Bay 12 Games Forum

Eat moon.
Or munch on it.

My suggested implementation:

Step 0: No golems: The default state is that you can't make golems.

Step 1: Artifact golem: "golem" is one of the types of things that can come out of a strange mood. The golem will (usually) be mysterious, and whether this becomes a good thing or a bad thing will depend on various factors, such as the type of mood, the source of the inspiration, the mythological connotations of the materials used, and what you do with the golem. Depending on the nature of the golem and the process of its creation, the dwarf who made it may be able to just go ahead and make more (Step 2). Maybe not, though; don't count on it. If she doesn't have that ability, you will first have to figure out if it's even possible to just make more; to do this, you have some skilled dwarves examine the golem, and try to figure it out. Most of the time, they won't, but sometimes, you'll go to Step 3.

Step 2: Urist Golem-Maker: If your formerly-moody dwarf can make more golems, then she can just do that, with the exact process and materials procedurally generated based on various factors, such as the type of mood, the inspiration, ... you get the picture. Generally, you will need whatever went into the first golem, although some parts may be superfluous, and some parts may have been divinely provided and need to be replaced with rare/expensive/bizarre substitutes in the production recipe. Urist may or may not be able to train more golem-makers. If she can, you can go to Step 3.

Step 3: GolemMurdered: Once Urist trains a certain number of golem-makers, it will just sort of be assumed that dwarves in her fort can become golem-makers. Generally, if you survive long enough, you will be able to progress to Step 4.

Step 4: Golem-making Civ: Once a site has enough aggregate golem-making training, the skill can start spreading into the general skills of its entity.

Step 5+: : I don't feel like going further right now.

Sometimes, your civ will start out on a step higher than zero. Also, most of the time you won't get a golem at all, even in a ten-year fort, and even when you do get a golem, it's still rather likely (P>0.5) that you won't be able to make more.

Step 5: Golems are common.
Step 6: Golems are overexploited.
Step 7: Golems rebel.
Step 8: Dwarves scorch the skies.
Step 9: The golems wonder how this was supposed to stop them.
On a serious note, I don't think that golems should be so much "rare and powerful" as "uncommon, typically inefficient, and requires care."

So my turn now.
The idea that formed in my mind is similar to the original myth of Jewish Golems.

The Golems were supposedly crafted by a Rabbi, from clay for the most part (Garden of Eden, any one?). According to some sources what gave the Golem life was an amulet with engraved name, or some such thing. The Golem would perform tasks ordered by it's creator, but it would also grow in size and power over time. The creator of the golem is able to destroy it easilly, if he does so in time, but if he fails and Golem becomes too powerfull to control... a lot of FUN happens.

I think that a Golem should be a creation of a moody dwarf. It's a good idea to make it require a masterwork statue of specified material. What I think would add to the FUN would be if the Golem maker required a living being to be sacrificed to give Golem its life. It should most certainly be a dwarf, in some cases even the creator dwarfself. Said Golem would behave like an animal that is aiding it's creator in performing any duties, with high efficiency, and also attacks any enemies in sight. But if the creator dies, have sacrificed dwarfself to make the Golem, or fails to destroy his creation in time, the Golem will become a rampaging Collosus. Not only does it give a backstory of other Collosi rampaging out there, but is possibly a source of a lot of FUN!
It's a simple feature as well, and simplicity is a good thing.

"-Oh I don't need millitary, I have this Golem that will take care of this invasion of pesky goblins! Hey, where is my Golem? Golem where are you god da*Collosus have smashed McCarpenters skull in, bruising the brain!* MN NO! Golem NO! Bad Golem NO!."

As too the idea that golems made of lower quality materials should be able to do fewer tasks is a very bad idea. Instead of making a wooden mediocre golem unable to dig and only haul items, he should still be able to do all the tasks, except with lower efficiency. Putting such limitations is just unnecessary, and not fun.

So...Golems are extremely rare and will inevitably turn? For no good reason? No thanks...
The note about golems of various materials merely being bad at certain tasks makes sense, as long as you consider the implications of said material. For instance, a wood golem wouldn't be able to forge because it's flammable, and a glass golem would be too fragile to be good at combat.

Quote from: Adrian on November 14, 2012, 02:58:38 pm

I'd rather see golems as a necromancer's dedicated building destroyers
We could pretend they are masterwork statues with a part of The Secrets of Life and Death inscribed on their heads

Nah, not everything needs to be a necromancers. That'll only give problems when more wizard types are implemented.
Necromancers could try to necro large animals, or do unethical experiments (mutations)

Agreed. On a related note, more normal animals should be at least level-1 building destroyers.

Here's a simple solution to tantrum spirals that occured to me while I was watching a fort collapse from 1 baby dying:  Don't go berzerk, just leave. 

Here's the logic:
Instead of going berzerk or becoming melancholy, the message could be"Urist McUrist has decided to leave this place of woe." Followed by the dwarf grabbing all of their clothes, weapons, armor, ect... then leaving the fortress off the edge of the screen.  The berzerk/melancholy behaviour might be activated two seasons after this message so that dwarves blocked from leaving can go into their suicidal fit, but until then they'd just be useless types nursing their need to get away between tantrums.

Thing is, dwarves that leave a fort get put back into the migrant pool and may show up in later waves of migrants after "wandering in the wilds" for awhile.  They'd get a boost to their happiness upon appearing in the migrant wave and may then find a new chance for happiness.  Suddenly, a fort with lots of unhappy dwarves killing each other off unrealistically because nobody can leave, or a fort with so many starving dwarves who are searching for vermin because nobody can leave, or a dwarf who's creative fit proves unbuildable and who is now too embarrassed to face his fellows anymore but is forced to because they can't leave - those don't happen anymore.  A badly mismanaged fort would just be abandoned by its population.  End of story. 

Berzerking dwarves would be understandable during combat - "Urist McUrist has entered a martial trance" seems like a wonderful time for the berzerk rage to be activated.  That way, the dwarf could "take joy in slaughter" until consoled by no more threats surrounding him or having been killed.

Yes, this would reduce !!FUN!!, but tantrum spirals are a bug, not a feature.  One easy fix would squash this bug and make forts less likely to kill one squad of goblins, then 80 citizens because a couple soldiers died.

Planned. Pretty much.

-----

My money on ShadowLop's situation is that lots of his dwarves were friends with each other. Dwarves A-C died; dwarf D is B's wife and A and C's friend. Dwarf D then walks through miasma, runs into a dwarf he doesn't like, and another Dwarf E, who liked A-C and hit some more bad thoughts, kicked D's puppy, F, down a chute where F died. D and E smash furniture belonging to friends of A-C or lunch them. Those who had other bad thoughts also smash, punch, etc. Notably, G, who is one of A-C's squad mates and friends and who was badly injured for another bad thought, tantrums. This is lethal and leads to more tantruming militiadwarves. Hammerer H and Captain of the Guard I start beating the perpetrators, leading to more sadness.
Is this a vague approximation of what happened?

adding a few more booze types wouldn't lag fps. that's mainly caused by too many scattered unstacked individual items, aka socks, in your fortress. I for one like the idea of more booze.

Agreed. More good choices are always good.
I'm interested in the Dwarven Grog bit. How is Human Grog made?

The Advanced Worldgen thing is the number of demon types.

Having one godlike demon is...not good. It would make Hell just a big FB.

First, if one choice is inherently superior to another then there's not really any reason to have the inferior choice, and there's that much less of a game. If there's no reason not to, such choices should be balanced.

Second, a miracle should be miraculous but it shouldn't be reliable or common. That's "balance" in the sense we're using it.

Third, why would being a doctor be needed to request a miracle or however it works, and why would siege operation would be needed to summon fireballs? And why would siege engineering matter at all? Seriously, if magic is just the highest level of normal skill, it's not so magical anymore.

Here's how one could work, which will only mine downward, useful for digging through a pool of water or magma, or for a 1x1 shaft (for some reason)

                            | <- drill shaft
                            |
                            |
                            |
                            |
                            |
                           [|] <- this provides rotation, needs to be hooked up to power source, does not move
                            |
                            |
                            |
                            |
                           \/ <- drill bit, moves down with shaft

So you'd have to build all the shaft pieces and a drill head, and drag them over to the rotating piece to assemble the drill.  As the drill goes through the layers, gravity pushes the shaft down another level.  Maybe you'd need a cap piece at the top, to prevent the thing from just falling out of the rotator piece at the end.
Once you've dug your hole, the dwarves pull the drill up and dissassemble it piece by piece.  It could also be run manually, like a pump, with a dwarf at the rotator piece.

It's way less efficient than just using dwarves, but useful for digging through water/magma/open spaces, for example, to dig down to cavern water for a well.  Can a magma forge be powered by magma more than 1z level down? For !!FUN!! purposes, it could also be used to drill creatures...  Take that, stupid bronze collosus...

I suppose a horizontal version could work, but then you'd need something pushing on it, since gravity wouldn't be helping you.

I think a long drill was mentioned a while ago.

Anyone have any ideas that don't require a long drill or are we resigned to waiting for more multi-tile constructions to be added before this has a chance?