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[nanomage]

actually, I think that having Aztec-style obsidian club-sword evolve in developed cultures which have abundant obsidian/flint/agate/quartzite and time but no metalworking is a neat idea. It certainly has a finer degree of sophistication and complexity that european knapped flint tools. Right now I think we have obsidian short swords available for dwarves by default, but wouldn't it be better if dwarves actually defaulted to not having them and would only think of them as viable if they had no means of obtaining good weapon-grade metals?

[GavJ]

Neolithic European tools were quite elegant. This is a stone axe from England-ish area, knapped and polished smooth over likely hundreds of man hours (these are fairly common, not often this smooth after being used though)



I don't think I've ever actually seen a real macuahuitl. Wikipedia claims the last authentic one was destroyed in the 19th century. The sketch of it is insufficient to show whether the stonework is better or worse than the European polished work above.

Here is a website with what they say are authentic prismatic blade segments individually: http://www.worldmuseumofman.org/aztprismblade.php
Which are definitely not as nice. But who knows whether these were nicer while they were in use (and got chipped by whatever destroyed the whole club, etc. etc.)
Or if these were simply cheap bargain basement club pieces and we didn't happen to find the really nice ones.
(well actually group 715 looks pretty high quality)

[nanomage]

well these ones look quite nice http://www.worldmuseumofman.org/display.php?item=651
they'd certainly have a good visual appeal if mounted on a club.

The English axe is certainly nice. I don't know if it's only my perception though, but I can't help thinking that, despite the application of advanced and labour-intensive (for that time) grinding technique, it's just a plain old axe. Macuahuitl, on the other hand, is, how do I put it, a technological know-how. You wouldn't even think of making smth like that if you could just cast a long edged bronze stick like greeks. Perhaps it's only me though.

[assasin]

Personally I think tech levels have an added bonus of helping fine tune the difficulty. If you're a new player who wants to experiment with military and doesn't want to start on an island could have a high tech civ but embark in a low tech area (of course it'd be relative in some ways; I'd assume a hunter gatherer society would have a much better grasp of medicinal herbs than some more "advanced" societies whose idea of disease involves humours or miasmas and healing involves bleeding) and have raids not include high tech siege equipment or tunnelers. On the opposite end of the scale you could start with no digging tech (assuming dwarves started out in caverns and than specialised) and embark on a  terrifying glacier with very high tech goblin neighbours and try to survive and trigger the modifiers to develop new techs and than expand into ruling the world.

[GoblinCookie]

Oh, one thing that I was not clear on... the main playable races would all be at some pre-determined tech level set in the entity object, so the only differences among civs within a main race would be of the flavor kind you mentioned.  That way, you don't have to worry about Dwarves who haven't figured out steel or Elves who haven't figured out orchards (but surprisingly know all about gemcraft).  The major tech differences would be among the animal men or other semi-sentient beings.

I think that civilizations could have a few basic techs that they always have, so elves always know about orchards and animal taming.  Dwarves always know how to forge metals and cut stone.  Goblins will always know how to make bladed weaponry of some kind even if it is stone.  Humans will always know how to farm. 

But that should be the end of it, there should not be extensive pre-knowledge because as far as can be determined the civilizations start off as hunter-gatherers transitioning into civilization; pre-history being their hunter-gatherer stage.  Animal-men are still in their hunter-gatherer stage and kobolds are on the cusp of civilization.

One thing to think of is variable start-dates, some civilizations should start at the beginning of history while some should start randomly up to say 100 years later.  We would to pre-assign a site quota out of the site-limit though to make this happen (but this is something that needs to exist already).

[Dirst]

One thing to think of is variable start-dates, some civilizations should start at the beginning of history while some should start randomly up to say 100 years later.  We would to pre-assign a site quota out of the site-limit though to make this happen (but this is something that needs to exist already).

There is already a planned feature to have groups found new civs after year 1, though for the life of me I can't find the quote so I don't know exactly how deep in the future to expect that behavior.  Toady seemed to be thinking of a bandit camp starting Australia, but it would work just as well with a bunch of animal men settling down in a nice cave.

[GoblinCookie]

There is already a planned feature to have groups found new civs after year 1, though for the life of me I can't find the quote so I don't know exactly how deep in the future to expect that behavior.  Toady seemed to be thinking of a bandit camp starting Australia, but it would work just as well with a bunch of animal men settling down in a nice cave.

I do not mean that existing groups should develop into civilization.  I mean that civilizations should not develop their first real site until a certain randomly determined date rather than everyone suddenly setting up all their first settlements at the same time in Yr1.  The problem is site limits, there is a hardcoded and zero-sum limit on the total number of sites that may exist in a given map but I have thought about how to solve this sort of.

The solution is to reserve about a quarter or so of the total sites on the map and then before Yr 1 create a number of camps for everyone in the correct biomes for starting off.  The camps have a population already in them and this is carried over once they become settlements. 

On the random date one of the camps of a given civilization turns into a settlement and then it settles the other nearby camps turning them into a settlement too (but without changing the total amount of sites on the map).  Only once all camps are civilized does a civilization actually create new sites from scratch. 

In order to have new civilizations actually emerge that are randomly generated from animal people or bandit groups we need to find a way to sometimes have surplus sites left over.  The best way to do this to give civilizations an urbanisation number that starts ticking the moment all their camps are civilized.  What this number does is increase the total maximum population of all their settlements, meaning that their existing sites grow bigger and bigger rather than them making new sites using those people. 

Depending upon how many new settlements have been created in the world recently there is a probability of one of the animal men populations within one of the biomes growing into a civilization.  Basically the population of the biome's animal men population is divided up among a number of camps and then exactly as with the regular civilizations these camps turn into settlements.

The new civilization's sites are restricted to available terrain  and selects a random site type out of the 5 sites available.  All the entity values are randomised, so the nature of the animal person civilization is a wild card.  It could have any basic nature and values at all.