Bay 12 Games Forum

Also, seasons greetings:

GINGERBREAD COLOSSUS

Tea and similar foodstuffs would be another use for wood.  A lot of trees can be used to produce tea-like beverages.  Safflower oil in sassafras was popular in sodas until it was observed to cause cancer. 

I always think of this tool as the Putnam Material Helper, and it takes me a few tries of the search engine to remember that's not what you call it.  I love it though. 

I know it's not particularly dwarfy, but in a game that strives to be so realistic, there are a lot of qualities of trees that cannot be exploited.

Wood Material Properties:
The Wood Database and other sites have material properties for many kinds of wood. 

Different classes of trees:
Wood can be divided into different classes, softwood, hardwood, ironwood and economic woods, like ebony or calamander.  Some woods are well suited for striking weapons, and in a fantasy game, there could be trees with metal-like properties that would be ideal for weapons and armor.  When such woods exist, Dwarves should be able to make weapons like staffs and clubs out of them, and there should be a way to make sure they are made from weapons-grade wood.  Also, our buddies the elves should be able to preferentially produce weapons and armor from weapons-grade wood.  They might be worth keeping around if they can trade us some grown ironwood swords and blackwood cudgels. 

Tapping Trees:
Trees can be tapped for various substances, for example maple trees produce syrup, gum trees produce latex, rosewoods produce perfume oil and diesel trees produce diesel fuel.  Perhaps a fantasy tree could be tapped to produce booze or magma.  Dwarves could produce a tap item at a workshop, attach it to a tree, and come back to collect the tapped materials when they are filled.  In the real world, bears are known to pillage maple syrup taps, which would be amusing in DF. 

Wood Improvements:
Wood is typically improved with substances like varnish, paint and lacquer.  I think varnish is just oil.  Tempera paints are ancient and could consist of eggs or milk and dye.  Lacquer-ware is complicated and would an interesting industry to explore. 

Aging:
Apparently, a lot of woods change color as they age.  For example, teak goes from red to brown to grey.  It seems like an easy thing to add, as long as it doesn't affect FPS. 

Aroma:
A lot of valuable woods apparently have pleasant aromas, like rosewood.  Not sure if there's a slick way to represent this in DF. 

Tree Farming:
Tree farming is definitely a real industry, and we should be able to do it.  Maybe something like a 3x3 or 5x5 zone where one plants a single tree.  Trees could be grown from seeds, or saplings could be transplanted.  The tree could be set to automatically tap, collect fruit, or cut down at a certain size.  Trees could also be planted decoratively, this would involve giving dwarves a happy thought when passing by them, maybe like a statue garden.  Some trees, like magnolias or palm trees, could have a higher decorative value. 



I know some of these would be possible to do with modding, and I plan to start trying some of them myself, if I can find the time. 

As an experiment, I want to see if I can create a fortress with a large multi-racial visitor population.  I've noticed in previous fortresses that I need to be in close proximity to foreign fortresses in order to attract visitors from them.  I'm playing the Furry Fortress mod, so my people are the Lagomers, and I have chosen to embark on a spot far from our homeland known as the Sepia Hills.  To our south are the Tadhger settlements, Aniculaaranic and Joulictjazard, and to our north the Dark Pits Odannako, Ngokangotub and Ngososnamoz.  I do not know yet what force inhabits these places, but Goblins, Yetis and Jumping Spider Men are known to exist in the region.  Our civilization of Lagomers is already at war with Goblin-kind, so I would expect one of the others to make their homestead here in the Sepia Hills, far from where we came. 

We stake our claim along the banks of the brook Squirmvulgar and name this place, Suclyhant, "Standardfocus".  Great things will be built here: 



Unfortunately, this spot which allows us to access to both the Tadgher and Dark Civ settlements sits atop a massive aquifer, so digging for stone and metal will likely prove fruitless.  But the region is rich with wood and the hills offer fire clay and yellow sand, so trading should be profitable.  Our kind, the Lagomers, do not partake of animal flesh or products, but here in the Sepia Hills, far from home, perhaps we will permit ourselves to stray from tradition and fish up the bounties that Squirmvulgar offers as well. 

You could make Vulgaris Magistralis some kind of megabeast or secret position. 

I've seen that description applied to creatures like megabeasts or giant animals that kill civ members.  I assume that if a beast kills enough people or if a person is there to see it kill people, it becomes an enemy of the civilization.  Probably the same mechanic as naming animals when they kill dwarves.