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[Techhead]

Toady has said that he does not want post-1400 technologies in the game at this moment, but what pre-industrial technologies are currently not found in Dwarf Fortress.
A few examples come to mind:
1. Paper, printing, and books. Papyrus was invented by the Egyptians, and was also in widespread use by the Chinese in the 3rd century. Calligraphy and woodblock printing wer commonly used in Europe throughout the middle ages, although not on paper until 1120. Movable type was invented around 1040 AD, predating the Gutenberg Bible by 415 years.
2. Gunpowder and firearms. Invented by the Chinese in the 800s, used as explosives in 1044, and in firearms by the 1100s. The technology was published in Europe by Roger Bacon in 1267.
3. Boats, sails, rudders, navigation, naval warfare, etc.
4. Animal/human power, outside of querns.
Others here

Also note that plate armor and steel crossbows were invented in the late 14th century, less than 100 years before the deadline.

Steam power was not included, although Romans had a few steam gadgets. The reason behind this is that almost all of the steam-related suggestions made have been using post-1400 technologies. Specifically, the use of confined steam to do useful work, a discovery made in the mid-1500s.

Here is my brainstorm, now discuss!

[penguinofhonor]

Paper and books are planned.
Gunpowder and firearms would be neat. They could be significantly slower and more powerful than crossbows and bows, but less accurate. They could have their own new skill, too.
Boats are planned.
Animal/slave power has been suggested several times and may be planned.

I think that steam power is cool enough that it can still be in despite the deadline. It's pretty dwarven.

[Techhead]

Talk about possible implementations thereof. Also, note the "More here" link, and feel free to add your own.

[Untelligent]

Your link is broken. Probably because the URL is an amalgamation of bay12games.com and wikipedia.

[penguinofhonor]

Wikibaype12ia!

Hm. I think guns should be expensive, powerful, slow, and inaccurate. But they would be absolutely devastating in the hands of someone who could use them well enough.

Here's how I think the ranged weapons should be:

Crossbow: short range, high power, medium speed, medium accuracy, medium ammo stacks
Gun: short range, very high power, slow speed, low accuracy, small ammo stacks
Bow: long range, medium power, medium-fast speed, medium-high accuracy, medium ammo stacks
Blow Gun: very short range, low power, fast speed, high accuracy, large ammo stacks

You would be able to carry more ammo with the blowgun and you would be able to poison more darts with less poison than it would take for arrows or crossbow bolts. Bullets could not be poisoned, but they could give lead poisoning if they were made of lead.

Bullets would be able to be made out of lead, which other types of ammo could not be made out of. But they couldn't be made out of wood or bone, unlike the other ammo. Guns couldn't be made out of wood or bone, either.

You would be able to get feathers to slightly increase bow accuracy, but they'd be optional.

[SocietalEclipse]

Early firearms used stone bullets as well.

[Belteshazzar]

I just want a way to properly build (or mod in the ability to do so) such mirraculous devices. I can understand he is going for a kind of Dark Ages feel, but I would just like to see what happens when I add in highly advanced Giants and Titans with Adamatine armor and bolter pistols (gyroget guns for the uninitiated.)

[sweitx]

I think gun should be medium ranged and are powerful regardless of skill.  Early gun actually cannot stand-up against a trained archer.  But it was much easier to train someone to use a gun then to train an archer, they simply outnumber archer by giving peasant a crap load of guns.

[Tamren]

I would think that dwarves would like shotguns because they tend towards tunnel fighting where long shots are not common.

[Belteshazzar]

Guns are also scarier than bows and cause lots of smoke. (obscuring battlefeild some?)

[Christes]

If only blunderbusses weren't from the 18th century

[sweitx]

Crossbow: short range, high power, medium speed, medium accuracy, medium ammo stacks
Gun: short range, very high power, slow speed, low accuracy, small ammo stacks
Bow: long range, medium power, medium-fast speed, medium-high accuracy, medium ammo stacks
Blow Gun: very short range, low power, fast speed, high accuracy, large ammo stacks

For more realistic, change it to following...
Crossbow: medium range, very high power, slow speed, high accuracy, medium-large ammo stacks
Gun: medium range, medium power, slow speed, medium accuracy, large ammo stacks
Bow: long range, medium power, very-high speed, medium-high accuracy, medium ammo stacks
Blow Gun: very short range, low power, high speed, high accuracy, large ammo stacks

Reason:
Crossbow:  In medieval context, crossbow is the most powerful weapon that can be used.  A type of crossbow called arbalest is strong enough to pierce plate armor (its use against Christian and Catholics were banned by Pope Innocent II).  Its draw back is the slow reload rate, beside that, crossbow IS overpowering in medieval warfare.
Gun: Gun sucks.  In medieval time, the gun is overpowered by crossbow and out-ranged by the bow.  It has one advantage, gun requires little training to achieve the same stopping power.  In addition, a single user can carry much larger supply ammunition.
Bow:  Medieval machinegun, a skilled English bowmen can fire at a rate of one shot per 4 second on average (not sustained, of course).  Bow are also accurate at medium range but can reach much further then any other ranged weapon at that time while maintaining their killing power.  A bow can also pierce some plate mails (won't pierce steel).  However, bow requires a lot of training to use correctly.
Blow Gun: Actually pretty useless, but couple with poison can be deadly, and its low weight/small size allow the user to maintain stealth better.  But during any shootout, blow gun user will get slaughtered at range.

Since the advantage of gun over bow during medieval time is purely the skill (or the lack of) required to use them effectively...
Skill/Attribute Effect:
Crossbow: Medium.  High Skill will improve accuracy and reload rate.  In addition, reload rate heavily depends on Strength.  Sustained fire quickly exhaust user.
Gun: Low.  High skill improves accuracy and reload rate (more improvement in reload rate, since early guns are so inaccurate that better skill won't improve the accuracy much).  User don't get exhausted quickly from sustained fire.
Bow: High.  High skill improves accuracy, reload rate, and power.  Power and reload rate depends on Strength.  Sustained fire quickly exhaust user.
Blow gun: High. High skill improves accuracy and reload rate.  User don't get exhausted as quickly.

[jellyman]

Lifts/Elevators, and cranes.

[Zeofar]

I have to agree with sweitx regarding the ranged weapons, anyone trying to portray guns from old days as "devastating" don't really know what they are talking about: even someone skilled with a gun couldn't do much amazing with a breech-sealed metal tube with a ball and some 'splodey stuff at the end.
Anyways, while guns may seem somewhat dwarvenly and people might think they are cool, they aren't really necessary and don't add much to the game or game world if you think about it.

From the times that I've thought about books in Dwarf Fortress, they have been written by philosophers (I believe I only was thinking about how to give philosophers a purpose), but they could also be written by preachers. Now, going beyond that basic idea it could give book-readers happy or unhappy thoughts (Happy - , Unhappy- Diametrically opposed to their religion/personality/philosophical beliefs (Either generated or converted by other books)), convert or modify their religions/habits/beliefs (Philosophical books which change habits/beliefs successfully could perhaps give dwarves tags such as "Urist is a Optimist", "Gatal is a Nihilist", "Lokun is a Epistimologist","Zotir is a Zirilist" or other such things) and and generally add dynamics among the fortress's community including or resulting in harmony, dissonance, or segregation, or any interesting thing that may arise in those kinds of conditions.
As a side note, although it may have been a slip of the tongue, Techhead phrased his post in such a way that suggested that the Chinese were using papyrus in the 3rd century when they were actually using genuine paper. Just putting that out there, since I felt like it.

[MMad]

Papyrus is for wimps and (pre-39a) elves. Vellum is where it's at. Making your writing material out of animal skin is much more hardcore. I like the idea of books as an export goods - back in the so-called dark ages scribes copying books was a primary source of income for many monastery orders and so on.

As for other technologies, pottery is one of the obvious ones basic ones currently missing, along with animal husbandry. The former would presumably be used mostly for trade goods, although perhaps clay amphoras or something could be used in lieu of barrels to store food? Perhaps a stock of high-quality eating utensils in the dining hall would make them even more ectasy-inducing? The latter is functionally there, but it's kinda strange right now with animals running wild all over the place, births happening all over the place with no need to manage it, animals not needing food and so on. I'd love to manage some proper dwarven cowboys.