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[kiwiphoenix]

What would a salamander even do?  It's just a slimy lizard or a frog with a tail.  A frog or toad civ would make sense since they could have giant legs or tongue attacks or poison sacs or psychedelic skin.  Or maybe one of the stranger types like axolotls or hellbenders which have cool names or distinguishing features.  But salamanders?  Salamanders??

And the biology is one thing, but then I'd have to decide what kind of theme a salamander civ would have.  There's no culture that associates themselves with salamanders and they live in the boring old northern hemisphere holarctic ecozone which I feel like I've depleted of culture at this point.

I mean maybe I could do something with the old myth that salamanders were created by lightning and fire and give them a wizardy theme with staffs and robes and pointy hats, but that strikes me as a little out of character at this point.  Kind of.  I guess.  Maybe.

Now, it's not my mod, but I would like to chip in that salamanders are the only vertebrate that can perfectly regenerate any wound. They can regrow an entire limb from a stump, given rest and time, and are a subject of ongoing genetic studies for that very reason.
Also, many species sport camouflage and/or secrete toxic slime when threatened. Others can detach their own tails as a sacrificial distraction. Iberian ribbed newts even have sharp-tipped rib cages that they thrust through their own (poisonous) skin as a defence mechanism, which is rather metal.
Plus, they come in a wide variety of cool colour patterns, ranging from matte to camo to neon to metallic.

Point being, don't write the little guys off, they're way more interesting than they seem at first glance.


They are semi-to-fully aquatic, soft-bodied, slow-moving, virtually harmless (even their teeth are flexible), long-lived, and non-confrontational to the point of throwing away bits of themselves to buy running-away time.
They were regarded with interest by Classical naturalists, were associated with devilry by medieval Europeans and Arabs, and appear as monsters in Japanese artwork. They are also endemic to China, the Mediterranean coasts, Mexico, Northern South America, and parts of the Western Middle East, so you're not actually that hemmed in - their entities could even spawn in lakes and exclusively colonise freshwater biomes, which would be unique.

With the new societal features given to us in DF2015, it seems to me like they could make the ultimate scholarly race. Weak, frail, slow, and cowardly, but packing camouflage, toxic secretions, Wolverine-level regeneration, and the infinite power of knowledge, a Caudatid fortress would be reliant on water features, mechanical devilry, and (praise the Toad) mercenaries for its survival. Possibly even alchemy or magic?


Just my two bits. Make of them what you will.

/biologyrant

[BlackFlyme]

Regeneration isn't quite possible, barring transformation syndromes.

[kiwiphoenix]

Fair point, but they could have ludicrous Recuperation values, and perhaps a rare 1-tick transformation.
Flesh wounds would heal in record time, with lost parts regenerating more slowly.
The real troubles would be message spam, and timing by wound age rather than calendar date. Maybe a long-delay syndrome given by a Clean_Friend interaction? Dunno, bad with interactions.

[Rydel]

I know there is a way to handle limb regrowth, since Ingido Phoenix has that for the Toads in Rise of The Mushroom Kingdom.  I think you just don't give them any bones in the limbs they can regrow.

[AceSV]

Well, as with the Bovarians, you are free to code up a salamander civ and post here.  I don't have anything against it, I just don't have the time or motivation to create and test it. 

[AceSV]

Sup y'all, been a while.  I'm in the process of revamping the badguy civs.  I wanted to wait until I was "finished" but that could take months to years at my current pace, so here's what I've got so far. 

I've removed Ogres as a badguy race, since Ogre sieges are just too hardcore with .42 numbers.  Some of the others have been cleaned out too to avoid crowding out the normal civs.  I hope to eventually add my own badguy races, and I'm starting with the new Wyvern civ.  They are basically animals, they produce no weapons nor can they speak (i think), but they can live in dark fortresses and siege your forts.  I've seen them eviscerate trolls in arena mode, but I have yet to face an actual Wyvern siege. 

Also, the original theory of Furry Fortress was that you would be fighting wars against other animal peoples, but the damn sissies just don't get angry at each other.  I've attempted to rectify this by add "bad" versions of each civ with both baby snatcher and item thief enabled.  You can also play as these bad civs, for more guaranteed FUN.  Unfortunately, item thief playable races will give you stolen goods warning when caravans leave the screen (not sure if they actually stole anything) but it keeps you from playing patty-cake with the goblin civs.  However, since any dwarven, human or elven civs would naturally be at war with you anyways, it might be interesting to have goblins as allies.  I'll have to think about it.  Or let you think about it.  I don't know if item thief impacts visitors. 

I have yet to actually face any furry civ sieges either, but theoretically they will have the ability to bring steel equipment and USE_ANY_PET_RACE war animals. 



Plans for the future are to add more a few more monster-civs like the wyverns:  Obsidimen, like gabbromen, but made of obsidian and with sharp claw and teeth attacks;  Thunderlings, creates made of "lightning" probably like fire men, they would be small but incredibly fast;  Oakgres, ent-like people made of wood, probably troll sized rather than ogre sized, since ogres were too hard core on their own, being made of wood would probably be worse.  Maybe some kind of a centaur race, not sure if I want to replace the game's fanciful one, so they might be something like dractaurs or bugtaurs (although we've already got horstangs and formicines, so I might skip it)  Maybe flip-side versions of the default races, powries as bad dwarves, drow as bad elves, barbarians as bad humans.  Might do rakshasa, flying poison-clawed cannibals of Indian legend, but I need to think of a way to balance that out. 

Another thought is to make more beak-dog style animals to accompany sieges, since armies of beak dogs are pretty boring.  Ideas off the top of my head are just to use prehistoric animals, kelenken, sebecus, daeodon, chalicothere, brontothere, gastonia, azhdarchids, etc.  Some of the old siege mounts would be cool too, I miss goblins riding giant toads and death worms.  Maybe some iconic dinosaurs.  I think if people recognize the names it gets too scientific and not fantasy anymore, but then this is a world of fox and rabbit people, so the fantasy theme may have worn off already. 

[AceSV]

Well gang, as far as I can tell, neither of the new badguy things works at all.  The wyverns might need to be intelligent, but I've had molemarian sieges before and I don't think they're intelligent.  What's happening now is that the wyverns will appear in small groups at the sides of the screen and then leave immediately, which feels like what would happen if a bunch of war animals were left over without any intelligent creatures to guide them.  I don't know what's up with the bad versions of the furries.  Maybe trade relations prevent them from declaring war, but I don't want them to not trade so that they can still trade with each other.  Arrrrrgh. 

[Eric Blank]

I always understood that warfare depends solely on ethical differences, not who they've been trading with. I've had trouble with custom civs that are supposed to get along with nobody being best friends with everybody, and civs that are intended to be reclusive and largely neutral getting wiped out consistently in most worlds genned because literally everyone hates them, though. Honestly, I'm not totally sure what governs it, but usually if two civs disagree on something strongly enough they'll go to war.
Keep in mind that actual declared wars are controlled by ethics in worldgen and ethics and diplomatic incidents (like murdering humans' diplomats and breaking logging agreements you've agreed on with elves) post-worldgen. If the "evil" versions of the civs simply have item thieving and/or kidnapping tokens added, but the same ethics, then while they will kidnap children and steal things and fight with you in fort-mode over stealing and kidnapping your kids, they might not actually go to war because they otherwise get along fine with everyone around them.

As for sieges just up and leaving, I'm totally at a loss. If they're not at war with you, they might leave because they suddenly realize they have no business being there anyway? It could also be a morale problem; the creatures' personalities or the ethics and values of the civ might cause the leaders or troops to give up, or decide they have no interest in the invasion.

[AceSV]

I always understood that warfare depends solely on ethical differences, not who they've been trading with. I've had trouble with custom civs that are supposed to get along with nobody being best friends with everybody, and civs that are intended to be reclusive and largely neutral getting wiped out consistently in most worlds genned because literally everyone hates them, though. Honestly, I'm not totally sure what governs it, but usually if two civs disagree on something strongly enough they'll go to war.
Keep in mind that actual declared wars are controlled by ethics in worldgen and ethics and diplomatic incidents (like murdering humans' diplomats and breaking logging agreements you've agreed on with elves) post-worldgen. If the "evil" versions of the civs simply have item thieving and/or kidnapping tokens added, but the same ethics, then while they will kidnap children and steal things and fight with you in fort-mode over stealing and kidnapping your kids, they might not actually go to war because they otherwise get along fine with everyone around them.

As for sieges just up and leaving, I'm totally at a loss. If they're not at war with you, they might leave because they suddenly realize they have no business being there anyway? It could also be a morale problem; the creatures' personalities or the ethics and values of the civ might cause the leaders or troops to give up, or decide they have no interest in the invasion.

I've heard that about ethics too, but if that's all it takes, they should all be waging war all of the time, because a lot of the furry entities have very different ethics.  I'll try giving them goblinoid ethics for science though. 

[darkflagrance]

I have suffered the vanishing siege bug in both Fortress Defense and Vanilla (with goblins). I think it's tied to a bug in world gen rather than a flaw in the raws, but I haven't actually been able to recreate the bug reliably. I would tentatively suggest that vanishing sieges are not a fatal problem.

Also, Dark Stranglers in Fortress Defense are babystealers without INTELLIGENT, and they should work fine. In fact, all Fortress Defense civs use the badguy tags like ITEM_THIEF and BABY_THIEF because other ways of forcing hostility were no longer as attractive or effective in the current version.

[Eric Blank]

If its a bug causing them to wander off, not much can be done about that except pray to the toad.

And yes, you don't see wars like all the time, ethical differences are not like a universal war-o-clock like the thieving tokens are. In worldgen they might last only a year or two, and after a couple wars spread out over a hundred years a civ could be wiped out. I've come upon a fairly large elven civ that's just gone recently. Not even stragglers left in the retreats. I wrote a couple chronicles in-play about elven retreats and they detail multiple sieges on the retreats by the two human civs over the course of a couple hundred years and their eventual demise. Only seen a couple elven bards in the flesh, that's it. But other than goblins invading hamlets, no warfare going on in adventure mode. Still, sometimes you'll gen a world and find civs in the middle of a war at the time history is finalized.

Thieving tokens will definitely work, though. Never a day of peace.

[AceSV]

Well, I tried giving Wyverns INTELLIGENT and it crashed on worldgen every time.  They were okay with SLOW LEARNER, but still didn't stick around for sieges. 

Thieves definitely show up, though no Baby Snatcher specific announcements yet.  I saw "A vile force of darkness has arrived" but no troops showed up.  A handful of thieves came to the door, but that was my only experience with it. 

This plan might get abandoned. 

[Eric Blank]

Any idea why giving wyverns intelligence could crash worldgen? I've never had a problem like that.

[vjmdhzgr]

I always understood that warfare depends solely on ethical differences, not who they've been trading with. I've had trouble with custom civs that are supposed to get along with nobody being best friends with everybody, and civs that are intended to be reclusive and largely neutral getting wiped out consistently in most worlds genned because literally everyone hates them, though. Honestly, I'm not totally sure what governs it, but usually if two civs disagree on something strongly enough they'll go to war.
Keep in mind that actual declared wars are controlled by ethics in worldgen and ethics and diplomatic incidents (like murdering humans' diplomats and breaking logging agreements you've agreed on with elves) post-worldgen. If the "evil" versions of the civs simply have item thieving and/or kidnapping tokens added, but the same ethics, then while they will kidnap children and steal things and fight with you in fort-mode over stealing and kidnapping your kids, they might not actually go to war because they otherwise get along fine with everyone around them.

As for sieges just up and leaving, I'm totally at a loss. If they're not at war with you, they might leave because they suddenly realize they have no business being there anyway? It could also be a morale problem; the creatures' personalities or the ethics and values of the civ might cause the leaders or troops to give up, or decide they have no interest in the invasion.

I've heard that about ethics too, but if that's all it takes, they should all be waging war all of the time, because a lot of the furry entities have very different ethics.  I'll try giving them goblinoid ethics for science though.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Ethic There's a table showing how differing ethics affect relations on the bottom of this page. It could help ensure more wars.

[AceSV]

Any idea why giving wyverns intelligence could crash worldgen? I've never had a problem like that.

I wondered at first if it had something to do with the new dance and music forms, but I removed their generate dance/music tokens and it still happened.  They have weird bodies, but nothing I haven't tried before.  Maybe [ETHIC:EAT_SAPIENT_OTHER:REQUIRED] is too hardcore?