Bay 12 Games Forum

Currently there is a wide spectrum of mostly unused skills (in vanilla at least) like astronomer, chemist, optical engineer etc that only used for book making, giving it little to no practical use. I have two ideas on how this could be expanded into tech trees for advanced equipment, highly valued scholars and proper incentive to conduct research.

The first method I thought of was to have each civ have a hive-mind like knowledge of each tech once it’s discovered. In world gen, each year a civ could have a small chance to discover a tech (this chance could be increase slowly by a larger amount of scholars in the population). The propblem with this would be with time scaling issues. A world that is 300 years old may only have primitive technology due to harsh living conditions = low scholar count, leading to little to no technological advancement, yet a random fortress can suddenly discover highly advanced technology over the course of a decade or two. Another issue and that you might have some random peasant know just as much as a highly intelligent scholar, which would seem atmosphere breaking to me.

This next method is far more preferable and fixes the issues of the previous one. Each dwarf could have a “known technology” skill subset (similar to dance forms) that allow them to craft a certain item (say a repeating crossbow like those from ancient china). For example, a dwarf with a high bowyer/mechanic and military tactics/mathematician skills may have a much higher chance to discover repeating crossbows (if toady implements ranged weapon firing speeds to be moddable, _{hint hint}). The item file could be something along the lines of

[ITEM:ITEM_WEAPON_CROSSBOW_REPEATING]
[NAME:crossbow:crossbows]
[ADJECTIVE:repeating]
[TECH_REQ:MECHANICAL_CROSSBOW]

Now this alone would mean that only your scholars could craft these advanced items, which would be inefficient to say the least. Since discoveries are often manifested as books, codices, or scrolls in game, all your smithies would have to do is is take a stop by the library and have a read. visiting scholars could even come to you could have scribes copy the valuable technology down onto a new quire for further study. If this is how it would it would also be interesting to see already existing items be moved to a tech tree, such as mechanisms, levers, steel, water pumps, strand extraction and bridge making. The tech teee could work similar to the following

[TECH:MECHANICAL_CROSSBOW]
[PREREQ:TECH:CROSSBOW]
[ALLOWS:ITEM:CROSSBOW_REPEATING]
[LEADS_TO:REPEATING_BALLISTA]
[SKILL:MATHEMATICIAN]
[SKILL:BOWYER]
[SKILL:MILITARY_TACTICS]

[TECH:LEVER]
[PREREQ:TECH:MECHANISM]
[PREREQ:TECH:AXEL]
[PREREQ:TECH:JUNCTION]
[ALLOWS:ITEM:LEVER]
[SKILL:MECHANICS]

I’d love to hear how you guys would implement these things. Perhaps there’s a better way I’m not seeing.

I like to play adv mode stealthy sometimes, and I go about it by slitting the throats of the unsuspecting enemy. Even thought they have blood flooding their esophagus and lack the ability to speak clearly, they still call out for help/ moan about their wounds, alerting nearby enemies. If we attached a token to the throat that removes the [CAN_SPEAK] token when injured, it would make assassins much more viable. (I know head shots instantly kill but that doesn’t always work with daggers. Throat is a guaranteed kill.)

A forge or armor shop in a human town or dwarven fortress where you can request a custom forged armor piece that particular civ knows for a certain amount of money. This would be useful for animal people or for someone looking for a particular metal or article of armor. The forging process could take a day or a week in game and be of random quality (depending on the smithy)

Say, if you’re a rhino man, you can visit a dwarven smith for their civ unique weapons and a piece of armor that actually fits you (also considering dwarves are the only ones who have steel, you could get stronger equipment)

Planning on adding deformities such as giantism, dwarfism, Siamese twins, club foot and butterfly syndrome to dwarves, goblins (to a much greater extent) and humans (maybe elves but to a lesser extent.) via the caste system. They would be somewhat rare (around 1 out of every 100-200 would be deformed in some way). I have giantism and dwarfism already done but if you guys want to see any specific disease/deformity/disability let me know.

Send me requests and if it seems interesting enough I'll draw your adventure mode character. Please include a screen cap of their description as well as important items like their weapon of choice, or for non-combatants, their instrument description.

Here's my rat-man adventurer. Weak and frail with nothing but a loincloth and stick to fight off his enemies.