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[Manveru Taurënér]

Nice! Evasion on the Travel Map level should be exciting too.

I'm hesitant to green this since somebody probably already knows, but do armies exist in peacetime? I know there's professional soldiers hanging out in castles and town walls and whatever, but I don't know if DF is rolling with the whole "mass conscript of peasants as soldiers are needed" method.

I think it was in one of the DF talks where Toady got into how when we've got the army arc implemented we'll be able to call in extra troops from the hill dwarves living outside your fortress, so I'd imagine much of the dwarven armies are much like what you said, dwarf conscripts called in during time of war. Going by the legends also supports this (depending on how much one can trust its representation of the world), as only a small part of dwarves fighting in wars are listed as having actual military professions.

[MrWiggles]

ToadyOne also spoke about sending off folks from your fort to train soldiers in the hill dorfs to get an army though. I think its a little bit ambiguous if those are standing armies from the hill dorf or conscripted peasants.

[monk12]

I'd assumed the "soldiers training hill dorfs" thing was like making a militia- dorfs who have skill with a weapon without being soldiers, who tend to be first responders to attacks in the boonies and the first guys conscripted when big armies are made. Do we know much about army composition- do people with combat skill get drafted first, or is it a random selection, or what?

[kaypy]

Do tents have any differentiating features or are they just something like cloth-block hovels at this stage?

[MrWiggles]

Like what?

[FearfulJesuit]

Are refugees going to show up at our fortress demanding shelter if there are wars in the vicinity?

[zwei]

Like what?

It could, for example, be one tile construction that shelters from weather and can be slept in line a bed.

[Mel_Vixen]

It could also mean that we can set up wall and ceilings made from cloth of variaous kinds which dont resist any stress or support other stuff. It would be a nice feature i think. 

How are tents handled? Are the just some sort of 1tile building akin to a bed or do the consist from Multiple parts like walls ceilings etc made from cloth (and supports/poles). Would it possible to set up a "cloth wall" in Dwarf mode?

[Cruxador]

I think it depends on the balance between realism and fantasy. Fantasy novels tend to have standing armies. The historically there were professional soldiers, but majority of an army was composed from conscripts from peasants.

Not entirely accurate. While it's true that sometimes peasants were conscripted, this was only for the largest and most important of wars. Most wars involved professionals only. Drafting the peasants was very economically costly and it was rare that wars were over something that was worth the lost harvest. Of course, the very big battles are the ones you usually hear about, and those did include peasant militiamen.

[CaptainArchmage]

It could also mean that we can set up wall and ceilings made from cloth of variaous kinds which dont resist any stress or support other stuff. It would be a nice feature i think. 

How are tents handled? Are the just some sort of 1tile building akin to a bed or do the consist from Multiple parts like walls ceilings etc made from cloth (and supports/poles). Would it possible to set up a "cloth wall" in Dwarf mode?

Tents in DF would be good for setting up shelter to begin with. Sleeping in a tent would give bad thoughts except for military dwarves, on the order of bad thoughts from sleeping rough underground, but not as bad as sleeping outside in the rain. Outside tents would also provide protection from deadly weather.

Tents would be useful, for example, to set up a military camp in the caverns, without waiting to carve out a barracks down there. They might also be useful on setting up camps on large maps, when the FPS optimisation goes in.

Armies should be an entity option. Historically, there were standing armies, conscripted armies, and militias. Militias are pretty much standard in Dwarf Fortress. Conscripted armies would be grabbed from the entity population in time of war, and would afterwards be dissolved. Standing armies would either be made up of professional soldiers (varying depending on the economy and amount of war present). There are also warrior nobility such as knights. Some beings such as wizards (when we get more magic in the game) would be capable of immediate participation in war if necessary.

Adventurers might not get tents even if the armies can use tents. Tents were brought up during the addition of the Night Creatures, so it might not be that low hanging of a fruit. For this release. 

The question is whether it should be possible to entirely evade bogeymen by sleeping in a tent. That's a difficult one to deal with; it appears to eliminate one challenging aspect of the game, but then bogeymen were only added around half way through DF2010, and it seems reasonable.

Isn't the current behavior of doors and building destroyers is the the BD comes up a attacks it until the wear quality goes down to x, xx, then destroyed?

How is that actually tracked internally?

Actually I don't think it is. I've had buildings destroyed, but they then exploded into their constituent components, possibly with some wear. Well most of my experience has been with forgotten beasts; the one or two times I've had trolls, the general solution was drowning or resorting to their own stupidity. Then I've green'd it for you.

ToadyOne also spoke about sending off folks from your fort to train soldiers in the hill dorfs to get an army though. I think its a little bit ambiguous if those are standing armies from the hill dorf or conscripted peasants.

The deal is that if the population is not consisting of historical figures, when you get to view the battle you will likely have named dwarves fighting. This means you'll end up generating historical figures.

[Mel_Vixen]

I think it depends on the balance between realism and fantasy. Fantasy novels tend to have standing armies. The historically there were professional soldiers, but majority of an army was composed from conscripts from peasants.

Not entirely accurate. While it's true that sometimes peasants were conscripted, this was only for the largest and most important of wars. Most wars involved professionals only. Drafting the peasants was very economically costly and it was rare that wars were over something that was worth the lost harvest. Of course, the very big battles are the ones you usually hear about, and those did include peasant militiamen.

Our town militia was conscripts on a regular basis. Every citizen had to train and stay in Militia for a certain time. *edit* What i am trying to say is that many placed had enough militia do some police work with a draft enacted when ever there was a war.

[Cobbler89]

The next steps are messing with guards and alarm/stealth in camps, being chased around by the soldiers you rile up (including at the travel map level as you try to evade the consequences of your actions), and interacting a bit with refugees.

Will we see the armies on the travel map?

Also, will we get the addition of "Outer" or at least "Outside" to the dwarven language file so we can use the new sneaking and refugee mechanics to reenact Metal Dwarf -- er, I mean, Metal Gear? No matter how many minecarts I nickname "Rex" and "Ray", I can't have adventurers Therleth and Giken infiltrate Outer Heaven with the help of Urist McOtaku if I can't build an appropriate fort named "Outer Heaven" in the first place. (And I know I could add the word myself, but it doesn't feel like the real word that way, y'know?)

[ETA] Hey, just noticed I can't find a Dwarf language entry for Fox either. "Gray Dog" doesn't have the same ring as "Gray Fox", now does it? Metal Dwarf has at least a couple different problems here. [/ETA]
[ETAA] (That's "Again" at the end of the acronym.) I also realized later I need "Big Boss", "Liquid" and "Solid" -- only "big" exists in the dwarven language file, so we're really in trouble here. That brings the list of words we need to: "Fox", "Boss", "Liquid", "Solid", "Outer"/"Outside". I've also heard that the name Moses means "Rescued from the Waters", so having a word for "Rescue" might help ("Shedim Moses" or "Moses Shedim" only would work if forts, like adventurers, could have words manually entered for their names -- last I checked I didn't notice any possibility of doing that). Yeah, I'm pretty serious about wanting a series of Metal Dwarf crossovers even though I know this isn't the suggestion thread and even though it's really just silly. And I don't want to make up my own words because that just doesn't count. [/ETAA]

Okay, okay, I know that's not a real question. *ungreens*

[Neonivek]

Anyone ever ask a question, then later realise you are asking the same question?

I almost asked Toady "Will the game differ the speed of attack from the rate of attack" three times.

[Chromasphere]

Nope, never happens to me.  Why do you ask?   While we're on the subject, is there a reason for your question?  Also, what is the root motivation for that question?


 






OK, fine, it was funnier in my head.

[misko27]

Will the refugees from failed forts make camp? I ask because I recently noticed that the dwarves who abandon do not, as I assumed, scatter in all directions, but actually form a group.