Bay 12 Games Forum

Just a quick suggestion that I found regarding my modding experience and a few personal observations of how DF generates cavern systems that are already lined up to be worked upon.

Some of the lore i was tapping into while making the draft of my total/majority conversion mod defines many kinds of cave dwelling creature, but to have them all simultaneously inside the same super-network doesn't really work because they live in respective in the fantasy world setting in places like different continents entirely unless i purposefully evocate them entirely from the underground.

• Its all a bit mix and match in trying to divide them up mostly between layers, but the underground is the most contentious offender for this especially with such a lot of big, deadly & threatening apex predators often being relegated to the third, so its strange to see a giant underground dinosaur underneath a glacier.

• The other is that this is indeed possible to have biomes affect caverns, as already the sea-levels from frozen oceans can have large waxing effect unintentionally in killing cavern moss & mushroom trees when you embark into them. As above, as below.

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Here's a few post-map rewrite examples i could pull up to try to get my point across of unique and mixed biome enviroments.

High Humidity Lush Jungle Limestone Caverns

A savage jungle underground might be quite similar to the novel cliche "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" with many great plant vines hanging from the ceiling, large insects comparable to variants of the generic GCS and the occasional large creature boding through.

• Creatures from typical DF mushroom caverns might congregate here despite being widespread all over with a generalist underground tag such as Drunians seeking out varieties of fruit to compliment a diet of mushrooms, avoiding cavern biomes where neither are present.

• The temperature is much hotter than the sublime subterrenean cold, with plants, grass and trees defined in the subterranean realm preferring this heat. Most aboveground jungle plants can have mixtures of above and below tokens and work fine here but not elsewhere underground.

• Some habitation preferences for lizard & snakemen layer linked civilizations to settle may be suitable for them.

• Alternative spheres to generic caverns similar to primordial titans, and forgotten beasts that are culminative of what those spheres represent in form.

No certainty that such a biome will exist except for the existance of a jungle or other suitable biome above it existing, and being the correct rock composition for a small way around the entire regional area distinct in the underground network. Being able to offload some varieties of creatures in these specialised biome climates would be a immense help to modding & indeed DF vanilla possibilities, which im sure advanced map conditions & third party applications can handle the rest for pre-configured arrangements.

The Roman colonization of other lands is also one I considered mentioning.  Romans, when they conquered a new land, often would enslave half the population of a city, sending them to the other provinces, then moving in people they displaced from other provinces.  That way, they figured, they were preventing popular uprisings of people of a single conquered culture because now the population was mixed with multiple other cultures, and they wouldn't be so able to easily unite with the other displaced peoples against their common Roman enemy.

It's also worth pointing out that by the time of the fall of Rome, almost 90% of the population of Rome was enslaved, which had an awful lot to do with its economic and military collapse.  (As most of the laborers and potential soldiers were slaves, so they had to hire "barbarian" tribes as mercenaries to be the Roman army for them, and were almost constantly facing slave revolts.)

Interesting point, but only that it actually puts up the point about what happens with the fate of races who are conquered by non-dwarven slaving entities such as humans; Having too many slaves distributed across their kingdoms secured from conquered settlements could actively worsen their site happyness and leave them more open to insurrections and a less enthusiastic defence unless its suitably balanced out.

• Also leaning into the point that instead of persecuting troublemakers and letting them go, they may just decide to enslave a good majority instead when they integrate, counting it amongst their war-spoils.

• Elves and other races that devour intelligent races may even attempt to eat them in a great feast of defeated foes

I dont expect goblins to spare any settlement of the dwarves (yours or anybody elses) the come across, i expect them to maim, slave, eat & raze everything in a trail-blaze, destroying as many settlements as they can like a force of destruction, with lots of small sites suddenly beginning to start vanishing with ruins in their wake with grandiose grisly monuments in their wake.

Suddenly being asked to simply leave and join a refugee group as a innocent doesn't seem so bad.

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The problem then, however, is that you're just kind of porting that idea of people thinking Rome is a Great Empire into DF and applying it to dwarves regardless of whether it is actually true or not.

Shouldn't your civilization have a reputation?  Shouldn't there be something where there is a respect for your civilization that might be increased or decreased by certain actions the player takes, or milestones the civilization has achieved?

If you want to go with an idea that conquered peoples will want to join dwarven civilizations because they see it as a Great Empire, then the effectiveness of that should be attached to how many Great Works your civilization has built, for example.  Or the size of the army or kingdom.  Resounding military victories in the recent past should be temporary bonuses to the respect of the citizenry towards your empire.

Likewise, there should be tracked the number of atrocities you've committed, how badly you go against the cultural ethics of the conquered, and of course, how much proganda the enemy has dropped on their people motivate them against you.

This does tie into viable system in DF where a entire entity could have a reputation permetating from your site or ascended kingdom status to set you apart from other dwarven civilizations, to such a extent you may end up being disowned for being a trouble-maker or being sat down for diplomatic talks prohibiting you from doing activites (by getting caught) without consequences. Every rumor regarding world activities getting out damaging or possibly improving your reputation with acts of kindness (finishing a war with tributatary status, then releasing towns, dealing fairly with diplomats etc) more and more.

• DF already has a entity strength gauging system, its reasonably invisible, but entities will not begin wars against entities like dwarves unless their convictions are very strong or they have superior forces/they are called in as allies. Extreme examples of this culminate in watching necromancers having wiped out normal civilizations declaring wars against the angelic residents of vaults.

Romanticising Rome is very easy as a archetype, as you've succinctly put out, i dont envisage in strict terms because im sure a player could modify something bigger or smaller to scale entirely individual to them in their own minds, but only by projected rate of expansion do i draw a comparison to what a successful DF player's personal empire could be. you could alternatively simply attribute some things like you've said to the Muslim Ottomans, who expertly capitalised and integrated many different cultural groups of people with tolerance, installing taxes upon them and employing them into their armies as lowerclass freemen (unlike the mamluks who used slaves) but were also known for their brutality in war, especially in coastal raids.

Rather than just punch an "integrate" button, it would likewise make more sense to try to sway the subjects of occupation to your side by promising them a better quality of life or other benefits.  Giving out free food and matching it with propagandistic entertainment (bread and circuses, if you will) to at least quell uprisings, if not overtly bring people into line.

Christianity, for its part, is filled with traditions that are really just Christianized pagan traditions.  The date of Jesus's birth was almost certainly during the Summer, but it's put in December because that made it overlap with a Roman pagan holiday.  Pork being suddenly declared to be "pure" and Christianity not having dietary restrictions like Judaism was mostly just to get Germanic peoples that loved their pork to join.  Halloween is basically made to take the place of pagan holidays related to Samhain.  Rather than just demanding that everyone bend to them, Christianity overtly warped itself to try to drag others into its cultural sway.

It would be more interesting to see some sort of option where you can issue edicts (if you have the king) that would try to change cultural norms or create holidays or traditions that appeal to other cultures to try to entice them into playing by your new version of a holiday that is syncretic in nature, even at the expense of unhappiness among your own culture for bending to foreigners.

Yes this may be true, but it could be the collated efforts of what 'integrate' is meant to represent, extended reach of diplomacy or/and reputation & problem solving on a local site level via 'investigate' to generate quests to kill bandit forts, stop plots of towards the assasination of local leaders and other nuisances -since a site that likes you shoudnt have to offer any resistance to its integration at all with no expulsions or pusnishments if there's no malign activities occuring and assuming citizens agree to be brought round to your way of thinking.

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Broadly speaking, I find "just wait five years, then kick out anyone who isn't grateful" to be a really boring way to represent one of the most fascinating processes in history - the dissolution of one cultural identity into another, and the formation of a single, cohesive cultural or national identity.

Ill be perfectly honest; thats a valid opinion and it is a interesting process but most DF players i dont think have the patience to raise animals/children in the scope of 10 years or even indeed reach their forts demise within the first 5 years outright, and the 5 years is more for the claims-paperwork to be put together and a benchmark of commitment to protect and uphold the occupation so that its not a instantenous snowball either.

I checked my game through gm-editor and there doesn't seem to be a CASTE_COMMON_DOMESTIC in the flags table for a creature but there is a HAS_ANY_COMMON_DOMESTIC value and changing it to fit this seemed to make the error not come up.

I'll keep using it to see if it works.

Nice findings, cool modification too for adding more pernamency to dwarven activities.

I do wonder if i could somehow combine this with a succubus-fort 'Corrupt' script's code to cross reference the current level of training that is expected before some creatures are mass enslaved, or else they turn out feral and poorly trained. Or possibly to just re-feralize at leisure to purge tamed pet intelligents of token & tame status to be availbile as normal fortress citizens.

Draws me onto my additional elaboration point about claims -which i did allude in my opening post as to being one of the key reasons to bother integrating in the first place to and that already exist in some capacity for DF regarding land.

Within your own fortress, land-holders recommended to your fort hold a personal claim they can exercise should anything happen and they are made to flee the fortress, allowing them to muster power in another site with intent to enforce the claim or reclaimation over any ruins or occupied site that your fortress has now become. This extends to include any dwarves who come under a windfall of a inheritance of a title from abroad, through close family and lines of inheritence finally having a purpose.

This opens a small subset of options you can follow based on the status of the claim, which after some negotiations via messenger, the site can become one of your direct holdings, cementing your claim in case of the residing noble at your sites sudden death passing the title, or splinter off into a vassal state (in which the noble will run back home to rule)

Of course when you obtain a monarch, you have the option to follow up your similar claims through them and this adds a layer above interacting with singular sites, as you control the entity of the entire kingdom at large -pressing any existing and newly forged land-holders into a vassal & trading relationship to replace the parent-civilizations place.

When you change fortress this is reset, because you will have become a new site government of no significance, and your old site as the unifier will preside over you as the new parent civ.

It'd be nice if everyone had a 'metropolis' style of extended site under the provision they can supply enough to it so that it makes sense, as many modern cities have only really been made possible though the extended negotiation of trade and development that certain actors for DF like merchant companies can achieve -by securing foreign goods without explicitly resorting to violence that a large empire or lots of hamlet & town founding would be able to do the same.

You can compare it to something like Beijing in the Middle Ages or London in the mid to late Victorian era both being the most populous and influencial cities of their time.

Then of course there's the fun in crippling this city and seeing it all fall apart as you pick away at its suppliers, the city starves and people flee, or is sieged outright and the dispora fills villages for many tiles around.

Any idea on how to train it without losing half of my elite squad?

Hit easy targets such as hostile castles & forts inhabited by bandits with intent to pillage since they infinitely refill even after you may try to raze them a few times given the kinds of shenanigans that occur in legends mode (im applying this as non-anecdotal advice, i usually use small settlements instead), including a lot of sneaking missions where the stealth is vital with a chance of retrieving something valuable but fighting is not. Essentially getting the experience and a bit of free training/loot to all dwarves involved for no penalties.

For real though, the likelyhood is that you will lose your 'General' to a cushy-desk job when they've been sufficiently groomed for the task is a astoundingly high likelyhood regarding that military tactics tends to work on snowball momentum fighting small sites in a prelude to fighting big sites, simply because their manager stat will be so high, they'll end up being selected for forced overseer unless there is another dwarf held in reserve who is more suitable.

Also to note, the militia captain of the first dwarf squad to arrive at the site actually directs the fighting under leadership, and sending supplimentary squads behind them (like a untrained bunch of very noisy soldiers) will quickly escalate a covert raid into a pilllaging mission irregardless of how quiet the first squad was since every other dwarf militia captain that arrives applies their own skills, the rest of the squad doesnt mater so the most prominent members for raiding and considering sending backup should always be the captains (best ambushers, most leadership, best tactics, ideally best desired weapon & social skills).

The caravan baggage train is as good as ever a indication of the trust that the civ has in you, with good trading relationships and offering valuable items (artifacts notably have a lot of traction when offered or least a lot of value traded) the caravan trains will start to swell larger.

Just the same, civ trust is damaged by the caravans being misplaced or destroyed without applicable and believable cause like a invading army, especially when it comes to having a eyewitness escape that can testimony a caravan destruction to being more than a 'misunderstanding' of a hostile action, and in most other cases with neutral parties, the civ sending the caravan expects you to do your due work & protecting and sheltering the caravan/pack animals from weather and wild animals.

Goblins dont technically have any animals to pull their wagons, but once adequate pacified by demanding continous tribute from their remaining active sites they'll no longer be hostile potentially in theory opening up the window for further trade negotiations, but this compliance number-game often dries up as they'll terminate the arrangement after a period of time. For a breif period however, there will be peace, and a few offerings.

As far as I understand that just results in larger caravans for other civs (up to a limit that can be reached by just giving them big profits), and did contribute to getting saddled with a monarch before holdings were introduced: don't know if it still does factor in the monarch attraction process.

A set number of types of jobs (glassworking, gemcutting, metalworking) 200 dwarves & a substantial amount of exports will call any position labelled as [POSITION:MONARCH] to your fortress in the same process, even if they're a dark-fortress generated clown. They'll be accompanied by two expertly skilled weaponmasters, but other entities the monarch has a hand appointing will remain offsite.

Quote from: BluealienDio on November 07, 2019, 12:40:02 am

Keep it up man, can’t wait for the Tomb Kings and Counts!

The current civ is pretty much the Counts, so you have that at already.

The 'Age of Sigmar' universe is set at a far future point post the end times of the Warhammer fantasy, known as 'The World Before the World' so not exactly really accurate to that statement at all. Besides, Nagash is a much more consistent prominent figure in this lore and the history of how the organized force of nighthaunts came to be compared to their last appearance in lore and neither of those factions really exist anymore regarding the enclosed end times spoiler.

I do like a lot of the updated generalized undead creatures in this modification (the silver weakness is a good touch) though such as the terrorgeist and its post-death explosion, but trying to adapt them to fit onto your earlier modification makes a point that its simply too hard to untangle either this new or old modification with much reliablity.