Bay 12 Games Forum

One of the Big Problems of a society without modern-style water purification, as I understand it, is the simple problem of finding something safe to drink.  Water in nature has all sorts of baleful bacteria in, so that wouldn't do.  Fermentation is a good answer -- the alcohol being antiseptic is one factor, but short of concentrations that require distillation the action of the yeast is actually more important -- and the ease of discovering fermentation means that tons of cultures rely on fermented drinks as an everyday thing.  The boiling step involved in beer brewing helps too.  Other attested solutions include tea (boiling again), milk (in regions of lactose-tolerant genetics), perhaps blood, ...

Beyond that I don't have too much, but your question seems like a fertile one for some Wikipedia-trawling, starting say here. 

For instance, I see that pulque among the Aztecs, at one time, was basically reserved for the upper classes in ceremonial contexts, except that it was so nutritious that they let the rule slide for the elderly and the pregnant.  Seemingly similarly nutritious is cauim, even now the staple of the diet of infants less than two among the Tapirapé (of the Amazon rainforest). 

Historical China looks to be another interesting case, as in many things given how prone they seemed to be to societal sea changes with the accession of each emperor.  One dynastic transition was directly linked to alcohol: the Zhou declared that their predecessors' renunciation of the right to rule was largely due to their alcoholism (incidentally kicking off a politico-philosophical meme that long outlived them).  Beer was so central to the Chinese of the 7th century BC that "to prohibit it and secure total abstinence from it is beyond the power even of sages", but by Han times half a millennium later they'd managed it... at least in the literal reading: beer production had been abandoned in favour of rice wice.  And "laws against making wine were enacted and repealed forty-one times between 1100 BC and AD 1400".

I haven't read the thread to this point, but here's a nice analysis of what's in it for self-interested magical forces to break their contracts from a tactical game-theoretic point of view.

Well, the other way to resolve the anomaly, and my preference, would be not to slow fortress mode down but to speed up within fortress mode the things which cause the discrepancy: e.g. let the dwarves walk 72 times in each tick, not just once.  Really not too implementationally different -- we'd still need the above changes to time spent eating and all that -- but far less glacial. 

If you worry it loses empathisability too much, as you can't watch your dorfs walking around... well, if the result was really a reintegration of the two different timescales, it needn't be so hard to code it so that you could switch to adventure-mode clock speed and follow someone if you want to. 

If you object that the current pathing algorithm couldn't handle that... well, that's probably enough of an objection to defeat this in practice.  But given the amount of time DF burns on pathing, I say an abstraction of it wouldn't be unwelcome.

Responding to an old question, in case it's something you feel like adding a few more cases of:

Finally, I'm hoping to have a system of legal/illegal goods on the black market, depending on what the government has outlawed. Alcohol can be one, I guess, but any ideas on other things? I'm not too sure what drugs or illegal substances were present in ancient societies, although I'm willing to make some up for the sake of interesting gameplay.

I'm not sure how much of this is anciently attestable, but perhaps:
- Various sorts of arms and munitions.  The controlling faction might have a technological advantage (e.g. the only bronze swords around) which it wishes to avoid falling into enemy hands.  For that matter, any particular other thing else (food, clothes, ...) of which other factions thought probable near-future enemies are in short supply. 
- Writings which are subversive or against the morals or precepts of the controlling faction (obscene, anti-Communist, ...).  If there's enough literacy for that as a category.  Or non-languagey symbols: a strict-monotheist religion might prevent you selling symbols of other religions' false gods, etc.
- Items proscribed by sumptuary law? i.e. stuff too extravagant for the commoners.
- Stolen goods?
- Items at the wrong price, under a factional price control law.  (ISTR the Romans etc. having had price control laws, but not the details.)
- Things whose manufacture and sale is the legally-blessed preserve of a certain faction: I guess I'm more thinking of a medievalesque guild system here, but who knows, a given faction of e.g. farriers with enough political clout could make anyone else selling a horseshoe illegal.
- Anything, if you don't pay your protection money, capisce?
- State (faction) secrets?  Though that's a whole other mechanics can of worms. 

ETA:

Not too much, but here are a few. Keep in mind these first two are extremely rough. They show the combat view that I currently have. This one shows my wonky combat system in a small scuffle. The gray and cyan in the background is the early work on a city street generator:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ancient cities didn't tend to be planned, and grid-like streets are a feature of planned cities, AFAIK.  If I were you I'd have the city layout generator be accretive, instead: take the principal roads to nearby places, erect a bunch of buildings along them growing outwards, put in some new peripheral roads as seeds governed by where the extant buildings are every once in awhile, etc.  I think someone in FotF (or the suggestions forum?) posted a bunch of good maps illustrating this once, when Toady was doing city maps.  Oh, and add city walls in the accretion process now and then too (e.g. London 1300).

Hmm, a thought just struck me that I haven't really thought of before concerning this. Does the skin colors of various groups (at least as far as humans go) correspond to what's actually logical concerning longitude (not that I'm sure that's even a valid term with how the df world may work), ie darker skin color in areas with longer periods of and more intense sunlight and vice versa?

It's not clear that that's even the whole story with humans.  It turns out light skin doesn't have too much of a natural selection advantage; failing to block UV radiation doesn't become a good idea just 'cause there's less of it at your latitude, it still increases your chance of melanoma and whatnot.  On the other hand, skin colour is such a stand-out unmissable feature that it wouldn't be surprising if sexual selection has had a large impact.  This is the view of Peter Frost on where light skin came from in Europe, for instance.  Another treatment.

For example, Rudolf II was, at same time:
[...] Archduke of Austria, Margrave of Moravia, Prince of Piombino, Prince of Transylvania.

Aww, you broke the alliteration    Clearly he should've been Tsar of Transylvania.

Aw, and here I thought it might be a raffle for such a grammar. 

Anyway, I have no particular pragmatic advice for how to run this, but I'd chip in if you get it running.