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[Starver]

Some thoughts being transplanted from the .13 release thread, where embarkation might or might be something that should be allowed within another civilisation's newly sprawled-upon territory.

indeed. it would just mean they would get pissed off, and attack you fairly quickly. Before embarking on a area where you would get attacked and become automatically in war with the race, you should get an embark warning.

idea: Choosing to embark within a pre-settled civilisation's bounds means a small cost of tribute for the initial area of settlement (to be taken out of the pre-settlement preparation budget).  Maybe recurring per season, necessitating tradegoods production (if not active trader involvement) to be able to fulfill the requests of the original locals, or risking conflict.  (Option to not pay original settling fee would mean being met at embarkation with resistance.  Would be similar to a Fortress Reclaim situation, perhaps.)

It'd be based upon the allowed/actual footprint of the fort.  Certainly at the surface (which might be a small entryway and some surrounding construction/landscaping efforts).  The concept of "mineral rights" might also play a part in the rental requested by more savvy landlord civilisations, as might the very real risk of a purposeful land-grab, by dint of deliberate undermining.

Maybe the rights to fish, dig into expose veins, set up external farms, enclose further areas with defences and tap into overground water-supplies to could each be independently granted allowances agreed upon striking Earth and for which minor expansions (diplomatically discussed, before or after the fact) on your part would mean some raising of the ground-rent.  Sudden landscape engineering efforts (or 'accidents') could turn the local civ against you in one fell swoop without the option to buy them off.

(Advanced: pre-existing local civ asks if there's any way you could alter the landscape to their benefit, e.g. expanding a local lake or even creating an aquifer-fed reservoir in a dry area...  And if you do this to their satisfaction, all credit to you (monetarily, or diplomatically), but they maintain ownership of the area.  Not that you couldn't have engineered in your own 'improvements' into the design, with the specs...  Not sure how exactly you'd encode this all, but I have some ideas...)


This would all integrate into existing political/military future aims...  Even at the current level of invasion implementations, with goblins attacking the human-owned area of which you are effectively a tennant micronation, you may not be the target of the invasion (beyond any easy targetting of the kind that already goes for caravans passing through your territory), but may be expected to act to defend the area (credit to the relationship) or might act to aid the invaders, passively or otherwise, against the locals (giving a relationship debt).  Be overly successful in actively aiding the raiders (with new military capability to target specific creatures, attacking defenders seems easy to do, and such actions would be easy to track and account for in code) and the invading civilisation may hold off going for your forces and adopt you as a standing tennant (albeit on possibly vastly changed terms).

Seal yourself off behind a minimum-footprint entryway, and you may well be such a minor annoyance that the local civ tolerates you.  But if they have reason to believe you're causing trouble, there'd be a tipping-point when they are left with no option but to come knocking, shouting over the parapets/through the walled-off entrance that really would like to discuss things with you, and/or hire suitable mercenaries (flyers, diggers, building destroyers) to be the vanguard of their retaliation and quite literally open up the way for 'discussions', of one kind or another.

Oh, and if there's a non-nomadic cavern civilisation sharing a vertical column of territory with a surface-dwelling civilisation, that you break into, you may have to juggle negotiations with each, according to your needs and your own demands upon their particular horizontal slive of 'sprawl'.

Might also give a significantly increased dimension to the concept of trade, when even if constant trade isn't made, seasonal 'market meetings' would be possible at each designated point between oneself and any/all locals.  At the expense of direct yearly trader wagons, as they'd switch to more profitable long-distance haulage (although that caravan being sent from the landlord people itself may also make your market a stopping-off point at the start/end of their yearly wanderings).  It seems to me that it would be a natural thing to be able to send surface crops to a subterranean civ with a penchant for sun-grown food, and in return supply something equally exotic of a cavern variety (e.g. wood-like products) in the other direction.

Yes, as dwarfs that straddle each world, you can create a tower-cap farm of your own within the intervening raw rock column, but the non-digging cavernites have access to more than the original embarkation square of cavern space, so could bring into the field huge amounts of subterranean wood/wood-like-stuff.  Ditto your own measly above-ground farm area and the surrounding civ's territorial extent and (it appears) existing farm capacity.

Anyway, much too much speak, perhaps very little immediate practicality.  So I'll just commend the ideas to the world for more casual consideration, instead.

[Jake]

Sound ideas, but there should definitely be some civilisation-related variations in what you can and can't do. An elven forest retreat is unlikely to care much about mining but cut up very stroppy if you start deforesting the area, for example.
And embarking near an actual village should open up the possibility of trade with its inhabitants, or using each other's amenities for payment in cash or kind. You could even require permission from the local lord to build your own mill or alehouse, with a conflict resulting if you do so without a license.

[Starver]

Sound ideas, but there should definitely be some civilisation-related variations in what you can and can't do. An elven forest retreat is unlikely to care much about mining but cut up very stroppy if you start deforesting the area, for example.
And embarking near an actual village should open up the possibility of trade with its inhabitants, or using each other's amenities for payment in cash or kind. You could even require permission from the local lord to build your own mill or alehouse, with a conflict resulting if you do so without a license.

Indeed.  I probably should have "etc"ed the bit in the 3rd (proper) paragraph about independent rights.  Elves care a lot about trees, humans might care a lot about access to (and especially abstraction of) water, other dwarfs would jealously guard the mineral wealth, that sort of thing.  And care less about the underground, the number of animals you kill and the height of any tower you build, respectively.  (Details to be tuned.)  That way, expanding sideways/upwards/downards into or across civilisation-important resources is high cost, possibly even impossible to do.  But some expansions have a minor cost, and others could be essentially 'unmetered access'.  With racial preferences, but perhaps modified.  e.g. humans in an area with few trees could hold them as sacred (in a "for own use, only" way) and undefilable by that darn dwarven troupe, reacting as Elves in a forest would with a whole quadrant suddenly turned to lumber.

And I like the alehouse (or at least some form of economic supply of alcohol/other goods) licensing idea.  Maybe not a prime driver, but flavour.  Not sure if a dwarven mill would necessarily compete directly with a human one, but if a dwarven mill was processing wheat bought from the humans and then selling the flour back, then a trade sanction on that might occur.

[Jake]

Historically (read: from my imperfect recollections of reading The Pillars Of The Earth a few months ago), all mills had to be authorised by and pay a hefty tithe to the local lord, though in practice retroactive planning permission could usually be had for the right price. This wasn't true for alehouses until much later, but seeing as intoxication is going to be implemented in the next big release I can see a case for the Elves wanting to regulate alcohol consumption.