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Single Giant library workroom. Takes a bit of set-up but once done is done.

90 (40%)

Specific Library sections. Books are in the library and the menu is managable.

111 (49.3%)

Generic library sections with free floating books. Messy, but flexible.

19 (8.4%)

Other: Describe (keep in mind the limits of modding)

5 (2.2%)

Total Members Voted: 224

[kilakan]

I gotta say, jawas and sand raiders seem glitched in the current one, they are ALWAYS hanging around in all major cities, and I got a seige of them once that were friendly........  Maybe replace them with something similar in the newer version, but maybe less stealth more kill?

[Mephansteras]

Hmmm, I haven't seen either of those behaviors. Are you running any mods alongside Civ forge?

[kilakan]

... just checked, got a double entry for them in mine XD  No wonder.

[bhamv]

Regarding using the crystal metals, I personally almost never make void crystal.  It's just too rare to get both cinnabar and cobaltite in decent amounts with any sort of regularity.  Since it's possible to search for flux but not to search for cinnabar and cobaltite, it's easier to set up my fortress for steel production rather than void crystal.

When I do get enough cinnabar and cobaltite for a few void crystal bars, though, I usually make armor out of it and give it to my top champions.

Blood crystal and night crystal are made if cinnabar or cobaltite are discovered, separately.  That's frequent enough to make them a feasible option.  A few weapon traps with blood crystal trap components can really bring the pain.

[Mephansteras]

Yeah, Void crystal is supposed to be a bit rare (it's more powerful then Steel, after all), but Quartzite can have both Cobaltite and Cinnabar, so it is possible to actively search for a location likely to have both.

[bhamv]

Ooooo, I didn't know about Quartzite, I'll have to look for it in my next fortress.

[Cheddarius]

Looks awesome.

[Mephansteras]

I have a lot of thoughts about the metalworking industry. One aspect I was thinking was to make it a bit more involved and realistic. Steel, for example, would require a blast furnace and always requires charcoal or coke as part of the reaction. Magma would reduce the fuel requirements a bit, but you can't make steel without carbon.

To compensate, I'd make coal show up in larger batches and possibly give more coke per batch. Trees might also get a chopping block station to reduce them to 2 stacks of firewood so that you can get more charcoal out of wood.

If I wanted to be even more realistic I'd have a step where most ore is crushed and roasted before smelting (which would take even more fuel and dwarfpower). Personally, I like realism and would be fine with the extra steps. Metalworking is not a simple industry, after all.

However, I don't know if that would annoy people too much. And these changes would effect both reaction files and civ entity files, so it's not as simple as just saying 'don't include these files if you don't want more complex metalworking'.

What do you guys think?

[sunshaker]

Steel existed long before Blast Furnaces. You basically have three methods to get there.

- Blast Furnace: Ore > Pig Iron > Wrought Iron, then Wrought Iron + Pig Iron = Steel
- Crucible: Ore > Steel (but is a specialized and highly skilled operation that can go wrong), see Wootz Steel
- Forging: Ore > Bloom Iron (this step can sometimes yield various grades of steel or pig iron (which can not be used for anything and counts as a waste product at this tech level)) > Wrought Iron > Low Steel > Medium Steel > High Steel (with each step taking fuel which adds carbon until finely there is enough carbon in the iron to make it good weapon grade steel).

[Mephansteras]

Hmmm, I'll have to look up Wootz Steel.

I think the Forging method for steel sounds like a good route for some other races, like Dyansauri or High Elves. Dwarves are going to be a bit higher tech then everyone else.

High Elves, of course, are probably going to be one of the few races with whatever method allows for Mithril (even if I can't get them to use it yet).

EDIT: Having looked up Wotz steel, it seems it relies on tungsten or vanadium impurities to work. So, perhaps not widely applicable enough. Might make for an interesting alternative, though, if you have the right minerals. I'll have to look into it some more.

EDIT 2: Looks like Gabbro can contain iron-titanium oxides in small amounts which can also contain vanadium. Ilmenite is actually a viable iron ore type found in Gabbro, so a Crucible Steel method that uses Ilmenite instead of other ores might work. Dwarves certainly go down deep enough to find Gabbro pretty often, so it's not unreasonable that they'd have figured something like this out.

[sunshaker]

The crucible method will still work with ore that does not contain impurities, it just won't make wootz steel (there are other similar steels to wootz (sometimes called damascus, but different from the pattern welded damascus of today), namely Bulat and Noric but others as well).

Pyrolusite occurs in the same areas as magnetite (oddly ilmenite occurs in those same areas, the raws seem to skip this but they are all found in black sand) thus I used an Enriched ore found in small clusters or single squares that occurred in magnetite, limonite, vanadinite (Pb5(VO4)3Cl), wolframite (FeWO4/MnWO4), pyrolusite (MnO2), hematite and black sand but only with a 50% chance of occurring. One of the odd things about this ore is that if you refine it normally the impurities will be removed by the flux with the slag (so you could have some really awesome ore on the map and not realize it and/or not know the method to refine it and retain the properties and just make regular iron out of it). Manganese will also cause similar properties to occur in steel.

See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_sand
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_mineral_sands_ore_deposits
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placer_deposit

[Mephansteras]

Hmmm, might be a bit difficult to model properly in DF right now without things becoming unbalanced. Perhaps simply having black sand give small pockets of minerals? I'd go with a custom workshop to sort out minerals from sand with a small chance of success (to simulate the amount of effort needed to get worthwhile amounts of metal this way) but sand is currently limitless so that'd be a bit broken.

I kind of like the idea of having Enriched Black Sand stones in small pockets that you can process at a workshop with a small chance of getting Ore or specific Gemstones.

As far as Blast Furnaces vs Crucibles go I'll need to read about those more. Perhaps Blast Furnaces will be a more economical way to get large amounts of steel but Crucibles will be used for special steels (like Wootz) and more useful for small batches of steel. I could see the blast furnace requiring large amounts of ore and fuel to be used with any efficiency, but I'll have to read more to see if that's realistic.

[sunshaker]

It is more of tech level thing than anything else (bloomery + forge superseded by crucible superseded by blast furnace), so perhaps different custom workshops used by different races (restricted by different skills). It wouldn't change them as opponents but it would change them if they were played (enhancing the differences between the races).

The Blast Furnace really needs power (windmill/waterwheel) to operate the bellows.

[Mephansteras]

It is more of tech level thing than anything else (bloomery + forge superseded by crucible superseded by blast furnace), so perhaps different custom workshops used by different races (restricted by different skills). It wouldn't change them as opponents but it would change them if they were played (enhancing the differences between the races).

The Blast Furnace really needs power (windmill/waterwheel) to operate the bellows.

The power aspect is a good point.

And actually, I like that. Have the Blast Furnace be more efficient but require power, while the Crucible would allow for steel production until a blast furnace is possible. Giving the crucible the ability to make Wootz steel as well would just be a bonus.

[Mephansteras]

Moving on to the Infused metals.

I have a few ideas on this. For version 2, we're going to make the process more complicated but yield more usable bars per gem.

First off, we're going to use Alchemy. This is going to require a few different materials, which I'll probably use for other things as well.

We're going to use Aqua Regia for this. To get there, we'll need a few things:

   Vitrol (sulfuric acid) comes from a few places but I'll be using Melanterite, which for convenience will show up as small mineral pockets in coal and lignite deposits.

   Alum is a substance gotten from refining Alunite, Schist, Bauxite or Cryolite.

   Aqua fortis (Nitric Acid) is made from saltpeter and alum

   Aqua Regia is the gotten by combining Vitrol and Aqua Fortis together.

I'm simplifying the actual Alchemy needed to do all of this. Various salts and other things would actually be needed for these processes, but to keep things manageable I'll be going with these basic requirements. Glass vials are going to become very important! Fortunately, between the ability to trade for sand and the increased rock crystal in Civ Forge that won't be too hard.

Aqua Regia will then be used to dissolve the various gems down into an Elixir. You'll get 5 vials worth of Elixir for each Gem.

I still need to come up with names for the various Elixirs.

If you have all four gem types (Frost Crystals, Storm Crystals, Fire Hearts, and Ward Crystals) you can create a Pure Elixir, which will allow for the creation of Elementium. You will only get 5 vials worth, though, so you'll be sacrificing quantity for quality.

Now that we have the Elixir, we'll need somewhere to use it. That's where the Infusion Chamber comes in. The infusion chamber will require stone blocks, a barrel, and gold bars to build. Once it is built you will be able to combine a vial of the appropriate Elixir with Iron Bars to create the various Infused Metals. This process will not require fuel.

So, the end result of all of this is that trading for various minerals is going to be quite important but a small pocket of gems will now give you a much more useful cache of metals to work with.

Thoughts?