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[Szkeptik]

I built a fort on a tundra and there isn't much on the surface other than snow covered plains. I have a few hunters scouring the endless white fields for what little animal life there is to catch.
But from time to time a pack of wolves would wander around the map before vanishing beyond the snow. I thought, Hey! War Wolves! That would be so awesome if my military could rush at the enemy with a pack of war wolves at their side.
To my dismay, wolves are not trainable. Nor are the Yetis by the way.

A wolf is larger than a dog so there's really no reason why it couldn't be used in a battle.

Turns out in a tundra environment there is nothing above ground that I can train for war.

[Wellincolin]

I agree. Training animals and using/interacting with them is an awesome feature. Also, wolves are domesticable even IRL so I don't see why they wouldn't be trainable.

Yetis are a different story.

[Starver]

"In Communist Himalayas, Yeti trains you!", to badly morph the meme.

However, there's always the possibility of changing your Raw tags[1].


IRL, it seems that proto-dog-like wolves 'trained' early humans, as much as humans 'trained' the wolves.  But that's a complex issue.  Modern attempts at wolf-training are quite concerted efforts, or involve breeding them into dog germ-lines to get wolfier-than-dogs, doggier-than-wolves offspring.

(Or, like with a certain Russian experiment, not with wolves but another normally wild species, is a matter of mass-breeding a certain type of wild animal segregating (and inter-breeding only among their own set) those that exhibit human-friendly behaviour from those that exhibit human-hostile behaviour...  With the interesting side-effect that the physiognomy of the 'friendly' line changes to simultaneously give them the same "puppy dog" features (even though being non-canine!).  Indicating some link (if one can perhaps exclude experimenter bias of attitude, that creeps into the selection process) between the physical phenotype and the mental make-up, in those genetic switches.  "Puppyfication", perhaps, in keeping them mentally/physically infantile, compared to their wild-attitude brethren?)

But, back to DF, the recent changes made training more prevalent (but graded by difficulty, according to familiarity) and perhaps everything should be trainable, in the right circumstances...  Yes, this probably means "Fido, the Ampersand" should be possible, albeit very difficult.  That is unless (and I'm not too sure about this detail) it'd have the [SENTIENT] quality.

(But how about a 'young' [SENTIENT], not that there's that many Ampersands but there are others of other races, being adopted.  Which also leads to the possibility of feral infant [SENTIENT]s having a small chance of 'adopted' by a wild animal.  Would add a bit of variety to find feral dwarf-children raised by wolves, or feral elven ones raised by anteaters, or somesuch...  There's already the mechanics of Goblin kidnap and re-raising as Goblins, which can be re-tasked or developed for more global use whenever a sufficiently young other-race infant is encountered.  Probably needs to be limited to social/pack animals.  A "Feral 'desert scorpion'-child" doesn't sound so likely...  But... possible?  Ahem, but I drift off of the original topic, somewhat.)


[1] I think it's still something that can be changed without re-worldgenning.  It's how I got War Elephants, but that was back in 40d.  These days, I think you can already get War Elephants via the new training scheme, given the right setup.  And obviously biome (or Elf trade importation).

[10ebbor10]

I'm pretty sure that experiment was/is done with a certain type of foxes.

While I agree that some things should be trainable, I don't think that evil magical beast  should be trainable.

[Starver]

I'm pretty sure that experiment was/is done with a certain type of foxes.

That's the one.  Couldn't think which animal it was, at the time of posting.  Knew it wasn't canine[1] or feline... Vulpine, yup...

[1] Although "vulipini" is a subset of "canidae", as is the "caninae", and below that the "canis" genus encompassing 'dogs' of various kinds, including dogs-as-we-know-them and wolves.  I suppose it depends how far you care to extend "canine" up that particular nomenclature.

[Tacolishous]

I personally would just like to be able to train the animals designated as exotic. I know there's a way to change it in the .int or something files so you can, but I don't really want to risk completely screwing something to hell. If I did, I would have to sit through another hour long download. I can play Crysis on max graphics but a download of this game takes an entire hour. Maybe I already broke something, come to think of it...
I wish I didn't talk so much.

[10ebbor10]

I personally would just like to be able to train the animals designated as exotic. I know there's a way to change it in the .int or something files so you can, but I don't really want to risk completely screwing something to hell. If I did, I would have to sit through another hour long download. I can play Crysis on max graphics but a download of this game takes an entire hour. Maybe I already broke something, come to think of it...
I wish I didn't talk so much.

I'm pretty sure you already can.
It's only a high risk thingy.

As for downloads taking to long, try another mirror. Df's servers ain't that good.

[Starver]

(Off the main topic, but if I ever get a chance to download from "Main Site, Mirror 1, Mirror 2, etc", or just "Mirror 1, Mirror 2, Mirror 3, etc", I usually go for not-the-first, as my first choice, before bouncing around (this time willing to go for the first, but still not my automatic choice) if I encounter a failure or delay in the download from my first approach.  But I choose 'randomly' among those that I can choose from, so that I might collide with those who habitually choose #2, or those who would choose #3, but I also might not.  Although I don't exclude the last item in the list, especially in a short list, I also slightly bias away from that one, too in case too many people's rule-of-thumb is that they always choose the last in the list.  If there's only two to choose from, well, it's a crapshoot.  So, anyway, that's my (((meta-)meta-)meta-)strategy.  And now that I've told everyone, I probably need to change to a different ((((meta-)meta-)meta-)meta-)strategy instead. )

[Wellincolin]

(Off the main topic, but if I ever get a chance to download from "Main Site, Mirror 1, Mirror 2, etc", or just "Mirror 1, Mirror 2, Mirror 3, etc", I usually go for not-the-first, as my first choice, before bouncing around (this time willing to go for the first, but still not my automatic choice) if I encounter a failure or delay in the download from my first approach.  But I choose 'randomly' among those that I can choose from, so that I might collide with those who habitually choose #2, or those who would choose #3, but I also might not.  Although I don't exclude the last item in the list, especially in a short list, I also slightly bias away from that one, too in case too many people's rule-of-thumb is that they always choose the last in the list.  If there's only two to choose from, well, it's a crapshoot.  So, anyway, that's my (((meta-)meta-)meta-)strategy.  And now that I've told everyone, I probably need to change to a different ((((meta-)meta-)meta-)meta-)strategy instead. )

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This strategy is not too good actually. It makes sense and is appliable for several cases, but usually not for downloads, since they are often ordered from best to worst (i.e.  the first link may be sponsored or a direct link, safely hosted from the same server as the website, so if the server is online and running well, this link is possibly the best). Mirrors are usually free uploaders (which put a limit on your downloads speed, usually a quite low one) or supporting websites, which, of course, want to advise their own in exchange for uploading the content.

Spoilers are also the best for keeping offtopic, even though it most people are curious enough for clicking on it to see it's content, they can click it back if they decide to ignore and stay on topic.

Thing is, in my humble opinion, most animals should be tamable by default. If you don't wanna tame them, you won't order your dwarves to do so. And if you REALLY don't wanna tame them, THEN you can just take the tag away.

[Starver]

Spoiler: Okey doke, then, I'll spoilered for irrelevance reasons, as I didn't intend to go this far into it (click to show/hide)

Though looks like the tag-rendering engine didn't respect your attempt to ['code'] your tag example, never mind, because I use it all the time anyway.  It was originally a one-line off-topic post, which fit nicely within brackets, and could have been easier ignored, rather than enticing the unwary reader to peek into a spoiler, however forewarned.

A whole lot of other stuff that I could have said deleted, but let's say that I consider myself doing the provider a service by not pestering their main repository.  And I don't mind if it's a lesser repository if it's also a less contested one.  And if there's an ad-ridden CNET-style repository, hiding in the mirrors, it's for something that I haven't downloaded.  Usually it's the Bay12 model, a link that (in that case) directly grabs the Wimbli-hosted zip file.  Anyway, this is the shortened reply, lacking detail.  Ultimately, when it comes to mirror-choices, it's horses for courses, I suspect.

Thing is, in my humble opinion, most animals should be tamable by default. If you don't wanna tame them, you won't order your dwarves to do so. And if you REALLY don't wanna tame them, THEN you can just take the tag away.

Sound like you're not far off my opinion, but not sure if saying this is enough of a contribution to justify my (now two-fold) off-topic commentaries.

[Zale]

I think you can just add [TRAINABLE] to the creature you want to be trainable.

[Revanchist]

I think you can just add [TRAINABLE] to the creature you want to be trainable.

You certainly can, but that would fall under the modding thread, whereas this thread is (to the best of my knowledge) aboutthings added officially to the game.