Bay 12 Games Forum

Maybe but I think it'd be hard to implement properly. I think factions would work out better as they're more open and visible to the player. Factions could make demands, much like nobles but hopefully with a reward for helping them. Maybe they send for some of their skilled members from the mountainhomes or something like that.

Not factions that are TRYING to stay secret.

Another way to let you see if a dwarf is under the cult's influence would be to look into its thoughts and preferences. Something about being an "avid worshiper of the dark lords," might be useful.

I think making the demons more or less powerful based on faith goes too far. Look at it this way. Wouldn't having a willing, obedient suicidal cult of 50 dwarfs (Of course including your military, otherwise where's the fun?), indirectly increase the demons' power by causing a heretical uprising?

The answer is yes.

Cults should more easily spread to dwarves that have recently had something bad happen to them (just like how they work in real life). Not something minor like noise, but something major like losing a spouse. This would be independent from the actual "mood" of the dwarf. I.e, a Happy dwarf that just lost all its family would still be happy, but inclined to join a cult. Dwarves with higher persuasion should spread the cult more. Once the cult hits 20% (or another percentage) of your fortress, they try to summon a demon/revolt, forcing you to kill them thereby exterminating the cult. You could also inoculate your dwarves via magma injections.

Throwing a dwarf in jail would make it less cultist (more points if its a jail outside), but a cultist dwarf being executed would transform it into a martyr. Perhaps certain statues and slabs could be designated as a "holy" one, that "fills the dwarf with reverence and steals its heart against darkness."

Mostly fine. Prisons sem like a good place to get new recruits, although probably as a side effect of the "bad thought" process and the kinds of dwarves being sent to prison rather than the prison itself.

...Meh. Seems like a lot of work, unless we want to screw up mods. Also, seeing as DF is an ASCII-style game, it would probably screw up the aesthetic.

Alright, something which came to me which i think will add a bit more to the concept, the foreman/master (profession), who directs and sometimes gives pointers to the dwarves under him. This is the equivalent to the squad captian for the military, and should ideally be the dwarf with the best overall skill AND social skills (or at least leadership presence) The foreman/Master (profession) would do a few things

1: decide who does what, for example, delegate mining out squares with valuable ore to the more skilled dwarves (or do it himself) and making sure the newbies get the nice cheap stone to mine out till they improve.
2: help train up less skilled dwarves working for him. The foreman position would have an occasional 'instruct' job and hang around a less skilled worker as he does his job, which would increase the less skilled worker's XP gain.
3: Enforce discipline. This won't usually be an issue unless your dwarves are unhappy, but the foreman would serve as a bit of a buffer when dwarves are unhappy and taking frequent breaks, it would be the foreman's job to either yell at them to get back to work (which could cause an argument, either good or bad depending on the temprament of the dwarf), try to reason with the unhappy dwarf, or if the situation is bad enough, give them a good kick in the pants (which may cause a fight). The foreman also serves as someone to complain too, as it makes little sense for EVERY dwarf to go to the mayor/expidition leader for all their problems. Enough complaints about a problem to the foreman would lead to him complaining the problem to someone higher up.

Thoughts on this?

Seems sensible. It would probably only be needed for large groups.
1--When you've got three miners or masons or whatnot, your EL or whomever can probably just say "Build a wall here," and they'd get it and work out a simple plan amongst themselves. With a couple dozen dwarves building a castle or somesuch, a foreman would be VERY useful.
2--Not sure how the foreman would do this, except in seasons that the masons are training masonry. Somehow...
3. VERY useful in large groups; in smaller ones, the harder-working dwarves can tattle on the slackers, encouraging everyone to work and swiftly punishing the slackers. Large groups? They might not even know WHO the slacker is, so some kind of foreman would be useful.

Personally, I think that something like this could be an outgrowth of civilian squads. You could set them to have certain skills, perhaps, and perhaps being able to tell various dwarves to do the training would make sense. That would allow for this as well as, say, having your legendary miner explain how to mine quickly and well to newb miners.
Probably shouldn't be automatic, though. "Dammit, miners, you can defend yourselves with your picks if you need to, stop training with the CoTG and get to mining out the bedrooms!"

Well, buckets don't hold 3,000 units of water, now do they?

The reagent for "Create Magma" could be normal stone plus some kind of firey plant extract, perhaps called something like Flameblossom. The flameblossom could be brewed into firewhiskey, or woven into flamepetal cloth. All materials of the plant would be pleasantly warm, except the extract (Essence of Fire?), which would be hot.

After the voting ends, we'll be working on biomes, right?
Also, what's the creeper stance on butchering sentients?

I like using them to send wood downstairs. I often have a wood stockpile aboveground, a inecart track leading to a pit, and then the pit falls next to my wood stockpile. (That way, dwarves don't get hurt when grabbing wood to make beds with.)

Allegedly, it works. In practice, I rarely muddy stone.