I do like the general idea, that more stuff should be moved from races to civs, and given a more procedural flavor.
tech trees = no. They could be cool as something worked along within worldgen, but no one wants to gen a world just to find out their civ hasn't discovered steel yet. Tech trees in fortress mode are an absolute no. I don't have a problem with different civs being able to make/use different sets of items, but we wouldn't want this to take away from fortress mode. Certain races prefering certain styles of clothing or weapons types would be good.
Ethics = yes. At least some of them should be moved to civs, with some reserved by race. Furthermore, the idea that there are many civs of one race, but you can only get one caravan from each race per year has always felt artificial.
Skills = this could be cool. The additional modifier to items is bad though. This could be done via the existing quality modifier system. Just have a particular civ be more likely to generate higher quality swords. If you want to have those items marked by their creators, use the existing decoration system to put that civ's symbols on it. Easy, and works within the existing frameworks.
Culture = in the spirit of the rest, moving more traits and behaviors to civs and away from racial raws. I'm leery about the physical attributes aspect, as I don't know how traits/genetics are handled during worldgen. Ideally the initial members of the civ could have weighted traits, and the rest is determined by genetics, allowing for captured or integrated members of other civs to dilute or mix the bloodlines.
Yeah, your civ should be omitted from that. However, I still feel that it's a bit strange when your dwarves are somehow proficient in all crafting skills from the start. It also devalues your starting sevens skills, and immigrants. Maybe a steeper experience curve in the earlier levels (as well as more bad items such as "poorly crafted X", "crude y") could be an alternative, with civs having a "civ skill level". This "civ skill level" would effect how skilled immigrants and your original dwarves can be in a particular skill (it should pretty much set an average). To compensate for your civs weaknesses you could request other civs to send instructors in a skill, and allow teaching to quickly traverse the early experience curve. Would be both sensible and realistic, and you'd never be completely restricted. Teacher/student skills would also be of use other than in the military.
As for having a civ-descriptor on items: having civ symbols on them could of course be pretty sweet as well, but you would hardly bother to put that on every item you made. Descriptors wouldn't add much, true, but you could let your imagination do the rest. Or maybe you could have randomly generated sets of general descriptions, with civs items typically fitting into a certain one.
Well, we do have something LIKE tech trees now with the civ knowledge system for taming animals.
The thing is, most of the technology available in DF is technology that was available since the Early Bronze Age, if not earlier. People discovered glassblowing out of the slag of early metallurgy, which was fairly early on in civilization.
The big things that would be technological breakthroughs, like, say, minecarts or smelting steel, are things I doubt most players would want to lose.
Civ knowledge of animal taming is fine because it's mostly a flavor thing, anyway. It's not a "tree" that you have to pass through prerequisites to get anywhere, it just gives you the taming of giant badgers or whatever.
If you were to make "technology" something that generally applies only to certain skills (thus justifying that skill entry) or where it makes a given trade good more common and cheaper in one civ, and more rare and expensive in another, then it could fit into the game fairly easily, and work well with caravans.
As for the Personality Rewrite, according to his response the last time I asked him about a month ago, Toady doesn't know what will be in the Personality Rewrites, either, so if you want to have a good idea, go ahead and suggest it, and maybe you can influence what he will decide on doing with Personality Rewrites.
I would like to see something more out of a culture thing than simply saying that, "they were known for producing [Roll 1d20 and consult table 4:3] and having outlook on life [Roll 1d20 and consult table 4:4]." Rather, I'd like to see it where the culture evolved as a result of the events of worldgen, in a way that a tech-tree would have taken place, but with cultural outlook and ethics and focuses in industry developing rather than technology to build certain things.
A civ constantly beset by werecreatures and vampires and night creatures might have a far more militant outlook on life and less trust for strangers and less hospitable towards trade than one that started on the coast, and traded overseas for great riches, and managed to make a secure kingdom before facing real military resistance.
What NW_Kohaku says rings true for the most part!
I'd like to emphasize that development of technology is only partly about people "knowing" something... it's as much about the availability of the appropriate resources (including people and tools... and motivation) to take advantage of that knowledge.
Like with steel... people knew how to make steel (or, at least steely wrought iron... not quite as homogenous as steel today) since iron working pretty much began. And things like the blast furnace which facilitated large scale iron (and steel) production and the like didn't come about in the West until the 17th century not because medieval peoples didn't have the knowhow or the creativity to put two and two together to make them; it's because it was hardly worth doing given the political, social, and economic structures of the time.
Yeah, and I think that's a great thing, although animal familiarity only has minor impact on gameplay as of now.
Tech trees are essentially an abstraction (of both knowledge, social and economic factors), and while it isn't very good, it makes some sense and allows civs to be have different levels of advancement. I never suggested that you'd have a "tech tree" in the usual sense, but more a restriction of technologies for certain civs. For instance, the aztecs, iirc, used mostly obsidian weaponry because they had no metal industry to speak of. Whether this was due to scarcity of suitable metals, social factors, lack of knowledge or a combination thereof I do not know, but it would still make sense to restrict metal weaponry if a similar civ would arise in DF. On the other hand, they had very advanced knowledge in astronomy in comparison to the rest of the world, made use of advanced irrigation systems and built great cities. Maybe you could make a more fluid system, where a "civ skill level", material access and social factors (i.e war, trading with and proximity to a civ which is knowledgeable in a skill, etc) determines the quality, types and amount of items a civ has access to, which would be represented in what civ members wear and what their merchants offer.
Regarding civ traits: Yeah, it'd be a bit... plastic if one were to just randomly generate traits. On the other hand, the randomness of DF is part of its charm. I remember reading in a story thread when I was new to DF about a swordmaster who made a mayor limbless in a berserker rage; the mayor, however, then proceeded to end the fight by biting off the swordmasters head. Allowing for the surroundings and history of a civ to effect how its members generally behave seems like a fair thing to do, but then you would also limit what kind of civs can exist. I actually think it'd be pretty cool if worldgen could create some pretty bizarre civs. Deciding how a culture turns out depending on external factors also seems like a very hard thing to do. Mistrust due to abundant night creatures, bandits and conflict is a good starting point, but then what?
Author
Topic: Civilizations: technology, ethics, skills and culture (Read 3723 times)