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[Owlbread]

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...

Yes, we were. The important thing is that many Native Americans, regardless of why they weren't enslaved, fought on both sides during the American Revolution out of loyalty, choice, money and so on, not by slavery. Why can't animal men do the same in DF?

Perhaps we could add a few extra things in as well - animal men will refuse to live in conditions that are the opposite to their natural habitat, so you may be expected to build or provide some sort of open-air camp outside for the tigermen (for them to live in, at least), or a dark cave for the troglodytes. If you break that agreement, they may break off their relationship with your fortress. I think your diplomat could also use broker skills like judge of intent, comedian, pacifier etc in dealings with animal men representatives; surely at least 1 would speak a human or Dwarven tongue due to historical exposure to these civilisations. This animal man representative would be the interpreter between your civilisations. If not, you could always find other ways of communicating until mutual intelligibility is established, or send in an Elf immigrant as your diplomat.

Animal men would also respond to your fortress "alerts", so that would mean they don't all suddenly get torn to shreds by goblins if you tell everyone to stay inside. Of course, if they have to stay inside for too long, they may become restless and fight your Dwarves. Perhaps you could, as part of the "alerts" system, exempt the animal men of any kind, or particular kinds, from this alert and so on. There wouldn't be a problem if you decide to hire some tigermen as soldiers, give them armour and weapons but also promise to protect their families and give them a camp in the open air to stay in. Even if the tigermen are inside a lot and can be controlled like Dwarven squads in your army, they would go to sleep in their camp, so they would be satisfied. Of course, they may become depressed if they have to stay inside and underground for too long (bad thoughts), a bit like the opposite of cave adaptation. It would make more sense to have cave creatures like lizard men as guards in your fortress rather than tigermen, who would be excellent rangers and ambushers who patrol your woodlands, flatlands and so on, hunting and stalking stealthed intruders and potential threats by scent. It'd be great having a squad of lizard men patrol your underground fortress and the caverns, biting the christ out of any goblin child snatcher or hostile humanoid that's brave enough. Same for the amphibian men, who would prefer to stay in water and guard your waterways. Flying creatures would be excellent watchmen.

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.

In that case, even better. I don't see anything wrong with animal men, elven or human members of a Dwarven civilisation taking control in the absence of all the Dwarven adults. If they've been there long enough, it's logical that they would be culturally Dwarven. Think of the British tribes across the southern and central parts of the isles that took on Roman qualities after the Romans left, or indeed the development of romance languages on the continent.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, that causes problems, though.

What's "aboveground" when it comes to a building, anyway?  I mean, any sort of home is going to have a roof, right? 

If I completely construct a building aboveground that includes a warehouse and workshops and dining hall, and those tigermen carpenters are working with the tigermen woodcutters and haulers only ever see the insides of your facility... what's the difference between that and being underground, as far as the game can tell? 

I can dig a giant pit into the ground, and then construct walls all over the place to build a fortress that is "below ground", yet has been considered "outdoors" for the purposes that farming would care about. 

Does that make tigermen happy?  Or do they have to get direct sunlight in a way that would make cave-adapted dwarves nauseous?  If so, does that mean including Tigermen specifically means making my fortress highly vulnerable to flying creatures?

If so, I think I'll keep the serpentmen and antmen, but screw the tigermen.

[Owlbread]

Well, that causes problems, though.

What's "aboveground" when it comes to a building, anyway?  I mean, any sort of home is going to have a roof, right? 

If I completely construct a building aboveground that includes a warehouse and workshops and dining hall, and those tigermen carpenters are working with the tigermen woodcutters and haulers only ever see the insides of your facility... what's the difference between that and being underground, as far as the game can tell? 

I can dig a giant pit into the ground, and then construct walls all over the place to build a fortress that is "below ground", yet has been considered "outdoors" for the purposes that farming would care about. 

Does that make tigermen happy?  Or do they have to get direct sunlight in a way that would make cave-adapted dwarves nauseous?  If so, does that mean including Tigermen specifically means making my fortress highly vulnerable to flying creatures?

If so, I think I'll keep the serpentmen and antmen, but screw the tigermen.

It would mean making your tigermen (or any other similar aboveground creature) vulnerable to flying creatures, yes, unless they can shoot them with crossbows, fend them off with other means or with the help of an allied tribe of flying humanoids that you've recently become acquainted with. I think the game actually has distinctions like "above ground, inside, dark" or something like that, and "underground, dark" and so on. Check your K thing next time you're in a fortress. If your workshops are indoors and you have tigermen carpenters (which may be unwise, as you could have another race for that job), then it would be fine if they go and sleep in the camp in the open air, provided they aren't indoors for too long. If you had lizardmen outside, the same problems would appear in reverse.

[NW_Kohaku]

Yes, of course I know about the inside designations - that's why I was comparing it to the aboveground/underground farming, where something is marked as "outside" forever if it has ever seen daylight.

The problem is that the system you are talking about essentially punishes the construction of roofs of any sort, except maybe to get around the problems of not being able to build a bedroom without a roof.

But seriously, talking about this is kind of pointless - why have anything other than dwarves at all for efficiency purposes?  There is no efficiency to be gained in having to set up completely separate quarters unless those tigermen can literally do something dwarves cannot.  Even lizardman and serpentmen, who are shorter-lived and more likely to wind up dying on you of age, are perhaps more hassle than efficiency, although serpentmen at least have the decency to come with a venomous bite that dwarves can't do themselves.

Multi-racial forts make sense only as far as their interactions and the presence or absence of racial tensions exists for flavor, and so it has to come back to those arguments.

Further, as someone who has made a multi-racial fort through the use/abuse of castes to make radically different sentient beings possible, including making minotaurs, spider-people, and serpent-people all live together with dwarves... guess what, those serpent people are going to be wearing pants.  If you make tail-warmers, elves that come to visit are going to be wearing tail-warmers instead of socks, in spite of the fact that tail warmers are basically the size of an elf's torso.

[Neonivek]

Animalmen have a very low age limit - sometimes hardly any older than adulthood

Which is frankly one thing I sort of want to change. Especially since the vast majority of insect Animalmen live only a single year (admittingly I would understand if Toady made all insect animalmen mindless)

Mind you I was always speaking on a World Gen + Adventurer perspective..

I still hate the term "Semi-sentients" for creatures who arn't programmed to create civs but who have intelligence. I would understand it for the slow learner intelligent races like trolls.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, that's for Detoxicated to change.

That little "Subject" line, you can edit that, too.

[Owlbread]

Yes, of course I know about the inside designations - that's why I was comparing it to the aboveground/underground farming, where something is marked as "outside" forever if it has ever seen daylight.

The problem is that the system you are talking about essentially punishes the construction of roofs of any sort, except maybe to get around the problems of not being able to build a bedroom without a roof.

But seriously, talking about this is kind of pointless - why have anything other than dwarves at all for efficiency purposes?  There is no efficiency to be gained in having to set up completely separate quarters unless those tigermen can literally do something dwarves cannot.  Even lizardman and serpentmen, who are shorter-lived and more likely to wind up dying on you of age, are perhaps more hassle than efficiency, although serpentmen at least have the decency to come with a venomous bite that dwarves can't do themselves.

Multi-racial forts make sense only as far as their interactions and the presence or absence of racial tensions exists for flavor, and so it has to come back to those arguments.

Further, as someone who has made a multi-racial fort through the use/abuse of castes to make radically different sentient beings possible, including making minotaurs, spider-people, and serpent-people all live together with dwarves... guess what, those serpent people are going to be wearing pants.  If you make tail-warmers, elves that come to visit are going to be wearing tail-warmers instead of socks, in spite of the fact that tail warmers are basically the size of an elf's torso.

That can be sorted though, I reckon. Maybe not now, but it's not impossible for creatures to be programmed to choose their clothes based on their physical needs. The idea is that the tigermen and other such creatures would somehow be better at ambushing and doing ranger-type activities than Dwarves, and creatures like troglodytes would be good for manual labour while your dwarves are more preoccupied with useful, higher-brow stuff - crafting, stoneworking, training, talking, writing books, woodworking, smithing etc. Stronger creatures could haul heavy items like platinum ore much faster than Dwarves can, and without the use of pack animals, wheelbarrows and so on. Dwarves are also unable to fly - some animal men can. Racial tensions can exist, yes, but they don't have to be the only decisive factor in this; I think if we can find animal men with unique talents (or create them) that our fortress could use, then that's good enough for me. Racial tensions are just interesting flavour that can add a lot to the game.

Also, the system doesn't punish the construction of roofs of any sort - only if you want to use animal men that prefer to live in the great outdoors for labour indoors (for extended periods of time), which is unwise. Just use troglodytes or an animal men that doesn't really give a damn about their environment as carpenters - the tigermen can be woodcutters if need be, but they'd be far better trackers and ambushers than your dwarves can ever be, even at legendary. Maybe not better fighters, but certainly better at "hunting". Not every tigerman would be a better tracker/ranger/ambusher than your legendary rangers, but legendary tigermen would be. I reckon creatures like lizardmen would be able to find their way around in the dark a lot better than dwarves could too.

Perhaps antmen could be effective miners/diggers - maybe in a different way to dwarves so they don't cancel each-other out. I think we could work something out, e.g. antmen could dig in a faster but less precise/productive manner (i.e. doesn't give as much stone, and can't dig intricate designs, but can dig very quickly. If you have a really big, simple room like a big square, get your antmen in to do the job. Whether or not the antmen actually do the job is dictated by a setting on the work order that you can set manually via the manager). This could get interesting. What do you fellows think should be the strengths and uses of certain animal men and savages, like the antmen for example?

[NW_Kohaku]

Oh, I know exactly what it takes to make clothing fit the proper castes - you need to make clothing based upon caste-level tags (although for efficiency, it might be useful to put it on the body part templates, as well).

Because right now, you have one-size-fits-your-whole-species clothing, regardless of if your females are 8 times the size of the males. 

Right now, you have no capacity to make clothing for sizes other than your primary race, so tigermen that might have different clothing sizes would not be covered at all - you'd need to have a menu option that lets you select what species or caste you are building your clothing for.

This has already been made fairly clear, I think, but hey, we can make another suggestion thread if we have to, I guess.

Flight and swimming make no difference, because pathfinding.  But then, we have to talk about pathfinding optimizations again.

The thing is... no, trogs are not better at that "low-brow" stuff than dwarves are.  In fact, given enough training, trogs would be as good as dwarves at the book-writing.  A dwarven miner and a tigerman miner are basically the same thing.  In fact, the tigerman might be better, since dwarves have an agility penalty.  Tigermen should then be better at darn near everything, since agility and speed are generally the only truly relevant stats in most work.

If you really want specialized races, then modding castes is your friend. 

Otherwise, the only point to this is the interracial relations.

[Owlbread]

Oh, I know exactly what it takes to make clothing fit the proper castes - you need to make clothing based upon caste-level tags (although for efficiency, it might be useful to put it on the body part templates, as well).

Because right now, you have one-size-fits-your-whole-species clothing, regardless of if your females are 8 times the size of the males. 

Right now, you have no capacity to make clothing for sizes other than your primary race, so tigermen that might have different clothing sizes would not be covered at all - you'd need to have a menu option that lets you select what species or caste you are building your clothing for.

This has already been made fairly clear, I think, but hey, we can make another suggestion thread if we have to, I guess.

Flight and swimming make no difference, because pathfinding.  But then, we have to talk about pathfinding optimizations again.

The thing is... no, trogs are not better at that "low-brow" stuff than dwarves are.  In fact, given enough training, trogs would be as good as dwarves at the book-writing.  A dwarven miner and a tigerman miner are basically the same thing.  In fact, the tigerman might be better, since dwarves have an agility penalty.  Tigermen should then be better at darn near everything, since agility and speed are generally the only truly relevant stats in most work.

If you really want specialized races, then modding castes is your friend. 

Otherwise, the only point to this is the interracial relations.

I know you want to reduce this thread to interracial relations, but it can actually cover any matter of things concerning "semi-sapient" creatures i.e. savages as part of your fortress. Modding is all fine and well but it's nice if it's an actual feature in the game. Technically, we could just mod in a lot of these suggestions from many threads and not really bother. Indeed, we don't have the capacity to make clothing for sizes other than your race, but I don't see why that couldn't be added. Also, trogs aren't as good as Dwarves at "high brow stuff" because they can't bloody read at all, and are slow learners. They're not better at the "low brow stuff" either, I'm just using them as an example of a slow-witted creature that could be handy doing basic jobs in your fortress while your dwarves do better stuff. Indeed, the tigermen would be faster than Dwarves (but perhaps they can't dig complicated designs) but remember - they can't stay underground. You need lizardmen for something like that, and even then they're not as good as Dwarves because of their inability to dig complicated things. Antmen could also do that job much better than any tigerman or lizardman could, but they run into similar problems - hence where your dwarves come in.

[Splint]

Wow I missed alot while I was at school. I'm impressed with the spirited debate I see here!

Just tosing this out there, Tigermen are too big to wear dwarf gear, except weapons and shields. If I recall They either only had those, or I bought gear for them from the humans; i don't recall exactly, as I had the tigermen working as  sort of shock corps I set upon goblins while the dwarves distracted them. Boy was that messy... I personally like the open air camp deal, like a sort of nobles screen thing showing requirments for the camp as a whole: Dining/meetinghall, watersource, dormitory, and for more savage races like trogs and tigermen, a barracks.

As far as interactions go, I liked that negotiations thing, and having to keep them content or they say screw off and abandon you (probably at the worst moment for the dwarves) or flat out give you the finger while scrotum stomping you legendary crafters cause you broke the agreement made with the tribe.your dwarves due to.... accidents... discourages dwarves, keeping the non-dorf population down.

As far as modding this... I'd do it myself but the last time I tried I wound up as a race of antenna'd fire breathing monitor lizard FBs and moose people.

[NW_Kohaku]

I know you want to reduce this thread to interracial relations, but it can actually cover any matter of things concerning "semi-sapient" creatures i.e. savages as part of your fortress. Modding is all fine and well but it's nice if it's an actual feature in the game. Technically, we could just mod in a lot of these suggestions from many threads and not really bother. Indeed, we don't have the capacity to make clothing for sizes other than your race, but I don't see why that couldn't be added. Also, trogs aren't as good as Dwarves at "high brow stuff" because they can't bloody read at all, and are slow learners. They're not better at the "low brow stuff" either, I'm just using them as an example of a slow-witted creature that could be handy doing basic jobs in your fortress while your dwarves do better stuff. Indeed, the tigermen would be faster than Dwarves (but perhaps they can't dig complicated designs) but remember - they can't stay underground. You need lizardmen for something like that, and even then they're not as good as Dwarves because of their inability to dig complicated things. Antmen could also do that job much better than any tigerman or lizardman could, but they run into similar problems - hence where your dwarves come in.

Actually, no, you can't mod that into clothing.  There is NO way to change how clothing is handled, and let your dwarves produce any sort of clothing other than clothing sized specifically for dwarves, and which dwarves will wear.  You can make "wing protectors" if you really want for your dwarves to give to owl creatures, but they're going to see those as "gloves", and wear them like gloves, and they aren't going to be sized for owl creatures.

Also, when something moddable comes into a suggestion thread, it is usually mentioned rather quickly.

Further, no, you can't dictate that troglodytes can't read or that lizardmen can't dig.  Not from the way the raws are right now, at least, because that isn't a part of their creature definitions, and what jobs they can claim are determined by what civ they are in.

A whateverman in a dwarf civ will be just as good a metalsmith or engraver as a dwarf is right now, because there are no relevant modifications to their skills.

And really, why should there be?  Unless you want to make some sort of personality-based conflict with the job itself (which is Personality Rewrite stuff), why should a tigerman NOT be as good as a dwarven metalsmith? 

Again, the game is just not built to currently meaningfully convey differences between races, which is partially both because of and why so many of the current races are just so plain similar when you get right down to it. 

Only making interactions between different races meaningful and more fundamental changes to the game mechanics to allow for more meaningful differences will change that, and it isn't some sort of personal insult to accuse me of saying that.

[Owlbread]

I know you want to reduce this thread to interracial relations, but it can actually cover any matter of things concerning "semi-sapient" creatures i.e. savages as part of your fortress. Modding is all fine and well but it's nice if it's an actual feature in the game. Technically, we could just mod in a lot of these suggestions from many threads and not really bother. Indeed, we don't have the capacity to make clothing for sizes other than your race, but I don't see why that couldn't be added. Also, trogs aren't as good as Dwarves at "high brow stuff" because they can't bloody read at all, and are slow learners. They're not better at the "low brow stuff" either, I'm just using them as an example of a slow-witted creature that could be handy doing basic jobs in your fortress while your dwarves do better stuff. Indeed, the tigermen would be faster than Dwarves (but perhaps they can't dig complicated designs) but remember - they can't stay underground. You need lizardmen for something like that, and even then they're not as good as Dwarves because of their inability to dig complicated things. Antmen could also do that job much better than any tigerman or lizardman could, but they run into similar problems - hence where your dwarves come in.

Actually, no, you can't mod that into clothing.  There is NO way to change how clothing is handled, and let your dwarves produce any sort of clothing other than clothing sized specifically for dwarves, and which dwarves will wear.  You can make "wing protectors" if you really want for your dwarves to give to owl creatures, but they're going to see those as "gloves", and wear them like gloves, and they aren't going to be sized for owl creatures.

Also, when something moddable comes into a suggestion thread, it is usually mentioned rather quickly.

Further, no, you can't dictate that troglodytes can't read or that lizardmen can't dig.  Not from the way the raws are right now, at least, because that isn't a part of their creature definitions, and what jobs they can claim are determined by what civ they are in.

A whateverman in a dwarf civ will be just as good a metalsmith or engraver as a dwarf is right now, because there are no relevant modifications to their skills.

And really, why should there be?  Unless you want to make some sort of personality-based conflict with the job itself (which is Personality Rewrite stuff), why should a tigerman NOT be as good as a dwarven metalsmith? 

Again, the game is just not built to currently meaningfully convey differences between races, which is partially both because of and why so many of the current races are just so plain similar when you get right down to it. 

Only making interactions between different races meaningful and more fundamental changes to the game mechanics to allow for more meaningful differences will change that, and it isn't some sort of personal insult to accuse me of saying that.

We may not be able to mod it in, but we can just get Toady to change it. Because Dwarves can have special traits that make them unique. They were created by Armok as the chosen race, why can they not be the best smiths, the most skilled miners and the finest masons in the universe? The reason why there should be special purposes (what's happening to my special purpose?) for animal men in fortresses is that it makes the game more interesting. Why can dwarves go into a martial trance and humans can't? Why can Elves talk to animal men and Dwarves/Humans can't? This is about making the current wealth of animal men more interesting by adding this fortress/native agreement, allowing them to shine in their own ways. And no, really, trogs can't read. They don't have the CAN_READ tag in their raws right now. Perhaps we could add it, but then they'd be a bit more advanced than just basic cavemen-like creatures. Lizardmen should also be able to dig (I'm not going by their current raws, I'm just suggesting that), but not as well as Dwarves or Antmen should be able to (as in, Dwarves could cut very intricate designs out of the rock with their picks and dig very fanciful rooms, but antmen can dig very fast, but only under simple instructions). I'm just saying that regardless of the current raws, this is what I think we could set up. Elves could be the best carpenters and hunters in the land, humans the best merchants or something.

We can get down to the more delicate cultural stuff after we lay this basic framework. I mean, it can't be any worse than it is now; right now, we can buy tigermen off the Elves and just let them run about in the fortress like labourless Dwarves. They can even make friends. I'm not suggesting we ignore the racial relations stuff, I'm just saying that goes on top of this idea like a layer cake. There are other ways to make races different to one-another in a meaningful way (which could be implemented alongside the race relations stuff), and I'm suggesting that we can do it through innate skills and abilities that make them better at certain things than other creatures. The problem with the race relations thing is that it seems to be a really deep concept that requires a lot of thought, so we would be best to take a lot of time on that. It would most likely come a lot later in the game as well because we barely have any meaningful inter-dwarf relations/interactions, let alone international relations between civilisations of the same race or seperate ones.

I personally like the open air camp deal, like a sort of nobles screen thing showing requirments for the camp as a whole: Dining/meetinghall, watersource, dormitory, and for more savage races like trogs and tigermen, a barracks.

That's an excellent idea, Splint. I really the idea of a nobles-screen like thing that you can go into to see what the tribes need. I suppose that brings you closer to the tribes, so they'd feel like more of a part of your fortress, but not too much so that you would forget they're there by agreements and treaties, not by birth or something like your dwarves.  I'd use tigermen as shock troops too, but maybe something more durable like a troll would be in order. That's a good point; are sasquatches, trolls and yetis of the same classification as trogs? Or indeed, animal men? Maybe they are, they're just a lot slower in the mind. I think the biggest issue is that trolls, yetis etc seem to be solitary creatures. I wonder how we could integrate them into the fortress. It should be possible - the goblins do it after all. Trolls are also evil, something we need to keep in mind.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, for starters, Armok doesn't exist.  You must be thinking of [ADJECTIVE][NO_ART_NOUN], the creator deity of [NOUN][PHRASE]. 

Anyway, the only thing unique about dwarves, aside from some attributes and a few personality things that don't make much difference until after the Personality Rewrite, the only thing that really matters is that they have TRANCES (which also makes them mood), and 60k size. 

Attributes unfortunately don't matter nearly as much as skills do right now, and since most animalmen don't even have any attributes given to them at all (or rather, all of them have default attributes), then the differences between the animalmen are essentially restricted to maxage and size. 


Sure, we could ask Toady for caste-level body-templatable clothing tokens... but that's another suggestion entirely, and I fully support making it (if it hasn't already been made). 

Which was my whole point - these sorts of things rely upon other suggestions to be implemented beforehand.


CAN_READ is not a token, by the way.  Reading is a skill, and while it might be possible to make creatures innately read or possibly even theoretically impossible to read through use of the caste-level skill tokens, those aren't being used in such a way right now. 


Digging is not a creature-level concept right now, either (barring skill tokens being used in a way they aren't right now, again), it's a civ-level token, so again, anyone who joins a dwarf civ is going to immediately become capable of dwarven steel manufacture, and have access to all other civ-level knowledge.

To get onto the "well that's how it should be", with lizardmen not being able to "dig as well"... once again, you're not answering the important question: Why shouldn't they?

Why can't a lizardman dig as well as a dwarf can dig if they are members of a dwarf civilization?  Unless there is some sort of physiological or deeply ingrained psychological problem with them not being able to swing a pick in a way like how a dwarf does if a dwarf taught him how to do that digging, why wouldn't a lizardman learn to dig just as well as a dwarf does?

Why shouldn't a lizardman know how to make steel if a dwarf shows him how?  Why shouldn't a lizardman start making =steel breastplates= with the best of them?

What you would have to justify is some sort of actual racial inferiority.  You need to explain why a lizardman will never be able to understand how to pound a bar of steel with a hammer to make it sharp the same way a dwarven weaponsmith will be able to understand it, no matter how tutored in the arts of weaponsmithing he/she may be by dwarves.  What justifies that?

The rest, after that, is all culture, and how cultures interact, and those are the very things that I am trying to say are the most important aspects.

So what if it takes a lot of thought?  This is the suggestions forums.  Anything that DOES get implemented is going to get implemented only after a few years and dozens of threads on the subject with hundreds or even thousands of posts.  THINKING or conversing are not the bottlenecks to ideas in DF.  If there's one thing we can do, it's hash out ideas as thoroughly as we need to before any action is taken upon them.

[ApolloCVermouth]

But seriously, talking about this is kind of pointless - why have anything other than dwarves at all for efficiency purposes?  There is no efficiency to be gained in having to set up completely separate quarters unless those tigermen can literally do something dwarves cannot.  Even lizardman and serpentmen, who are shorter-lived and more likely to wind up dying on you of age, are perhaps more hassle than efficiency, although serpentmen at least have the decency to come with a venomous bite that dwarves can't do themselves.

Multi-racial forts make sense only as far as their interactions and the presence or absence of racial tensions exists for flavor, and so it has to come back to those arguments.

To me, this is an important point. I'm not sure how Toady plans to develop dwarven society, except that dwarf mode inns imply some sort of more substantial interaction with outside races--though building them will be optional. I probably won't build them. In my mind, dwarves are a secretive race that exists to make beautiful things and to gather wealth. They live to work. Why would dwarves want animal men building their walls or engraving them with their legends? Why would they teach others their secrets?

[stabbymcstabstab]

Because they need some one to reach the booze on the top self.