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Author Topic: Abundance of Goblins  (Read 3036 times)

Dozebôm Lolumzalìs

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Re: Abundance of Goblins
« Reply #15 on: January 24, 2016, 01:03:41 pm »

their negligible death rate
Have you forgotten that (outside of war), the favorite pastime of many goblins is murdering other goblins and shoving their corpse into the troll pit?
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ClorrProdigal

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Re: Abundance of Goblins
« Reply #16 on: January 24, 2016, 02:07:22 pm »

Do demons still lead their armies into battle? I remember in older versions that whenever demons battled anything other than megabeasts they usually won.
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Urlance Woolsbane

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Re: Abundance of Goblins
« Reply #17 on: January 24, 2016, 02:13:41 pm »

Do demons still lead their armies into battle? I remember in older versions that whenever demons battled anything other than megabeasts they usually won.
In world-gen, they do. Also in world-gen, however, a demon can be killed by any animal from a camel onwards. Elephants, while no longer the monsters of legends, are frequent demon-slayers.
« Last Edit: January 24, 2016, 04:53:30 pm by Urlance Woolsbane »
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IndigoFenix

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Re: Abundance of Goblins
« Reply #18 on: January 24, 2016, 03:53:29 pm »

Either way, it's their biome ubiquity that counts the most.  If you want to keep the goblin population to a reasonable level, just restrict their settlements to particular areas like everyone else.  Say, swamps and deserts.

The thing is, I don't think it's meant to be a fair competition between the races.  Goblins aren't on equal ground with the other three races, because they are The Enemy, which is found wherever "civilized beings" are not.  They are the challenge facing every race that wants to expand and the pressure that strives to take away what they already have.  The world basically belongs to them by default; the other races are challenged to fight against the goblin menace but they (the goblins) will usually win out in the end.

Feniks

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Re: Abundance of Goblins
« Reply #19 on: January 25, 2016, 01:37:48 am »

I am going to experiment in changing dwarves to become more agressive and fight back.

For elven fix I think extending their bioms to other forest like bioms would help adding savana or swamp should make them a bit more flexible.
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Niddhoger

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Re: Abundance of Goblins
« Reply #20 on: January 27, 2016, 12:18:57 am »

Elves also only use wooden weapons, while goblins are like humans and use non-steel metal.  However, I don't think equipment is taken into proper account during world-gen fights.  I strongly believe that weapons and armor are only randomly generated (like clothing) when a figure enters your embark site. 

I think weapon skills are taken into consideration, but for the most part its just a straight pitched battle between soldier counts.  This is why I always make a food surplus and turn my entire fort into soldiers before I retire it.  I then let them train a year or so as well.  That way, if something attacks during world-gen (building another fort), I have 200 soldiers to defend the site.  Traps, ballista, defensive positions (tight corridor with fortifications on the side for marksdorfs) are all ignored in world-gen wars. 

If equipment isn't properly being assigned or modeled in the fights, then that would also explain why dwarves die so much.  Steel has a huge advantage over bronze/iron/copper in terms of both deflection and piercing.  So steel-clad dwarves should mow through hordes of goblins like a scythe through grain.  They do in fortress mode, at least... Even with lower numbers, technological superiority would see dwarves win most wars.

Also, goblins do murder each other, but not at a significant rate.  I looked into a 10,000 strong fortress in legends viewer, it had less than a dozen murders in 1,000 years of history iirc.  I'll need to check again soon, but I don't remember it being anything near enough that would be needed to control their populations. 
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malvado

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Re: Abundance of Goblins
« Reply #21 on: January 27, 2016, 12:53:12 am »

A few of the problems could be fixed by limiting the amount of goblin offspring each female goblin can have, introducing child mortality rate as well should probably help as well.
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Urlance Woolsbane

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Re: Abundance of Goblins
« Reply #22 on: January 27, 2016, 01:04:41 am »

A few of the problems could be fixed by limiting the amount of goblin offspring each female goblin can have, introducing child mortality rate as well should probably help as well.
Surely the latter could be done by creating a caste with a MAXAGE of 1?
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Feniks

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Re: Abundance of Goblins
« Reply #23 on: January 27, 2016, 05:26:44 am »

I tested it and making more bioms available for dwarves makes them more aggressive and they do go after goblins more. In one of my test I had civilization of dwarves living entirely in dark fortresses. They took over some early one and then their main sites got destroyed.

I really like the idea of early child death for goblins. Being civilization of barbarians it's likely young ones do some dangerous stuff and fight each other or just fall pray to stronger adult goblins. I will experiment with creating caste  with max age of 11 that will basicly be a pool of young ones that die before reaching maturity.

The greats advantage when calculating battles goblins get is from trolls in their ranks. My worlds tend to go like this:
Goblin>Trolls>Human>Elves/dwarves>kobolds reducing number of trolls should even the odds.
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HungryHobo

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Re: Abundance of Goblins
« Reply #24 on: January 28, 2016, 11:02:22 am »

I'm wondering if it's down to the fact that they also have a single biome where they are utterly unchallenged except by other goblins.

Perhaps modding in a sturdy race or even a version of goblins which are limited to evil swamps etc but will fight the goblins for them might put some pressure on them in those locations.
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FrisianDude

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Re: Abundance of Goblins
« Reply #25 on: January 28, 2016, 12:40:07 pm »

Obviously then, said swamp-inhabiting anti-goblin goblins must be called 'boglins' and there is no alternative.
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Edward_Tohr

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Re: Abundance of Goblins
« Reply #26 on: January 30, 2016, 12:50:39 pm »

Obviously then, said swamp-inhabiting anti-goblin goblins must be called 'boglins' and there is no alternative.
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