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Author Topic: Base starting dwarves/resources on strength of civ  (Read 1279 times)

GlyphGryph

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Base starting dwarves/resources on strength of civ
« on: May 27, 2009, 07:42:07 pm »

Okay, the ideas basically in the title - make the amount of resources (or even dwarves) you start with based on the civ you select. Play the huge rich civ, and of course they'll send out well supplied settlers.

Play the tiny civ under constant siege, and maybe 4 dwarves a pick and some plump helmets is all they can afford to sponsor your trip.

Even better, once we can retire forts rather than abandon them, that would add to the strength of a given civ - meaning the next deploy will give us more stuff and settlers. Our aventurers can get rid of threats to the civ allowing it to grow. (of course, that one requires us to be able to reactivate world gen time, kind of).

This means it will REALLY feel like you're 'playing the civ', and really get a feeling that what your accomplishing is having a meaningful impact on future games.
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Derakon

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Re: Base starting dwarves/resources on strength of civ
« Reply #1 on: May 27, 2009, 08:43:17 pm »

The problem here being that civ strength is not something the player can have any impact on, as a general rule. Your first fort gets a choice between maybe three civs, more likely two or just one. What if you want to play a fortress that gets a forge set up ASAP to start churning out the steel blocks for your Massive Citadel of Magma Doom? Are you supposed to just re-generate worlds until you get a civ that's rich enough to afford sending you off with an anvil?

In other words, difficulty should be something that players can choose, not something that is inflicted on them. You can make the game harder by embarking on a magma-free glacier, by deciding to bring odd starting loadouts, by refusing to trade...but you can't meaningfully affect a civilization's wealth during history.
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Idiom

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Re: Base starting dwarves/resources on strength of civ
« Reply #2 on: May 27, 2009, 10:25:38 pm »

I believe it is one of the future goals that none of the things in the game appear out of thin air. I think that was originally about immigrants, but I do think it should be applied to items as well.

I do like this idea because it would give each game more flavor. Each world would have a more unique challenge.
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GlyphGryph

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Re: Base starting dwarves/resources on strength of civ
« Reply #3 on: May 27, 2009, 11:05:41 pm »

In other words, difficulty should be something that players can choose, not something that is inflicted on them. You can make the game harder by embarking on a magma-free glacier, by deciding to bring odd starting loadouts, by refusing to trade...but you can't meaningfully affect a civilization's wealth during history.

Which is why I suggested this mostly take place after you CAN affect a civ's wealth, which is going to be added sooner or later.

Even without that though, the solution is usually let worldgen run a bit longer - boom, bigger civs with lots of supplies to send your way. If you decide to play 50 years after the world is born though, you're really going to have to bootstrap yourself up. For most games and most civs, it will be about what we've got now, though - its just the outliers that would become more interesting.
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Pilsu

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Re: Base starting dwarves/resources on strength of civ
« Reply #4 on: May 28, 2009, 02:38:34 am »

It's all well and good but it gets a bit iffy when you start adding custom civs for challenge and suddenly dwarven civs aren't guaranteed prosperity. My human civs tend to either die or wipe out the elves completely with little in between for instance and that's with very little modding. We really need more control over the worldgen if civs' prosperity will start having a real impact on your embarkation. It's already irritating enough to not have access to flux just because the Syrups of Bellowing was placed on a volcanic region and can't expand beyond one mountain range
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Derakon

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Re: Base starting dwarves/resources on strength of civ
« Reply #5 on: May 28, 2009, 11:48:31 am »

Which is why I suggested this mostly take place after you CAN affect a civ's wealth, which is going to be added sooner or later.
The only words I saw to that effect were that abandoned fortresses should add to the controlling civs wealth. This does nothing for the first fortress you play in a given world, and many of us only ever play one fortress per world.
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