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[Sowelu]

Right...So at year 0, all these various civs suddenly *FLOOF* appear out of thin air.  Maybe it's like Civilization, and the history-less wandering nomads spontaneously unite behind their own leaders.  Maybe it's like Unicorn Jelly, and they arrive through dimensional gates and start adapting to the new world.  Either way it works alright.

But what happened before all that?  Well, we know that the Powers already existed, and the megabeasts/semimegabeasts already existed.  Were there other races before our five main ones?  Did the Powers have civilizations?  Were the Gods more active?

Lotsa people seem to ask for things like old catacombs as HFS under plains or something.  It might be neat, but who would have built them?  Any cities or civilizations would have been long-dead ruins by now, but they still might be fun to find...

Dealing with only humans, elves, goblins and kobolds for decades would suddenly make things much more interesting if you broke into catacombs with pictures of lizardmen on the walls.  With the occasional weapons made out of some unknown material that is no longer forgeable even by dwarvenkind...a little better than steel, not nearly so good as adamantine.

In any case, I'm thinking it might be fun to let ancient and dead civilizations sprawl across the map and then all die out, long long before the modern day arrives.  It could be greatly simplified and sped up--Less hist fig data might be required.  Stories and legends may, perhaps, never even be translatable.  Run it ten years at a time, because it's all fuzzy anyway.

Just think it might be entertaining...even more so if the landscape itself can change over time (growth of forests, deforestation, the creation of mountains by the Powers).  But this is a long-distant power goal.

[Tylui]

Oh... That's a very nice idea.  Actually, that would be kinda kewl.  What if there weren't ANY hist figs for it, so basically, the adventurer would have to figure out what went down on his own, without the help of looking back at legends.

[penguinofhonor]

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[Dasleah]

Urist McUselessdwarf Cancels Hunt: Eaten by Dinosaur.

Not that far into BCE, huh?   :roll:

[Sowelu]

Okay, yeah.  So some important hist figs, like the King of Atlantis or whatever.  But most of the hist figs never get generated in the first place, since they're guaranteed to get abstracted out.  Or something.

[Neonivek]

quote: Right...So at year 0, all these various civs suddenly *FLOOF* appear out of thin air

Actually... as much of a joke as you make it seem... that is EXACTLY what happened... perhaps not as in "Poof" but in the sense that 1 year before 0... nothing was there (or at least nothing alive).

[Lyrax]

I don't mind civs popping out of nowhere.  Really, what good is ancient ANCIENT history gonna do us?

[Wooty]

I like the idea of having the worlgen pick 5 races from the BC years (lizardmen, frogmen, azakabbazan monkey king warriors, antlions, whatever), and putting a few trace ruins or engravings in ruins or deep underground - but generating all that stuff is kind of pointless.

[Jetman123]

Perhaps give these places civilizations of their own, but make them much smaller and more isolated? "Minor powers" if you will that have been upstaged by humans and the like.

[Align]

I always looked at it as realized common creation mythos, where In the Beginning, there was nothing except <god>, who desired a material world for <reason>, and made one.

[Bricktop]

I think this would be a great idea. Any prehistoric civs should be extremely abstract, with very few hist-figs at all.

This would basically be brining back the old undead ruins, but fleshing them out a little and adding cool engravings. I think it would be great to do.

If there was an extremely abstracted civ-developemt stage for the negative years (-1 etc), with the entire populations becoming undead at the beggining of year 0 (possibly with a few generated engravings from around then showing what the 'disaster' was that supposedly killed them. People starving or burning or whatever.

This would then mean we could have a few types of ruins on the world map, haunted by the undead. There could be the above-ground ruins, which would be like the old DF ruins. Possible styles for these ruins could by mayan-style pyramids, groups of enterable burial mounds (like some british barrow mounds) and possibly some sort of towery settlement. These could all be inhabitied by the undead, with an undead leader who would be equipped with good quality armour.

Another type of ruin could be the catacombs that people are always asking for. These would basically be a sort of ruin that is completely buried, with an army of undead trapped inside. Again, there could be an undead leader equipped with good quality armour and weapons and stuff as a sort of 'boss' to fight. These could also have a few 'treasure rooms' which would be full of gold crafts etc and, to make these have a good reward upon being cleaned out, there could also be an artefact inside. The artefacts in these ruins would be generated in worldgen and would always be worth a large amount.

[Cthulhu]

I like the idea, I somewhat don't like the idea of having undead in the ruins.  For some reason it kind of ruins the sense of mystery.

[Neonivek]

quote: I always looked at it as realized common creation mythos, where In the Beginning, there was nothing except <god>, who desired a material world for <reason>, and made one.

In this case the gods seem to be dirrectly tied to their domains to the point where they cannot act outside them (Yay Toady notes). The Elf Gods being the most limited seeing as they actually have an area of influence. They are very much limited in what they can do to the material world.

Most likely the gods came into existance and tried to take their claim in the world.

Ps. In the list of my favorite V2 arcs... Wizard is in first and God/Power is in second.

[Fieari]

I'd rather it be that catacombs are built by actual civs, and then get abandoned during wars, and fail to be reclaimed.  The only Before Creation stuff I want should be supernatural-- like the demon caves.

[Abyssal Squid]

Beatman civilizations would be cool, but it makes no sense to have them exist before the start of time.  You could achieve the same effect by seeding the world with a ton of beastman civs, each with a lot of population, but having them die out as soon as any "real" race declares war on them, and maybe pushing back the end of worldgen.  Let feral beastmen survive in their native habitats, too, so they never die out completely.