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[Inarius]

For example, would it be possible for the player to become a king as an adventurer, start a war with a civilisation, retire, make a fort to build an army to aid it's civilisation in said war, AND have the adventurer Monarch migrate to your fort?

I support this demand/question.
It would be good to know.

[Caldfir]

With the 1400 technology cutoff are there plans for platinum, aluminium, bismuth, and nickel silver what with them being on the other side of it?

How Toady sees it is that there are some aspects of Dwarven society which is more advanced then the 1400 cut off. For example Dwarves have certain cuts more advanced then the 1400s.

Though I will admit my Chemist friend says that natural aluminium is actually outright nonexistant.

I would like to see Toady chime in on this regardless.  I've poked around wikipedia and compiled the information surrounding the issues here for the convenience of forumgoers. 

Platinum does exist in vary rare native desposits naturally.  Platinum is simply a rare element, and while it was not identified before 1400, there were no actual physical technical limitations to just picking it up, should you be astonishingly lucky enough to find some.  I would agree that it is substantially more abundant in Dwarf Fortress than it ought to be (especially when you chance upon a castle made entirely of native platinum). 

Have to agree about the aluminum.  Unless you can do at least some chemistry, there is simply no aluminum to be smelted anywhere.  Even today, aluminum production is prohibitively costly in terms of electricity, and frankly it is somewhat surprising how common it is, given how inconvenient it is to produce. 

Bismuth has been around since ancient times, but was not identified as a unique metal until the 16th century (may have been mistaken for tin or zinc).  In my own mind I'm fine with the metal being in the game as-is, since it was in use since antiquity, and I don't know how Toady would simulate mistaking one metal for another (though once some kind of fantastical generated metals get into the game, perhaps something sensible would become available). 

Nickel-Silver, while not produced until the 19th century, again nothing about its composition would make its production at an earlier time impossible, however it would possibly be more appropriate to use cupronickel in stead, since cupronickel looks the same and was available since antiquity.  As an added bonus, cupronickel is corrosion-resistant in seawater, so if that's ever a thing that gets into the game, it would be a good idea for this alloy to be available. 

[Neonivek]

I would like to see Toady chime in on this regardless

Ohh by all means I am not Footkerchiefing where I'll respond to your question and not answer it forcing you to ask again later. I didn't mean that as a "No Toady answer" deal.

[MasterMorality]

Dwarf Fortress updates:

"well, it's been half a year. I've 'touched' on everything going in by now..."

In another developer you'd be like "You only touched!?"

DF is like "Jesus Christ, there's more!?"

It's amazing.

[Knight Otu]

I was referencing two very specific things under one concept with my question, which was not addressed by these answers.

1) Urist Libash nailing his 95 thesises of why elf artifacts are not acceptable for trade on the meeting hall door.
2) Urist the Urist declaring all the old teachings outdated, and now all religious rules have changed.

Religious schisms.. Where one religion becomes two. There are two kinds of historical schims. You have the one where there is a dramatic change from the old to the new (Judiasm to Islam or Catholicism, for example) and you have divergance from doctrine (The protestant reformation being a good example)

I'm thinking if you have multiple claimants to a throne, maybe the framework for it will be applied to religion too. Or maybe not, because of the real danger of real life controversy. It's greater fun as you spread your religion to other civilizations and start to have a large area of uniform religion, and then one civ gets all church of england up in there.

There's this old core:

Core63, SUCCESSION, ASSOCIATED CONFLICTS AND SCHISMS, (Future): First of all, succession for positions needs to occur in play, so that dead liaisons are replaced, as well as dead monarchs. Then the process needs to be made messier all around. Wars over succession, schisms over religious disagreements, etc., starting from world gen and coming into regular play. In dwarf mode, you might be involved on one side or the other, directly or indirectly, relying on more involved diplomacy and army code than we currently have, and adventure mode can also gain a lot from such conflicts.

And this old power goal:

PowerGoal86, THE PROPHET OF AA, (Future): The Church of Aa has become decadent and gifts to the deity have waned, and the priests have been filling their coffers. You appear and claim to be a prophet and say that Aa has abandoned the Church. The priests scoff at you, but you perform a miracle, and there is a schism in the Church and much violence.

[Naryar]

With the 1400 technology cutoff are there plans for platinum, aluminium, bismuth, and nickel silver what with them being on the other side of it?

How Toady sees it is that there are some aspects of Dwarven society which is more advanced then the 1400 cut off. For example Dwarves have certain cuts more advanced then the 1400s.

Though I will admit my Chemist friend says that natural aluminium is actually outright nonexistant.

I would like to see Toady chime in on this regardless.  I've poked around wikipedia and compiled the information surrounding the issues here for the convenience of forumgoers. 

Platinum does exist in vary rare native desposits naturally.  Platinum is simply a rare element, and while it was not identified before 1400, there were no actual physical technical limitations to just picking it up, should you be astonishingly lucky enough to find some.  I would agree that it is substantially more abundant in Dwarf Fortress than it ought to be (especially when you chance upon a castle made entirely of native platinum). 

Have to agree about the aluminum.  Unless you can do at least some chemistry, there is simply no aluminum to be smelted anywhere.  Even today, aluminum production is prohibitively costly in terms of electricity, and frankly it is somewhat surprising how common it is, given how inconvenient it is to produce. 

Bismuth has been around since ancient times, but was not identified as a unique metal until the 16th century (may have been mistaken for tin or zinc).  In my own mind I'm fine with the metal being in the game as-is, since it was in use since antiquity, and I don't know how Toady would simulate mistaking one metal for another (though once some kind of fantastical generated metals get into the game, perhaps something sensible would become available). 

Nickel-Silver, while not produced until the 19th century, again nothing about its composition would make its production at an earlier time impossible, however it would possibly be more appropriate to use cupronickel in stead, since cupronickel looks the same and was available since antiquity.  As an added bonus, cupronickel is corrosion-resistant in seawater, so if that's ever a thing that gets into the game, it would be a good idea for this alloy to be available.

Yeah... but they're dwarves. They naturally dig deep and live underground, hence they should be far more familliar with ores and magma and coal than 14th century humans, which only very occasionally mine.

Familiarity with these implies discovery, hence dwarves should have far more metallurgy tech than 14th century humans.

More on the subject at hand : is the "will dodge anywhere, even on a 15-z cliff" problem solved ? I'm getting sick of my dwarves dodging into magma moats.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

that's a feature, not a bug. fighting is messy, and you don't allways look where you're stepping

[FearfulJesuit]

Seven months and nine months later...

...the end is finally in sight.

I'm giving it a tentative arrival date of Valentine's Day to March 1st, and now I'm just waiting for the DF Talk...

I'm gonna be honest, although I'm excited for this release, it's mostly due to the trees, since I rarely play Adventure mode (though that could change). I can't wait to see what Toady decides to do next.

To make this post worthwhile: Toady, how does pairing people up in worldgen work? Does it just randomly pair up different-sex friends, if friend relationships are even tracked in worldgen? And how does it decide who can be friends with whom, if that's how that works?

[CaptainArchmage]

Challenge: Get the release out before Valentine's Day. It looks like some crazy stuff - like America defaulting - may be happening afterwards.

I see Toady says he has touched on everything, but we haven't seen anything on kobold sites or caves. Are those just going to be done right before the release?

@Availability of metals: Firstly, metal abundance is different in DF. One boulder of ore can produce enough gold to build a four-tile long wall, which is 4 or 8 meters long in conversion to metric. There's a lot more of it too.

The availability of platinum and aluminium provides some more variety. The fact that in this game, dwarves can use magma for smelting indicates that you cannot just restrict this game strictly to technology available up to the 1400s. Its a different world, and crazy stuff happens in it.

[Torchy]

The update is not going to be out before Valentine's Day. He's touched on every category, but he's still adding features (like goblin occupations) related to those. Remember also that even once that's done, there's usually a bugfixing period of at least three weeks to a month after Toady finishes adding all the features to an update. If he were finished with absolutely everything feature-wise right now, I'd guess around March 1st. Since he's not, I'd say you probably shouldn't get your hopes up until sometime around Arbor Day. (Wouldn't that be something, with multi-tile trees going in?)

[Vattic]

Though I will admit my Chemist friend says that natural aluminium is actually outright nonexistant.

Have to agree about the aluminum.  Unless you can do at least some chemistry, there is simply no aluminum to be smelted anywhere.  Even today, aluminum production is prohibitively costly in terms of electricity, and frankly it is somewhat surprising how common it is, given how inconvenient it is to produce. 

...dwarves should have far more metallurgy tech than 14th century humans.

I was mainly posting to hear what the Toad himself thinks and also aluminium who's presence most puzzles me in game.

[PTTG??]

Well, we make aluminum in places like northern Russia, where there's tons of electricity from hydroelectric, and nobody to use it. Zap some clay, and you got some wonder metal.

[CaptainArchmage]

Well, we make aluminum in places like northern Russia, where there's tons of electricity from hydroelectric, and nobody to use it. Zap some clay, and you got some wonder metal.

That's the modern industrial process, using bauxite. Native aluminium is found in real life, in volcanic (igneous extrusive) deposits. It comes in a very small size, but then so do IRL gold nuggets. In dwarf fortress, as native aluminium comes in small clusters of either up to 5 or up to 9 tiles, and accordingly drops with 100% yield, you can get up to 20 or 36 bars of aluminium from a single deposit.

[CaptainArchmage]

Repurpose of post:

With goblins occupying towns, does that mean they will occupy deep dwarf settlements if the fortresses connected to them fall?

[FearfulJesuit]

You've mentioned that once this release and the bugfix releases following it are out, you've got several directions to choose from in terms of where to go development-wise. What are some of those directions you're looking at?