Bay 12 Games Forum

Just pointing out that human tribes were not isolated from each other, and there was interbreeding between groups by... various means

Quote from: Reese on January 16, 2010, 02:03:41 pm

It's important to look at what makes civilization occur(and how you define civilization); we have plenty of examples of human cultured in various forms of civilization.  granted civilization should mean the building of cities or villages, the primary factors would be a race's willingness to live together in large groups and close quarters, and the race's capability with invention or adoption of technology.  Considering how world gen goes, a desire to expand and settle into a large kingdom or empire should also be a factor.

The question is, what races exhibit these three characteristics? Dwarfs for certain, humans historically, elfs barely meet the last requirement, and seem to get a pass on the second.

From the Biology perspective civilization like comes from a certain type of food scarcity (meaning you have to leave the social group in order to stay reasonably well fed,) with display-fights between neighboring groups. In this case raiding groups to pick off members of the other group are an effective tactic to guarantee dominance. Then the whole smarts thing can take off because instead of other things in your environment being the limiting factor on how smart you need to be it switches to members of your own species being the most important threat to your well being and a lot of the base group mechanics are already in place so soon you can't afford to forgo society, particularly based on the level of society of your neighbors.

I'm not really sure if that's simple enough for other people to follow along with or not anymore. I can barely tell that cell-type vocabulary isn't common knowledge after having been in it so long :/

Are there any fantasy creatures/races that form 30ish member groups but never societies? I picture satyrs possibly running around in small packs for more elaborate pranks and things but they're the closest I can think of and they're already half-human.

yeah, that's true, but in the context of DF a civilization is an entity that builds towns and cities and claims territory (never mind that the territory claims mean nothing when it comes to a player building a fortress... you could build your fort on top of the human or elf capital with no repercussions if you're not at war with them...)

The smaller groups work would work as nomadic civilizations (thinking animal people) but I understand there isn't really anything like that yet.

Like I said, it depends on how you're defining civilization for the purpose of the conversation.

Speaking of my little side note above, and granted it's a bit further into the fortress future than the next release,  will other civilizations ever eventually react to you building a fort within their geopolitical boundaries?  I'd like to think there will eventually be repercussions if a group of dwarfs just started digging in in the middle of human territories, especially if they are digging up all sorts of valuable minerals and gems that technically belong to the humans... I'd like to see something like the humans annexing your fortress by defeating your military, allowing you to continue running it, but swapping your parent civ to human and stationing NPC human guards.  maybe you could even rebel against the humans and kill their guards by training and arming new troops in secret...  That'll need some pretty sophisticated AI on the human guards, though, and some way you keep you from dealing with the human guards like caravans and nobles currently can be dealt with... Or maybe not

Quote from: CobaltKobold on January 16, 2010, 04:36:20 am

Spoiler: F stuff (click to show/hide)

I don't want to talk about it, but the reviews were fairly in the direction of REALITY DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY on the detailed mechanics, aside from being egregiously offended.

Unlike DF.

the explicit CAN_CIV doesn't make much sense to me presently. If a creature is able to do the thinking, and the speaking, why couldn't one civ?

Social structures. If you've got a species that has no qualms with murder over trivial disputes civilization might very wel be impossible for it.
I imagine even goblins kind of put that out of their minds for awhile as they focus on preparing to throw themselves at a row of marksdwarves.

Others just don't for no particular reason. In the settings where you've got all those talking creatures in a good forest the spirits never really have some centralized home location bigger than a grotto.

It's important to look at what makes civilization occur(and how you define civilization); we have plenty of examples of human cultured in various forms of civilization.  granted civilization should mean the building of cities or villages, the primary factors would be a race's willingness to live together in large groups and close quarters, and the race's capability with invention or adoption of technology.  Considering how world gen goes, a desire to expand and settle into a large kingdom or empire should also be a factor.

The question is, what races exhibit these three characteristics? Dwarfs for certain, humans historically, elfs barely meet the last requirement, and seem to get a pass on the second.

Yeah, FATAL's system might be detailed, but it's also horribly wrong.

So?

I'll admit I have no knowledge of FATAL outside what's been mentioned in the last few posts, but it seems to me any system that gets things 'horribly wrong' still has merit as a base on which a not 'horribly wrong' derivative system could be built...

Speaking of derivative systems, Toady probably shouldn't even bother looking at FATAL because derivative works fall under copyright infringement, and I think we can all agree that Copyright issues are the last thing Toady needs to deal with, and plausible deniability is the best kind.

Quote from: Gara-nis on January 14, 2010, 01:07:15 pm

I guess the root question is: Does alcohol grant dwarves a performance boost, or does lack of alcohol inflict a performance decrease?

Those mean the EXACT same thing. Does sending my laptop to the shop decrease my performance or does getting it back increase my performance?
You've got to say compared to what.

aye, there's the rub... I believe he means compared to a normal dwarf, which is to say: which state is a normal dwarf?
It's more a matter of programming; does toady have it coded to penalize non drinkers or to reward drinkers?  And, when more systems related to drinking go in, will he keep it that way?

I'm sure someone who is familiar with dwarf companion could tell us for certain, but does it really matter?

Spears don't have a higher critical chance. They have a different kind of critical. Swords actually have a higher chance, and their critical is severing. Dealing with the mess is part of it; if you don't want to then you should use an impact weapon. Hammers are inferior to maces due to weight. Spears will stick, rendering your spearmasters into wrestlers (which is why I said it is necessary to train your spearmasters in wrestling, though of course you ideally train all military dwarves in wrestling). All of this will change, but at the moment swords are by far the most effective weapons there are. Nothing else even comes close. A sword will stick, but only *extremely* rarely, to the point that I've run a fort for 10 years now with champion swordmasters and orc/goblin sieges, with only two swords dropped.

Speaking normatively, swords shouldn't be as effective against tentacle demons as other weapons. But speaking factually, they are much MORE effective, against tentacle demons and everything else in the game. It's just what we have to work with right now. The system will change.

I would like to back up your statement, but when my hammer dwarfs are regularly punting gobbos in to walls hard enough for them to explode in a shower of gore and body parts, they just don't seem to be that clean of weapons...

Given the new combat in the next version Toady is working on, the hammer should become more powerful than the mace as the weight begins to be calculated in to the damage, though.

Man, I haven't cracked open a fortress in a while, the last thing I did was start a fort in a chalk wall on one side of a valley cut by a stream... it's got chalk walls to form a courtyard, but the only thing I've had to harass me so far were some macaques that were quite tasty.

Just set a second pump to pull from the level below the drowning chamber back into the reservoir, the water will drop back through the grates as it's pumped out...

after wracking by brain for the length of time it took me to read the thread, I think you could make a moat around your fort without a single dwarf having to set foot on the ground outside by digging a tunnel under the surface where you want your moat to be, then build floors one z level above the surface above where you want your moat to be, and collapse that floor.  the collapsing floor will cave in the ground above the tunnel you dug, creating a moat

you can dig out tunnels on as many Z-levels as you want your moat to be deep, and the collapse will take out all the floors... it may also collapse any tunnels you have that extend out under the moat, though, so be careful!