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[ZebioLizard2]

Well I didn't find any thoughts on the topic, so thought I'd make one myself.

Anyways, once the dwarven kingdom is expanded to include things such as out of castle warfare, might there be an option to expand your own kingdom by sending them out to build their own fort?

There could be several thoughts to the matter

1: You direct the fort/farm/etc directly, such as how you do things in your own fort, making a new fort out as you would your old.

2-3 Basically involve the dwarves building the place themselves, rather then you being able to specifically do everything.

2: You'd have limited micromanagement, rather like a governor sending broad orders rather then specific instructions.
3: You basically just send caravans, and hope for the best at what they make.

There could be benefits as such, like being able to send forth new raw materials and things you cannot find. While one could argue that the dwarf caravan can send anything you want, that may change in the future since they seem to be able to procure everything, even if they come from an area with no real way of getting such.

Some benefits of Dwarfy Imperalism:
1: Being able to gain Tribute in the forms of goods, or coins (Once dwarven economy actually is viable, useful, and has something to offer)
2: Being able to gain goods for a cheaper price
3: Being able to gain goods that you cannot, nor can your mountainholme ever needs to send

Some Cons:
1: You would need to send some dwarves to begin with, and sending a bunch of low class immigrants that dont even know how to mine could end in disaster.
2: Such as the first one, you would need to equip them, bit minor compared to it however, but it depends on whether you can directly control the fort, or if you have to depend on them building it themselves.
3: Dwarfy rebellion, ask to much in tribute/goods then they have would piss em off, eventually culminating with them dividing themselves from you, possibly war/etc.
4: If your not the king, may cause your lordship to begin to question you as well.



This would culminate within several new job types, such as being able to build your own caravaners and such, roadways designed to head to the place would make travel quicker/easier on your dwaves, not to mention safer. I just love huge kingdom type things. 

If this has been discussed before, sorry, but I couldn't find anything on the matter, while this is a bit oppertunistic since he's so far away from the matter, I thought I'd like to see some discussion on the matter.

[NW_Kohaku]

Funny, I just wrote a post mentioning a "Dwarf Empire" phase of the game as a way of extending the life of forts.

Ah well, let me pull this out, from the FotF thread...

Actually, this gets me thinking about how the whole Army Arc 2 will play out - when we are doing things like building sprawl around ourselves, laying down roads, conquering foreign cities, pushing around armies on the map and stuff, I wonder how this will be handled...

All these things happen off-screen, after all.  Worldgen events also tend to take place "by the year" rather than by the day, the way that fortress events occur. 

Our eventual goal is to have the player's role be the embodiment of positions of power within the fortress, performing actions in their official capacity, to the point that in an ideal world each command you give would be linked to some noble, official or commander.

When I try to picture it, I think of a few of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games (8, I believe, was one that did this), where you would normally be in control of just your selected historical character, but every few months, there would be a "Council Meeting" where the actions of all the other officers would be determined by the ruler/governor, and you could assign tasks like conscripting or training soldiers or sending them to war to generals, while more beurocratic officials were given jobs improving the farms or the economics of the region.  If you were not a ruler, but an officer yourself, you could try to make suggestions that could curry you favor that could translate to promotions, and would wind up with you being assigned a task that would similarly give you favor if you managed to complete it by the time of the next council.

I wonder if something like this would be in DF?  Will we have something like a "New Year's Council Meeting" where we can see a review of the previous year's events, including the outside world's happenings in reports from agents that report to the mayor or baron or king (expedition leaders will probably be too low-level to have spies in the field) before we then dispatch captains or ministers or liasons or other agents to enact our bidding (if we are high-rank enough)? Will the dwarves whose actions we are presumably deciding have a system for gaining favor and rising through the ranks, so that advancement from baron on up becomes a matter of some sort of political wrangling?  I imagine people will be slower to have their Baron get an Unfortunate Accident when "we are the Baron", and getting the Baron to climb the ranks would give them greater power and authority over the world map.  It would also give some of these nobles something to do - meeting with agents and compilating data for the next year's council so that it is more detailed and informative in the same way that we have bookkeepers now, whether it is the baron himself or some agent like a spymaster if you have risen enough to afford one.

Like that, it would be like we suddenly get to sit in the war room, controlling the outside world in broad strokes before going back to the micromanagement of your power base.  (Potentially including training up dwarves you can later promote to agents that can be sent into the world map to see your will done.)  The contrast appeals to me.

I basically see this as a way to create a new layer of gameplay, where your personal fortress is just a stepping stone to creating true empire...

But the problem is that as your fortress matures, if you want to REALLY start focusing on world-matters instead of provincial ones, you're going to potentially need a way to speed up the game so that you aren't basically sitting around twiddling your thumbs waiting for the reports on what you've been doing around the world through agents. 

(Unless, of course, we start having actual ability to "zoom in" on another embark location, and start doing crazy things like playing multiple embarks at once, or leaving embarks fully automated while we play from another embark.)

The other option is to make the late game a matter of juggling increasingly difficult late-game mechanics.  (See: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61620.0) Of course, if all people want to do is watch the "Empire Mode" map, then anything else is just a distraction, and the time between meetings is just something to be left automated...

[ZebioLizard2]

That is a wondrous idea in actuality, but the problem is, is that as it is, there needs to be a way of providing a bit of benefit to the player, most of the people on these forums are nobility murdering psychodwarves afterall.

What would be the pro's, the con's of such an elaborate political meetings? The wheeling and dealings of an empire doesn't mean much if its just like the liason thing, but if it convenes a ton of power over you it may put people off.

That's why I rather stuck to the simple beginning aspects of it within my idea. Of being able to create your own little empire to start with. It would be a good stepping stone to pushing up into such idea's as  a worldwide political spectrum, speaking with other races, and having overall ways of wheeling and dealing in the dark underworld of political sanctions, trade, and war.

Hopefully adding charts, dwarf fortress needs charts I say.

I've played Romance of the three kingdoms, fun game, always backstabbed every few turns though..Would actually work rather perfectly in dwarf fort. 

Also..could you link that Empire post? I'd like to read over it if I could.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, pros and cons:

Pros:

• You get a ******* empire!  Seriously, lust for conquest is in the blood of many players of DF.  Simply having the ability to push your stack of tokens onto someone else's stack of tokens and make the map turn your color is all the encouragment many players need, even if it's just glorified Dwarf Risk.
• Similarly, you get the ability to paint the map with your worldmap projects.  (Charter the construction of roads in the shape of a giant middle finger pointing at the elven forests!)  Generally speaking, it's one more box of sand you can sculpt in your image.
• It makes nobles both useful and even likable.  When you suddenly find out that YOU are "Countess Zon", then you're not dropping her in the magma, you're giving her a real royal guard.  It may even give the noble some kinds of "Noble Skills" that can be trained to make your nobles more powerful and less easily replaced.
• This can give you a far more serious control over diplomacy - you can actually try to make peace (or start wars) rather than just wait for the humans to please stop seiging you and trade with you again.  You can also potentially negotiate what cities you start getting caravans from, so that you can get different selections of stuff from different cities, especially if you build roads to their lands, which could increase the size of caravans that arrive.
• Depending on whether or not we get it, we could have the ability to start setting up extra embarks that we could potentially simultaniously simulate, or auto-manage, or leave your current fort behind on auto-pilot (once Toady impliments it), and start up another embark as some sort of forward base of operations for your armies, or as a major trade city to support the wealth of your empire.  Your forts won't just be islands unto themselves, they will be a chain of outposts that mark stepping stones towards total global domination!
• Dwarven court intrigue...  Which if you've played Dragon Age, you might realize would be alot like human court intrigue, but with more axes to the face and less poisoned daggers in the back.  We could have all kinds of mechanics for sending out nobles out to booze up their superiors and fellow nobles, creating frienships, spreading rumors that break other people's friendships, smuggling, duels for honor, public events for glory or recognition, and just plain spies and assassins.  (Ninja dwarves?)
• It's new stuff to play with!  New menus to explore! Shiny new buttons to push!  Some people just want more novel stuff that they can dig around in.  The more modes you can cram in without hurting other people's fun, the better.

Cons:

• It takes a freakin' long time to do this.  Maybe the meetings should be seasonal, instead, if people want to really participate in these things?  If people want to focus on Empire Mode, then they may be stuck with nothing to do while letting a self-sufficient fortress piddle around waiting for the next meeting.
• This may annoy people who want to automate their fortress and run the whole thing a good degree of time into the future (although an option to just put politics on autopilot may be a useful solution).
• Otherwise, if people are focused on some kind of project, this makes the year/season change into a big interruption.  (Yeah, sure, the stop and calculate stuff part is a big lag, too, but not as much as being forced into a menu because it's time for the meeting... it's basically the same problem as the trade negotiation screen... although perhaps that could be bundled up into the council meeting, and you could go in and out of the menus before hitting a final "confirm everything" button, so that you could give orders to agents, then change your trade plans to reflect your needs then go back and give more orders then come back and tweak a little.)

The link to the other thing I said: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=62629.msg1497994#msg1497994
Sorry, it's not very detailed, it was just that I had just posted that right before you had posted this.  I just mentioned that an Empire Mode would be a good way to extend playtime, since that was part of what Andeerz needed to make his plans come to fruition.

[Quarterblue]

I think it has been suggested. A sort of Kingdom mode, it's in the Eternal Suggestion poll, I voted for it. But anyway, Toady One is going to implement armies travelling through the whole world map. Personally, I find it neat. You could send expeditions to plunder elven forests and goblin towers, maybe even send caravans yourself to other sites.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Military

    * Dwarven armies
          o Ability to send out fortress dwarves to lead larger groups of surrounding dwarves out around mid-level maps (or just go alone)
          o Ability to send equipment and fortress dwarves out to train surrounding dwarves
          o Ability to attack sites and entity populations with your dwarven armies
          o Ability to set fires and select supplies to haul back when sacking a site
    * Villain interactions
          o Must adjust villains etc. to allow them to operate at dwarf mode time scale
          o Make armies/beasts that attack fortress come from actual groups moving on world map
          o Ability to fight other armies with your dwarven armies
                + Larger armies should spread over multiple mid-level map squares
                + Ability to create fortifications/lines/etc. instead of spreading haphazardly
                + There are complications to be worked out if you can zoom in to battles and control them at the local level, concerning what happens to your fortress
                + If you can zoom in, situations like being surrounded need to be respected and have the desired results regardless of what area is zoomed in on
          o Allow villains to attempt to demand tribute from you
    * Improved sieges
          o Eliminate remaining edge-of-map exploits
          o More highly trained attacking soldiers when approprate
          o Many trap exploits are handled above by requiring more to produce a trap, things like cage traps should make more sense vs. large creatures etc. (respect strength/ability vs. material, large cages might be separate object)
          o Coming up with a plan to overcome pathing obstacles to reach fortress innards
                + Ability to dig (optionally, default on)
                + Ability to build bridges/ramps
                + Ability to use grappling hooks/ladders/climb
          o Learning from mistakes if first attempted assault plan fails badly
                + For instance, if many siegers are killed, caged, etc. in a given hallway, they shouldn't generally go that way again, even if that means building/climbing/digging
          o Siege engine improvements depend on state of boats, lifts/moving fortress sections, since these should all use the same framework

[Andeerz]

Mmmmm... I love this thread.  <3  I will see about contributing something meaningful to it in the future.  So far, I like everything NW_Kohaku and Zebiolizard2 are getting at.

[NW_Kohaku]

I think it has been suggested. A sort of Kingdom mode, it's in the Eternal Suggestion poll, I voted for it. But anyway, Toady One is going to implement armies travelling through the whole world map. Personally, I find it neat. You could send expeditions to plunder elven forests and goblin towers, maybe even send caravans yourself to other sites.

Yes, I was aware of that, and the original post I quoted from FotF was a question I had for Toady about how it would be implimented. 

The difference here is that, while I call it "Empire Mode", it's really just a special feature of later-game Fortress Mode, wheras Kingdom Mode is explicitly about just doing the worldmap stuff.

Of course, that does mean I should scour the Kingdom Mode threads for any useful bits to resupply here, although I'll do that after I get some sleep...

[Andeerz]

DO IT!  I DEMAND IT!   

A kingdom/empire mode would make my dreams come true... Everything I've read Toady say gets my hopes up more and more.

[NW_Kohaku]

Right, done.  The threads I found were very short, not very much got hashed out but how much work it would be to make them, except for one bit about having the ability to launch from one Mode into another Mode.  (This is the Kingdom Mode thread.)

This would basically be the "Zoom out", "Zoom in" function, where you go from being in control of the kingdom to just an embark to a kingdom again.

Actually, if I think about this from the standpoint of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I always rather liked the notion of playing characters of various statuses.  You could pick a Kingdom Mode (King) start, and wind up just deploying agents from that mode that becomes your fortress, or you could start as the agent that gets deployed, and try to work your way up the ranks to having real power... or just be a nobody "adventurer" who gains fame and noteriety.  (Of course, RotTK would let even a ruler who declared himself emperor decide he wanted to just stroll around a backwater village alone, then pick a fight with a band of pirates single-handedly, just because, even if he was SUPPOSED to be unifying the kingdom.  Plus you could just pick up and move to whatever city you wanted to manage your empire from at the moment... which basically was how you focused on developing farms and markets, anyway.)

*sigh* this takes much more of the need to have automated fortresses than even before, however.

[Quarterblue]

Why not make Kingdom Mode from the point of view of the King? You basically own the King, appoint nobles, give production orders/mandates in various fortresses (with an efficiency depending on the skill of the managers), send expeditions form the Mountainhomes to start new fortresses, control armies and control the diplomacy with other civs.

[alamoes]

King's adventure mode! I think that would work, but it might be beneficial to have democracies or parliaments available for control.  That also brings the seedier side of politics.  Killing other officials in the senate or inserting a friend to help gain votes on allowing slavery comes to mind. 

[NW_Kohaku]

Starting play as the king as a Kingdom Mode does pretty much seem like the point.

I think Fortress mode, though, might benefit from some sort of "rise through the ranks" system.  "You" might start the game as some sort of low-level functionary dubbed one of the crazy loons who was willing to lead an expedition to get a stab at a better lot in life.  You hit mayor, and you're someone important enough to get an audience with low-level nobles.  Eventually, you get important enough that one of you (the one who will be "you") gets to be the baron.  Then the real politicking can begin. 

You have to give reports to higher-ranking nobility, including the King, perform some function for the greater use of the Kingdom, such as training troops for the armies (Provide 15 elite warriors for the armies), spearheading invasions, just plain holding the pass if you are in dangerous territory, or else supplying food or setting up homesteads and sattelite villages you must protect, and encouraging population growth. 

The thing about the RotTK model is that instead of just having the game randomly spit out some mission you have to perform, you can gain and spend influence with different leaders, and use it to change the mission you are going to be given, within reason.  If the kingdom is at peace, and you want to start a war with humans, it might be nigh impossible, but if it's already at war, you might be able to convince the King that using your fort as a staging ground as opposed to another would be the better strategic move, or that you would make a better leader of the armies, or that what his people REALLY want more of are microcline mugs.  Never enough mircocline mugs!

[Footkerchief]

Some related stuff:

# Core28, CONTROL OF TERRITORY AND EXTERNAL LOCATIONS, (Future): As your fortress expands into a barony, county and duchy, these words should attain some meaning with regards to the surrounding lands. Additional outposts/villages/work camps might be founded under your control, but out of the playable view, providing local trade and a further population pool for warfare and other endeavors. The scope is undecided, but this might include typical mountainside outposts, dwarf/human/mixed villages nearby in other biomes, or deeper sites that you found in tunnels that you carve via the next core item. Related to Core29 and Bloat172.

# Core30, KINGDOM, (Future): If you manage to get the monarch of the dwarves to arrive, you should obtain at least indirect control over the entire corresponding dwarven civilization. This includes the movement of all dwarven armies on the map and the ability to make the most important diplomatic decisions. Requires Core28.

Kindom mode
Civ Mode Suggestions
Empire Mode? That's easy to do!
Kingdom Mode (the thread mentioned by NW_Kohaku above)

[Derekristow]

I like the idea of becoming a baron being when Kingdom Mode starts to show itself.  This gives a nice opt out option, where people can simply refuse to become a barony until they are ready to deal with the higher level stuff.  It would make it much easier on a new player who doesn't know the ropes, or a player building a megaproject who wants no interruptions.

Really everything in this thread so far seems good.

[NW_Kohaku]

Actually, rather than the option to "not get a baron", having something in the in-game option menu that lets you designate "auto-meeting" or some similar task would be ideal.  You just have your baron enter the meeting and make agreements automatically.

The only problem is that it might mean that you're trying to automate your fortress, and get stuck with some task that takes an active role in fulfilling - like being sent 20 immigrant military recruits, and being tasked with returning 20 elite soldiers in 2 or 3 years. 

A possible solution might be to just make auto-meetings have the sort of tasks that one can accomplish on auto-pilot (send 30 units of cloth by next year - and you can set up a "tribute depot" or some such that creates the jobs to move cloth to the depot automatically.)  The problem with that, however, is that it becomes the same stupid Pharoah mechanic of requesting some random crap every so often, although if it could be automated, at least it wouldn't be an interruption, which was the main nuissance.