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[Orange-of-Cthulhu]

When examining the world, I find it to be a tad to empty in between larger settlements.

Especially mountains seem just totally empty of people.

To me it makes the world feel sort of "too empty", like people just arrived five years ago. You also get a weird feeling like all the sites are like under permanent siage and live in gated communities surrounded by nothing but wilderness. The world doesn't feel "lived in".

So I sugggest scattering a number or mini-settlements holding like max 10 people normally around the map.

It should work like a "major" settlement like a city or a forest retreat each generate 1 minor settlement in ther surroundings pr 250 inhabitants.

The minor settlements should be linked to larger settlements, so you find them around where there's people living. Like sites generate them x clicks away from the site. So you get more populated "lived in" areas, but also some wilderness with less stuff in it.

HUMANS GENERATE (towns and cities):

Hunter cabin: A hunter, maybe his wife and kids. It has hunter stuff in it like hides, bones and meat. 1 pr year a trader arrives and buys all the stuff.

Watchpost: A 8*8 wooden 3 story tower with a lookout on the top and a guy with a horse at the ground floor. They watch out for invasions and megabeasts, and the horse guy rides off to the nearest town to warn them if they spot one.

Hermit house: Same house as the hunter cabin. In it lives a wise man that left socity to seek wisdom in nature. They're located in inhospitable areas like deserts and mountains.

Mining station: 1 shoddy house for miners to live in, 1 storage room for ores, 1 furnace house to smelt them, a small mining system below them. In mountains near roads. Population like max 5 miners.

MONASTERIES GENERATE:

Road side altar. It's just an altar they build in a place people pass buy, to advertise their faith. Maybe you can pray there?

FOREST RETREATS GENERATE:
Sacred tree. A random tree is deemed sacred by the elves. Max 3 religious type Elves like in the tree in order to listen to the thoughts of the sacred tree and then share the wisdom of the tree to their community. (You should SO much be able to cause mayhem and consternation by cutting it down.)

Giant animal training station. Essentially just a small field with a couple of elven animal trainers and some giant animals. The Elves deem it better to train animals more "in the wild" sometimes. So it's a place you can get in bad trouble as a new player.

DARK FORTRESSES GENERATE:
Children-snatcher hideout. A small house with disgusting crap in it. A couple of child-snatching goblins use it as a base for when they go out and steal kids. Sometimes you can find stole kids temporarily held here, before they're transfered to the Dark fortress.

Watchtower: Same as the human watchtowers. Except the goblins use them more to scout out good places to invade. It also has a torture room in the basement.

Altars. Goblins will sometimes build small altars full of bone jewelry and twisted statues to honor their demon load in places they deem to be good for this purpose. A couple of dead bodies of sacrificed sentient prisoners is all you find there.

ALL SITES EXCEPT ELVES
Logging stations where the sites get their wood. A shack with beds, plies of logs and 1-5 woodcutters heaving at trees.

Goblins should somehow be extra more destructive than the others.

[PlumpHelmetMan]

+1. This is a very cool idea.

[brewer bob]

Nice ideas.

The wayside shrine/road side altar would be especially great. Maybe you could find some offerings from there once in a while (and be possibly cursed if you steal them)?

Mining probably would require a bit more than a group of 5 miners, as it is/was quite labor extensive (not to mention expensive). There should be also assayers, refiners, workers, craftsmen for equipment, managers, shippers, etc. So, instead of a small station, it could be a small hamlet/community dedicated to mining (and ruled/owned by a local lord/baron/other noble, depending on civ).

[Orange-of-Cthulhu]

Nice ideas.

The wayside shrine/road side altar would be especially great. Maybe you could find some offerings from there once in a while (and be possibly cursed if you steal them)?

Mining probably would require a bit more than a group of 5 miners, as it is/was quite labor extensive (not to mention expensive). There should be also assayers, refiners, workers, craftsmen for equipment, managers, shippers, etc. So, instead of a small station, it could be a small hamlet/community dedicated to mining (and ruled/owned by a local lord/baron/other noble, depending on civ).

I was thinking of humans as sorta shitty miners compared to dwarves. I imagine it more like, a prospecter notices iron ore right at the top, then they did like 3 x levels down and grab the cluster and then they give up and leave.

IDK, it might be cool to make it a type of hamlet instead actually, so the hamlets are not all the same.

Cursed shrines are a great idea. It can be tied on with vampires/werewolves (maybe you can become one by insulting the gods at a shrine?), and there could be missions to purify it, un-curse it, somehow. You could also used some of the effects from evil biomes. Like there's a little 15*15 square evil biome around it.

[brewer bob]

Mining probably would require a bit more than a group of 5 miners
-- snip --

I was thinking of humans as sorta shitty miners compared to dwarves. I imagine it more like, a prospecter notices iron ore right at the top, then they did like 3 x levels down and grab the cluster and then they give up and leave.

IDK, it might be cool to make it a type of hamlet instead actually, so the hamlets are not all the same.

Just basing my suggestion on the limited knowledge I have on medieval mining, since that's been the tech time frame of DF, and it appears to have been quite the effort. But I guess if it'd be just some shallow mining, it'd require less of infrastructure (e.g., no need to drain water out of shafts/tunnels)?

I'm not an expert on the topic, so just throwing ideas.

[Orange-of-Cthulhu]

Mining probably would require a bit more than a group of 5 miners
-- snip --

I was thinking of humans as sorta shitty miners compared to dwarves. I imagine it more like, a prospecter notices iron ore right at the top, then they did like 3 x levels down and grab the cluster and then they give up and leave.

IDK, it might be cool to make it a type of hamlet instead actually, so the hamlets are not all the same.

Just basing my suggestion on the limited knowledge I have on medieval mining, since that's been the tech time frame of DF, and it appears to have been quite the effort. But I guess if it'd be just some shallow mining, it'd require less of infrastructure (e.g., no need to drain water out of shafts/tunnels)?

I'm not an expert on the topic, so just throwing ideas.

Toady & Tarn will anyway read volumes about medieval mining before doing anything, if they decide to do it lol

I guess yeah, by logic humans and goblins would have even bigger mines than the dwarves, since they have way more people they need metal tools and weapons for. Like a goblin civ with 40 K goblins should by logic have dwarves that are GIGANTIC compared to the dwarven ones.

I feel like it's a "hole" in the game that goblins and humans just get metal weapons out of nowhere- They should have mines.

But in the context of the game, I feel like mining is the dwarven thing, so it's kind of a compromise to give humans and goblins mines that are sorta shitty compared to a Dwarven Fortress.

[Splint]

+1 to the general idea.

In regards to the mining, might be better to differentiate somewhat dark Fortress civs generating an open pit, humans generating shallow mine tunnels (probably no more than a half dozen z-levels deep,) while dwarves have their extensive, deep mining galleries.

Spoiler: Additional spots for (mostly) any civ. (click to show/hide)

Messenger post: A small building along roads (probably at one-day distance intervals) with book cases and coffers and a few beds with a pasture full of mounts. Adventurers might encounter messengers and the like resting here or changing mounts or what have you.

Trading Post: A small building along roads (probably at day to day and a half intervals from a major settlement) with some tables and beds on an upper level and a storage building. Inhabited by a merchant and their security detail and family. More successful Trading posts may have small mead halls/drinking mounds built alongside them. Unlike shops in towns, these are always unspecialized and likely to have all kinds of stuff, including food, weapons, and so forth.

Large Tannery: Tanning is dirty business, so larger operations may need to relocate outside of larger towns. One or two buildings with barrels and such around with a rest house staffed by a number of workers with lots of leather around, along with a relevant storehouse for it. Not available to animal-friendly civs.

Charcoal Camp: Similar premise to the logging camp (so not available to plant-friendly civs,) but with the stuff for making lots of charcoal (and the material itself) present. Like large-scale tanning operations, it's dirty work and so beyond a certain point should probably be located away from major towns.

Farmstead: Wealthier farmers may set up their own operations away from towns. Can tie into the existing stuff regarding debts and so forth too, with these farmsteads sometimes changing hands because the owner got in some trouble with a lender or the tax man. They may also take the formers of cultivated fruit tree orchards, a livestock ranch or apiary.

Training Camp: A place where nearby civilians, soldiers and such come to train. Lots of armed and adventurous people to be had that will generally be more inclined to join the player if there's no immediate threats to their community (by which I mean mega/semimegabeasts or armies.) Probably has a sleeping barracks building or two and as well as a large building with weapon and armor racks and an archery range.

Sacred pond: A larger than normal pond, regarded as sacred, with a residential house for a small contingent of attendants and pilgrims to stay at. Requires a religion with a water-related deity to be made by a given civ. Contaminating it will upset attending clergymen and worshippers and might get you cursed. A more "negative" version is a blood pond, a constructed version which has dead animals of some specific, randomly chosen type present as well (basically such religions pick a preferred offering animal, such as mules, or elk birds or some such)


Slavery-permitting civs will likely see some of these be partially staffed with slaves, which the player can try to free by violence, stealth or buying their freedom if so inclined, and obviously tree-based civs would have their equivalent structures made from large trees, mountain ones might opt for mounds and dark pits may opt for open pits with rooms built into the walls.