Bay 12 Games Forum

This is fine. But it would be nice if you could also select the different shops from a list as well as the town hall. This would make it possible to access and find the shops in towns stradding cliffs with no ramp in sight.

If you were a mason, and showed up to my fortress when i already have 10 of them, i will do one of 2 things.
1. Draft you.
2. Make you haul trash all day.

#1 is not desirable for obvious reasons, if you wanted soldiers at your fort you could simply attract recruits and novice soldiers.
#2 is also not desirable because it means you are effectively performing a job below your station and your talents are wasted. Dwarves are not unhappy about this now but they probably will be in the future.

Even just the threat of getting drafted, especially if your fortress is in a hostile area would keep most dwarves away.

BUT! heres the thing, the union representative lobbies for changes that would benefit his union!
1. He would demand that work be given to the dwarves in his field of expertise. This is hardly a problem for workers with steady jobs, IE brewers, miners and the like.
2. He would lobby for better conditions for the workers.
3. He would only allow you to draft a limited number of workers per year.
4. He would allow you to discourage possible migrants, but would NOT allow you to cut off immingration completetly to workers in his union.

These are all things you will have to deal with when the rep takes up residence. But it is the price you pay for the increased control and greater knowledge you have about said workers.

So what is the whole point of this? Well, in this way, you can keep migrants out and still keep the rep happy.

Why not integrate both suggestions? Lets say i get the House Ber lady to tell all incoming farmers that i will not need them for oh... 2 years.

So first year goes by, 1 farmer shows up, but only because she was married to a smith, which you desperatly needed. Kicking her out would anger the smith and he would leave as well.

Second year rolls around, the warning is still in effect at this point. In the spring, no farmers show up. In the autumn however, a small group turns up that includes 2 farmers.

Now you can still go the big bad wolf route here and say:
"we dont need you, get out"
But that would probably anger at least a few dwarves in your fortress, but since we put that warning out earlier the conversation would go more like:
"You were warned that we have no room for more farmers, now please move on"

In either case, you could STILL offer to draft them in which case you get more soldiers, never a bad thing unless you lack for food. Or you could take them in with the understanding that they will be performing menial work until a job becomes available.

Make sense? In hindsight both methods work pretty well, but they also mesh together in a good way.

[ June 02, 2007: Message edited by: Tamren ]

[ June 02, 2007: Message edited by: Tamren ]

In the beginning, what do you have? A hole in the ground! Regardless you NEED those new colonists in order to turn it into a productive outpost, which presumably is the whole point.

So to start you would want anyone you could get. Later on once your city has developed a bit more you can start thinking about more civic control. Turning away dwarves whos skills you do NOT need and encouraging the immigration of likely candidates.

Something like that would require 2 way communication between you and the rest of civilization and possibly a noble. Just turning people away at the border is not going to cut it.

That is pretty much the fundamental point of any game. If it is not fun then it becomes work, and thats no fun!

This would let us recycle the bigger things like catapult parts with ease.

It brings the canary or it cracks the mountain in half, again.