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[milo christiansen]

From the readme:

Saurian civilization mod

Saurians are a small (size 20000) reptilian race of swamp dwellers with mildly venomous bites (causes pain).
Saurians cannot dig stone and so they get the little metal they use from their hated foe, the goblins, or from trade.

What follows is an overview of the stuff I added/changed.

Plants:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

   Wire Weed
      Wire weed is a strong fibrous vine used by saurians to make clothing and armor. To make armor sheets of wire weed cloth are glued together with leather to reinforce it. The resulting leather can be used to make armor at a leather worker. Wire weed takes about 3 seasons to grow.
      Wire weed reinforced leather is about as strong as iron and is the strongest armor material available to saurians without goblinite or trade.
   
   Stick Reed
      Stick reed has a sticky sap that can be refined into a glue at the laminator or it may be bundled into wicker at the basketry.
   
   Swamp Grass
      Swamp grass is a fast growing plant grown by saurians for making into wicker and for the rice like seeds it produces in large amounts. Swamp grass may be bundled into wicker at the basketry.
   
   Young Trees - many, many kinds
      Farmable wood. They must be processed before use via cutting them into lamina at the sawmill and then gluing that into laminated logs at the laminator. Surface trees take 1 season to grow (but they can't grow in winter), underground trees (if you somehow get them) take 2 or 4.

Major Materials:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

   Glue
      Glue is made at a laminators shop from hide, hoof, bone or stick reed and is used for laminating various materials together.
   
   Laminated Log
      Made at a laminators shop from glue and planks or bamboo lamina, laminated logs are more valuable than normal wood.
   
   Wood Scrap
      Scrap is the result of scrapping wood. Its only use is being burned into ash or charcoal at the sawmill.
   
   Wicker
      Wicker is a light material made from woven plants at the basketry. Good for furniture if no clay is avalible.
   
   Wire Weed Fiber Cloth
      Wire weed fiber cloth is good for protective clothing and laminating with leather to make wire weed reinforced leather.
      
   Wire Weed Reinforced Leather
      The queen of armor materials (the king is water steel) wire weed reinforced leather is equal to iron in strength but much lighter.
      
   Water Steel
      Water steel (a name for damascus steel) is the best, most expensive, weapon/armor material saurians can make. Water steel can take a better edge than normal steel, but for the purpose of armor they are equal. Water steel is more valuable than normal steel.

Buildings:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

   Craftsaurian
      Here you can make mechanisms from wood or bone, querns/millstones from bone, and blocks from bone.
      If you are a fan of itemless embarks the makeshift axe or wooden shovel may be just what you need.
      When you have a moody saurian about to go nuts sometimes uncuting a large gem you got in trade or making a boulder from blocks you have laying around is just the thing you need to save him.
      Of course all the vanilla stuff is there as well
   
   Kiln
      There are many more things to be made from clay here.
      Most of the glazing reactions take place here. To use the advanced glazes grind pearlash at a millstone or quern, the resulting powder is white glaze as well as the base for the other colors. You can mix different colors of dye powder into white or gray powder to tint it (gray powder is made from white+black).
      Glaze powders are considered bonemeal by the game so they are stored in food stock piles.
      If you want to glaze a specific item type a certain color use stockpiles, otherwise the reaction will take any glaze powder and unglazed item.
      Old style ash glazing is also possible.
   
   Batch Kiln - 8 blocks
      The Batch Kiln has exactly the same reactions as the kiln except they all take 4X the materials and produce 5X the output.
      The collect clay order must still be issued from the normal kiln and you can not glaze items at the batch kiln.
      
   Brick Kiln - 4 blocks
      Here you can produce two kinds of bricks in 16 different colors.
      Normal bricks produce 10 bricks from 5 clay.
      Fine bricks produce 5 more valuable bricks from 5 clay.
      Note that if you just want normal (uncolored) bricks, the batch kiln is a little more efficent.
   
   Smelter
      Forge water steel from iron, charcoal and bone (for flux).
   
   Sawmill - 4 blocks, 2 mechanisms, 1 serrated disk
      You can cut wood into planks or scrap and willow into lamina or scrap here. Scrap can be burned into charcoal or ashes here as well. Remember to bring a serrated disk!

   Laminator - 4 blocks
      This workshop is where everything involving glue takes place. Here you can make wire weed reinforced leather as well as make laminated wood from planks or Willow. Note that jobs here use the strand extractor skill (renamed to laminator).
   
   Basketry - 1 generic building mat
      Here you can bundle some plants into bales and use bales to make various items, mostly furniture.
      Note that wicker is treated like stone for stockpiling purposes, and bales are blocks.
      The bundleable plants are: longland grass, swamp grass, and stick reed.
   
   Bonfire - nothing
      Start two kinds of fires, a short wood fueled one or a long wood/charcoal fueled one.

Castes:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

   All saurians have natural skill (level 2) in bite, kick, punch, and fighter.
   Ratios - Normal:Hunter:Warrior:Shaman
   Female - 55:10:5:1
   Male - 50:5:15:1
   
   Normal - 1 for every 1.35 saurians
      Your normal saurian with nothing special.
   
   Hunter - 1 for every 9.47 saurians
      Level 2 ambusher
      Learn bow and ambusher at 125% normal rate.
      Can see 30 tiles (normal is 20)
      hunters are 2/3 more likely to be female
   
   Warrior - 1 for every 7.1 saurians
      Learn axe, sword, spear, armor user, and shield user at 125% normal rate
      Better than average bite, kick, punch, and fighter skill (level 3)
      Warriors are 3/4 more likely to be male
   
   Shaman - 1 for every 71 saurians
      Mages to support your army, shamans have a range of useful spells to help you and hinder your enemy. Shamans also serve as doctors for saurian villages and forts.
      Learn all medical skills at 125% normal rate
      Start with level 2 in all medical skills
      Spells:
         Weaken
            Causes dizziness, drowsiness, slowness, and impaired function of limbs.
         Blood
            Causes bleeding, almost always leading to death.
         Venom
            Causes pain, just like a saurians bite but stronger.

Tips:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

   Embark in an area with an aquifer.
      Aquifers provide easy to get drinking water, much faster to set up than a cistern and screw pump and much safer than a river.
      
   Use hunters.
      Saurians are good hunters and so long as your arrows hold out you can get large amounts of good cheap food without having to worry about diverting farm space. The other animal products gathered are just as valuable, leather is one of the components for the best armor material available to saurians and bone makes a good source of hunting/training arrows. In late/mid game hunters can become valuable additions to your military as snipers.
   
   Embark in an area with clay.
      Saurians can make all sorts of stuff out of clay. If you neglect this you will have a much harder time of it.
   
   Bring a serrated disk or materials to make one
      This is an important part for making the sawmill. The sawmill will supercharge your early industry and save you huge amounts of wood via bamboo processing and burning scrap to much needed fuel.
   
   Start a large wire weed plot in the first season or so.
      Wire weed takes a VERY long time to grow, it's best to get your crop going ASAP so you can make armor later. Note that for any kind of quanity you will either need several years of production or a HUGE plot. Don't count on having more than a few peices of wire weed reinforced armor by the end of the year.
   
   Don't be afraid of commiting untrained troops.
      Saurians all have a little combat skill, and even if you take losses saurian population tends to go up fast. Just remember to keep you best troops back untill they have good weapons and at least a little armor.
   
   Pay attention to your saurian's castes.
      You can of course just assign anyone to anything but if you try to make sure you match jobs to caste bonuses you can get that extra little bit of performance that can sometimes make a big difference. For example shaman caste saurians make good support troops or doctors but would be wasted as farmers or crafters.
   
   Don't forget bone blocks.
      Since you lack stone, bone blocks can make a good, early, fire-safe building material. This is mostly useful for item-less embarks but can come in handy in other cases as well.
   
   Buy metal whenever you can!
      Iron is rare and expensive, but crucial for making weapons (and to a lesser extent armor). You will need every little bit you can get. Try to save your water steel for arming your best troops. Don't forget copper, it's great for arrows and arming your early milita. Dwarves should bring all the other metals, so having lots of valuable trade goods ready and waiting is a very good thing.
   
   Buy rare items like gems, silk and stone ASAP.
      If you need raw gems you can "uncut" large gems you trade for at the craftsaurian, if you need cut gems you can use glass. Stone boulders can be pressed from blocks at the craftsaurian, buy rare and valuable blocks from the dwarves for best results. Silk cloth is (AFAIK) only avalible from the dwarves, unless you get VERY luck and have some web vermin in the area.
   
   Do not embark with tree seeds.
      Each farmable tree coresponds to a vanilla DF tree. If you are not careful it is easy to embark with seeds that have the wrong biome needs to grow at your location. Whenever possible gather the required seeds on location.

Install:
   To install just drop all files (except this readme) into your raw/objects directory and generate a new world.
   Uninstallation is much less trivial, your best bet is to delete your raw folder and replace with a fresh copy.

Special thanks to the makers of:
   Masterwork
      The raws make a great place to look when you want to know how something is done.
   Kobold Camp
      The original idea to make a civ that can't dig stone came from here.
   Dwarven Lamination
      The whole lamination idea came from here.
   Expanded Glazes
      My glazing system was inspired by this mod.

BUGS:
   Not really a bug, but I am not happy with how glazing works. If anyone has any sugestions for a better way to handle this please speak up.
   
   Please report any (other) abnormal behavior.
   

Change Log:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

v1.6 for DF 34.11
Insane crafter loss prevention measures initiated.
   Added "uncut large gem" reaction to craftsaurian shop
      Too many moods require uncut gems and they are almost imposible to trade for. Large gems are a little more common.
   
   Added "press boulder from blocks" reaction to craftsaurian shop
      Stone boulders are as rare as hens teeth and of course every mood needs them
   
   Fixed the water steel reaction.
      Why did I have it using a copper bar? Don't ask.
   
   Lowered water steel fuel cost to 1 (plus one for the [FUEL] tag)
      Having to pay two for one in iron is cost enough without draining your charcoal stocks as well.
   
   Merged the tree farming plants from Better Dorfs
      Better tree farming has arrived! This adds a farmable version of EVERY vanilla DF tree.
   
   Added NO_STONE_STOCKPILE to the bonefire materials
      You really don't want someone hauling burning boulders off to a stone stockpile.
   
v1.5 for DF 34.11
The metal strikes back!
   Doubled the value of ALL metals
      Any saurian who somehow gets candy will be VERY happy
   
   Removed Tempered glass
   Added world gen reactions for copper and iron
      If I have to use metal anyway it may as well be real metal.
   
   Added permitted clothing entrys for metal armors
      Now you can make metal armor again. Wire weed reinforced armor is still the lightest stuff you can get.
   
   Added Water steel
      Slightly better than normal steel (produces blades that are twice as sharp).
   
   Added reaction for creating water steel bars to smelter
      2 iron 5 charcoal 1 bone (flux) makes 1 water steel bar.
   
   Disabled the shaman spell Inspire
      This spell was a source of many annoying combat logs.
      
   Disabled the shaman spell Heal
      This spell was used on everyone and anyone, will re-enable if I can find a way to restrict it to injured.
   
   Add native skill and learning boost for medical skills to shamans
      This is to help make up for the loss of the Heal spell.
   
   Several other small changes
   
v1.4 for DF 34.11
The great plant re-write.
   Wicker reactions partly redone
      There may be a few more things to make.
   
   Removed whip vine and blade weed as bundleable plants
   Added swamp grass, a bundleable plant with edible seeds
      Sawmp grass will only grow near water, like rivers, lakes and swamps.
   
   Added willow, a small, farmable tree
   Removed Bamboo
      Willow takes the place of bamboo. Slower growing, but more or less the same.
   
   Stick reed's biome changed from NOT_FREEZING to ANY_WETLAND, ANY_RIVER, and ANY_LAKE
      Reeds like water, so if you want lots of glue you better settle in a swamp.
   
   Added "craft makeshift axe" reaction to craftsaurian workshop.
      Making a makeshift axe requires wood and raw green glass (for the edge).
   
   Added bonfire building
      This allows you to set fires, hold that goblin roast you always wanted.
   
v1.3 for DF 34.11
Saurian evolution in action.
   Adventure mode reactions removed
      If you want adventure mode crafting either use advfort or get a dedicated crafting mod.
   
   Lowered density for wire weed reinforced leather to 600
      This should be a little more realistic.
   
   Added Brick Kiln
      Now you can have bricks in a color other than brown without having to spend huge amounts of time/resources glazing them. Great for large above-ground forts.
   
   Removed saurians natural ambusher and observer skill
      Everyone showed up with a quiver and after a while it got really annoying.
   
   Added some more castes
      See the section on castes for details.
   
   A few other little changes
   
v1.2 for DF 34.11
The military update.
   Shallow copper removed
      I never wanted saurians to be able to work metal and now I have a replacement (sort-of)
      
   Tempered glass added
      Glass expertly tempered into a perfect weapon material.
      For armor use wire weed reinforced leather.
      Tempered glass is mostly the same as iron (lower density)
   
   Added batch kiln
      The batch kiln can make 5 times as many items as the kiln.
      There is no collect clay order or glazing, you still need a normal kiln for them.
   
   Added some more items to make from clay
      I forgot to make a list of exactly what, sorry.
   
   Added "make bone blocks" reaction to craftsaurian workshop
      This should allow you to get a fire-safe building material on itemless embarks.
      Also great for intimidating skull statues over your entrance
   
   Changed permitted clothing items.
      With shallow copper gone the only armor you can make is leather, permitted clothing reflects that.
   
   Fixed a major bug in the saurian entity positions
      You could lose the ability to have any nobles, ouch!
      A side affect of this is that the chief saurian is now elected instead of appointed.
   
   Added bodyguards for caravans and diplomats
      They should be a little harder for goblins to kill now.
   
   Saurians should now siege their enemies
      Because, why not?
   
v1.1 for DF 34.11
The big bug squash.
   Wire weed armor removed, wire weed can now be used to reinforce leather instead.
      I just never liked the old way, this one is better.
      
   Laminating job skill changed to strand extractor from alchemy because alchemy would not gain xp.
      If I figure out a fix, this will change back.
      
   Added "Make wooden shovel" reaction to craftsaurian workshop.
      This should make itemless embarks a little easier.
      No training axes. Not now, not ever. If you must, add your own.
   
   Added reactions to process "natural" wood at sawmill.
      Scrapping your hard-earned laminated wood hurts, and setting up lots of special stockpiles is a pain for something this simple.
   
   Added advanced glazing.
      Saurians need more color!
   
   Removed the scrap product from the "cut wood into planks" reactions
      After a while you got SO-MUCH-SCRAP that you were swimming in charcoal and ash.
      If you want scrap (and you will) just use the dedicated scrap reactions.
   
   Added a few more permitted clothing items.
      It should now be easier to get full armor coverage.
   
   Added some adventure mode reactions.
      A saurians got to get his armor somewhere right?
      Note that for simplicity all adventure mode reactions use the knapping skill.
   
   Removed [DRY] from Stick Reed
      This should make it grow only near water.
   
   Lots of other little (non player visible) changes.

v1.0 for DF 34.11
Version the first.
   Initial release

Download

[milo christiansen]

Now updated, see first post.

[milo christiansen]

A little feedback would be nice.

Some of the reactions/buildings I used for this mod are going to be used (in much modifyed form) in a dwarf mod I am making so it would be nice to know what everyone thinks.

[Zavvnao]

yay! lizardy guys to play as in df. Its nice to find another option than replacing the race in every entity with reptile men (who still act like dwarfs, elves, humans, etc.)

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

looks like an alternative universe for Kobold Camp, Quite interesting

[milo christiansen]

Suggestions welcome

I have a few things I want to add yet but the next update (coming in a week or so) will probibly be the last for a while.

[Zavvnao]

are there secrets the saurians can have? like shaman/witch doctor or druid stuff in contrast to necromancy? Its fine if that is not added.

And do their forest retreats show up on maps? it did not with the Ironhand or Phobos graphics.

[milo christiansen]

Now updated! Check first post.

are there secrets the saurians can have? like shaman/witch doctor or druid stuff in contrast to necromancy? Its fine if that is not added.

No special secrets, at least not in this version :p

And do their forest retreats show up on maps? it did not with the Ironhand or Phobos graphics.

I have no idea, I assume they do but you know what they say about assume... I'll check.

[milo christiansen]

Now updated, see first post.

And do their forest retreats show up on maps? it did not with the Ironhand or Phobos graphics.

I found one marked on the map of my testing world but it was in yellow instead of the light green it was supposed to be

This is likely to be the last release in a while as I have more-or-less added everything I wanted. Suggestions are still welcome!

[milo christiansen]

Now updated to 1.5

1.4 was skipped, I had it all packaged up and ready to go but never got around to uploading it.

[milo christiansen]

Updated to 1.6.
If you where happy with 1.5 and do not want to regenerate your world, the only fix you really need is the one for the water steel reaction. Just copy "reaction_smelt_saurian.txt" into your save's raw/objects folder.

[milo christiansen]

If you use the "reinforce leather with wire weed" reaction make sure you use stockpile links to stop it from using the same piece of (already reinforced) leather again and again.
This will be fixed in 1.7 (as soon as I find enough problems to make a 1.7 worth my time)

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

I'd suggest use some Reaction Class, unless so normal Leather is [REACTION_CLASS:LEATHER_NORMAL] and the new leather is [REACTION_CLASS:LEATHER_REINFORCED] and your reactions have

[REACTION:REINFORCE_LEATHER]
[REAGENT:a:1:SKIN_TANNED:NONE:NONE:NONE][REACTION_CLASS:LEATHER_NORMAL]

this will make it take all normal leathers an not the new leather.

[milo christiansen]

That's what I did I plan to add some more stuff and then I'll push that change allong with the rest as 1.7

Thanks

[milo christiansen]

The saurian mod is now part of Better Dorfs
So no standalone 1.7 after all.