Bay 12 Games Forum

After using legends mode for a little bit, I have some suggestions on how to possibly reduce clutter to bearable levels.

Timelines

When turning off all "non-important" events (in other words, displaying only the yellow text), it seems that 90% of the events consist of:

a) Random festivals, and every little detail about them listed individually (so you have stuff like "107th Crossbows Throwing Competition of the Armored Festival began" being regarded as a very important event. No joke, I literally pulled that example straight from the game.)

b) Random rampages and abductions.

These don't really ring the bell for me as being particularly important events for world history. When toggling "important events only", the following things should be displayed:

A) Megabeast deaths
B) Major sites being founded, conquered, or destroyed
C) Civilizations/Religions/Factions being founded or extinguished
D) Particularly 'important' (this might be difficult to determine) people getting into positions of power, e.g. powerful monarchs ascending the throne, extremely adept generals entering service, etc.
E) Wars breaking out and ending, major battles (Note - wars seem to be almost broken currently in worldgen. Basically every border skirmish is treated as a major war by the game, hence the vast majority of the "wars" in legends mode are single-battle affairs that last less than half a year. This should be fixed, obviously)
F) Important artifacts getting created, changing hands, lost or destroyed

Ideally, there should be some granularity when it comes to displaying this info, ranging from "Just give me the barest breakdown of the era" to "Give me an infodump of every minor event that happened during the era".

Regions

These should have the format of:

1) Intro
2) Flora and fauna
3) History overview
4) Points of interest

For example:

"The Infinite Fingers was a mountain chain on the continent of The Absolute Realm.

The flora mainly consisted of cottongrass and hair grass, with little in the way of larger vegetation. The fauna was as typical of mountain regions, with the large population of giant bats and giant bobcats being particularly noteworthy.

In primordial times, the mountains were inhabited only by tribes of kea men. During these times, the mighty roc Famime Fuchsiatulip ruled the region from the skies. In 46, the first dwarven settlers from The Nation of Hammers arrived and built the fortress of Cloisterrag. In 102, Famime Fuchsiatulip was struck down by the dwarf Tosid Trancepaint in the 3rd Ravaging of Cloisterrag by Famime Fuchsiatulip. In 183 Cloisterrag was sacked by elven forces in The Fierce Conflict and made part of the Cerulean Empire. In 202 Cloisterrag was retaken by The Nation of Hammers from The Cerulean Empire.

Points of interest:

Cloisterrag (Fortress) is the largest and oldest inhabited settlement in the region
The Tombs of Glistening (Tomb) is a large and ancient tomb complex near Cloisterrag
The Red Peak (Geographical feature) is the highest peak of the region"

Obviously, if someone desired more detailed info (like in the current version), there would be an option for that as well.

If I have any more ideas for other parts of legends mode, I'll post them.

1. Since the magic update plans to include the possibility of entire regions changing due to magical influence, would it be possible to apply this system to simulate more gradual, natural regional changes? For example, desertification, rivers changing course, glaciers advancing and receding, etc. (this question might have been asked before, if it was, feel free to disregard it)

2. Currently, worldgen adventurers seem to be able to recover artifacts from ruined sites. Would it be possible to expand their behavior to also include the generalized ability to behave as looters and steal regular items? Right now, it seems that a site can be abandoned for a thousand years and it'll still have all of it's fine steel equipment neatly piled up in the barracks, untouched.

3. Is some kind of ruin overhaul in the plans for the next few releases in general, in the sense of actually simulating decay through the ages? Right now, they just feel like ordinary sites, just without any inhabitants.

4. Will world-ending artifacts be a thing? How would they be balanced?

1. Will we be getting an overhaul of the calendar, with procedurally generated per-word calendar systems? By this I mean two things - both the mechanics of time passage themself(for example worlds where seasons last several years, perhaps even decades, like ASOIAF, among the more mundane options) and the recording of the passage of time by sapient beings(e.g. a different number of months in a year, the division of time into "eras"(like in the TES universe), an explanation of when year 1 starts(where applicable), etc.)
2. How will spellbooks work? They're a staple of high fantasy and they'll obviously be included, but I see some problems with how to make them both fun and having them make sense. More specifically:

a) How will the generator handle the writing of spellbooks? Obviously this would require mages experimenting during worldgen and then writing their discoveries down, but how specifically are they going to experiment? A human might be able to see potentially interesting venues of further investigation, but how would a computer handle this?
b) Are spellbooks planned to be the one-spell-per-book variety, or the all-encompassing tomes with a bunch of spells contained? The first would be more fun(since it would require more exploration and learning new spells would be more rewarding) but would make far less sense(why, exactly, would a 2 step spell require an entire book about it?) while the second would be the other way around.
c) What would prevent worldgen mages from cluttering the world with 3000 books about the exact same spell?
d) What would prevent worldgen mages from simply discovering every spell there is on older worlds?
e) What would prevent spellbooks going around the world in massive numbers and making everyone a mage over time? If my character can read, what prevents me from simply learning a spell even if I'm not a mage(excluding spells that have prerequests, such as a bloodline or a faith in a god)?
f) Will there be spellbooks less about practical spells and more about interesting experiments that could further one's deeper understanding of the magic system?

Hope that isn't too much.

1. Will there be a setting for artifact abundance during worldgen?

2. Will there, in the future, exist a need to properly identify an artifact? Right now, everyone is able to immediately recognize an artifact upon seeing it, which usually doesn't make much sense. I'd imagine there'd be several ways to identify an artifact - either someone in your fort has outright seen it before(and is aware of what it is), has heard/read about it somewhere(with varying degrees of certainty), etc. and if you have a suspicion that an item you posses might be an artifact, you could send out a squad of scholars to scour nearby libraries for more info. Even if you know what the artifact is called, you might not know other info, such as origin, magical properties, etc. This could create very interesting situations, for example purchasing a cheap, weird bone crown from a caravan and it turning out to be an ancient artifact that turns the wearer into an extremely powerful lich, causing much fun in the fortress.

3. How much info about the world's creation myth and magic would your average adventurer have access to initially? How about your fort?

Wow, color me impressed. Some of the quotes this thing generated not only make semantic/logical sense, but actually sound wise and akin to something someone from RL history might have said.

"NEVER FORSAKEN PHILOSOPHY BECAUSE IT IS THE BEST CURE FOR STUPIDITY."

"VICTORY LOOKS EASY AT FIRST."

"IT IS BETTER TO BE RIGHTEOUS DESOLATED THAN FALSE COMRADE."

"KNOWLEDGE IS LIKE A DRUG FOR THE SMART."

"POWER IS NEVER UNDERSTOOD."

And finally, this quote:

"WE LIKE TO BE RICH AND WE TRY TO HIDE IT. WE PRETEND TO LIKE KNOWLEDGE AND WE TRY TO SHOW IT TO EVERYONE."

That last one really impressed me.

Now, not all of the generated quotes are as good as this, and these are relatively simple(excluding the last one, arguably), but I could easily see a more complex version of this generator working very nicely in DF.

Attention; you can only have so much of it, and your empathy skills should determine how well you can read a crowd (which needs to be its own entity)

Obviously. Social skills should be a huge factor in conversations, and how they play out. Currently, social skills are almost all the same and have an exceedingly minor role in the game. I imagine they could be improved in a way like this:

1) Conversationalist: determines mainly your capacity for small-talk, but also has a slight effect on other types of conversations. A high conversationalist skill lets you make small-talk that is actually interesting to the second person, opening the way for things like making a friend, getting someone's guard down, making someone more likely to divulge information that they're not normally supposed to, etc. Capped by your empathy level.

2) Comedian: determines the quality of your insults, and how likable you are in general. While conversationalist is meant to have a greater effect on long-term relationships, comedian can be used to gain a temporary, but significant, relationship boost with someone(if the context is valid, of course). High-quality insults could also be used to make someone lose their temper, potentially making them make rash and irrational decisions. Capped by creativity.

3) Judge of intent: how effectively you can judge other's emotions and detect lies during a conversation. A high level in this skill lets you get accurate info on what the other person is feeling, how interested they are in the conversation, how believable they are finding your story, etc. while also letting you see through otherwise highly believable lies. Capped by the your empathy or intuition, whichever is higher.

4) Liar: how good your lies are, obviously. For simple lies, like answering 'yes/no' questions dishonestly, only this skill is used, but for more elaborate lies(including made-up stories like the one I made above) it is used in conjunction with the persuasion skill. Capped by your creativity.

5) Intimidator: how legitimate your threats come across, obviously.

6) Persuader: used when trying to convince someone to do a particular action, or trying to change their values. Also used when making long, elaborate lies. Capped by your empathy.

7) Negotiator: used mainly when haggling or making some kind of contract/deal. Capped by your patience(?).

Do you foresee some sort of technological progress system to apply during worldgen? Currently, no matter how many millennia pass, technology stays completely the same. While I understand that this is a very common fantasy trope, it would be nice if there was an option for some sort of system that supports this.

Technologies could be a mix of real-world ones(e.g. gunpowder, printing press) and procedural ones, interacting with the magic system/world-specific features(e.g. a high-strength alloy of copper and a fictional metal unique to the universe of the current game, automata powered by a certain primordial force, etc.). After originating in a certain site(most likely dwarven or human), the technology could slowly spread through sites of the same civilization, and eventually sites of other civilizations and races.

Since many technologies would be exclusive to a certain few civilizations for a long time, it would mean that a large-scale catastrophe that wipes out the said civilizations would make the technology 'lost', so you'd have situations where, say, a sword produced 400 years ago is highly coveted and expensive due to the unique alloy it is made of, whose recipe is now lost.

How would you like a technology system to look like in the game?

I'm playing in the latest 43. Version. I'll try with 42. to see if there's any difference.