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[NW_Kohaku]

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.

I would too, but that falls under the "Majesty style of gameplay" that Toady doesn't seem to want.  Which is a pity, because that's how a more realistic version of feudalism would work.

[Courtesy Arloban]

I would too, but that falls under the "Majesty style of gameplay" that Toady doesn't seem to want.  Which is a pity, because that's how a more realistic version of feudalism would work.

That is where I got the idea from, too bad as I did like that part of the game. I wonder why Toady doesn't like Majesty?

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

I too would like a multiracial fort, as long as I'm ordering my dwarves to labor till they die I might as well order humans/goblins/elves as well.  Has anyone tried retiring humans, elves or anything else in a mountainhome to see if they come with the migrants?  And if they do is it as migrants themselves or humoid pets?

[NW_Kohaku]

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1457383#msg1457383

Would you even consider changing the relationship that the player has with the dwarves right now (as unquestioned overlord and direct allower and denier of all things dwarves can and cannot do), so that dwarves can become more autonomous and individual, and possibly create a better simulation, while on the other hand, potentially dramatically upping the potential for Fun because dwarves are stupid and very likely to hurt themselves unless continually babysat, or perhaps more importantly, if it meant that the player had less direct control over his fortress, and had to rely more on coaxing the ants in his/her antfarm to do his/her bidding?

Our eventual goal is to have the player's role be the embodiment of positions of power within the fortress, performing actions in their official capacity, to the point that in an ideal world each command you give would be linked to some noble, official or commander.  I don't think coaxing is the way I'm thinking of it though, as with a game like Majesty which somebody brought up, because your orders would also carry the weight of being assumed to be for survival for the most part, not as bounties or a similar system.  Once your fortress is larger, you might have to work a little harder to keep people around, but your dwarves in the first year would be more like crew taking orders from the captain of a ship out to sea or something, where you'd have difficulty getting them to do what you want only if you've totally flopped and they are ready to defy the expedition leader.

They basically can't be ordered if a friendly non-dwarf visits your fort, at least, unless something changed in the last few versions I wasn't aware of.

[Neonivek]

One issue is that the game needs a mechanic to prevent minorities from becoming the majority so easily.

The game is almost made of "Slave race becomes master race". Since it happens so often it is almost nothing special (mind you it happens all the time in history)

a mechanic such as poverty could be the mechanic in keeping their numbers down.

[Splint]

Wouldn't that depend on how quickly they breed anyway? Seems animal people don't breed very fast, so having them living as specialists within the fort seems feasible, as they usually only come in smallish numbers.

[Neonivek]

Wouldn't that depend on how quickly they breed anyway? Seems animal people don't breed very fast, so having them living as specialists within the fort seems feasible, as they usually only come in smallish numbers.

It has more to do with how they breed and how the game functions currently.

But still lets say a pair of animalmen who have 12 babies at once joined a civilisation we will call them Rabbitmen... Soon Rabbitmen would pretty much take over the world.

Even with normal reproduction it isn't abnormal for one race to overtake the other.

[Splint]

yeah, but given the high mortality rate in DF worlds... Seems living to reproductive age would be difficult.

[Neonivek]

yeah, but given the high mortality rate in DF worlds... Seems living to reproductive age would be difficult.

One issue is that simply speaking the ONLY cause of mortality is one on one combat (or War with soldiers a very VERY small fraction of the population). I think Toady also added starvation but it doesn't affect Non-historical characters.

Disease, poverty, accident rates, and all that yeah COULD stop the rabbitman invasion. but we don't have any of that.

[Splint]

Yeah.... But why is it that a simple concept such as this has to raise so much crap. Animal men as civ members.

Good: Severe cave adaptated dorfs can send the animalmen to fight on the surface with those dorfs who won't leave a trail of vomit. They also have the size that dorfs don't have to make hunting easier for them, so they'd probably make good hunters. Animalmen benefit from the tools, food, and shelter they get from the dwarves. In turn, the dwarves also keep the bad stuff underground where it belongs.... usually...

Bad: Of course they'd be a hamper on resources, and you'd need to cater to their needs for housing and such too, making capturing/integrating trogs, animalmen and such an optional choice. But if someone wants more hands, and they accidently picked a dead civ, and new workers are N years away from adulthood, these individuals can provide a base to work with, taking up the slack for the lack of dwarves, and still retaining the benefits.

There's also (potentially in the future) To simply tell them to piss off or they may choose to leave on thier own if things go to shit, deciding the relationship isn't working. And the mortality rate was more based off player actions, as I was assuming this all under fortress mode play with say, civ possesing no -men to dump on your head. Cause there's still the xenophobia/philia/player decides option to the raws, if that's possible.

I'm still drawing from my own cheaty way of accomplishing this that showed animal men can be extremly useful to a fortress. Antmen for example, will defend the fortress with thier lives regardless if they're soldiers or not. Had one keep on choppin' trees till the giant badger actually went to tear her apart. No cancelation, just that they died. Found a giant badger foot, tow teeth and a decapitated antman. tigermen make great soldiers, due to thier size and strength compared to a dorf and haulers. And best of all, as civ members if the dwarves are killed, you can use the animal men to hold the fort until more arrive, if the civ isn't dead. And in terms of connections, they segregat themselves anyway, only socializing among themselves, reducing the tantrum impact: Dwarves don't care if the antmen die, antmen don't care if tigermen die, tigermen don't care if dorfs die. And yet they all work for the betterment of the fortress (or more the insane overseer running it's amusment.) They will get upset as thier fellows fall however.

And thus there are my view. Likely to be countered with matters of ethics, heirarchy and other crap when this is simply something players would like to have if they want to have the option to put a nusiance/threat to direct use for the fortress. Since many a DF players blatently disregard morality anyway cause they wanna have fun. Remeber those merperson concentration camps? Rabbitman population problem? Send'em here! We'll take good care of that little issue...... [AKA if there are still dorfs, they'll be happy to do as the overseer says: Magam sauna for all visiting rabbitmen.]

Sorry if I ruffled any feathers, Just wanted to get that rambling/justification out. I doubt strongly Toady will ever implement this anyway. But we all want to at least be heard.

[Bytyan]

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.

As I said earlier, I have no problem the suggestion, I have a problem with not calling it slavery. Darwin was adamantly apposed to slavery, as any person with modern commonly accepted morals would be, and his theory of evolution was in part fueled by the desire to prove that blacks were human, and not "the highest of the work animals", as was the common belief. His theory wasn't perfect, but it did make that point. Once again, the suggestion is fine, but to justify forcibly assimilating tribal cultures into a larger one as described previously for their own good is slavery by definition.

[Ravenkana]

As I said earlier, I have no problem the suggestion, I have a problem with not calling it slavery. Darwin was adamantly apposed to slavery, as any person with modern commonly accepted morals would be, and his theory of evolution was in part fueled by the desire to prove that blacks were human, and not "the highest of the work animals", as was the common belief. His theory wasn't perfect, but it did make that point. Once again, the suggestion is fine, but to justify forcibly assimilating tribal cultures into a larger one as described previously for their own good is slavery by definition.

Actually, no. Look up Social and Racial Darwinism. Evolution, during both the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, was used to prove that there was a hierarchy of races with Anglos (i.e., Brits) on top and with other groups (Africans, Jews, Asians) at the bottom. The backlash against evolution would not occur until at least the 1910s due mostly to the conflict between it and the literal interpretation of the book of Genesis.

[Detoxicated]

Well maybe you could add a feature, that tribes of animalmen exchange warriors and workers for goods. These animalmen would be slaves for seven years. After this period they would be freemen and could either decide to stay or leave. If you happen to have a member of any animalmen tribe you could make him a "Tigerman Negotiator" for instance. This noble would be able to negotiate with closeby tribes of his kind, to engage in trade and possibly immigration of said race (this would give the player some control if they wanted more of that race or not). I personally would love to see a society with many races, as the human cities are often depicted in fantasy novels.

While I do see that training animalmen into members of society could be considered slavery, I don't see why having animalmen in your society necessarily has to be slavory. I mean the French, for example, traded with native american tribes and built missions, but they didn't enslave people in that area of the world. I mean if you were for an approach to really integrate them, would it be slaves.

[NW_Kohaku]

One issue is that simply speaking the ONLY cause of mortality is one on one combat (or War with soldiers a very VERY small fraction of the population). I think Toady also added starvation but it doesn't affect Non-historical characters.

Disease, poverty, accident rates, and all that yeah COULD stop the rabbitman invasion. but we don't have any of that.

Actually, that's backwards.

The two biggest killers in DF worldgen currently are starvation followed by old age, with violence coming in third. 

Animalmen have a very low age limit - sometimes hardly any older than adulthood, and generally nothing more than around 25 or 30 years old.  If they reproduce quickly as well, then that starvation rate is going to be big.

Toady had to exempt historical figures from starvation, because so many kings were starving to death, and he figured that if anyone would survive starvation, it should be the historicals. 

With that said, there IS a big problem with goblins and sometimes elves taking over human civilizations... but that's mainly because goblins don't eat and don't die of old age, which are the two major caps on population.  As such, goblins are the perfect population explosion race, as they ONLY die of violence, and the more of them there are, the more adventurers they send out to wipe out the megabeasts and werecritters that do cause them problems.

[Owlbread]

One issue is that simply speaking the ONLY cause of mortality is one on one combat (or War with soldiers a very VERY small fraction of the population). I think Toady also added starvation but it doesn't affect Non-historical characters.

Disease, poverty, accident rates, and all that yeah COULD stop the rabbitman invasion. but we don't have any of that.

Actually, that's backwards.

The two biggest killers in DF worldgen currently are starvation followed by old age, with violence coming in third. 

Animalmen have a very low age limit - sometimes hardly any older than adulthood, and generally nothing more than around 25 or 30 years old.  If they reproduce quickly as well, then that starvation rate is going to be big.

Toady had to exempt historical figures from starvation, because so many kings were starving to death, and he figured that if anyone would survive starvation, it should be the historicals. 

With that said, there IS a big problem with goblins and sometimes elves taking over human civilizations... but that's mainly because goblins don't eat and don't die of old age, which are the two major caps on population.  As such, goblins are the perfect population explosion race, as they ONLY die of violence, and the more of them there are, the more adventurers they send out to wipe out the megabeasts and werecritters that do cause them problems.

Indeed. Thanks heavens the goblins are such savages, otherwise there'd be too many of them. Elves are also good at that population-explosion thing, seeing as they live forever (but they do eat).

But come on guys, does this really have to be a debate about slavery? Were all the Native Americans that fought for both sides during the American Revolution enslaved? If an animal man decides to live in your fortress, he can theoretically leave at any time and just abandon you. I agree with one of the earlier propositions in this thread about the animal men suddenly deciding they didn't like the way your fortress was going, so they'd just leave. I don't see what's wrong with having a multi-racial fortress; remember, although Cacame may have proved me wrong, the royal families of Dwarven civilisations are almost always Dwarven (without fail, unless bugs are involved). I don't see what's wrong with having a mayor from another race, just as long as your civilisation is clearly Dwarven.

The only problems here are with the animal men's short lifespans and the obvious need for them to have lots of babies, which would create a population explosion and so forth. Perhaps you could make agreements with the animal men that they can only stay if they keep their population under control etc. As for human or elf immigrants, I don't see what's wrong with that either. Again though, although all this would make sense in a human town (as shown by Threetoe's story about the half-Dwarf, or the power goal about the adventurer who goes to evict the gnome population from the slums and brains one of them with his sword etc), it doesn't quite fit the Dwarves. Maybe xenophobia could be a trait of the Dwarven race, so they will only allow new immigrants from other races or civilisations to join if they adopt that civilisation's customs and so on. I suppose Elves would never come to your fortress if you chop down trees and so on. Why would an Elf want to go and live in a smelly dark cave full of alcoholic midgets? Indeed, why would a human, except to trade? Maybe that's the answer. Immigrants would be very small in number and even if they did come, seeing as they've got the cojones to want to live in the dark halls of Murdertrampled they'd be good enough to be honorary Dwarves anyway.

I see animal men and semi-sapient beings in this context as being much more independent of your fortress than these "sentient" immigrants; they can choose to leave at any time, are not under your full control as a player, live near or in your fortress as a result of treaties and agreements made by your diplomat/expedition leader/mayor etc. Perhaps you could have an agreement with a tribe of Troglodytes (for example) that would request that they perform hauling duties and basic construction in exchange for your protection and food. You could also set an agreement with them that they would live in a particular area of your fortress. If you make unreasonable demands (like giving them 1 square-sized accomodation and no food or protection), they may refuse. If you decide to break their agreements they may simply leave or even turn on you. If they are evil, they could just turn on you anyway, forcing you to pick your friends carefully. If they break the agreements on the other hand, you may have to evict them forcibly, leading to conflict.

[NW_Kohaku]

But come on guys, does this really have to be a debate about slavery? Were all the Native Americans that fought for both sides during the American Revolution enslaved?

No, nearly 90% of them died of the waves of diseases that followed European contact.  The fatality rates were so devastating that the overwhelming majority of villages were simply abandoned by the few survivors who had to flee to other villages or tribes just to survive. 

Part of the reason that there are so many towns with names like "Springfield" is because when the first European settlers were looking for a place to set up their homestead, they found an abandoned Native American farm already plowed and planted, and simply moved into the old village where the hard work had already been done for them, and said, "Nobody was using the land, so it's perfectly fine for us to just take it."

Still, it's not like slavery of the natives didn't take place - it's just those slaves died too frequently.  In the islands where Columbus first landed and enslaved the native peoples, the entire island was depopulated of its native population.  The reason the African slave trade was started was to get slaves that would survive.

Oh, wait, we were talking about something else...

I suppose Elves would never come to your fortress if you chop down trees and so on. Why would an Elf want to go and live in a smelly dark cave full of alcoholic midgets? Indeed, why would a human, except to trade?

Current migrants are culturally dwarves who just have strange attributes right now.  Elves that live in your caves would have dwarven mentalities, not be cannibals, and not give a darn about the trees.  They might also have a good appreciation for stonework, and their artistic inclinations might lead them to be engravers rather than rope reed weavers.  They adopt all the religions and ethics of their adopted culture, rather than having it be an innate aspect of their race, which is a big part of the Cacame-style integration.  Cacame was an elf in body, but dwarf in soul, because he had adopted the dwarven way of life.  I also once had an elven queen named Asmel (dwarven name) who spent the early portion of her life as a plump helmet farmer because she was born in dwarven lands, and spent her whole life as a dwarven subject.

It's not a bug if a non-dwarven king or queen rises up, it just means that there is a shortage of adult dwarves to take the throne.  That's just much rarer in the current versions of the game where there are so much greater population totals, and more people die of starvation than violence, so the wars that tended to depopulate dwarven mountainhomes of all adult dwarves don't take place as often.  But they still happen - a dwarven civ that takes a serious pounding and faces existential crisis might still put a non-dwarf up if there are only non-dwarf adults left.

Plus, there are plenty of occasions where there are vampire tyrants that become king - and those include the lizardman vampires.