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[miauw62]

So, I've had an idea. It seems fairly straightforward what this idea is about, it is about a crossover of Asimov's Foundation and DF.


If you haven't read the Foundation series, I recommend that you do, because they're great.


This idea mainly occured to me because the first book read a little like a DF succesion fort, in my eyes.


Sadly, I have no idea how to execute this idea. We'll have to wait until DF2014, that's for sure. History progressing is absolutely essential. I guess this would be more about the story than anything else, but one would also have to decide how closely we will follow the books, or only in basic premise.


Then there's the problem of generating a suitable place to embark, a dwarven civ about to fall.


Either way, is anyone interested in this?

[Zaerosz]

1. I have absolutely no idea what this "foundation" is and I'm not reading a whole book series just to find out, could you summarize please?

2. I'm sorry but when I read the title my first thought was the SCP Foundation.

[MDFification]

I have absolutely no idea what this "foundation" is and I'm not reading a whole book series just to find out, could you summarize please?

Essentially, a scientist makes a mathematical model for studying human civilization so complete he can predict what's going to happen to civilization in the future. He discovers that within the next couple hundred years, civilization - the monolothing Human Empire - is going to inevitably collapse, starting a dark age. But, he predicts, if another civilization is established out in the hinterland that escapes the fall unscathed, the dark age can be shortened.
The Foundation is that civilization; it's given instructions in time-capsules. The problem is that if they know what's going to happen, the mathematical model can't predict what they'll do, so they have to be uninformed about the future. They're only told the significance of what happens after it happened.
And of course, there are inaccuracies; individual actions do have consequences for all of civilization if that individual is extraordinary.

[escondida]

Somebody needs to tell the necromancers that...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

the idea of making the Encyclopedia was a just hoax to get them out to Terminus.

Sounds like an interesting idea. Maybe the thing to do here would be create a long-lived fort, a huge metropolitan area and the jewel of the empire, then set it to run on its own for a couple hundred years while people ran other forts and had adventures in other parts of the world...and then reclaim it.

[itg]

I had actually had the same idea, but I was going to wait until DF 2014 was out and stabilized to post. I don't think there's going to be any way to make a civilization collapse from within in DF 2014, but it might be possible to set things up so that there's one large Dwarven civilization which is about to be torn apart by goblins, humans, elves, and maybe the HFS, depending on how they work in post-worldgen activities.

[neblime]

I don't think there's going to be any way to make a civilization collapse from within in DF 2014

you could just play an adventurer and stab all the position holders, until the succession is disputed enough that the civ breaks up into many different claimants.
Also, we have to make sure a demon in the form of a mule twisted into humanoid form shows up later, and is worshipped by the dwarves, but only a hidden sub class of dwarves can stop him.

[miauw62]

1. I have absolutely no idea what this "foundation" is and I'm not reading a whole book series just to find out, could you summarize please?

2. I'm sorry but when I read the title my first thought was the SCP Foundation.

Yeah, maybe I should have summarized. MDF's summary is pretty good, though.
And there ARE many things called Foundation in fiction. As it stands, most fortresses eventually become SCP sites naturally anyway

Somebody needs to tell the necromancers that...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

the idea of making the Encyclopedia was a just hoax to get them out to Terminus.

Sounds like an interesting idea. Maybe the thing to do here would be create a long-lived fort, a huge metropolitan area and the jewel of the empire, then set it to run on its own for a couple hundred years while people ran other forts and had adventures in other parts of the world...and then reclaim it.

Sounds like a good plan. Some adventures would be needed, to spice things up and to defuse bad things like "accidentally" murdering the human caravan. Preferably not by murdering the leader, after all, violence is the last refuge of the incompetent

I had actually had the same idea, but I was going to wait until DF 2014 was out and stabilized to post. I don't think there's going to be any way to make a civilization collapse from within in DF 2014, but it might be possible to set things up so that there's one large Dwarven civilization which is about to be torn apart by goblins, humans, elves, and maybe the HFS, depending on how they work in post-worldgen activities.

Yeah, the reason I made this thread now was to get things ready. My plan for a collapsing civilization was to run really long histories (I have 16 gigs of high-speed RAM) and re-use the seeds with shorter histories.
Dwarves will also be able to war dwarves in DF2014 I think, which just opens up more possibilities.

I don't think there's going to be any way to make a civilization collapse from within in DF 2014

you could just play an adventurer and stab all the position holders, until the succession is disputed enough that the civ breaks up into many different claimants.
Also, we have to make sure a demon in the form of a mule twisted into humanoid form shows up later, and is worshipped by the dwarves, but only a hidden sub class of dwarves can stop him.

Technically it would have to be a very rare caste of dwarf :V
Is it possible to make demons join your fort with DFhack?



Oh and btw this entire idea is actually just an excuse to use the name "Hairi Seldon"

[Timeless Bob]

Actuarial tables and Demographics... the modern equivalents to "psychohistory" (and scarily accurate sometimes.)