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[Manveru Taurënér]

Question about enemy sieges, i thought i remembered reading that the enemy will finally be able to actually challenge your fortress instead of sitting outside until everyone gets bored unless you open willingfully a path to your fort.

But looking into the development list
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

I noticed that the whole Siege improvement subsection

Improved sieges

    Eliminate remaining edge-of-map exploits
    More highly trained attacking soldiers when approprate
    Many trap exploits are handled above by requiring more to produce a trap, things like cage traps should make more sense vs. large creatures etc. (respect strength/ability vs. material, large cages might be separate object)
    Coming up with a plan to overcome pathing obstacles to reach fortress innards
        Ability to dig (optionally, default on)
        Ability to build bridges/ramps
        Ability to use grappling hooks/ladders/climb
    Learning from mistakes if first attempted assault plan fails badly
        For instance, if many siegers are killed, caged, etc. in a given hallway, they shouldn't generally go that way again, even if that means building/climbing/digging
    Siege engine improvements depend on state of boats, lifts/moving fortress sections, since these should all use the same framework

Wasn't actually in blue ( the color for " Done, Next Release " )
Does that mean that the development list is not up to date or that the siege improvements are in development but will not be in the next release ?

The only things done that could be called siege improvements afaik is enemy climbing and jumping (climbing is noted in the middle there). It will give them at least some means to bypass your walls until you update your designs accordingly.

[LordBaal]

Siege engines, boats... I drool over those possibilities, I hope to be able to play them before 2020.

I will set sail on a juggernaut impulsed by a charcoal (even if it can run on coal, it will be charcoal) thrown by slave elves chained on the engine room into the engine (and an elve will be thrown in there every once in a while to mix it up), it will also have huge masts and sails made from the biggest trees I can find (hopefully a former elven site tree) AND a deck of slave oars-elves just for the sake of it and a backup if we run out of charcoal or elves, it will have dozens of cannons even if I had to modd'em in. It will run on elven hate and spew hellish fire against it's enemies! And will be the jewel of my fleet!

Speaking of which. Eventually the other races will be open to play with them, right?

[Manveru Taurënér]

Siege engines, boats... I drool over those possibilities, I hope to be able to play them before 2020.

I think and hope siege engines might not be thaaat far off. Purely speculating here, I'd say after this release we'll see taverns, probably also straying into cooking and music, along with more elaborated hill dwarves and fortress visitors. After that I'd wager at the thief role getting tackled, including crime and punishment in adventure mode as well as in fortress mode. After that we'd have improved mechanics either along with or right before improved sieges, unless the economics system is decided to be revamped before these.

None of those releases should be as large as this one as long as feature creep doesn't strike too hard. Then again there are several other rewrites and additions sneaking about atm such as the farming rewrite, mounts, further adventurer skills, starting scenarios and fortress mode off-site army engagements, all begging to be wrapped up as well. I'm optimistic we'll see them before 2020 anyway

Boats I'd assume to be a later prospect, possibly waiting until after the fluid rewrite among other things.

[Verdant_Squire]

Now that the movement system has been overhauled, will a tile having items/furniture make a meaningful difference in movement? I've always found it strange how you can easily walk straight through large cabinets/tables/chairs/ect. without having to do a any real maneuvering, or how you can walk over a tile which which has 10, 20, 50, or even 100 unplaced mechanisms or toys and not be at risk of tripping or hurting your feet at all.

Will soldiers / town guard wear uniforms and stuff, which involve using specific weapons or armor? If so, will adventurers working for a town have to wear it, and will be able to identify soldiers from other towns?

[Robsoie]

The only things done that could be called siege improvements afaik is enemy climbing and jumping (climbing is noted in the middle there). It will give them at least some means to bypass your walls until you update your designs accordingly.

Thanks, that's already much better than the "sit and do nothing" behaviour of the current sieges unless you intentionally build an opening (usually full of trap) so something will actually happen during those "sieges".

[Manveru Taurënér]

Now that the movement system has been overhauled, will a tile having items/furniture make a meaningful difference in movement? I've always found it strange how you can easily walk straight through large cabinets/tables/chairs/ect. without having to do a any real maneuvering, or how you can walk over a tile which which has 10, 20, 50, or even 100 unplaced mechanisms or toys and not be at risk of tripping or hurting your feet at all.

Will soldiers / town guard wear uniforms and stuff, which involve using specific weapons or armor? If so, will adventurers working for a town have to wear it, and will be able to identify soldiers from other towns?

For the speed thing I'm fairly sure nothing has been done, it hadn't at the time of this FotF reply anyway after the initial movement overhaul and I'm sure it would've been mentioned if anything had been done since (although it was quite a while back).

Will the Dwarfs and other races have bush-clearing abilities, asides from harvesting and trampling, e.g a machete, i.e hacking the vegetative things hindering their progress into little bits?

I haven't gotten to any movement speed issues.  The more those matter, the more likely it is you'd have the ability to deal with it.

[smjjames]

Will soldiers / town guard wear uniforms and stuff, which involve using specific weapons or armor? If so, will adventurers working for a town have to wear it, and will be able to identify soldiers from other towns?

No idea if Toady One has made town guards wear town uniforms, but since the adventurer is considered a free agent, it's totally optional. Although on a battlefield it would be helpful.

We already have entity symbols for various governments, so I could see a heraldic-like system where each group has their own coat of arms.

[Deboche]

Sorry if this has been asked before but...

Will it be possible to put traps on walls to hit climbers? And would it be possible to make an unscalable wall by making a platform forcing the invaders to grab on to it from below as such:

XXXX
     X
     X
     X
g g X    side view, g are goblins, X is wall

[smjjames]

We can't install traps into walls yet. Traps involving stuff coming out of a hole in the wall, now that is another story.

That wall arrangement should work as far as preventing them from climbing. However, it also creates a blind spot where your marksdwarves can't shoot them.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Just need to build a moat as well and he should be good for most stuff (save those few that'll go into water).

[Verdant_Squire]

No idea if Toady One has made town guards wear town uniforms, but since the adventurer is considered a free agent, it's totally optional. Although on a battlefield it would be helpful.

Do adventurers count as free agents? I don't remember reading anything that said they are treated differently when it comes to being in the guard in the dev logs.

[Footkerchief]

Do adventurers count as free agents? I don't remember reading anything that said they are treated differently when it comes to being in the guard in the dev logs.

I don't think an adventurer can join someone else's guard organization.  They can lead a squad of their own -- maybe that's what you're thinking of?

[Nopenope]

What exactly does the Tavern arc consist in, what modes will it primarily affect and is there a planned timeline for it? Will its development cycle be as big of an undertaking as the current one?

[Manveru Taurënér]

What exactly does the Tavern arc consist in, what modes will it primarily affect and is there a planned timeline for it? Will its development cycle be as big of an undertaking as the current one?

Massive info-dump on taverns, enjoy ^^

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Rainseeker:   So what will be happening in these taverns? If I walk into a tavern in adventure mode what will I see, versus in dwarf fortress mode, what would happen?
Toady:   I think adventure mode is going to have ... it's mostly going to be locals and people visiting for market days, as well as some travellers and people hanging out that you can perhaps hire. Whereas dwarf mode it's going to be more particular for dwarf mode at first, especially when you've got diplomats and merchants showing up as they do now. If they're going to stay for a while then they might need to eat and drink so you'll have to take care of them a little bit, and if they're going to stay a while - I mean how often do dwarves sleep - if they're going to stay a whole season you might need to put them up in a room. But there will be locals there. It depends on how soon we get back to a local economy inside the fortress, but it's basically making meeting halls more interesting for your dwarves at the very start, with the dwarves going in and instead of just claiming a room for parties or going on a break and just hanging out doing absolutely nothing they can take you up on the amenities you set up for them in your meeting halls, or dining room. It's kind of like a meeting hall and a dining room, those things might all get mushed together, and you'll have your dwarves go there, they'll be able to drink and play with little games and use their musical instruments ...
Menendez:   (banjo backing)
Toady:   ... and I don't if the kids show up at the bars and use their toys ... We want to get toys and instruments in but I'm not sure the toys ... like their little mini-forges, I don't know if you go to the bar for that, maybe you do if you're a dwarf.
Capntastic:   What sort of things will you be able to place, like amenities wise, and how much will dwarves care if the inn is not well stocked, what penalties could that incur.
Toady:   I don't even know if ... Tavern-wise, it's not like your own dwarves are going to stay at your inn, that'd be kind of cruel wouldn't it, if the seven dwarves arrive and they make an inn and then they have to stay at their own inn, but for your dwarves it's basically the same as it is now, they just need to be supported drink wise, they need to have good food, and they need to chat with their friends to bolster them up a bit, and if there's specific pleasures that come out of playing music and listening to people tell stories and that kind of thing - I don't know about dwarven dancing - and then playing with different types of games, which we'll talk about in a bit I'm sure. Those kinds of things for dwarves, it's really just an extension of the current mechanics and getting them to ... Right now if they go to a party, if they're talking to people and making friends that makes them happy but the party should be really more of a release than that for the dwarves, especially if they've got a lot of their minds that they need to have cancelled out, then they should have lots of different funny specific happy things to do there. So that kind of thing for them in particular, just dwarves from your fortress coming in, it's really just going to be an activation of music and like I said story telling. I don't know if there's going to be a particular service industry, like people serving drinks to your own dwarves, if they just go to the stockpile and grab some stuff, they don't pay for it or anything, just hang out and it's just an extension of the meeting hall/dining hall concept for them. Where it gets more interesting is when you involve people that aren't economically a part of your fortress, then you've got people that you'll actually be able to charge for drinks, charge for staying, if you want to: it might not be something you want to do to a diplomat, but it might the dwarven way of doing things. I haven't quite decided about that particular one. But you've also got merchants coming in, and depending on the location of your fortress you might also have travellers showing up or bandits showing up. There's nothing that says that the bandits don't hang out at a dwarven tavern and then move on, because there's plenty of them just lingering around, and also if you build your fortress out in the wilds they're more likely to be the closest people. This might be the time when we start making adventurer type people and mercenary type people move around a little bit and in that case you'd have some additional visitors there as well. I know in the first release which is going to predate the tavern release there's going to be people moving between towns and villages, going to markets and so on, and depending on the location of your fortress you could bump into some people's associated movements like that, although jamming your fortress in between the villages and towns ... that's a little tight. It'd be kind of funny, but it's a strange location for a dwarf fortress.
Rainseeker:   (as Urist McRainseeker) You can't tell me where to build!
Toady:   There's a whole other large issue that's coming up before the army stuff which is the dwarves that live around your fortress, these sort of either hill dwarves or dwarves that live deep in the mountains that you're not specifically controlling, and they would also be really good candidates for not just your own local markets and stuff, but showing up and hanging out at your establishment.
Rainseeker:   Right, right. How do you feel about perhaps goblins showing up to drink and party?
Toady:   It's perfectly fine ... The way things work now goblins are not these slavering, evil, one hundred percent creatures, as we might have talked about before: you've got goblins integrating a bit into human towns ... it should be less so in places like elven forests and so on, but if there are goblins living in a human town, a few goblins, or there's goblins as part of a bandit group then they could show up. We had dismissed the specific idea of saying 'No goblins allowed in my inn', I don't know if it's a bit reminiscent of some stuff we don't want to drag into the game, but you should be able to eject people you don't want. We were thinking that if you've got people coming eventually to your fortress, say you have a reputation for having really good whiskey or something - we could add booze quality as one of the things we were thinking about adding - so you've got a reputation as a place that has good whiskey and you might get more travellers that way, and you might eventually have more well-to-do people showing up, and that might be involved with the gambling that we were considering adding too. Then you might ... I don't know if you have to kick all the bandits out of the tavern and then have a bouncer or something. If you've got a bunch of bandits showing up ... it might be a little more random until we get to all the personality rewrites, but we do already have the anger personality and so on, so if there's going to be more bar fights from bandits you might not want to have them around if you're trying to get some more well-to-do people to show up at your place.
Rainseeker:   Throw down some good tips, come on.
Toady:   I guess people who do bar fights, they might catch a case and go to the hammerer, you never know. So you could finally start hammering elves, just at your leisure maybe; picking them out, dragging them up on false charges and hammering them all. You want to be a little careful talking about this stuff, you're not necessarily turning Dwarf Fortress into Diner Dash or anything, because it seems a little weird, right? But when you've got merchants and diplomats coming, they don't have to eat or drink while they're there and you can't even offer them anything, it kind of fits into that. There's the option of perhaps having mercenaries stick around in your fortress, we thought about that a bit, you might be able to hire them and put them into squads ... you might not be able to change all their weapons, and you wouldn't have armor for them necessarily that fits, but it seems like a reasonable thing for people that don't want to focus on that; they just want to have some of those guys around. You'd probably just get the money right back from the drinking and gambling immediately. We were originally thinking about doing just adventure mode taverns and inns, and then we remembered ... there was this suggestion around 2008 or something on the forum for dwarf mode inns. I don't remember if we had talked about it at all before then, or if that was just a random suggestion that popped up back then ... So we saw taverns and inns on the dev page and we were like 'Okay, let's do dwarf mode inns too', so it's a little strange. It's certainly one of those things that popped out on the release list when we put that up, because we hadn't talked about it very much; that's the reason we're talking about it now. So basically you've got more interesting people visiting your fortress and you might be able to convince them to stick around.
Ollieh:   (musical interlude)
Capntastic:   So how do you feel the interface will be for setting these places up and keeping them supplied with cool stuff?
Toady:   I think the hub of the inn and tavern ... whatever you want to set up, because we want it to be open-ended and have some options there ... The hub is the meeting hall/dining room, I don't know if they're going to all become one type of building now, just a place for people to meet up that may or may not have tables and chairs and ...
Rainseeker:   Counters! We must have counters.
Toady:   ... counters, that's right, and whatever other furniture decides to come up. So that's going to be the hub of it, and then even if it's just a little counter where someone goes in to check into their inn, like if you wanted to set up something that was more like just a hotel type inn rather than having a big hall with tables and games and booze ... So you'd have this hub where you'd set up your services and link up rooms, it would probably just use regular bedrooms, so we don't have to change it that much for your inn rooms, and link them up to the main meeting all, and at the meeting hall you'd also be able to set up your prices and specifically what things you want going on at your inn, and perhaps you'd also - like with the workshop profiles - be able to attach the particular people you want to hang out there. So basically we wanted to set up the hub in those buildings and not deviate too much from what we've got now. There's obviously going to have to be a new kind of screen or options menu for the new stuff but it should all come right off of that screen. When you get into this economic stuff there's also this desire to jump into, 'I want my guest list with their winnings tab and how many drinks they've bought' and if for some reason you set up two inns you could have charts saying how well they're doing. I don't know how much we want to jump into Theme Park type of stuff, but it's reasonable ... Like, if you decide to start your fortress and you just set up this giant gambling hall and you attach some stockpiles filled with all kinds of stuff that's brought in and it becomes a big part of your fortress and basically booze is your main export straight to people into their stomachs and then they export it out of their bodies when they walk off the map or whatever, and that's your main source of income, then it would be reasonable to have tracking information for that kind of thing. But if it's just a small little place you use to make your diplomats and merchants more happy and more likely to have good trade agreements and that kind of thing then it doesn't need to be something that's in your face all the time. We're certainly not planning to have it at the end of the year pop up your earnings; that's not what we're going for, I don't want to scare people into thinking we're doing something completely off base and stupid with the game.
Rainseeker:   I think the neat thing about what you're choosing to do here is that you're allowing it to be more grey, because there were enemies and then there were friends, but now there are people that are customers or are visiting that might be annoying that you want to kick out but are not per se trying to kill you.
Capntastic:   I think that the important thing will be to keep the mechanics in line with what's already there, instead of making it like it's its own minigame within a game within a game.
Toady:   It's all going in with ... There's going to be nothing wrong with having your tavern meeting hall, your dwarves decide to throw a party there, there happens to be a merchant there; that's actually part of the idea, to have your dwarves around those people so that one of your dwarves could challenge a visiting merchant to a Tacticus game or something and that was one of the main things we were planning to explore with that, these interrelationships and also just the games themselves. We were thinking, well, if you've got a dwarf and an outsider playing a game you should be able to pop in and control the dwarf and just pop up a little game screen and play with some games. The starting point for that was adventure mode, because of course going in a tavern and just rolling dice or playing a little game of some kind is a perfectly reasonable thing for an adventurer to do. The problem with adventure mode mechanics sometimes is that they don't make it into dwarf mode until way later, like with the combat reports where that kind of fighting was going on but you couldn't read the text of what actually happened until recently. The idea this time is to get the dice games and card games and board games - or whatever we end up adding first - into both modes at the same time, so that you'd be able to control your dwarves playing against the outsiders, and perhaps if your dwarves are playing with each other you'd be able to pick one of them to jump into. I'm not quite as certain about that but it might be required just to give you the opportunity to do this very much. If two people are playing a game at a table in a meeting hall then they're going to be playing that game for a certain amount of time, like several days in dwarf mode the way it works, or at least a couple of days ...
Rainseeker:   A very addictive game.
Toady:   So it'll probably just pop up a little notification in the top left corner, one of those little letters or something, just letting you know that you can jump into something if you want, and then you'd be able to pop in and play the game in frozen time, so no time passes while you're resolving it, and then when you leave the game would either adjourn or they'd continue sitting at that table for the same amount of time they would have, so that it doesn't feel like there's any meta-gaming going on that way. I mean jumping into someone's head and playing a game for them is already kind of meta-gaming, so it's not that big a deal. You could, if one of your gambling addict dwarves decides to gamble away your anvil or something, then maybe you can jump in there and win the game for him.
Rainseeker:   Oh please, oh please let that be real.
Toady:   It's one of the things we wrote down where we were like 'Do we want to do this? Is that too painful?' and well, you know, it might be too fun to avoid. But you don't want to totally annoy the player into quitting your game, but to some extent that stuff's funny.
Capntastic:   Losing is fun!
Toady:   That's right. Especially when ... it's all ... I don't know what I was going to say, it's alright.
Rainseeker:   (as Urist McRainseeker) Och, you are banned from playing cards!
Toady:   It should be entertaining, and it's good - even independent of all the visitors - giving the dwarves something finally to do with those instruments they've had for years just sitting there. And it's like there's all these attributes, like musicality ...
Capntastic:   Musicality, and kinetic sense.
Toady:   Yeah, all that stuff that they don't use at all, like musicality: there's zero use for it ... and also the language abilities don't get used that much and we can have people telling ... it would be cool, like the historical information sometimes it gives you on engravings, you can have a dwarf say 'Now I will tell you of the story of the time that I carved cheese pictures in my room' or something, and they'll sit there ...
Capntastic:   Gather round.
Toady:   So you have these really funny dwarf parties where ... more like the way, it'll probably use the same stuff - that was the point - of the military stuff where it says exactly what they're doing during their training exercises and that kind of thing. You know you'd have these activities that pop up at parties, like there's a storytelling activity going on, or there's a musical activity and then people can join in as participants in different ways, and just kind of hang out in the meeting hall doing this different stuff, and the same with the games that they play.
Rainseeker:   Could you perhaps listen to the story? Like with the game, you could just jump in and listen to it?
Toady:   You'd certainly be able to see what the story is about. If it's randomly generating the dude talking ... I threatened at one point to do a poetry generator, I've threatened these things, and if it comes down to it now it seems early because we haven't done the grammar rewrites and the things that I wanted to do with that stuff, so it might not happen immediately. Before I play too much with language I wanted to get through those things, but if it's just ...
Rainseeker:   The dwarves from Nantucket will have to wait.
Capntastic:   Tread lightly.
Toady:   It rhymes with bucket.
Rainseeker:   It does rhyme with bucket.
Toady:   And buckets are really important in Dwarf Fortress.
Rainseeker:   They are, you need them to build wells.
Toady:   That's right ... You should be able to see what they're about, even if it isn't giving you the blow-by-blow, and there are things it can do, like if he's retelling the story of a war, he can talk about ... you know we've got the different list of events that happened and the storyteller might highlight a particular duel from that war, just mention it or whatever ... So you'll get some information, I doubt we'll be jumping too far off the deep end on that one right now, and what else ... singing, and dancing ... what else do people do to entertain themselves? I don't know if they're going to be putting on plays...
Capntastic:   Boasting.
Toady:   Yeah, just talking all kinds of crap.
Rainseeker:   That would be kind of cool, have them lying about stuff they've done, they tell a story but it's actually a lie.
Toady:   Yeah we can finally use those personality traits, those lying skills, and their creativity. And they could make up fake stories, it's not boasting, it's just telling a funny story or whatever. So it should be cool; one of the main things of that release is just getting your dwarves in there and not just having these stand around and talk parties. There's a place for that, but not in a dwarf fortress ... and they don't even have drinks, they're just sitting there talking to each other, I guess they've all just really close friends talking about old times and doddering around or something. But not anymore.
Capntastic:   There need to be procedurally generated mixed drinks and dare drinks.
Toady:   We had those old recipes, then they disappeared. I don't know very much about any of that stuff, despite having spent nine years as a student in college, but certainly people get into their booze and dwarves should be the rule rather than the exception there.
Capntastic:   Oh yeah.
Toady:   So yeah, I imagine there'll be some learning about that. But certainly drink quality, like I mentioned before, with the reputation of your fortress resting on that perhaps. Even if you don't make the best swords you probably have the best whiskey in the whole world.
Rainseeker:   Can you allow us to craft our own microbrews, like invent a drink?
Toady:   I guess that's what the Capn was referring to too, right? It kind of relies on this whole recipe idea we had before that you'd be able to take not just the number of different food items you're putting in, and then it says 'this is made of minced this and minced that and minced water and minced air and whatever else you can mince in Dwarf Fortress'; just running with that but that actually having named recipes is not that difficult, it's just something that ... The structures for it in a basic way were in the game at one point and they disappeared, I still have these trade tabs for recipes that aren't used for anything, so I'm not sure quite when I'm getting to that, because it's the kind of thing you could end up throwing in, you know? But certainly drink quality is going in.
Ollieh:   (musical interlude)
Toady:   It's kind of a weird thing, there are all kinds of avenues that come out of taverns, like can you hire people, can you hire just soldiers or if your dwarves are all busy mining can you hire a cook, or hire a human to clean up all the forgotten beast blood that's tracked around ... well, you'd be hiring a series of humans to clean up the forgotten beast blood.
Rainseeker:   (as Urist McRainseeker) Och, there goes another one!
Toady:   It's certainly up for considering. We tried to think of all the different visitors that you can expect, and there's a lot of humans just kind of wandering around when they get their towns destroyed, and they live in the hills, so they could come and be some use to you. But we're not sure, and it would rely on ... You get a lot of migrants yourself, but in those fortresses that don't get a lot of migrants, or especially when migrants start changing over to something that actually has to migrate and come to your fortress then you might find that there are more other types of critters visiting. It doesn't mean you need to keep them, it doesn't mean you need to even welcome them, and if you don't have a tavern established you might not have to worry about this stuff, because I can definitely see the side of people that just want to have their dwarves without dealing with all this riffraff. So it's something that's only going to happen if you really encourage it to happen for the most part, although there are things like refugee crises that already happen in the game, but the guys just kind of go off into the wilderness and then re-establish sites in world generation, but if world generation is over they're just hanging out, and those situations might be thrust onto your fortress.
Rainseeker:   You have your seven dwarves and then three hundred people show up. You're like 'Uhhh ...'
Capntastic:   'Where's the food?'
Toady:   There have to be reasonable limits and constraints, but ... You've got to worry about, you know, if you're allowing bandits to come to your tavern and there's only seven dwarves. Maybe they stay in line just because they don't know if there are traps and levers that a dwarf could pull. Especially when you're going into a tunnel in the earth you should be on your best behaviour, maybe they just come there to drink and gamble and stuff, although I imagine there'll be people building outdoor establishments, like big green glass casinos and stuff. It'll be interesting to see what happens, it shouldn't take too much dwarf power to help out your guests; you'd probably be responsible for serving them drinks. Maybe that means that goblets will finally be used for something too, but I'm not sure. Because right now what would serving a drink look like? They go a stockpile and grab a barrel and just pour it down the guest's throat and then bring it back to the stockpile. It's a dwarf bar, that's not far off I imagine. But maybe there'll actually be a point to making all those goblets now, you just stack them in your bar.
Rainseeker:   I guess I assumed that the dwarf always took an actual mug with him or something; it just doesn't work that way huh? He just goes and sticks his head in the barrel and takes a drink?
Toady:   Chugalug right out of the barrel, yeah. I guess you can imagine that there's a tap, but ...
Rainseeker:   I want a barrel like that, full of beer.
Toady:   It should be fascinating, it should be really fascinating. Ever since we put it up on the dev page we're like 'Dwarf mode inns are fascinating', it's just weird. But we're looking forward to it. The hill dwarves is a big thing later, we're not really sure how that's going to work into it, because the hill dwarves are army arc material, but that'll probably change the character of them a lot, especially if you have a lot of hill dwarves.

There's even more info in the DFtalks if you want, but linking all of it would be a bit much (I think you'll find it easier to read in the actual transcript, the link is in the quote). As for the other questions, it's been hinted that Taverns are a strong candidate for the next cycle after this release, as soon as all the bugfixing and the promised fortress mode work priority overhaul is done that is. So that'd be timeline of it I guess, Toady doesn't seem to keen on doing more specific date estimates.

The development cycle shouldn't be anywhere near as long as this one hopefully. Toady has stated that he doesn't want them to take this long and will surely try even harder to keep it short in the near future I'd imagine. How long the Tavern stuff actually takes we'll most likely have to just wait and see. There are a lot of related features so it depends on how much more than just the taverns will go in along with it.

The stuff in the dev page should give some estimate:

Inns, taverns and dens

Taverns/inns
Lay out the basic area/furniture and entertain dwarves/guests
Fortress guests include hill dwarves, merchants, diplomats, adventurers, mercenaries, bandits, travelers, etc.
Musical instrument use, dancing, storytelling, etc.
Set prices/activities
Recipes/drink quality
Games
Dwarves can gamble with outsiders
Rooms rentable to outsiders
Reputation tracked
Tie-ins with fortress justice if things go badly

Adv mode taverns/inns
Some of these places shadier with shadier individuals

[Valtam]

Will soldiers / town guard wear uniforms and stuff, which involve using specific weapons or armor? If so, will adventurers working for a town have to wear it, and will be able to identify soldiers from other towns?

They currently do, whenever you look at the clothes (usually helmets and armor) of town guards, they'll tend to have their civilization or entity symbol embroidered on them. Sometimes is not as easy, but there should be some kind of quick way to check it out, as soon as it turns relevant.

What exactly does the Tavern arc consist in, what modes will it primarily affect and is there a planned timeline for it? Will its development cycle be as big of an undertaking as the current one?

Though there's no actual Tavern Arc in the Dev_Single page (which is where I assume you got your doubts about the existence of that specific arc), you might also take that the avaliable development list is outdated and inaccurate, in terms of Toady's ongoing plan.

The Tavern Arc, as we've heard, meshes a lot of stuff from the Diplomacy Arc, the Crime and Punishment Arc and a lot more. It might allow your fortress to have foreign denizens and floating populations, it will be a source of valuable information and rumours as well, it might help the economy and also provide entertainment for and by idle dwarves. Expect drunk fights, adventurers gathering, thievery and, why not, a disease vector.

Arcs, as they're being developed right now, are not lineal and self-contained, rather branching themselves while overlapping their checks and goals.

Also, see Manveru's ninja post.