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« on: January 15, 2009, 06:59:12 pm »
I started on this fort when I was at home over the break. Then my computer crashed and I lost it, I'm going to give it another go though.
The original 7 dwarves and whatever families they start are going to be the privileged nobility, I was going to give them surnames and everything. They're going to live in a nice area of town. They started out living in aboveground houses each made of two levels, their workshops on the bottom level, and their bedrooms on the top. I made streets and everything. I made this part into a little gated community.
Then, as immigrants came, I had them set up shop outside the gates. They lived in little crappy shacks and I got some industry going. Then carp attacked and killed a few dwarves and the computer crashed and that's where it crashed.
The plan was that I'd have that little gated community be the rich area, and everything else was going to be slums. Shacks or group homes, little or no wealth, just industry. I'd have a standing army who would patrol the streets of the slums, keeping order. I assume there would be a lot of crime, with all the unhappy poor people. So, the soldiers would quickly be on the scene to beat them down and preserve the social order.
I planned on eventually making a big human-style castle where the ruling families/immigrant nobles would live. It would be the only wealthy nice area, other than maybe some barracks and other little police stations out in the slums. the castle would be well-stocked with emergency supplies. In the event of goblin attack, I'd draft everyone. The nobles would have top-of-the-line armour and weapons, like knights of yore. But I'd send them to the castle to hide and defend that. Every peasant would wrestle or have a weapon and no armour and they would charge the attackers, supported by a well-armed standing army.
Security would be fairly poor at the slums. I'd have a defensive picked of sentry animals spread around the wilderness to alert me of ambushes early, and hope that it gave me enough time to help the rich people and mobilise the poor to fight for their lives.
Every battle would involve brutal casualties probably, plunging the oppressed underclass into even deeper despair. Eventually they will either die out and I'd start the process all over again, or they'd all tantrum at the same time and overwhelm my military (unlikely but it would be really cool to see)
I would even try to keep the aristocracy separate from the peasants so they don't even become friends enough to care when their short lives end.
It is really labour intensive, building all the stuff. The only underground stuff I had was a small basement under each house for storage, and a mine where my miner would procure stone for construction
Anyone ever do anything similar, having an underclass who struggle to survive while the favoured dwarves prosper?
