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[Owlbread]

It will eventually be possible to have some sort of "first contact" type interaction with animalmen. Their integration into your fortress to create a multi-racial society is quite reasonable, especially since we will have the power to invade Goblin fortresses, conquer them and install our own forced administrators to keep them under our control - hence, Goblin subjects in a Dwarfish empire. If I was a trog or another kind of semi-sapient being, I'd be quite happy to pull rocks around and make walls as long as it means I would have something to eat and somewhere to sleep. That's not slavery, provided I'm willing. Perhaps I could make myself useful by being physically stronger than the Dwarves and haul many items at once.

The humans are going to even have half-Dwarves and half Elves and such, judging by Threetoe's stories. Why can't we have Trog helpers?

[NW_Kohaku]

I would agree with the notion that we need to have a better way to deal with non-dwarves in the game, and hopefully the Tavern stuff will help give us a better way to start dealing with that.

In fact, I've argued most of the things argued (on every side of the argument) before, in a more tongue-in-cheek thread that cast dwarves as the villains for trying to grace the "primitives" with "civilization", as it would almost certainly lead to completely amoral player behavior mirroring the worst of Imperialistic tradition.

Still, I am somewhat hesitant to bring it back up, because there were some... troublingly enthusiastic supporters of slavery and segregation. 

A major part of the problem with the idea of slavery in particular, however, is that there simply are none of the internal social complexities in DF required to make slavery make any sense.  There is no social stratification between a dwarven hauler and a dwarven gem cutter.  There is no mechanic for the very real impacts that slavery had upon society, like the fear of slave revolts. 

What is the difference between a tigerman woodcutter and a dwarven woodcutter in a free society?  Right now, there is no particular way to segregate out different races at all, except for the fact that non-dwarven units simply cannot have their labors directly meddled with.  If an elven immigrant walks on the map with the "cooking" labor enabled, however, they'll start using a kitchen.

The problem is a fundamental lack of underlying components that such systems would need to be built upon.  We need the basics of internal cultural strife to start dealing with integration into a culture in a meaningful way.

[Avo]

It should be up to the player to decide how they play the game. The moment you start to remove major idea's because they might support "Amoral behavior" is the moment your game changes from a game into a tool for political indoctrination. Some people might see killing and eating animals as Amoral, would you remove that to?

[NW_Kohaku]

It should be up to the player to decide how they play the game. The moment you start to remove major idea's because they might support "Amoral behavior" is the moment your game changes from a game into a tool for political indoctrination. Some people might see killing and eating animals as Amoral, would you remove that to?

Glad to hear it.  You can help by voting for urine and fecesbeing added into the game, or voting for the number 18 ESV suggestion thread version.

Anyway, it's not about "removing major ideas because they might support amoral behavior", it's about representing them in a manner that is realistic.

It's fine to have a game where you can run a slave-holding society, provided slavery actually means something in the game, and isn't just another worker.  Again, how would a slave be different from any other dwarf at this point in the game?  Without there being things like slave revolts or internal political dissent, there is no meaning in putting such things into the game.

[Splint]

Hey now, this is about making animal people members of your civ you can order around the same as dorfs. No need to get all huffy. And let's face it. In thew grand scheme the poor dorfs are all our slaves! See? it's equal already!

Come on Badgerman Assault Squads! Let's go Badgerman Assault Squads!
And if Dfusion and Runesmith has taught us anything, it proves it works. I've had tigerman miners, antmen woodcutters, and moosepeople working in crafts shops while the dwarves slept ate and drank, and vice versa. Plus Tigermen make great haulers. I imagine them knocking eveyone out of thier way as they haul stuff; they friggen cook down halls when they haul stuff. And from what it looks like, most animalmen are human sized so you can just buy stuff for them off human caravans.

Plus the animal men can compensate for the dwarves lack of aboveground effectivness. Plus, some players would segregate them regardless. Personally I'd keep all my woodcutters and carpenters in a topside complex with the animalmen from above while antmen and the like lived in the main complex with the cave-adapted dorfs.

[Neonivek]

Actually I'd consider all Non-semi-megabeast sentients to be what I call "Minor Races" not semi-sapiants. Races that arn't defaulted to form civilisations.

Semi-sapiant is what I'd consider the trolls for example. A halfway between animal and person.

[Detoxicated]

Well, maybe the terminology was a bit off, but I would also fully support the technique to make trolls full members of a civ.

[Courtesy Arloban]

There is a difference, I think, between saying that some individuals are suited to certain tasks and that a tribal group of people is better off in a forced labor camp so they can learn proper culture. A large part of why the theory of evolution was rejected so vehemently in victorian england was because it clearly stated that blacks were of the same approximate makeup as everyone else, as apposed to being a lesser being created to serve man, like dogs and oxen. Do I think it is necessarily a bad idea to have foomen folded into culture in a bigger way then they are now? No. Do I think that the proposed mechanism unsuitable for randomly generated fantasy anarchy? Not at all. But it is exactly slavery, right down to the moral justifications.

Actually Darwin held the beleif that africans were the "missing" link.  Missing is in quotes because darwin did not know about extinction, or continental drift, or anything else in modern evolutionary theory.  He made a drawing of the humanoid family tree that puts africans between chimpanzees and europeans.

If troglodytes and animalpeople were real, then forcing them to work for you would indeed be slavery, but then so would forcing dwarves to work for you without pay as well.

[Splint]

Seems even with the economy the dwarves suffer more than anything....

[Courtesy Arloban]

Are they paid in the economy?  I mean Civilization and its clones like to claim they model different governments by giving you some (not based on reality) bonuses and penalties to having different government, but when it comes down to the simulation, your always playing a despotic ruler than micromanages his citizens life, sets production levels, and taxes irrespective of what civilians would actually have(where do citizens get the gold to pay their taxes), and invents new technologies by throwing money at them.

I actually typed this already, but i felt I was getting a little off topic and deleted it before posting my last post.

[Splint]

True enough, but some games make you pay for being a complete dick ruler. And DF does in its own way: Berserkers, fell mood murders, tantrums, and neglegence of a temporary opening bieng your punishment later.

And They seem to have magic credit lines or something....

[NW_Kohaku]

Are they paid in the economy?  I mean Civilization and its clones like to claim they model different governments by giving you some (not based on reality) bonuses and penalties to having different government, but when it comes down to the simulation, your always playing a despotic ruler than micromanages his citizens life, sets production levels, and taxes irrespective of what civilians would actually have(where do citizens get the gold to pay their taxes), and invents new technologies by throwing money at them.

I actually typed this already, but i felt I was getting a little off topic and deleted it before posting my last post.

Yes, but the way the economy worked was just silly.

For starters, the government (you) control who can do what work and own all materials from when they are mined/grown/harvested to crafting to something useful until and unless some dwarf buys it for their own (like clothing or trade goods).  Functionally, you own the bed and door to their room, and they have to pay rent for the privilege of that door. 

Dwarves only got paid for the work they did... but they work they did was functionally based upon a collection of things under the government's control, not theirs.  So, if they are carpenters, if the wood stockpile was efficiently placed just a few tiles away from their workshop, and plenty of woodworkers were running around cutting down plenty of trees, and haulers were working at peak efficiency, they could generate tons of cash in exchange for their work.  If there was only one woodcutter, and no haulers, the carpenter would have to go out and get his logs himself, and that would result in much less actual items being made, and hence, less pay. 

Then there are the haulers, they get paid by the item they move, not how far they moved it.  Since they had to pay for their food and the rooms they slept in, they often went broke, and were forced into either debt or eating bugs to survive.

Then there was the money... because money was a physical object, thanks to Toady liking the notion of coins with specific art images on them, they were stacks of objects in a game where stacks cannot be re-merged, meaning that eventually your whole fort would be flooded with individual coins.  They were also physical objects that had to be carried, so dwarves would run to their rooms to get their coins to buy something, spend them on their food, and then drop them off in their rooms when they were done before they could go back to work.

In short, just stripping it completely out and declaring total communism was basically an upgrade from the old economy, since it just didn't really make sense without the internal social structures it takes for a mercantile or capitalist system to make sense.

[Splint]

Screw slavery and all that.... I just want bushrangers to assist my soldiers.....

[Courtesy Arloban]

In short, just stripping it completely out and declaring total communism was basically an upgrade from the old economy, since it just didn't really make sense without the internal social structures it takes for a mercantile or capitalist system to make sense.

It does sound easier, but I would like to be able to put a price on a forgotton beasts head, and watch as every able bodied dwarf went after it with the enthusiasm that they go after a sock.

[Splint]

This place is great. From slavery to placing bounties on invaders to give dorfs incentive to kill them. Which is a pretty damn good idea itself.