Actually, that sounds like a pretty cool idea. If you wanted to hit the dawn of agriculture here are some things that you might want to do:
- Remove all the domesticated animals except dogs (actually, just remove the pet tag, I think, since all the animals existed they were just wild).
- The copper age (prior to writing, post stone age, dawn of agriculture) did have stone and copper tools, as well as open pit mining, so stone and copper picks would work (as well as weapons).
- If you wanted to encompass all cultures that went through this period you could have stone headed spears, simple bows, atlatls(sp, spear throwers), slings, stone bladed swords, knives, clubs, scythes, and picks for weapons.
- I don't know if it would be possible, but from a historical prospect you'd want to have a lot more food items generated from a carcass: Organ meat and marrow especially.
- Alcohol would be straight out (poor dwarves). I believe you can remove the tag from the dwarf profile.
- If you really want to talk about the dawn of agriculture then you're talking about growing crops from plants native to the area via seed collection, so you'd want to remove seeds from embark (don't know how you do this, but it should be possible).
- Armor doesn't really make an appearance for quite some time, but there were primitive cultures that had wood and bone or shell armor, whether you keep it would be a matter of discretion.
- Mechanisms would be straight out as well: No levers, flood gates, axles, wind mills, water wheels, bridges, doors, or anything of that sort.
- Crafts did exist, but you'd want to remove things that don't exist in the era (e.g. mini-forges). Stone, bone, and shell only (metal was virtually exclusively for tools).
- Gems weren't really worked, so the jewelers shop might have to go.
- I don't know if you can mod what dwarves like or don't like, but removing the bad thoughts about sleeping in the dirt, drinking bad water, or not having tables or chairs would be nice.
- While they did carve stone, they didn't really smooth stone or make fortifications, so engraving is out. So is making walls or fortifications (Jericho, one of the first cities and the first real walled city, didn't have a wall at the dawn of agriculture and didn't have one for several thousand years after).
- If you can find a way to hunt bugs, that'd be an accurate source of food (not the best food, but they were eaten).
- You'd have to keep the kitchen, but loose the barrels.
- Keep animal traps and stone fall traps, but loose cage and weapon.
- You'd have to modify the nobles some how, but you'd need to pick a primitive culture to model them after.
Hope this helps!
-DB
Thanks.
They have found traces of alcohol in ancient tombs from more than 6000 years ago, natural fermentation happened (put some berries in a clay vase and if you don't eat them fast enough they ferment, the flavor might not be the greatest (modern yeasts are carefully selected to avoid off flavors) but it would get you drunk)
Antler picks where used to mine flint out of the chalk in England (wiki Grimes Graves) but since you can't get antlers or horn to drop from animals (yet) bone picks would work fine.
While you can't get more types of meat to drop you can increase the amount of meat and bones dropped.
Eating bugs is easy just add more vermin (and then trap them with animal traps).
Well I see your point about barrels as we know them today, but in the past they used potter and carved stone containers in a similar way.
I suspect that if you remove the agriculture tokens from the civilizations they will not allow seeds on embark, however, they will also not allow plants on embark, nor will their merchants sell you seeds or plants. If you are coming from a civilization to settle a new area you would probably bring seeds/plants with you (just like you would bring an axe or a pick or a weapon). Otherwise you can just forage for what grows in the area. Probably a better idea is to modify the plant list so you have only one or two useful plants which give seeds, allowing you to start the game with them, and have the rest of the plants be seedless forcing you to gather them.
I can remove the Mason skill and the Engraving skill. Relying on wood (Carpentry) for above ground buildings is ok and though this will require a lot of trees.
I can see everyone starting with herbalist 5 and then a smattering of other skills, hunting is one of those odd skills (it allows lots of useful things like sleeping anywhere and not minding the weather, but hunting is a high priority job and anyone with hunting will try to hunt before they do anything else, I discovered this when I made a hunter/carpenter/wood cutter one game, he absolutely would not stop hunting to disassemble the wagon, cut down a tree or make a bed, I had to shut hunting off).