beast-riding bad-asses. Trade with paupers or the rich; scare away tiny robbers or cower before poisonous master thieves in your vaults. Your choice.

Allies!
Quote
############################################################
Allies - These civs act like your human allies. They send caravans and trade with you; a small chance of war remains.
############################################################

Level I - Wooden weapons, wooden armor. Trades very early. Cheap trade goods, only pack animals. No bodyguards.
TOAD_MAN
PENGUIN MAN
SLUG_MAN

Level II - Bronze/Copper weapons, Bronze/Copper armor. Trades early. Silver trade goods, brings wagon. No bodyguards.
DESERT_TORTOISE_MAN
BEETLE_MAN
GOAT_MOUNTAIN_MAN

Level III - Iron weapons, Iron armor. Trades as usual. Gold trade goods, brings wagons with bodyguards. Brings cave animals and good/evil wood.
GNOME_MOUNTAIN
PLATYPUS MAN
PANDA MAN

Level IV - Steel weapons, Steel armor. Trades late. Platinum trade goods, brings wagon with bodyguards. Brings cave/evil/good animals and evil/good wood and plants.
GAZELLE_MAN
ARMADILLO MAN
MUSKOX_MAN

Level V - Steel weapons, Steel armor. Trades very late. Platinum trade goods, brings wagon with bodyguards. Brings any pet race and any wood/plant. At peace with wildlife, ignores neutrals.
CHINCHILLA_MAN
CHAMELEON_MAN
AXOLOTL_MAN

Invaders!
Quote
############################################################
Enemies - These civs act like goblins. Hostile to your dwarves, they send ambushes, snatchers and sieges to break your fort.
############################################################

Level I - No weapons, no armor. Siege very early.
MANTIS_MAN
RAT_MAN
ROACH_MAN

Level II - Wooden weapons, wooden armor. Sieges early. Sends ambushes.
BEAR_GRIZZLY_MAN
BROWN_RECLUSE_SPIDER_MAN
WOLVERINE_MAN

Level III - Bronze weapons, bronze armor. Sieges as usual. Brings cave animals.
BADGER MAN
LION_MAN
WALRUS_MAN

Level IV - Iron weapons, iron armor. Sieges late. Brings cave and evil animals. Doesn't fight with wildlife.
TIGER_MAN
ALLIGATOR_MAN
LIZARD_MAN

Level V - Steel weapons, steel armor. Sieges very late. Brings selection of any possible animals. Doesn't fight with wildlife and ignore neutrals. Might wait you out, besieging your fort till you attack.
BLENDEC_FOUL
ELEPHANT_MAN
BLIZZARD_MAN

Thieves!
Quote
############################################################
Thieves - Acting like kobolds, these civs will send single individuals to steal objects from your fort. Once they have stolen three items, they might attack you in force! They often hide in caves and don't appear in the world-gen menu.
############################################################

Level I - No weapons, no armor. Steal very early.
WORM_MAN
KEA_MAN
GNOME_DARK

Level II - Wooden weapons, wooden armor. Steal early.
FOX_MAN
RACCOON_MAN
HONEY BADGER MAN

Level III - Copper weapons, copper armor. Steals as usual.
GREMLIN
SATYR
GRIMELING

Level IV - Iron weapons, iron armor. Steals late.
RATTLESNAKE_MAN
BLACK_MAMBA_MAN
BLIZZARD_MAN

Level V - Steel weapons, steel armor. Steals very late.
AARDVARK_MAN
AYE-AYE_MAN
KING_COBRA_MAN

Cavern Civs!
Quote
############################################################
Caverns - These tiny civs don't siege, steal or trade. They only appear in small groups of hunter-gatherers in the caverns below.
############################################################

Level I - Wooden weapons, no armor.
PLUMP_HELMET_MAN
REACHER
GORLAK

Level II - Wooden weapons, wooden shields.
ELEMENTMAN_GABBRO
ELEMENTMAN_AMETHYST
BLOOD_MAN

Level III - Bronze weapons, bronze armor.
VORACIOUS_CAVE_CRAWLER
MOLEMARIAN
ELEMENTMAN_MUD

Level IV - Iron weapons, Iron armor.
BLIND_CAVE_OGRE
TROGLODYTE
IMP_FIRE

Level V - Steel weapons, Steel armor.
ELEMENTMAN_IRON
ELEMENTMAN_MAGMA
ELEMENTMAN_FIRE

PS: All civs use vanilla DF creatures and items; no vanilla DF files were altered for this. It should conflict with no mods and should work with any tileset. It's a homage to Darkflagrance Fortress Defense Mod II (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=62874.0), the OG extra-invaders mod.

Have fun!
Title: Re: [44.12] Meph's Fortress Defense III - 60 civs to siege, trade, steal.
Post by: Thief^ on March 22, 2019, 11:28:28 am
Nice, might have to add a few of these to my next game.
Title: Re: [44.12] Meph's Fortress Defense III - 60 civs to siege, trade, steal.
Post by: ZayZe on March 22, 2019, 08:08:11 pm
Will this be added to the Meph Launcher with that cool tileset you got?

Also, good work. Heard you working on the Steam Release as well.

Edit: I looked at the mod and it seems to conflict with your Tileset launcher slightly. A txt files for fortress reactions already exists.
Title: Re: [44.12] Meph's Fortress Defense III - 60 civs to siege, trade, steal.
Post by: GM-X on March 22, 2019, 10:28:47 pm
Quote from: Meph on March 22, 2019, 08:12:07 am
PS: It's a homage to Darkflagrance Fortress Defense Mod II (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=62874.0), the OG extra-invaders mod.

Did you get permission from Darkflagrance to release a sequel to a mod he worked on since 2010?
Title: Re: [44.12] Meph's Fortress Defense III - 60 civs to siege, trade, steal.
Post by: Shonai_Dweller on March 23, 2019, 10:38:41 pm
Hmm. Yeah. I mean, Fortress Defence is a genre, so I imagine you can call your mod that if you want, but when I tell someone to try "Fortress Defence", I mean the real one.

Having to explain that, yes, Meph is a big name these days, but no I don't mean his mod which has nothing to do with the other one, and no I don't know why he named it III, might get annoying regardless of any approval you may have. It's not even a fork, is it?

But, meh, I don't know the history behind its development. Maybe it always belonged to Meph.
Title: Re: [44.12] Meph's Fortress Defense III - 60 civs to siege, trade, steal.
Post by: Ptasznikt on March 24, 2019, 03:43:25 pm
Wonderful.
Modding living beings is the most cumbersome thing, but with these, it's easy to give them a nice touch and flesh them out.
Title: Re: [44.12] Meph's Fortress Defense III - 60 civs to siege, trade, steal.
Post by: Toxicshadow on March 26, 2019, 11:34:05 am
Quote from: GM-X on March 22, 2019, 10:28:47 pm
Quote from: Meph on March 22, 2019, 08:12:07 am
PS: It's a homage to Darkflagrance Fortress Defense Mod II (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=62874.0), the OG extra-invaders mod.

Did you get permission from Darkflagrance to release a sequel to a mod he worked on since 2010?
Quote from: Meph on March 22, 2019, 08:12:07 am
siege, trade, steal
He really meant it  ;)
Title: Re: [44.12] Meph's Fortress Defense III - 60 civs to siege, trade, steal.
Post by: SalmonGod on March 27, 2019, 04:40:17 pm
So I used this thing I found on DFFD as a base  (Sver 1.4.0 + Revised 2.0 merge (http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=14128))

And I gave a bunch of these races Sver equipment.  I don't know how much this may have to do with it, but...

I've thrown them into a bunch of various world gens now, and it seems like in every case, the Enemy races end up with extremely low populations compared to the Ally races.  And there's very little conflict.  Most of the history of every world consists of the Ally races attacking elves... only the Ally races, and quite obsessively.  While the Enemy races mostly keep to themselves in low numbers.

Specifically, I've included

Allies
------
Toad Men
Beetle Men
Axolotl Men
Platypus Men
Gazelle Men

Other
---------
Rat Men
Grizzle Bear Men
Elephant Men
Walrus Men
Tiger Men
Raccoon Men
Cobra Nagas

Tried removing Toad Men and Beetle Men from a few gens to see if some extra breathing room would help, but that only results in larger populations for the remaining Allies.

Thought you might find this interesting.  I'm guessing the Invader races are supposed to be more aggressive expansionist, and not so overshadowed in world gen activity by the Ally races extreme hatred of elves :P
Title: Re: [44.12] Meph's Fortress Defense III - 60 civs to siege, trade, steal.
Post by: teddyybrosevelt on March 28, 2019, 10:11:30 pm
-Edit Deleting my bug issue, who knows where bug came from

Loving the mod though, I put in a ton of these animal men to invade me. Have tons living in fort now too so its very varied. Also chameleon men just offered me a giant sperm whale and a sea serpent last Spring, so that was worth it in itself.
Title: Re: [44.12] Meph's Fortress Defense III - 60 civs to siege, trade, steal.
Post by: Sver on March 30, 2019, 01:09:44 am
Quote from: SalmonGod on March 27, 2019, 04:40:17 pm
So I used this thing I found on DFFD as a base  (Sver 1.4.0 + Revised 2.0 merge (http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=14128))

And I gave a bunch of these races Sver equipment. I don't know how much this may have to do with it, but...

I've thrown them into a bunch of various world gens now, and it seems like in every case, the Enemy races end up with extremely low populations compared to the Ally races.  And there's very little conflict.  Most of the history of every world consists of the Ally races attacking elves... only the Ally races, and quite obsessively.  While the Enemy races mostly keep to themselves in low numbers.

The equipment has next to no impact on the worldgen - that's why the elves are usually pretty militarily successful in vanilla worlds, despite fighting with fragile sticks and unarmored. It all ties down to population size (which depends on many factors, including biome and site type preferences, farming/fishing, need to eat/drink at all, aging, babysnatching etc.), ethics and conflict events, which, together, create a vague "aggression level" of a civ.

I wouldn't mind if you'd drop your entity files on DFFD, to take a look: I used to tinker with the "aggression level" a lot, so I might figure out what the deal is.
Title: Re: [44.12] Meph's Fortress Defense III - 60 civs to siege, trade, steal.
Post by: teddyybrosevelt on April 06, 2019, 05:17:12 am
I cant seem to make the blizzard men invaders have more than like 10 people and 1 site. Several other races ive noticed issues with too (mantis men, grizzly men, spider men) Foul blendecs and blizzards seem to be the worst though never breaking past 50.
Title: Re: [44.12] Meph's Fortress Defense III - 60 civs to siege, trade, steal.
Post by: Sver on April 06, 2019, 05:53:10 am
Quote from: teddyybrosevelt on April 06, 2019, 05:17:12 am
Foul blendecs and blizzards seem to be the worst though never breaking past 50.

These two creatures have no male/female caste variation, so they are unable to procreate (there is no parthenogenesis or agamogenesis in DF). Only the first of their kind (plus the occassional spawns to fill in the noble positions, perhaps?) would thus exist in any given civ.

Quote from: teddyybrosevelt on April 06, 2019, 05:17:12 am
Several other races ive noticed issues with too (mantis men, grizzly men, spider men)

I suspect that's because all these creatures are carnivore. I recall my modded carnivore civs were pretty low on population too. Quoting the wiki:
Quote
It should be noted that due to a bug, carnivorous sapient civilizations (those with the [CARNIVORE] or [BONECARN] token in their raw files) will go extinct near immediately. This is both a blessing and a curse for modders: a blessing because it allows the forceful extinction of modded civilizations, a curse because it prevents you from modding in and playing a purely carnivorous race.
Title: Re: [44.12] Meph's Fortress Defense III - 60 civs to siege, trade, steal.
Post by: teddyybrosevelt on April 06, 2019, 11:20:39 am
Thanks for help! That definitely fixed Blizzard men, I gave them male and female tags for my game. Taking out the carnivore tag has made Brown Recluse men in my testing seem to be doing better, however not ever reaching more than 10% of the Axolotls in best cases which are explosively expanding, however. Still a huge improvement!
Title: Re: [44.12] Meph's Fortress Defense III - 60 civs to siege, trade, steal.
Post by: Sver on April 06, 2019, 12:42:39 pm
Another thing I've noticed is that civs living in dark fortresses (which seems to be the entirety of enemy civs) have this in their raws:

Quote
-LIKES_SITE:DARK_FORTRESS- causes a lot of lag in adv-mode

Meanwhile, city-dwelling civs (all of the allied, I assume) have this:

Quote
[LIKES_SITE:CITY]

This essentially puts the enemy civs at a great disadvantage against the allies, as they don't congregate inside their uncapped population centers, unlike the allies. However, it is true that [LIKES_SITE:DARK_FORTRESS] causes problems in adv-mode, as you cannot fast-travel through dark fortresses like you can through cities (and thus, have to endure their terrible full-load fps). The best possible resolution is probably to give this set of tags to enemy civs, instead of their current ones:

Quote
[DEFAULT_SITE_TYPE:CITY]
[LIKES_SITE:CITY]
[TOLERATES_SITE:CITY]
[TOLERATES_SITE:CAVE_DETAILED]
[TOLERATES_SITE:DARK_FORTRESS]

e.g. to have them live and congregate in cities, with some occassional migration towards dwarves and goblins.
Title: Re: [44.12] Meph's Fortress Defense III - 60 civs to siege, trade, steal.
Post by: teddyybrosevelt on April 06, 2019, 02:00:45 pm
Thanks so much for the replies, I actually tried that earlier, before i looked to forums to help. Ive tried again now in addition to the carnivore tag change and still brown recluse spider men always on brink of extinction, but I think I will give up on them ( Only kept striving cause I thought who best to head up my weaving caste then some spider citizens that might wander in). Some of the invaders ( elephant men, walrus men, tiger men after carnivore fix, blizzard men after mating fix) seem to do much better at populating and spreading so I think ill just stick to ones that populate for the game I'm going for. Maybe throwing in an extinct spider civilization will lead to interesting stories
Title: Re: [44.12] Meph's Fortress Defense III - 60 civs to siege, trade, steal.
Post by: SalmonGod on April 16, 2019, 01:17:31 am
Quote from: Sver on March 30, 2019, 01:09:44 am
I wouldn't mind if you'd drop your entity files on DFFD, to take a look: I used to tinker with the "aggression level" a lot, so I might figure out what the deal is.

Ok, so yeah... I'm stumped.

Since you and Taffer both released big updates, I've taken another stab at this with a new set of entities from this pack.  Things I've tried so far.


Between all these measures, I managed to successfully reduce the amount of conflict between elves and everyone else.  This appears to have led to a slight increase in variety of conflict between all the other entities.  But also much less conflict in worldgen overall.

Successfully got a larger number of invader civs popping up, but almost no proportionate increase in overall populations.  They're still pitifully few in number, and I assume this is partly why they're so inactive.  With 5 invader entities each settling the same number of civs as everyone else, I can't get them to total more than 5% of total historical figures.

So here's a download (http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=14344), if you still want to try tinkering with it.

BTW, your equipment presets that you wrote up for your latest release are really useful for adding races like this to the game.  Thanks for that, and it's definitely a feature worth expanding on if you do anymore work on your mod in the future.  Although I should put some effort into making sure everything is size appropriate for the races I applied them to.
Title: Re: [44.12] Meph's Fortress Defense III - 60 civs to siege, trade, steal.
Post by: Sver on April 16, 2019, 02:20:08 pm
Quote from: SalmonGod on April 16, 2019, 01:17:31 am
Increased population & cluster values for the relevant creature raws

This doesn't affect civilizations, unfortunately. The only way to increase their population rates is probably giving them a low child age cap (the lower - the better) and/or a higher max age cap; there are no multiplets in worldgen, so the creatures with the highest amount of adult years are the ones most "fertile". Increasing the entity value of family also seems to work for HFs at least. [LIKES_SITE:default site type of this civ] + [TOLERATES_SITE:default site type of this civ] entity tokens also help.

I'll still probably take a look at a couple of worldgens.

Quote from: SalmonGod on April 16, 2019, 01:17:31 am
BTW, your equipment presets that you wrote up for your latest release are really useful for adding races like this to the game.  Thanks for that, and it's definitely a feature worth expanding on if you do anymore work on your mod in the future.

Thanks for the feedback! :)
As far as the functional presets go, though, I don't really have any more ideas so far. May go the cultural flavor route (desert dudes with scimitars, island dudes with longbows, you know), but other than that, I dunno. Anything on your mind?

Quote from: SalmonGod on April 16, 2019, 01:17:31 am
Although I should put some effort into making sure everything is size appropriate for the races I applied them to.

You can really just set everything to [MINIMUM_SIZE:15000] or even lower. These limits are there for realism's sake only - and, when merging with a mod such as Fortress Defense, are but an unnecessary handicap.

UPD: Checked the raws and, just as I thought, enemy entities lack any farming, as their raws are copied from goblins (who don't need to eat and, thus, don't care). Try giving them any or all of the following:
Code: [Select]
[INDOOR_FARMING]
[OUTDOOR_FARMING]
[INDOOR_GARDENS]
[OUTDOOR_GARDENS]
[INDOOR_ORCHARDS]
[OUTDOOR_ORCHARDS]
You can aslo give them one or both of these - appears to be buffing the coastal/river site populations:
Code: [Select]
[RIVER_PRODUCTS]
[OCEAN_PRODUCTS]
Title: Re: [44.12] Meph's Fortress Defense III - 60 civs to siege, trade, steal.
Post by: SalmonGod on April 16, 2019, 05:43:32 pm
Thanks for having a look!

Quote from: Sver on April 16, 2019, 02:20:08 pm
Quote from: SalmonGod on April 16, 2019, 01:17:31 am
Increased population & cluster values for the relevant creature raws

This doesn't affect civilizations, unfortunately. The only way to increase their population rates is probably giving them a low child age cap (the lower - the better) and/or a higher max age cap; there are no multiplets in worldgen, so the creatures with the highest amount of adult years are the ones most "fertile". Increasing the entity value of family also seems to work for HFs at least. [LIKES_SITE:default site type of this civ] + [TOLERATES_SITE:default site type of this civ] entity tokens also help.

I thought this was probably the case, but was trying anything I could think of.

Quote from: Sver on April 16, 2019, 02:20:08 pm
Quote from: SalmonGod on April 16, 2019, 01:17:31 am
BTW, your equipment presets that you wrote up for your latest release are really useful for adding races like this to the game.  Thanks for that, and it's definitely a feature worth expanding on if you do anymore work on your mod in the future.

Thanks for the feedback! :)
As far as the functional presets go, though, I don't really have any more ideas so far. May go the cultural flavor route (desert dudes with scimitars, island dudes with longbows, you know), but other than that, I dunno. Anything on your mind?

I agree with the flavor route.  Since I've learned a bunch digging through the raws, I'm probably going to take a shot at doing this myself.

I'm not sure how well the way DF's raws are set up allows for it, but instead of having races specifically set up as allies/invaders/etc, it would be cool to have animal people entities with behavior/ethics/values flavor matching the anthropomorphized personality of the animal and see what conflicts shake out on their own from that.  Going to take a shot at it.

Quote from: Sver on April 16, 2019, 02:20:08 pm
Quote from: SalmonGod on April 16, 2019, 01:17:31 am
Although I should put some effort into making sure everything is size appropriate for the races I applied them to.

You can really just set everything to [MINIMUM_SIZE:15000] or even lower. These limits are there for realism's sake only - and, when merging with a mod such as Fortress Defense, are but an unnecessary handicap.

It's those details that make Dwarf Fortress so interesting, though.

Quote from: Sver on April 16, 2019, 02:20:08 pm
UPD: Checked the raws and, just as I thought, enemy entities lack any farming, as their raws are copied from goblins (who don't need to eat and, thus, don't care). Try giving them any or all of the following:
Code: [Select]
[INDOOR_FARMING]
[OUTDOOR_FARMING]
[INDOOR_GARDENS]
[OUTDOOR_GARDENS]
[INDOOR_ORCHARDS]
[OUTDOOR_ORCHARDS]
You can aslo give them one or both of these - appears to be buffing the coastal/river site populations:
Code: [Select]
[RIVER_PRODUCTS]
[OCEAN_PRODUCTS]

This is probably the big thing I've been missing.  Thanks!
Title: Re: [44.12] Meph's Fortress Defense III - 60 civs to siege, trade, steal.
Post by: flyteofheart on June 22, 2020, 07:35:57 am
Kinda sad to see this hasnt been updated. I really like using the animal people for more things in world gen in general.

In my ideal world, this and Taffer's "Revised" would both be in the vanilla game haha.

Anyone tried to revive this? or does it work as is without too many problems in 47.04?
Title: Re: [44.12] Meph's Fortress Defense III - 60 civs to siege, trade, steal.
Post by: Iä! RIAKTOR! on June 22, 2020, 05:17:31 pm
Meph, how you make more than one cavern civ?