Bay 12 Games Forum

The night creature tags run counter to being part of a civilization, assuming you mean entities. You're better off using the tags for child thieves and the like to simulate it.

I recall hearing somewhere that world-gen wars are actually done as a series of one-on-one fights between all participants; only when one or two noteworthy historical figures fight does Legends call it a "duel" and record it specially.

It's actually more like...
Both armies each stand in a single line, and the dudes at the front of each line fight each other. When someone dies, they leave the line and the next person in line fights the person at the front of the other line. So it's entirely possible, but incredibly unlikely, for two armies to clash, but only one soldier from the winning army to ever do any actual fighting.

Quote from: peasant cretin on January 14, 2017, 02:43:19 pm

Punching and kicking (and biting!) have an advantage over the war hammer (any weapon actually) versus weapon-using NPCs who have shields.

Your war hammer attack can be defended in 3 ways: parried by the weapon-using NPC, blocked with a shield, or dodged (you miss).

Punches and kicks however can't be parried at all. They can be defended in 2 ways: they can miss (dodge), or the weapon-using NPC can shield block the punch/kick.

Now say your character is large enough and strong enough to grab the NPC and maintain that grip -> they can no longer dodge. Now there's only 1 defense, the shield block.

And if you remove their shield...

All your wild, heavy, precise and multi strike attacks become a sure hit?!?

If I grab someone without a shield and issue a multistrike with 10 hits... really?!?

No, because you can still just "miss". Or they can dodge.

Thx for the answers!

I don't want to add or remove tags, that seems too artificail, but ajusting their ethics, that seems promising. Maybe overpopulation population don't influence on starting wars, but perhaps over populated sites makes battles bigger and more significant.

Alright, I will give it a try.

I would like for toady to elaborate more on how history gen works. How the AI assembles its armies, attack, defense, siege...are those stuff "modble" (hum...modifiable?) or is it hardcoded?

Larger populations are guaranteed to lead to larger armies and larger battles.

I would like it if Toady elaborated on how world gen/world activation decisions like starting wars works as well. Maybe someone will ask the right questions in Future of the Fortress someday. I'm much too lazy and I'm really not sure what questions will make sense and be worth Toady's time to answer.
Unfortunately, the actual decision making process that NPCs go through is hard coded and we cannot mod it. Though we can alter variables that effect the decisions they make, insofar as we understand it, as in the case of Facets/Values/Ethics.

Just going to link this handy summary of what we the players know about behind-the-scenes war stuff here.

With all that mind, there are a few ways to encourage wars.

If you want wars to be more frequent, but not an always-happening sort of thing, you can set Ethics for each Civ to hold more extreme differences. The df wiki page on Ethics has a helpful chart to compare point values for that.

If you want specific groups of civs (ie. Dwarf + Humans vs Goblins + Elves or something) to go to war with one another more frequently, you can use tags like BABYSNATCHER and/or ITEM_THIEF to prevent friendships along a certain line. These tags work together and separately: Let's say Civs 1-3 have neither BABYSNATCHER or ITEM_THIEF, Civs 2-5 have only BABYSNATCHER and Civ 6 has both BABYSNATCHER and ITEM_THIEF. Civs 1-3 will be hostile (and thus inclined to go to war) with all civs who have either BABYSNATCHER or ITEM_THIEF -- so 1-3 will be hostile to 2-6. Civs 2-5 will be hostile towards anyone who does not have BABYSNATCHER or anyone who does have ITEM_THIEF -- so they are hostile to Civs 1-3 and Civ 6. Civ 6 will be hostile towards anyone who does not have BABYSNATCHER and does not have ITEM_THIEF -- civs 1-5, therefor.

You can alter the VALUES of each Entity and the FACETS of each creature to make them more inclined to violence. This should, hypothetically at least, encourage warmongering. Things like a high POWER level and a low PEACE level would probably do the trick. Tweak it around a bit to try and get whatever works best.

You can use very specific worldgen parameters in conjunction with entity biomes to force everyone to start in more or less the same area, once they hit the world/civ site limits they'll need to fight to expand. I'm not sure if this actually encourages wars, but having everyone close enough to fight will help remove obstacles to warfare. A smaller map helps with this. Other worldgen stuff that can help (and you can further increase some of these in the entity files): Lower site cap, higher pop cap + higher pop/site cap (results in larger battles, larger armies, etc.).

You can combine the above methods, and while that won't guarantee constant warfare it will contribute to it.

If there is a civilization that you want to always be at war with everyone, you can give their creatures the UNINTELLIGIBLE tag. Since they won't be able to communicate, they'll never be able to form peace treaties and any wars they start or have started on them will not end until one side is wiped out. UNINTELLIGIBLE does not create pseudo-factions (true factions/alliances/whatever aren't possible) the same way that BABYSNATCHER and ITEM_THIEF does - UNINTELLIGIBLE kobolds will be hostile to UNINTELLIGIBLE orcs or whathaveyou. CRAZED should accomplish the same goal with the added bonus of being able to talk to the creatures, though I haven't tested it.

Humans have the advantage of size, elves have numbers and speed, goblins have numbers and a demon master, dwarves are strong.

Goblins and Elves also have immortality.
Goblins have better physical stats than anyone else (rather surprisingly). Elves are generally worse off for physical stats, but are a little more agile. Humans are, naturally, middle of the road with dwarves slightly above them in Strength/Toughness but still below Goblins.
Just adding on to that a little. One of the reason Goblins do so well, aside from their numbers, is their immortality and the lack of a need to eat or drink -- so their massive hordes can hypothetically all reach legendary (though I don't think it ever happens in world gen, or at least I have never seen it). If a world is genned for long enough, Goblins will almost always win save in the rare case where they're rapidly exterminated by the other 3 races in the very early years.

Quote from: Teneb on February 20, 2016, 09:58:55 pm

Quote from: cochramd on February 20, 2016, 02:03:53 pm

Related questions: I've modded mittens and chausses to be made from mail instead of leather or fabric. Will the game know to make them in pairs?

There is, I think, a token in the item itself that allows for that behaviour, so yes.

That's the thing, I can't find any such token in the item files. The token has to be somewhere (if I had to guess it's tied to the fact that these items are of the glove and shoe types), but I don't know where so I guess all I can do is keep my fingers crossed that it's someplace where the game will pick it up now that they're made of mail.

Pretty sure gloves and shoes are just automatically made in pairs, there's no special token needed.

Why is it that the HUMANOID_JOINTS body part isn't enough to allow for wrestlers to break arms through holds and the like? What changes would need to be made for that to take effect?

Also -- how does one figure out what tissue is being called by ARG# in body detail plans?

Can ignore this. I need to learn to read Toady's comments before asking questions.