Bay 12 Games Forum

I agree, but it doesn't have to do anything with underground diversity.

This is not X-Box live, where you get achievements for everything. "Achievement unlocked -> Logged in to X-Box live", "Achievement unlocked -> Random event 3842", "Achievement unlocked -> Achievement unlocked", "Achievement unlocked -> Stack overflow". Yeah.

I'd like to see how you dig granite with your hoe. There are different kinds of picks, and granite picks are bad for soil.

I don't agree that picks work great for soil. They work great to loosen up the soil, but you still have to use a shovel to remove it. I think it would make sense on the abstraction level of a game, if picks, which can be used to mine granite, wouldn't work for soil at all. Picks for stone, shovels for soil. Not everything has to be completely realistic

I'd like it if picks didn't work for soil and shovels didn't work for stone at all.

I don't have any concrete ideas about heartstone, but if this is going in, it HAS to be VERY special. Just imagine what the heart of a mountain would mean for a race that spends 90% of their time inside it's bowels.
Of course, there are the common interpretations for such a mythical thing, source of magical power, rejuvenative effects, etc. I think this can't be worked out in a few posts, as it demands other questions answered first, questions about religion, magic, and the dwarven societies themselves.
Not to discourage brainstorming, though, I'd really like to read what people think about a "heart of the mountain".

You can also seal your entrance with water or lava.

I think diggin AI wouldn't be THAT complicated. It might require group intelligence, though, so that a siege can send in some recon troops, and the group will then know where they have died, and stop before this spot. Diggers would then simply start to dig in a straight line for the spot where a randomly picked "no job"-dwarf hangs around.

Later in the game, when ventilation comes in, diggers could start digging close to ventilation shafts, and dig down for a random amount of z-levels, then start digging horizontally in a random direction.