Bay 12 Games Forum

In my most recent fort I managed to accidentally dig into the third cavern layer while setting up my magma forges. I, of course, checked u and noticed a voracious cave crawler. Crap. I went to work walling it up (I had already set up several forges and magma furnaces). However, before anyone could really get down there the cave crawler decided that my proficient weapon smith looked like a dwarven happy meal (which comes with a side of iron swords). Luckily my weapon smith was cowardly and ran away (into the cavern *facepalms*) and all that was left was Liu Qi, a marksdwarf I hadn't placed into an army quite yet. I set up a burrow in the stairwell leading to the magma forge area (I always set up doors and cage traps in advance), hoping they'd draw back and I'd be able to catch the cave crawler.

However, Liu Qi was having none of that. Urist McDiesPainfully decided he was going to fist fight the cave crawler, mumbling something about "Show me your moves." I just shrugged and figured the poor stupid fellow was dead, but as I watched the fight unfold Liu Qi just kept dodging. Liu Qi Captain Falcon managed to eventually hit the cave crawler in the head, bruising the brain . I'm now tempted to put Captain Falcon into his/her own squad, and send them out to any conflict just cause I can. Goblin siege? Captain Falcon. Forgotten Beast? Captain  Falcon. Only problem is that the war dogs might confuse him with an animal person and then all my war dogs will be dead  .

Does anyone else think we should have some sort of rubric here for how good the corruptions are? IE, how much did you corrupt the person's wish, how creative was the corruption ultimately, and how many lines did you use to do so?

IE, if I wish for ramen, then having it dumped, boiling hot on my head, would score pretty low (out of a 1-5 score, probably 1, 1, 5). On the other hand if the ramen becomes sentient, and kills my family right before my very own eyes before becoming a normal bowl of soup again, might rank a bit more of a medium score (I'd say about 3, 3, 4). Thoughts?

NECROED!

2070: You have started a stone collection, which is largely composed of materials you like to build with in DF.
You keep this stone collection around your computer. (semi-guility)

2071: Said stone collection is actually your computer case and it is magma safe.

2072: All of your dwarves have nicknames that make them into flash cards. IE, Cao Cao, 175, 220, Battle of Chibi, etc. Sub-sgin, you've had whole fortresses running around with names like Iddingsite or (Fe+2,Mg+2)2Si04. (guility)

2073: Same as above, but you've utilized nicknames relating back to profession and Dwarf Fortress (this is much harder than it seems). IE, a carpenter might end up with the name 'prosopis' while a mason would probably get Iddingsite.

2074: You are saddened when a dwarf that you haven't gotten around to naming dies. This is mostly because when you obsessively look at their grave, lamenting how horrible you are at keeping these guys alive, that the dead dwarf isn't operating as a flash card. Ironically, you would probably visit the grave less if you got around to naming that one.

2075: You've actively researched how to start farming mushrooms and done so, but because you're a dabbling grower, what you harvest manages to make you sick. (semi-guility)

Ugh. Getting through those six pages was hell guys. For starters, I want to point something out before I get into real life examples. And that is: Small scale societies tend not to control their populations via fighting and infanticide. The tendency, as I understand it, is they use out-migrations and settle new areas. This makes sense since any amount of serious fighting would leave their small scale economies completely devastated (and cause villages to dissolve). They tend to use relationships, debt, and credit to form exchanges. There's a few exceptions, such as the Yanomami, but even they tend not to be as violent as some author's describe them. *gets off of soap box and returns to topic*

Okay . . . You have several real life models to pull from for polygamy.

There's the Tibetan system, where you have one woman marrying multiple men. Usually brothers and the stated 'reason' (by ethnographers, I believe) is to keep land ownership in the family. So, infrastructure and the environment can have an impact on these types of social relationships, this could help 'inform' world gen (obviously historical contexts of civs are important as well).

On the other hand, you have polygamy where powerful actors tend to marry multiple wives and have concubines *cough* Cao Cao *cough*, but your average Joe only marries one woman.

You have the Canella, where when you marry into a family you are considered the 'husband' of all of her sisters as well (and their husbands are considered your wife's 'husband'). A bit interesting because that seems to radiate out and include all of the cousins (and their husbands) on the mother's side. Then again, I do believe that it is a matrilineal society.

There's also the case of Brazilian travesti, though they might be more polyamorous. They tend to have one boyfriend while having many clients. The material and social exchanges are interesting in that case. If prostitution ever makes it into the game it might be worth taking a look at how real life prostitutes juggle their social and intimate relationships. Quite a few women-men from American Indian traditions tended to be polyamorous as well though you did have monogamous pairings too.

There's also the Bedouins described by Abu-Lilu Lughod. Polygamy is common and the preference is to marry first cousins (first wife is usually a first cousin). This preference is due to the fact that a wife can leave at any time (though she can't take the kids), so first cousins tend to be trusted more. At least, that was my understanding.

Essentially, anything we can imagine plus some in nearly any context arranged in any fashion. Our little dwarves are based on Homo sapiens and we are adaptable as I'll get out.* Hell, there's no reason why you couldn't have 'homosexual' incestuous polygamy as the standard and once every five years there is a wife/husband exchange across families in order for pregnancies to happen. Though, I would recommend a reading of Vincanne Adams et al "Sex and Development" since Adams makes the case that sexuality is a new phenomena and the behaviors, feelings, etc that we proscribe to specific sexualities are not as hardcoded (socially) as we make them out to be. That is, sexuality is a recent phenomena. This seems to be the case in non-Western societies (and this really opens up the sorts of marriage arrangements we can see).

Oh, and I nearly forgot to point this out, matrilineal societies, from what I've read, also tended to be monogamous (the Canella are an exception). I haven't heard of many that were polygamous or polyamorous. The Iroquois, for instance, were matrilineal and monogamous. Most American Indian tribes that are matrilineal that I've read about tended to be monogamous. This isn't to say this is the 'natural' course, just with most of the cases that I'm familiar with, this is the case. Anyone claiming differently please include specific examples. Throwing around assertions with nothing to back them is, well, it is counter-productive d*** it.

*There is even cases of multilingual exogamy (AKA, you can't marry someone who's first language is the same as your own).

Huh, that's some weird pathing right there. That would explain how all those crundles are getting into my fort.

Dwarf bug logic is always !!fun!! (part of the reason I play this game). Though it could be considered a feature instead of a bug since things will path through diagonal spaces on the same Z-level. It only makes sense that the same principle should or could be applied across Z levels for climbers and/or fliers. Though, since a down/up-down staircase doesn't reveal the tiles adjacent to the tile below upon completion I would say it clearly isn't intended.

Pretty sure I found your hole.

This staircase:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Is diagonally adacent to this tile on the level below:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That creates a path into your fort for climbers.  Plop a wall there and you should be good.

It is already sealed. The Z-level above has an up staircase. I could be wrong, but that should act as a solid floor.

I've already done the wall test and there are no points for the GCS to walk in, however the GCS is a legendary climber. Anywhere, that's accessible by climbing they could easily get in, and I don't believe the wall test could account for that (arena testing proves that they're more than happy to climb over a wall to kill a target).

My old save is too old to use. The GCS must have spawned after the season changed and shortly there after pathed into my fort (assuming that it wasn't a result of bugginess). I can, however, cheat and go off of the old save while I try and figure it out. Which is fine. I'd rather preserve the 'crime scene' and figure out just how the GCS got into my fort.

And I would have uploaded the save right off the bat, except I don't know how to upload it on here. Do I go through a third party website to post it or am I missing something on these forums?

Toady, thank you for your reply. Happy to see that it got a reply, though I don't really feel like my question was answered.

What my original question boils down to is: Do you plan on, way down the road, implementing things like cultural marriage preferences/requirements where, for instance, a dwarf has to marry another dwarf that doesn't even speak the same language, potentially from another city/fort?

Speaking of which, another question came to mind: Once you get to the hill dwarves do you plan on having cultural variation within civs?  * Since dwarven society (and most of the df societies in general) seem to be feudal systems I imagine there might be a significant amount of cultural and linguistic variance between forts/settlements/cities within a civ.

*Both of my questions might be looking too far ahead. If so, no worries.