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Author Topic: 'Political arc' and some worldgen suggestions  (Read 3008 times)

TBCoW

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'Political arc' and some worldgen suggestions
« on: July 12, 2015, 07:55:45 pm »

Simplified diplomacy

As it stands now all groups generated in world generation are exclusively tied to civilizations they came from (excluding vampires) even if all existing members are of different race from former one. The problem is that all the creatures behave the way their civilization wants the to, disregarding possible needs and changes they should have as time passes. My first suggestion addresses this somehow and probably fixes adventure apathy problem as well.

Right now various groups are mostly generated around historical figures that are claiming sites and their relationships with others are basically binary (enemy or friend) with in between states irrelevant. My solution to this is following: give groups full freedom to perform actions that are currently available to civilizations. The question is what happens to civilizations? In my opinion they should be trashed as they are – "NUMBER OF CIVILIZATIONS" should only indicate the amount of groups created initially but do nothing more then this.

Let's say civilizations are no more and only groups remain. So how are new groups created? They should be created by splitting from their original group and have various relations depending on the reason of the split. And the reasons can be various:
-New settlement – Some members of the old group gather and leave old group to create a camp or some site using some resources available at the home town. If the group left only to expand, they keep all their values and relationships with other groups the same as the group of their origin (but this may change as they are new group). If the group is exiled or left because of the lost fight with their former one their resources are very limited and they automatically start with the worst possible relationship (think of rebels).
-Disagreement – members of existing group disagree about some decision, leading to the split (new group has some personality trait range moved even beyond starting point), which can be minor (Dwarves cut trees and majority of elves wanted war – a small group formed as it wanted to send messenger first) or major (Some group attacks a town and conquers it – living citizens are split into few groups: rebelling, running away, accepting new rule). This should be the most common type of split.
-Supernatural event – something strange happened and this formed new group (transformation or birth of some sapient not natural being) - like necromancy or curse now.

I will move on to the next point – interacting in the world. I mentioned previously that disagreements may lead to splits. The possible effect is a couple of groups with varied goals, morals and laws. I will focus on relationships between groups:
-Hatred – This should only happen if groups have opposite opinions on major topics, had recent conflict that resulted in many deaths and the goals each of the group tries to achieve is unthinkable for the other side of conflict (totally killing off enemy may be such goal as opposed to survival). All the reasons together should make both sides actively oppose each other when it comes to politics and lead to lethal fights whenever they meet.

Humans wage a war against goblins to avoid being enslaved and losing lands and they try to encourage everyone else to join their cause.

-Dislike – 2 groups have a conflict that may be important. Depending on the scale of conflict they may fistfight, steal resources or even assassinate important characters. The side with lower capabilities may simply try to avoid conflict and accept the other sides' terms or get enslaved. The war is less likely and usually short. If for some reason it is prolonged, dislike may change to hatred. Sides of conflict may pressure other groups to stop trading with opponent and sometimes make them join the conflict.

Humans 1 founded a hamlet that was destroyed by a dragon. Many years later Human civilization 2 reclaims it. This causes a conflict, which escalates to a 3 year war ended by retaking the hamlet.

Dwarves have a fortress on a heavily forested land. Their heavy deforestation concerned elves, which tried to negotiate but were ignored. To force them to accept their terms, elves sent an assassin to kill mayor and persuaded humans to stop trading with dwarves by offering lot of wood. Conflict ended with dwarven group limiting their tree cutting.


-Apathy – 2 groups just met or are in progress to a better or worse relationship. This will make them work with or against each other only if there is some force behind such action.

Human and dwarven groups had some conflicts recently, which left them unfriendly. The goblin danger united them to face common enemy and allowed them to try diplomacy again.

-Like – 2 groups had at most minor conflict recently that was resolved peacefully. If groups meet for the first time and their morals and laws aren't opposite, they start with this relationship. On this level various treaties and agreements can be made.

Upon founding new hillocks dwarves met unusually friendly goblins. These usually dangerous creatures took down their demon master and limited warfare. Both groups started trading some time later.

-Trust – 2 groups had been in peace for years. They may sometimes accept not great trading offers or give a gift for their partner. In times of conflict they are likely to join in or at least somehow help.
Goblins were easily conquering elves. Another group of goblins helped their ally by trading them 500 swords at really good price.

-Alliance – 2 groups have been at peace for a few decades and both laws and morals mostly overlap. Settlements that were founded by a  group from some location (and were sent to expand and not because they were exiled) start at this level. Both groups are willing to help each other in any way possible: economy, politics, research, military. They have a chance of fusion with differencing personality traits either averaged or staying the same as the bigger group. If group fusion happens between groups of different sites the leader stays in a safer or older and richer settlement.

King and queen of 2 groups after long and exhausting war against goblins helped each other repair their mountain halls. Having the same laws, they decided to cement the alliance with marriage with king moving to the site of his wife.

With the system of reputation taking into account both history and similarities duplicate groups are unlikely to exist (unless they haven't met yet) and many starting civilizations may mean either regions where blood never stops flowing or few kingdoms that should be different (with some chance to split).

Everyone knows that emotions aren't everything and groups interact with hope of getting benefits:
-trade – simple caravan sending or on site barter – should be improved with economy arc so amount of resources matters as well as controlling strategic routes.
-military – simple force to keep peace at sites and defend from megabeast attacks or use some force in negotiations. The groups with common goal or somehow depended are more likely to join forces to overcome danger or other obstacles.
-intelligence – sharing information about possible threats, using assassins or getting powerful artifacts is sometimes impossible for a single group even if it is big. It may be necessary to cooperate sometimes.

Applying these changes would greatly benefit both fortress and adventure modes: trading with specific groups from various sites (if they can send a caravan), generally more interesting wars and even more interesting world with some races behaving different from what a player is used to (different groups having various personality traits ranges) and making random NPCs in adventure mode usually not indifferent to killing as they are part of some group 'hive mind'.

New arcs should vary different groups depending on general wealth, as well as value of different items, aggressiveness and justice (laws and punishments):
-Treasure hunter and artifact arcs by letting the powerful groups gather secrets and artifacts to increase their standings, sometimes also sharing with allied groups.
-Explorer arc should make things interesting by making the groups try to learn more about their surroundings to gather needed resources, avoid evil or dangerous terrains and make use of some magical grounds as well. The ruling groups should also control sea and land routes not allowing unfriendly ones to use them while letting best friends use them for free.
-Military arc should make groups try to achieve safety and more influence while keeping down those who oppose them. Groups should try to gather better weapons and use them to control their terrain, help allies, make their point and kill extreme enemies.

While this 'political arc' is the most important thing I wanted to post, there are some lesser things I wanted to suggest:
-Civilization re roll – when worldgenning it sometimes happens that the world is looking great but civilizations are too spread or too concentrated – in this case simply re rolling history would fix this.
-Minimum/maximum range between starting sites of civilizations in advanced worldgen.
-Split between major and minor sites in world gen as well as possibility to choose multiple. Right now humans have DEFAULT_SITE_TYPE:CITY and it should be split into DEFAULT_MAJOR_SITE_TYPE:TOWN and DEFAULT_MINOR_SITE_TYPE:HAMLET. This split would let people make unique site combinations for custom races with some crazy possibilities like everything possible.
-Related to previous suggestion: make towers major sites and allow civilizations to build them if they are allowed to in raws.
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GoblinCookie

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Re: 'Political arc' and some worldgen suggestions
« Reply #1 on: July 13, 2015, 11:25:11 am »

Simplified diplomacy

As it stands now all groups generated in world generation are exclusively tied to civilizations they came from (excluding vampires) even if all existing members are of different race from former one. The problem is that all the creatures behave the way their civilization wants them to, disregarding possible needs and changes they should have as time passes. My first suggestion addresses this somehow and probably fixes adventure apathy problem as well.

The problem here is?  Sites belong to civilizations which are made up of sites, how realistic

Right now various groups are mostly generated around historical figures that are claiming sites and their relationships with others are basically binary (enemy or friend) with in between states irrelevant. My solution to this is following: give groups full freedom to perform actions that are currently available to civilizations. The question is what happens to civilizations? In my opinion they should be trashed as they are – "NUMBER OF CIVILIZATIONS" should only indicate the amount of groups created initially but do nothing more then this.

Firstly groups do actually have the ability to perform all actions currently available to civilizations.  Relations are also *not* binary, there is a whole cold war state in the middle. 

You want the devs to trash a whole entirely functional system in order to replace it with a new system.  Do you not seem to realise that the devs have limited time, that means all the time on pointless scrapping and replacing is time not spent improving the game.

Let's say civilizations are no more and only groups remain. So how are new groups created? They should be created by splitting from their original group and have various relations depending on the reason of the split. And the reasons can be various:
-New settlement – Some members of the old group gather and leave old group to create a camp or some site using some resources available at the home town. If the group left only to expand, they keep all their values and relationships with other groups the same as the group of their origin (but this may change as they are new group). If the group is exiled or left because of the lost fight with their former one their resources are very limited and they automatically start with the worst possible relationship (think of rebels).
-Disagreement – members of existing group disagree about some decision, leading to the split (new group has some personality trait range moved even beyond starting point), which can be minor (Dwarves cut trees and majority of elves wanted war – a small group formed as it wanted to send messenger first) or major (Some group attacks a town and conquers it – living citizens are split into few groups: rebelling, running away, accepting new rule). This should be the most common type of split.
-Supernatural event – something strange happened and this formed new group (transformation or birth of some sapient not natural being) - like necromancy or curse now.

So the new sites just magic up the needed capital needed to build themselves?  Reality check, in order for a new site to be built those given the capital to build the site are going to be those who are on very good terms with the old site and the old site is going to want to mantain a close relationship with them (and vica versa) if not actually demand a definite return on their investment. 

Rebels and the ilk are never going to be able to create a new site because they will never be given sufficiant capital to do so by the old group.

I will move on to the next point – interacting in the world. I mentioned previously that disagreements may lead to splits. The possible effect is a couple of groups with varied goals, morals and laws. I will focus on relationships between groups:
-Hatred – This should only happen if groups have opposite opinions on major topics, had recent conflict that resulted in many deaths and the goals each of the group tries to achieve is unthinkable for the other side of conflict (totally killing off enemy may be such goal as opposed to survival). All the reasons together should make both sides actively oppose each other when it comes to politics and lead to lethal fights whenever they meet.

Humans wage a war against goblins to avoid being enslaved and losing lands and they try to encourage everyone else to join their cause.

-Dislike – 2 groups have a conflict that may be important. Depending on the scale of conflict they may fistfight, steal resources or even assassinate important characters. The side with lower capabilities may simply try to avoid conflict and accept the other sides' terms or get enslaved. The war is less likely and usually short. If for some reason it is prolonged, dislike may change to hatred. Sides of conflict may pressure other groups to stop trading with opponent and sometimes make them join the conflict.

Humans 1 founded a hamlet that was destroyed by a dragon. Many years later Human civilization 2 reclaims it. This causes a conflict, which escalates to a 3 year war ended by retaking the hamlet.

Dwarves have a fortress on a heavily forested land. Their heavy deforestation concerned elves, which tried to negotiate but were ignored. To force them to accept their terms, elves sent an assassin to kill mayor and persuaded humans to stop trading with dwarves by offering lot of wood. Conflict ended with dwarven group limiting their tree cutting.


-Apathy – 2 groups just met or are in progress to a better or worse relationship. This will make them work with or against each other only if there is some force behind such action.

Human and dwarven groups had some conflicts recently, which left them unfriendly. The goblin danger united them to face common enemy and allowed them to try diplomacy again.

-Like – 2 groups had at most minor conflict recently that was resolved peacefully. If groups meet for the first time and their morals and laws aren't opposite, they start with this relationship. On this level various treaties and agreements can be made.

Upon founding new hillocks dwarves met unusually friendly goblins. These usually dangerous creatures took down their demon master and limited warfare. Both groups started trading some time later.

-Trust – 2 groups had been in peace for years. They may sometimes accept not great trading offers or give a gift for their partner. In times of conflict they are likely to join in or at least somehow help.
Goblins were easily conquering elves. Another group of goblins helped their ally by trading them 500 swords at really good price.

-Alliance – 2 groups have been at peace for a few decades and both laws and morals mostly overlap. Settlements that were founded by a  group from some location (and were sent to expand and not because they were exiled) start at this level. Both groups are willing to help each other in any way possible: economy, politics, research, military. They have a chance of fusion with differencing personality traits either averaged or staying the same as the bigger group. If group fusion happens between groups of different sites the leader stays in a safer or older and richer settlement.

King and queen of 2 groups after long and exhausting war against goblins helped each other repair their mountain halls. Having the same laws, they decided to cement the alliance with marriage with king moving to the site of his wife.

With the system of reputation taking into account both history and similarities duplicate groups are unlikely to exist (unless they haven't met yet) and many starting civilizations may mean either regions where blood never stops flowing or few kingdoms that should be different (with some chance to split).

For the most part you just want to give names to things that are essentially in the game already. 

Everyone knows that emotions aren't everything and groups interact with hope of getting benefits:
-trade – simple caravan sending or on site barter – should be improved with economy arc so amount of resources matters as well as controlling strategic routes.
-military – simple force to keep peace at sites and defend from megabeast attacks or use some force in negotiations. The groups with common goal or somehow depended are more likely to join forces to overcome danger or other obstacles.
-intelligence – sharing information about possible threats, using assassins or getting powerful artifacts is sometimes impossible for a single group even if it is big. It may be necessary to cooperate sometimes.

Applying these changes would greatly benefit both fortress and adventure modes: trading with specific groups from various sites (if they can send a caravan), generally more interesting wars and even more interesting world with some races behaving different from what a player is used to (different groups having various personality traits ranges) and making random NPCs in adventure mode usually not indifferent to killing as they are part of some group 'hive mind'.

Groups already interact as it is. 

New arcs should vary different groups depending on general wealth, as well as value of different items, aggressiveness and justice (laws and punishments):
-Treasure hunter and artifact arcs by letting the powerful groups gather secrets and artifacts to increase their standings, sometimes also sharing with allied groups.
-Explorer arc should make things interesting by making the groups try to learn more about their surroundings to gather needed resources, avoid evil or dangerous terrains and make use of some magical grounds as well. The ruling groups should also control sea and land routes not allowing unfriendly ones to use them while letting best friends use them for free.
-Military arc should make groups try to achieve safety and more influence while keeping down those who oppose them. Groups should try to gather better weapons and use them to control their terrain, help allies, make their point and kill extreme enemies.

While this 'political arc' is the most important thing I wanted to post, there are some lesser things I wanted to suggest:
-Civilization re roll – when worldgenning it sometimes happens that the world is looking great but civilizations are too spread or too concentrated – in this case simply re rolling history would fix this.
-Minimum/maximum range between starting sites of civilizations in advanced worldgen.
-Split between major and minor sites in world gen as well as possibility to choose multiple. Right now humans have DEFAULT_SITE_TYPE:CITY and it should be split into DEFAULT_MAJOR_SITE_TYPE:TOWN and DEFAULT_MINOR_SITE_TYPE:HAMLET. This split would let people make unique site combinations for custom races with some crazy possibilities like everything possible.
-Related to previous suggestion: make towers major sites and allow civilizations to build them if they are allowed to in raws.

I will adress your lesser suggestions.

1. This is not supposed to be the kind of game where you cheat by rerolling until you get the result you like.

2. That has more merit, however I would prefer civs arose from prexisting populations that inhabit the land in a primitive state. 

3. Given the amount of hardcoding involved in these sites I very much doubt that is worth the devs time.  They would be better off allowing us to create fully customisable sites with the feutures of the original sites.

4.  Civilizations already do create towers essentially.  Making towers major sites means that we will see minor sites trading with towers, since trading ignores political allegiances; how are living creatures supposed to trade with things that automatically kill anything that is alive?
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TBCoW

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Re: 'Political arc' and some worldgen suggestions
« Reply #2 on: July 13, 2015, 04:22:45 pm »

Quote
The problem here is?  Sites belong to civilizations which are made up of sites, how realistic.

Sites should belong to groups with the most powerful being the driving force of civilization. This isn't constant as some event may remove them from power and civilization MIGHT split.

Quote
Firstly groups do actually have the ability to perform all actions currently available to civilizations.  Relations are also *not* binary, there is a whole cold war state in the middle.

You want the devs to trash a whole entirely functional system in order to replace it with a new system.  Do you not seem to realise that the devs have limited time, that means all the time on pointless scrapping and replacing is time not spent improving the game.

I am not totally sure about action performing and will not argue here. I exaggerated with binary relations but you surely can say that they seem like it with this 'cold war' having absolutely no effect in game.

I said to trash civilizations part and use them only as starting point but keep their mechanics for group. I have no idea why you mock me when Toady said himself that most of the existing systems are placeholders and various reworks are possible (sometime in the future) and yes - these changes and tweaks should improve the game and aren't pointless.

Quote
So the new sites just magic up the needed capital needed to build themselves?  Reality check, in order for a new site to be built those given the capital to build the site are going to be those who are on very good terms with the old site and the old site is going to want to mantain a close relationship with them (and vica versa) if not actually demand a definite return on their investment.

Rebels and the ilk are never going to be able to create a new site because they will never be given sufficiant capital to do so by the old group.

You are partially right here. You forgot i said about camps which don't really need many resources to set up. They can be transformed into something else by simply using local resources. I wrote about relations between groups from different sites in another part of text (alliance) which also says about willingness to share and a chance to quickly become a single group (with 2 sites now) again.

Quote
For the most part you just want to give names to things that are essentially in the game already.

They aren't really in the game. Civilizations wage wars because of differences in their ethics and that's it. (I exclude fortress mode from this.)

Quote
Groups already interact as it is.

No they don't.
Groups don't send caravans. It is only a single caravan per year from 1 civilization not group. They also include everything civilization has access to not some particular groups.
The same thing for military but also they don't help you forces to defend but only to siege you. (You know that caravan guards are meant to protect caravan and not drive out invaders.)
The same for rumors. 

Quote
I will adress your lesser suggestions.

1. This is not supposed to be the kind of game where you cheat by rerolling until you get the result you like.

2. That has more merit, however I would prefer civs arose from prexisting populations that inhabit the land in a primitive state. 

3. Given the amount of hardcoding involved in these sites I very much doubt that is worth the devs time.  They would be better off allowing us to create fully customisable sites with the feutures of the original sites.

4.  Civilizations already do create towers essentially.  Making towers major sites means that we will see minor sites trading with towers, since trading ignores political allegiances; how are living creatures supposed to trade with things that automatically kill anything that is alive?

1. It's not cheating but getting world you want to have. Some people want perfect environment, others specific wars and sites that changed owners in their history. Quick.

2. That's why i want this to be optional and not used outside advanced worldgen.

3. I have no idea how hard it is to change. It was better to suggest it then not anyway.

4. I never saw in wiki you can allow civs to make towers. Did you mean that necromancers from any civilization can make them? You are right about the trading. That could be fixed with economy arc though.
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AceSV

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Re: 'Political arc' and some worldgen suggestions
« Reply #3 on: July 13, 2015, 08:36:18 pm »

I'm gonna have to play the tl;dr card, but I think I've been part of some previous discussions that might be helpful to you:  http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=148437.0  http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=148740.0  http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=149473.0

I think the problem with having a complex automated political system is that most players are completely disconnected from events happening around the world, so any resulting military actions or trade deals are going to feel just as arbitrary to the player as if the machine were creating those events randomly.  I agree that more natural politics, for example getting trade caravans from fortresses instead of civilization capitals, would improve the game, but I think you need a player-centric approach rather than a completely realistic one. 
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GoblinCookie

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Re: 'Political arc' and some worldgen suggestions
« Reply #4 on: July 14, 2015, 09:12:53 am »

I am not totally sure about action performing and will not argue here. I exaggerated with binary relations but you surely can say that they seem like it with this 'cold war' having absolutely no effect in game.

I said to trash civilizations part and use them only as starting point but keep their mechanics for group. I have no idea why you mock me when Toady said himself that most of the existing systems are placeholders and various reworks are possible (sometime in the future) and yes - these changes and tweaks should improve the game and aren't pointless.

The cold war state causes folks to give you dialogue and missions related to the cold war state.  It also causes individuals to refuse to talk to you but not attack.

There is something that you must avoid doing if you making a game or mod to a game.  You must not create substandard mechanics that you then throw out to replace with slightly better mechanics, because that way you do not make progress towards developing the game but instead get stuck doing the maximum amount of work every time for a less than a total amount of gain.  The amount of work needed to replace the whole mechanic is still 100% while the new mechanic is only 10% better than the old mechanic. 

It is also unclear exactly how your proposed replacement even improves the game.  It replaces a setup that is realistic and makes sense, that is having a number of local governments and an overarching central government with either an uber-centralised setup by which multiple sites belong to a single undivided government or an uber-decentralised setup by which all sites are totally independant of eachother, answering to no higher authority.  Not only do you propose that present game mechanics be overturned, you propose they be replaced with mechanics that are decidely less flexible, neccesitating extremes by their very nature.

You are partially right here. You forgot i said about camps which don't really need many resources to set up. They can be transformed into something else by simply using local resources. I wrote about relations between groups from different sites in another part of text (alliance) which also says about willingness to share and a chance to quickly become a single group (with 2 sites now) again.

They also do not create much in the way of resources.  Camps therefore need a constant supply of supplies to sustain them while they build themselves up, supplies that must be provided to them by the host settlement on a constant basis.  They also need capital, the question was never about how much capital would be provided but why anyone would give them any at all, especially when they are enemies of the government.

Say the camp needs 50 tents.  Why would any sane settlement have their manager put in an order for 50 tents, wasting all that valuable cloth just to make tents so that a bunch of dwarves that want to leave and deprive the settlement of their labour can do so?  A central government on the other hand would do just that, it can demand that all 10 settlements produce 5 tents and hand them over to it.  It would use the resulting 50 tents to produce another settlement because that would allow it to eventually acquire 55 tents, making the central goverment more powerful. 

Here we get to the rub.  Having a central government that is higher than the government of the site is a prerequistive of expansion, if all we have is the site government then there will never be anything other than the site government.  Replication neccesitates something like the civ-level government exist, because only a civ-level government benefits from expansion of the number of sites as they will all belong to it.

They aren't really in the game. Civilizations wage wars because of differences in their ethics and that's it. (I exclude fortress mode from this.)

No the given reason in the world-gen is actually almost a deception.  Civilizations go to war because of poor relations, differences in ethics contribute to poor relations.  Other things, such as long periods of peace improve relations, which is why you will often see the world 'settle down' and become less violent over time during world-gen even though ethics cannot change at the moment. 

No they don't.
Groups don't send caravans. It is only a single caravan per year from 1 civilization not group. They also include everything civilization has access to not some particular groups.
The same thing for military but also they don't help you forces to defend but only to siege you. (You know that caravan guards are meant to protect caravan and not drive out invaders.)
The same for rumors. 

Worse than that.  It is one caravan per year from each entity type, so if you have multiple elf civilizations you will not get multiple elf caravans. 

How things work outside of fortress mode however is anything but that.  Groups exclusively trade with eachother, ignoring the civilizations they belong to, the setup is that major settlements trade with other major settlements (they are defined as markets in the code) and minor settlements trade with only one major settlement.  Given that the caravan arc is due to happen at some point, eventually fortress mode will probably end up working on that basis, we will trade with a number of other major settlements and also with nearby minor settlements as well.  The actual settlements will send caravans across the map to eachother, loaded with goods.

1. It's not cheating but getting world you want to have. Some people want perfect environment, others specific wars and sites that changed owners in their history. Quick.

2. That's why i want this to be optional and not used outside advanced worldgen.

3. I have no idea how hard it is to change. It was better to suggest it then not anyway.

4. I never saw in wiki you can allow civs to make towers. Did you mean that necromancers from any civilization can make them? You are right about the trading. That could be fixed with economy arc though.

1. For those things we have wordgen settings.  What you are talking about is rerolling the dice because we do not like the result; that is cheating.

2. Fine.

3. All minor sites promote into major sites if the right conditions are met (they cannot find any nearby major settlements to trade with).  That is what makes the idea you are proposing extremely unlikely to be worth the devs time.  It would better that they press on in breaking the sites down into their elements and then allowing us to make custom sites using those elements than they add in mechanics so that forest retreats can potentially become towns in a 'modded' game.

4. I meant that civs create towers, not that the towers then belong to the civ or can be defined as their site.  So yes I meant that necromancers from any civilization can make them, but the tower government use the items and other stuff from the civilization those necromancers came from. 
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Bumber

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Re: 'Political arc' and some worldgen suggestions
« Reply #5 on: July 15, 2015, 04:32:26 am »

They also do not create much in the way of resources.  Camps therefore need a constant supply of supplies to sustain them while they build themselves up, supplies that must be provided to them by the host settlement on a constant basis.  They also need capital, the question was never about how much capital would be provided but why anyone would give them any at all, especially when they are enemies of the government.

Say the camp needs 50 tents...
Then you build your own tents out of hide and plant fiber, find something you can trade with the other civs (or they make an investment,) or you try to make do without?

It stands to reason if you've made a new enemy, then you might have made a few allies. I'm sure the humans and elves would seize the opportunity to create trade arrangements with an emerging settlement that doesn't have the bargaining power of the mountainhomes, yet soon will be able to provide them with dwarven metal and crafts.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2015, 04:43:03 am by Bumber »
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Re: 'Political arc' and some worldgen suggestions
« Reply #6 on: July 15, 2015, 10:55:46 am »

Then you build your own tents out of hide and plant fiber, find something you can trade with the other civs (or they make an investment,) or you try to make do without?

It stands to reason if you've made a new enemy, then you might have made a few allies. I'm sure the humans and elves would seize the opportunity to create trade arrangements with an emerging settlement that doesn't have the bargaining power of the mountainhomes, yet soon will be able to provide them with dwarven metal and crafts.

How can you make tents if nobody gives you the tools to do that? 
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Bumber

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Re: 'Political arc' and some worldgen suggestions
« Reply #7 on: July 15, 2015, 09:02:31 pm »

Then you build your own tents out of hide and plant fiber, find something you can trade with the other civs (or they make an investment,) or you try to make do without?

It stands to reason if you've made a new enemy, then you might have made a few allies. I'm sure the humans and elves would seize the opportunity to create trade arrangements with an emerging settlement that doesn't have the bargaining power of the mountainhomes, yet soon will be able to provide them with dwarven metal and crafts.

How can you make tents if nobody gives you the tools to do that?
You either make the tools on site, trade for them, or bring them with you. Surely a carpenter thinks to bring his tools (by which I mean beard because there aren't any yet) with him as he's leaving the fort? Less so for a smith's heavy anvil.

Need I remind you that single pick embark is also a thing? As I said, you can make do without.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2015, 09:10:42 pm by Bumber »
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Reading his name would trigger it. Thinking of him would trigger it. No other circumstances would trigger it- it was strictly related to the concept of Bill Clinton entering the conscious mind.

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GoblinCookie

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Re: 'Political arc' and some worldgen suggestions
« Reply #8 on: July 16, 2015, 12:04:32 pm »

How can you make tents if nobody gives you the tools to do that?

You either make the tools on site, trade for them, or bring them with you. Surely a carpenter thinks to bring his tools (by which I mean beard because there aren't any yet) with him as he's leaving the fort? Less so for a smith's heavy anvil.

Need I remind you that single pick embark is also a thing? As I said, you can make do without.

Until the game gets more complex you kinda win.  The principle however stands.
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JesterHell696

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Re: 'Political arc' and some worldgen suggestions
« Reply #9 on: August 06, 2015, 03:52:32 am »


-Civilization re roll – when worldgenning it sometimes happens that the world is looking great but civilizations are too spread or too concentrated – in this case simply re rolling history would fix this.


This is already possible if you use advanced worldgen, if you go into adv-parameters and you'll see the following parameters

use seed      yes/random        <--   if random each time you generate a world it'll be a different map -/- if yes it'll always generate the same map but megabeasts and civs will be different.
seed           H6b3iHDcIeKew    <--  this is what controls the generation of the world map itself.

the other seeds that control other aspects of world gen and are pretty self explanatory.

history seed
name seed
creature seed


1. For those things we have wordgen settings.  What you are talking about is rerolling the dice because we do not like the result; that is cheating.


I would say that in you can't "cheat" during worldgen as the game give you the option to export world info while you can still able to abort worldgen and in my opinion the game doe'nt start until you start your adventure/embark.

I think "re-roll" cheating would be using dfhack to kill DF when your adventurer dies to a "lucky shot" or a slade titan attacks your fort and kill all your dwarfs and you want to "re-roll" the results.

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"The long-term goal is to create a fantasy world simulator in which it is possible to take part in a rich history, occupying a variety of roles through the course of several games." Bay 12 DF development page

"My stance is that Dwarf Fortress is first and foremost a simulation and that balance is a secondary objective that is always secondary to it being a simulation while at the same time cannot be ignored completely." -Neonivek

GoblinCookie

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Re: 'Political arc' and some worldgen suggestions
« Reply #10 on: August 06, 2015, 08:33:10 am »

I would say that in you can't "cheat" during worldgen as the game give you the option to export world info while you can still able to abort worldgen and in my opinion the game doe'nt start until you start your adventure/embark.

I think "re-roll" cheating would be using dfhack to kill DF when your adventurer dies to a "lucky shot" or a slade titan attacks your fort and kill all your dwarfs and you want to "re-roll" the results.

Worldgen is very much part of the game.  It is actually very much a game in itself where all manner of things happen; reading through legends mode is also often great fun. 

Being able to constantly reroll the dice in order to get the conditions exactly right is hardely any different that rerolling when your adventurer gets killed by a lucky shot.  In both cases you are rerolling the dice to get a circumstance you want as opposed to one that you do not.
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Bumber

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Re: 'Political arc' and some worldgen suggestions
« Reply #11 on: August 06, 2015, 03:12:36 pm »

Worldgen is very much part of the game.  It is actually very much a game in itself where all manner of things happen; reading through legends mode is also often great fun. 

Being able to constantly reroll the dice in order to get the conditions exactly right is hardely any different that rerolling when your adventurer gets killed by a lucky shot.  In both cases you are rerolling the dice to get a circumstance you want as opposed to one that you do not.
Except you don't have any control over world gen once it starts.
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Reading his name would trigger it. Thinking of him would trigger it. No other circumstances would trigger it- it was strictly related to the concept of Bill Clinton entering the conscious mind.

THE xTROLL FUR SOCKx RUSE WAS A........... DISTACTION        the carp HAVE the wagon

A wizard has turned you into a wagon. This was inevitable (Y/y)?

JesterHell696

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Re: 'Political arc' and some worldgen suggestions
« Reply #12 on: August 06, 2015, 07:35:36 pm »


Worldgen is very much part of the game.  It is actually very much a game in itself where all manner of things happen; reading through legends mode is also often great fun. 

Being able to constantly reroll the dice in order to get the conditions exactly right is hardely any different that rerolling when your adventurer gets killed by a lucky shot.  In both cases you are rerolling the dice to get a circumstance you want as opposed to one that you do not.


I going to go out on a limb here and say your a fan DnD?

I'll be honest I've never been a fan of that game system but I have played it once with PnP and multiple time as a CRPG, now I'll use an analogy as to why I think re-rolling the world is not cheating although I do admit freely that it is re-rolling.


So if a DnD character takes a feat that enable them to Re-roll under one specific condition the use of that re-roll is not cheating because that is its intended.

So in dwarf fortress you can export the world pop and site info after world history has finished generating and then abort world gen after checking that info in the export file, to me this suggests that its intended to allow the player to re-roll the world as many times as they want.

Now if you compare that to "re-rolling" a result in adventure/fortress mode where you have to use an external 3rd party program to "kill" DF as the game only allows one "active" save in any world a and auto saves when you lose.

I can't see how you view them as equal, one is in the games hard-code and the other is an external program made by a 3rd party not affiliated with the developer, at the very best/worst re-rolling world gen is like being a munchin power player who abuses the in game rules with out violating them "technically the rules state I can" while re-rolling adventure/fortress mode is like fudging your roll to try and trick the DM "look a natural 20!".


I also think legend mode is great fun, but I think of legend mode as just a way to get more detailed information about the world not as a another type of game-play.

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"The long-term goal is to create a fantasy world simulator in which it is possible to take part in a rich history, occupying a variety of roles through the course of several games." Bay 12 DF development page

"My stance is that Dwarf Fortress is first and foremost a simulation and that balance is a secondary objective that is always secondary to it being a simulation while at the same time cannot be ignored completely." -Neonivek

GoblinCookie

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Re: 'Political arc' and some worldgen suggestions
« Reply #13 on: August 07, 2015, 09:00:54 am »

I going to go out on a limb here and say your a fan DnD?

I'll be honest I've never been a fan of that game system but I have played it once with PnP and multiple time as a CRPG, now I'll use an analogy as to why I think re-rolling the world is not cheating although I do admit freely that it is re-rolling.


So if a DnD character takes a feat that enable them to Re-roll under one specific condition the use of that re-roll is not cheating because that is its intended.

So in dwarf fortress you can export the world pop and site info after world history has finished generating and then abort world gen after checking that info in the export file, to me this suggests that its intended to allow the player to re-roll the world as many times as they want.

Now if you compare that to "re-rolling" a result in adventure/fortress mode where you have to use an external 3rd party program to "kill" DF as the game only allows one "active" save in any world a and auto saves when you lose.

I can't see how you view them as equal, one is in the games hard-code and the other is an external program made by a 3rd party not affiliated with the developer, at the very best/worst re-rolling world gen is like being a munchin power player who abuses the in game rules with out violating them "technically the rules state I can" while re-rolling adventure/fortress mode is like fudging your roll to try and trick the DM "look a natural 20!".

I also think legend mode is great fun, but I think of legend mode as just a way to get more detailed information about the world not as a another type of game-play.

If we use the date from the old world we have exported to create a "new" world then  then we are not rerolling anything but reusing the data we have already rolled. 

Legends mode is perhaps more akin to reading a book than gameplay, but then reading can be part of gameplay can't it?  One of the more annoying things is that you cannot access legends mode when you have a save active.
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JesterHell696

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Re: 'Political arc' and some worldgen suggestions
« Reply #14 on: August 07, 2015, 08:22:30 pm »


If we use the date from the old world we have exported to create a "new" world then  then we are not rerolling anything but reusing the data we have already rolled. 

Legends mode is perhaps more akin to reading a book than gameplay, but then reading can be part of gameplay can't it?  One of the more annoying things is that you cannot access legends mode when you have a save active.

I didn't say use data from the old world to create a new world in my last post, I did however say to OP in my first post that you can use Seed info to generate "new worlds" with the same geography but a different history, now what I meant in my last post was that you can check the exported data for information that might be important to you, for example if you want to play in a world where dwarven civilization is almost gone you can check the pop info and say "yes! only 900 dwarfs left alive." or "damn! over 24000 dwarfs left... best regen."

I also know it is possible to reroll a new world using old data, when you export worldgen info one of the files is called "region-world_gen_param" this file contains all the advance world gen info including the 4 seeds used to generate the world, you can copy paste this info to the bottom of the world_gen file in the init folder and "re" generate the same world.

here is an example.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)


I know that if you only use the first seed that you'll get the same geography but different civilizations, megabeasts and history and even if you use all four of these to generate a new world you can still get a world that is  different from the original template by changing other parameters like amount of civilizations, megebeasts, secrets, good/evil biomes or the world age, all of which will result in a different world, I think its like generating a "alternate reality".

I think we mostly agree about legends mode in that its not necessary for gameplay but it certain can help give things context they otherwise wouldn't have, its why I copy my world rename it "copy" and if I want to check legends I just save my game and open the copy's legends mode, I would call this cheating as it's not possible "in game" and can allow my adventurer or fortress management more knowledge then they would realistically have access to.
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"The long-term goal is to create a fantasy world simulator in which it is possible to take part in a rich history, occupying a variety of roles through the course of several games." Bay 12 DF development page

"My stance is that Dwarf Fortress is first and foremost a simulation and that balance is a secondary objective that is always secondary to it being a simulation while at the same time cannot be ignored completely." -Neonivek