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[Ωmega]

i think a neat idea would be to add enemy morale and an intimidation value to creature's traits.
imagine you started your first fortress. with frequent flipping back to the wiki, you've managed to start a simple, mostly self sustaining fortress. you made a basic military for protecting your small population of dwarves and station them around the place. one day a goblin ambush springs up out of nowhere and begin fighting your soldiers. them being outfitted with leather armor and knives while you being outfitted with basic clothes and fists. the goblins would see this as a slaughter rather than a battle and easily destroy your pitiful attempts at the game. a few weeks and many, many tries later, you've mastered your military forces. a goblin ambush tries an attack but meet an huge army of ultra buff, fully steel armored, duel great axe wielding, grinning badasses ready to obliterate every last invader. the goblins decide "well fuck that" and run off.
XP, strength of equipment, and amount of kills a dwarf has should add to an intimidation value that can cause weaker enemies that would normally try to stand up against you to run and cower without trying to fight first to avoid those annoying mountains of dead bodies, blood, and socks.

[Urist McUristsonson]

Isn't something like this going in now?

06/12/2012  Next up we'll be adding structure to physical conflicts and dealing with some of the psychological ramifications of being in a fight to the death. The first test case will be your responses to the little groups of jerks that can chase you around now, though much of what we're doing has general application. If you attack them with your weapon, it'll set up a conflict at the lethal level, and they'll have to decide individually whether they are up for that. Some of them will run, some will give up immediately, some will hang back, some will attack, etc., and the events in the battle will determine how people continue to respond. An interesting thing about systemitizing this will be that your followers will automatically be subject to exactly the same effects that your opponents experience. In your first serious fight you might discover that your courageous companions aren't really that reliable, and that a few of them might even leave your service and bolt down the street the second stuff starts to get crazy. Surrending or otherwise breaking off the conflict before everybody on one side is dead will be explored a bit.

You won't want everything to turn into such a violent mess in the first place, alienating all the townspeople, so we're going to do non-lethal combat (and putting away/drawing weapons etc.) after this is done.

06/15/2012  I've gotten it up to a point where it tracks conflicts and the game has a new system in place for determining critter actions, goals and current states of mind. I've mostly been banging out how it should be set up to allow for things like army AI and dwarven job priorities without having to scrap it all again. That's not to say it'll be quick to write those updates now, but it's more straightforward, anyway. Right now the new stuff just applies to what I've been working on, so that critters will generally feel terror when people are trying to kill them, unless they are oddly constituted, and in order to continue fighting they need to master their fear. Failure to master emotional states leads to forced actions like running away or attacking in rage, although running away can also occur as a rational action if the critter gets to that stage. Entering a state of terror or being in a state of terror for a while also works as a stressor that can have longer-term personality changes/effects (which'll also be the rewrite for dwarf-mode happiness/tantrums etc. as we re-interpret the various stressors in the thought list there). They won't defend themselves at all if they don't have basic aspirations like staying alive (alternatives might need to be found for possibly mindless critters like gabbro men, although they'll probably initiate whatever conflict they are involved in for whatever inscrutable reason). It's a continuing process, but I should be moving on to surrender soonish.

[GreatWyrmGold]

There's even a crude version now. When enough goblins, or their leaders, are killed, the goblins will turn around and exit the region posthaste in a retrograde advance. Which is to say, they run like elves.

[10ebbor10]

There's even a crude version now. When enough goblins, or their leaders, are killed, the goblins will turn around and exit the region posthaste in a retrograde advance. Which is to say, they run like elves.

Often back through the meatgrinder deathtrap they just came through, but that's not important.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Well, they can't exactly flee through the ceiling or walls, now can they?

[Starver]

I've sent them fleeing through a completely different (but now the only possible) 'exit', before.

In fact, through the use of pressure plates, I've had them running around a circle of corridor ("the exit's just around the corner... no, that's blocked, but the real exit's just around the next corner...  no, that's blocked...  but the real exit's just around...").


But that was for a lone trapped hostile (possibly a thief).  Anyway, right now they appear to have a "break point", but they also tend to have a "I'll stand around here, near my caged leader...  but I can't do much about the leader being caged, so I won't" element to their behaviour.

It'd be quite interesting to have them visually assess the opponents and react accordingly.  (Would this apply to one's own dwarfs, also?  "Haha!  I shall go up to them and spike them with my spear, that I just picked up!  Oh, wait, those crossbowgoblins look a little 1337 to me...  Maybe not.  Not by myself, certainly...  I'll just.. erm.... go for something to eat.  That's it, eat.  Armies and stomachs, after all...!")

[GreatWyrmGold]

Anyway, right now they appear to have a "break point", but they also tend to have a "I'll stand around here, near my caged leader...  but I can't do much about the leader being caged, so I won't" element to their behaviour.

The leader's not dead.

It'd be quite interesting to have them visually assess the opponents and react accordingly.  (Would this apply to one's own dwarfs, also?  "Haha!  I shall go up to them and spike them with my spear, that I just picked up!  Oh, wait, those crossbowgoblins look a little 1337 to me...  Maybe not.  Not by myself, certainly...  I'll just.. erm.... go for something to eat.  That's it, eat.  Armies and stomachs, after all...!")

That would be amusing.