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Author Topic: Class Warfare: Internal politics, scaling difficulty, and personalities  (Read 60387 times)

NW_Kohaku

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Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
« Reply #90 on: May 27, 2012, 09:33:39 pm »

Okay, I've been reading over this (a feat in and of itself, as no one can throw up walls of text like kohaku...) and while all the stuff that's been posted looks good so far, i have two questions about stuff that hasn't quite been posted.

The first is about the inherent differences between dwarves, and our only historical race of reference (I.E. Humans). Dwarves behave very differently than we do, and i'm wondering how that's going to affect politics and the system of government. For exmaple, for humans, the feudal system is based on land and it's ownership. The king gives land to his barons, barons rent it to lords, ect. For dwarves, who live underground, that sort of thing will have to be handled VERY differently, and i'm wondering how you plan to do that.

The second is a question of options. Do you want players to have a CHOICE in what kind of government their fort or civ has. For instance, what if i want to run my fortress as a republic, roman style? Or perhaps a straight up dictatorship, do what the overlord says, or face the hammer. How would that be handled, and how would one go about changing the government of a fort or civ that already exists. Will revolution and secession be possible. That sort of thing.

Well, thank you for challenging the feat.  It takes some building to construct those walls, as well.  It's the sort of work for late nights, when my restless morning mind has gone into the focused stares of the half-asleep, and half-driven.

I actually split this post in two for length, so as to keep it more manageable.  The next post is on government types and how the player controls which one they develop.  (The noble tree and government types.)

At a certain level, I do think the current system of just plain being prompted, "do you want a noble", however, is kind of the way to go.  Beyond that, however, I think a setup that is reactive to your playstyle and the context of your fort (like starting scenarios) is best.

I'd say more, but I'm going to just put it in the next major post, anyway. 



Because it doesn't really fit in anywhere else, though, I've been playing some other games recently, in between spats of writing, as a means of priming the creative pump, looking for good ideas to swipe. 

I've been playing Patrician III, a game I nabbed over a Steam sale a couple years ago ($2 on sale, and it's at only $5 regular price - worth a try if you're at all interested in the genre), and only now started playing. 

The game is at once pretty simple, but actually very subtle with some complex mechanics under the hood. 

On the surface, it's a naval trading game like the old Uncharted Waters/New Horizons games, but where you just sit in an office the whole time and tell other people to sail your ships for you.  Typical trading game mechanics - buy low, sell high, each town has specialties where they manufacture 4-6 out of 15 or so goods, and need to import the rest. 

The difference is, you actually have a large degree of control over the towns, themselves.  Trade with them so that their needs are supplied, and their surpluses are sold for a profit, and their economy improves, which brings more people into town, which increases their demand for goods, which increases the amount of goods you can sell them in a go around for a high enough price to be worth trading. 

As you build up cash, you can build your own workshops in the town, which not only lets you get goods directly at a stable price, but also employs the town's working classes, which further improves the economy in the region, and you can build and own townhouses for your workers to rent out rooms. 

You can then build improvements that you "donate" to the town in your name.  This doesn't profit you directly, but it improves your good name, and it improves the economy further to have infrastructure spending on the roads and wells.

The more and more of a town that you wind up either owning or having your name carved upon as you donated it as a civil work, the more power and influence you have in town until you can get yourself declared Lord Mayor, and eventual Alderman of the whole merchant guild over the Hanseatic League. 

Basically, it's all a matter of just keeping the wheels of commerce spinning ever faster and making a profit on every spin of the wheel.

At the same time, there are a dozen or two other rival trading companies, all doing their own thing, building their own industries, and potentially helping you by also building up the economy in their own way, even as they slice out a share for themselves. 



Also of note, this game has a low/middle/high class system, as well - Low class citizens only buy cheap goods, but buy in bulk, eating up grain, beer, fish, and timber mostly, but also a little leather, cloth, whale oil, and pottery.  The rich, meanwhile, consume meat, wine, furs, iron goods, honey, and spices.  The middle classes consume a little of everything but the highest-end goods like spices and furs. 

Each class has its own happiness meter, and can riot or vacate the city when they are dissatisfied, such as when they cannot have the foods of their price range available.  Each class has its own housing types, as well, and the balance of who moves in is based upon how you are satisfying those basics.

The lower classes do the work in your facotry, but aren't very profitable customers.  The rich do no work for you, but they are the customers for the high-profit goods you make your living supplying.



Steam is completely changing the way I play games - I used to play games for hundreds of hours and tried to find every last thing I could find while exploring a game for all its content.  Now, I buy games for $2 and play for just a few hours, just to get a grasp of what basic concepts the games use and what unique gimmicks they can cram in.  It's a real sampler platter. 
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Waparius

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Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
« Reply #91 on: May 27, 2012, 10:23:31 pm »

Quote
The second is a question of options. Do you want players to have a CHOICE in what kind of government their fort or civ has. For instance, what if i want to run my fortress as a republic, roman style? Or perhaps a straight up dictatorship, do what the overlord says, or face the hammer. How would that be handled, and how would one go about changing the government of a fort or civ that already exists. Will revolution and secession be possible. That sort of thing.

Seems most likely, given Toady's approach, that it'll just run generic-fantasy style, with a monarch who is periodically assassinated.
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Phlum

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Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
« Reply #92 on: May 27, 2012, 10:30:21 pm »

I think that it should be decided how the world works and what dangers the dwarfs will face before worrying about the dwarf social life. For now, they are too mentally backwards to think about this, "politics." t

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea, But dwarf fortress doesn't have the foundation and mechanics to allow for this complexity, yet. I mean that not even the physics of the world have been finalized. Much less the complexities of society.

I would guess that there is a long term plan for something like this. Just based on some of the traits that seem without much purpose, IE. rebelliousness and the like.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
« Reply #93 on: May 27, 2012, 11:10:42 pm »

I think that it should be decided how the world works and what dangers the dwarfs will face before worrying about the dwarf social life. For now, they are too mentally backwards to think about this, "politics." t

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea, But dwarf fortress doesn't have the foundation and mechanics to allow for this complexity, yet. I mean that not even the physics of the world have been finalized. Much less the complexities of society.

I would guess that there is a long term plan for something like this. Just based on some of the traits that seem without much purpose, IE. rebelliousness and the like.

Well, these major threads I write are all severely long-term.  Part of the reason I'm writing this is to make an argument for the things I think should be in the Personality Rewrites, which are coming up "soonish". 

Basically, I'm laying the groundwork for arguing for certain traits being put in during the Personality Rewrites (like the motivation meters, the loyalties, for example,) as well as the Standing Production Orders. 

In order to argue for what these "foundational" changes Toady is coming up upon should include, I have to start by talking about where I think we could be building. 

Further, it's not like Toady hasn't been tinkering with ideas of how guilds work or nobles and he's going to include some economic system eventually for the Caravan Arc.  About half of this is something Toady's already planning to do, and I'm just trying to show how the other half will tie in with the stuff he already wants to do to make a grand simulation and management game.

Part of the point of the severe complexity and rising challenge with how far you develop these ideas - like farming, or mining, or military, or economic or other forms of social power in this thread - is that it makes it so that there is a natural divergence in how different players will experience the game. 

That is, the idea is that farming can be simple, and produce little, and players will have to somehow find a way to trade for most of their food, which in turn means they are more vulnerable to sieges, and need to focus more on a proactive military.  Alternately, the player can go for a complex and advanced farm, and players can focus in on farming and mining, and because they don't rely on trade, can ignore social and military development.  Hence, specialization in handling one field of the game's complexity allows you to have more slack in the other areas of the game.

Between the mining (stone, metal, coal, and gems), farming (food, cloth, wood, leather, bone, oil, and spices/decorative goods), and social changes (the labor supply to use these things), the idea also is that all the major "raw materials" of the game will become more challenging and deep across-the-board, meaning that you can't just assume an infinite supply of stone or metal or food or labor - you have to actively plan for all these things in advance.
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RanDomino

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Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
« Reply #94 on: May 29, 2012, 12:11:46 am »

I have to say, I hate money both irl and the concept of it in DF, and I hope it will be possible to at least turn it off without destroying the rest of these ideas.  Viva Communist Fortress!

In the political intrigue game, you have a court (a special menu) and the ability to make decisions about your land holdings, and different nobles of the same civ are constantly spying on each other's court to gain advantages over the others.  Gaining enough prestige to climb in ranks through nobility means gaining more and more noble tree nobles under your banner, expanding the number of hill dwarves under your command, and gaining economic, military, or religious influence by running trade caravans that bring profits to the kingdom (that are taxed by the king)

For that matter, the king will have their own court, and will be ordering you as a vassal to provide for the kingdom in some way.  This means that you may be given directions to generate more wealth (through trade) and paying up some of that wealth in taxes, more soldiers or to fight and gain military victories, or to simply train troops and lend them to the armies of more powerful military dwarf nobles, or to appease the gods or seek their favor for religious forts.  Fulfilling these royal demands gives you more prestige and failing them harms your prestige, and may get your noble stripped of his title if they lose it all.

There should definitely be a 'military prestige' branch, rewarding you for making your baron into a front-line fighter.

And maybe if the King issues edicts that are impossible or suicidal ("Destroy the entire Giant civilization singlehandedly by year's end, using only weapons engraved with my face!"), you could have the option of seceeding, which would probably prompt a civil war invasion of your fort by the kingdom (or a coup, if there's existing dissent against a mad king- which could even result in your baron/count/duke being made king, if his prestige is high enough... of course, having the cojones to seceed or declare a coup should mean a hell of a bump to it).

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potential death of the fort motivating them

If your dwarves aren't staring death in the face every waking moment (and every sleeping one, in their endless nightmares), you're not having fun.

Quote
You could even start setting different price gradients of what you are willing to pay the more low your supplies get.  ("I'll pay you double, just somebody make some booze before there's a riot!")

This might just be my pervasive anticapitalism talking, but why would 'you' (the embodiment of the noble class, or maybe the State) need to comission that (or practically anything, really) if the economy is as demand-oriented as you describe?  Shouldn't they just automatically price-gouge?

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Means by which stages are advanced

If every character now has personal power and motivations, isn't "advancements" as discrete stages a vestigal way of thinking about it?

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(I'm sure some players will find a "beat that serf and tell him to get back to work" button quite enjoyable...)

I'm having trouble reconciling your general vision of DF with players who aren't sociopaths.
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Waparius

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Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
« Reply #95 on: May 29, 2012, 02:40:37 am »

I'm having trouble reconciling your general vision of DF with players who aren't sociopaths.

Sociopathy=/=sadism.

Besides, I love making chickens explode in Dungeon Keeper precisely because I doubt I could kill a chicken (in non-desperate circumstances, etc) in real life.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
« Reply #96 on: May 29, 2012, 04:17:30 am »

I have to say, I hate money both irl and the concept of it in DF, and I hope it will be possible to at least turn it off without destroying the rest of these ideas.  Viva Communist Fortress!

I am going to talk about it more in the next major post, but...

Communism only particularly works when you have a community small enough that nobody can free ride without drawing the ire and retribution of others in the community, which in turn means it has to be small enough for everyone to know everyone, and where everyone has a shared, united identity.  This could be religious in nature (the so-called religious communism, like the Catholic Church orders where people forswear all personal property, and live purely off church money, but where everyone is explicitly there because they chose to be there), or because of a desperate enough situation against an external threat that all members are motivated to work together for the common good for survival's sake, or because everyone is known and either at least distantly related or friends with everyone else. 

The way that this is enforced is through the "motivation" mechanic I'm going to get into with the Personality Rewrites portion - the more your fortress becomes large, wealthy, impersonal, and factionalized, the less motivated your dwarves will be to work for a communal good when they don't feel any particular communal identity.  Hence, you have to supplement that lack of motivation to act for the common good with a motivation for personal gain through offering a share of the wealth of the fortress to them in the form of functional store credit to buy some of the things your fortress has produced. 

If you want to have a permanent communist outpost, it should be possible (after all, many actual villages were functionally communist or anarchistic or even democratic at the time, but only on a small scale of a single village) but it would require finding ways to minimalize the factionalism and size of a fortress.  That would mean, for example, making your fortress an "abbey" or something where everyone is there for a common (in this case, religious) purpose so as to give them a better communal shared identity to work towards collectively.

Meanwhile, reveling in capitalism would more quickly allow for rapid growth, but expose serious social fissures that the player must manage. 

At least, in theory...
Hope that gives you an idea of where I'm going with this.

There should definitely be a 'military prestige' branch, rewarding you for making your baron into a front-line fighter.

And maybe if the King issues edicts that are impossible or suicidal ("Destroy the entire Giant civilization singlehandedly by year's end, using only weapons engraved with my face!"), you could have the option of seceeding, which would probably prompt a civil war invasion of your fort by the kingdom (or a coup, if there's existing dissent against a mad king- which could even result in your baron/count/duke being made king, if his prestige is high enough... of course, having the cojones to seceed or declare a coup should mean a hell of a bump to it).

This basically sounds like we're talking about Mount&Blade, now. 

If your dwarves aren't staring death in the face every waking moment (and every sleeping one, in their endless nightmares), you're not having fun.

I guess my forts don't have much fun outside the first year, then... but then, that's kind of why I'm making these "make the game harder as you go on for greater periods of time" suggestions in the first place.

Anyway, the idea is that if you have serious external threats like military invasions and FBs and it's causing deaths that make dwarves seriously aware of how easily their society could collapse, they will "rally around the flag" and be more motivated to work together in spite of their differences.  If not, then they can descend more into factionalism, and you have to find ways to deal with inter-factional diplomacy or motivate your dwarves more with money than communal good.

This might just be my pervasive anticapitalism talking, but why would 'you' (the embodiment of the noble class, or maybe the State) need to comission that (or practically anything, really) if the economy is as demand-oriented as you describe?  Shouldn't they just automatically price-gouge?

That depends on what setup your fort has.  If the price of their finished product is going up, but because of the arrangement the fortress has, they are paid a salary instead of owning their final product, then they'd not be more motivated to work until the price of their finished goods goes down.  (The same as a real-life factory worker who is paid by the hour instead of owning the goods they have a hand in producing...)

If every character now has personal power and motivations, isn't "advancements" as discrete stages a vestigal way of thinking about it?

It's an advancement for the fortress, not the individual characters. 

The idea is, however, that immigration to the fortress is controlled by things other than just plain wealth that you can produce quickly and easily right at the start, and hit 200 dwarves by year 2.  If, instead, you have to work on getting more "fortress prestige" to get more than 30 dwarves who directly know your starting seven to sign up to join your fortress, it will both stretch out that unfortunate flooding effect of immigrants, as well as make immigrants a reward, rather than a challenge or punishment for having too much fort wealth, and also add some sense of realism that dwarves aren't just waiting in the wings to join the first fort that isn't dying on its first couple months.  If you feel like dwarves will only join your fort when you've proven something about it - that it's safe, and wealthy, and not really a squalid little hole where there's nothing to eat but just plump helmets, then the game feels less gamey to have these limitless supplies of cannon-fodder showing up.

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(I'm sure some players will find a "beat that serf and tell him to get back to work" button quite enjoyable...)

I'm having trouble reconciling your general vision of DF with players who aren't sociopaths.

I think my statement, with emphasis on the word some, stands pretty much incontestable. 

Let's face it, some players want to be bastards.  There's no point fighting it - just give them the chance to do it, but the reason people aren't absolute bastards in real life is that it often has consequences, and if you can model realistic consequences to psychopathic behavior, then it feels more justified to the playerbase as a whole than some arbitrary game mechanic limiting you to only certain actions. 

That said, some players may not want to play that way, and there are mechanics for not having to play that way. 

That's the whole point of the noble tree and government structures - to give you a little creative expression over what sort of fortress internal structure you are going to build. 



Oddly, even though I chose the name "class warfare" as a tongue-in-cheek joke reference to the simple fact that I was suggesting rich dwarves, it seems like I've somehow gotten into an argument on the merits of Communism, anyway. 

Who knew Occupy Wall Street would come along and make the whole concept relevant in the intervening years?
« Last Edit: May 29, 2012, 04:20:09 am by NW_Kohaku »
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RanDomino

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Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
« Reply #97 on: May 29, 2012, 02:17:57 pm »

The way that this is enforced is through the "motivation" mechanic I'm going to get into with the Personality Rewrites portion - the more your fortress becomes large, wealthy, impersonal, and factionalized, the less motivated your dwarves will be to work for a communal good when they don't feel any particular communal identity.  Hence, you have to supplement that lack of motivation to act for the common good with a motivation for personal gain through offering a share of the wealth of the fortress to them in the form of functional store credit to buy some of the things your fortress has produced.

That might be true for Human Town, but I think Dwarves are generally considered to be more stoic, impersonal, and collective-minded.  DF Dwarves may be a little scatterbrained but I don't know how much of that is programming/processing limitations and how much is intended.

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If you want to have a permanent communist outpost, it should be possible (after all, many actual villages were functionally communist or anarchistic or even democratic at the time, but only on a small scale of a single village)

well, I have to say, that's the idea- the most advanced contemporary conceptions of communist society for large populations use network theory and overlapping memberships in multiple small groups to have potentially very large populations with a similar 'cousins' connection, though not actually family.  But of course this is not "anarchocommunist fortress" either.  Although it should be observed that the population of forts generally top out at 200 or so, well within the 'small village' scale for communist society.

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Hope that gives you an idea of where I'm going with this.

I agree with the goals but I'm not sure introducing real-world economics (well, mainstream economic theory) is right for DF.  From what I understand the last implementation of the economy was a huge mess.

Quote
Anyway, the idea is that if you have serious external threats like military invasions and FBs and it's causing deaths that make dwarves seriously aware of how easily their society could collapse, they will "rally around the flag" and be more motivated to work together in spite of their differences.  If not, then they can descend more into factionalism, and you have to find ways to deal with inter-factional diplomacy or motivate your dwarves more with money than communal good.

well, what seems like 'easy mode' to players (walls and deathtraps) might still be terrifying to the dwarves.  With Fortress Defense, you can easily have a siege every year, which is a ton really.

Quote
Oddly, even though I chose the name "class warfare" as a tongue-in-cheek joke reference to the simple fact that I was suggesting rich dwarves, it seems like I've somehow gotten into an argument on the merits of Communism, anyway. 

Who knew Occupy Wall Street would come along and make the whole concept relevant in the intervening years?
bah, they're a bunch of noobs; I would have had this same argument a year ago.
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dizzyelk

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Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
« Reply #98 on: May 29, 2012, 09:33:28 pm »

The way that this is enforced is through the "motivation" mechanic I'm going to get into with the Personality Rewrites portion - the more your fortress becomes large, wealthy, impersonal, and factionalized, the less motivated your dwarves will be to work for a communal good when they don't feel any particular communal identity.  Hence, you have to supplement that lack of motivation to act for the common good with a motivation for personal gain through offering a share of the wealth of the fortress to them in the form of functional store credit to buy some of the things your fortress has produced.

That might be true for Human Town, but I think Dwarves are generally considered to be more stoic, impersonal, and collective-minded.  DF Dwarves may be a little scatterbrained but I don't know how much of that is programming/processing limitations and how much is intended.

That depends entirely on how dwarves are defined as. In literature they range anywhere from gruff but kindhearted workaholics who put the well being of the clan above personal considerations to outright jerks who work hard simply to gain more money, and are insanely tight-fisted and violent. Who's to say that the current impression of DF dwarves is nothing more than a placeholder while Toady fixes all that was (so very) wrong with the economy.
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NW_Kohaku

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The primary problem with economics is that the entire actual field of economics is no longer mainstream, and people listen to business school majors and political operatives while demonizing the actual economists as not knowing economics. 

We've had some of these debates before, and trust me, I doubt many of the things that I'm going to be suggesting are actually going to be controversial in the least (as in, it's mostly what you'd find in every Macroeconomics 101 textbook, including notions like substitute goods and the like).  Further, nothing I'm using hasn't been "theory" for at least a hundred years.

As for what dwarves are like "canonically" in DF, I'd just point to the fact that whenever you start DF.exe, then the game will put up randomly selected words to fill the following subtitle: "Histories of [synonym of greed] and [synonym of industriousness]."  Given the generally LotR nature of dwarves in this game, "digging too greedy and too deep" is basically the whole nature of dwarves Toady is going for as the reasons for their downfalls.
« Last Edit: February 12, 2013, 10:40:56 pm by NW_Kohaku »
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Bohandas

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Re: Class Warfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness (System Overhaul)
« Reply #100 on: May 31, 2012, 10:29:54 pm »

Quote
(I'm sure some players will find a "beat that serf and tell him to get back to work" button quite enjoyable...)

I'm having trouble reconciling your general vision of DF with players who aren't sociopaths.

Such a feature isn't actually so far fetched. I believe the game Dungeon Keeper actually had a button like this; And Evil Genius had a button to have minions summarily executed.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Class Warfare: Internal politics, scaling difficulty, and personalities
« Reply #101 on: February 12, 2013, 04:12:23 pm »

Noble Trees and Fortress Governance Structures - Part 1:

While I mentioned in the Sliding Scale of Difficulty section that the scale of the fortress would have multiple stages, and that fortress governments would grow in relation to that, the concept of the Noble Tree is to allow for players to choose which type of government they want their fortress to have through a gradual development of their noble tree. 




One of the key reasons why you would want to create these nobles is because it creates the interface of that noble for you to better administer the fortress.

Continuing on from the thread's original intent to make the player take a far more managerial role as the game goes on, zooming back out of a micromanagement role to a macromanaging one, the appointed nobles you institute take over some of the micromanagement as you give them macromanaging commands.

Similar to what has been suggested in the Improved Farming thread, rather than requiring players to micromanage the steps to achieving some end-product, you merely order of your guild leaders the finished products you want, and they will place the orders into the queue for the intermediate products after telling you what they are ordering, provided that they are authorized to use those materials.

Spoiler: Authorizations (click to show/hide)


There would be advantages to having a guild interface beyond just the capacity to have orders automatically authorized and carried out. 

This is in following with the notion that Toady had about our positions as players being reflections of some appointed noble in your fortress - as you appoint nobles, you gain access to the commands they can give, and also to the information they collect.  You have to manually look all over your fortress for a log if you have no bookkeeper, but with a bookkeeper keeping track of everything, you can instantly look at the stocks screen to see how many logs you have, and then zoom on the map to a specific log if you so choose.

Likewise, nobles can give more data on your fortress as certain aspects of your fortress become more complex and have more layers of bureaucracy - the advantage is that you have more bureaucrats that can just give you information rather than requiring players fish it out, themselves.  (Or through memory-hacking tools...)





Since this post is getting tortuously long, I will make this a two-parter, instead.
« Last Edit: February 12, 2013, 08:10:08 pm by NW_Kohaku »
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Putnam

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Re: Class Warfare: Intenral politics, scaling difficulty, and personalities
« Reply #102 on: February 12, 2013, 07:35:51 pm »

...Intenral?

NW_Kohaku

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Re: Class Warfare: Intenral politics, scaling difficulty, and personalities
« Reply #103 on: February 12, 2013, 10:43:26 pm »

...Intenral?

I have no idea what you are talking about, but it is surely a campaign of outrageous deafmation defamation!
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Personally, I like [DF] because after climbing the damned learning cliff, I'm too elitist to consider not liking it.
"And no Frankenstein-esque body part stitching?"
"Not yet"

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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Class Warfare: Intenral politics, scaling difficulty, and personalities
« Reply #104 on: February 21, 2013, 12:40:29 am »

Noble Trees and Fortress Governance Structures - Part 2:

The development of these power-bases within your fortress can shape very different types of fortresses. 

In a manner of speaking, you can consider it like choosing "classes" or skills from a skill tree for an individual character in a more traditional RPG.  The noble tree branches you head down changes the character of your fortress, and how it governs itself. 

As the player is the representative of government, this, in turn, means that the players powers (as expressed through what orders can be given to subordinates) changes with how their government is set up.  Reaching the tips of these branches can mean having strict, regimented control over their fortress, or watching a nearly-autonomous set of individual actors vie for power in which you are merely an arbiter of power at best.  Starting scenario might change which one you head towards, but it would ultimately be a player choice of dictator vs. spectator.

Bureaucracies at the highest levels:
As the fortress moves out of its seven sods in a hole stage and gets larger, the different types of noble branches can start to take over the fortress. 

This section skips over the intermediate states, and describes what it would mean to allow a "pure" government by a single branch.

Spoiler: An Unopposed Guild (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Great merchant houses (click to show/hide)


Spoiler: Religious Holy Cities (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Royal Palaces (click to show/hide)

Since reaching the pinnacle of one noble branch doesn't necessarily preclude going down any other branch to an arbitrary degree, you can easily wind up with more nobles than you can handle.

The point of the system is to allow players to focus their fortress on the type of jobs they want to do, rather than having a set, linear path.

By having a branching structure where the player can pick any path they want, but where the only real limit is the number of dwarves it takes to fill up their guilds or governments and the FPS costs of having so many dwarves, it creates a situations where, rather than having the game randomly determine what elements of the game they are allowed to play, the player chooses what elements of the game they are willing to build up towards playing.

Further, by making the fortress either more autonomous within itself, or by exposing the player to the world outside the fortress over which they have less control, it allows the player to start focused on their little slice of land, and then gradually build outwards towards things they have far less control over, and where the systems are much more complex.

This achieves the overarching goal of re-introducing the concept of a difficulty slope, rather than simply forcing the player into a cliff.
« Last Edit: February 21, 2013, 12:50:24 am by NW_Kohaku »
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Personally, I like [DF] because after climbing the damned learning cliff, I'm too elitist to consider not liking it.
"And no Frankenstein-esque body part stitching?"
"Not yet"

Improved Farming
Class Warfare
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