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[NW_Kohaku]

Further, if dwarves are still going to be mining for stone all the time, regardless of whether that stone has iron, then you're always going to need a pick for that.  It would be a fair assessment that you should probably just reroll any dwarven civ that doesn't have access to copper or iron or couldn't make picks somehow, although I wonder if the game just fudges that and says all dwarf civs automatically get iron because they wouldn't be able to make an anvil without one. 

However, saying "no glassblowers unless the mountainhomes or at least some hill dwarves have sand" would be somewhat more reasonable, provided you could "invent" glassblowing in the field somehow.

[Andeerz]

Irmo:  That is pretty much what I was getting at.

And NW_Kohaku, I think that could work.  Though what in what I detailed last time I posted, if one was to implement that, you could have glass blowers coming into being even if the civ doesn't have any or any access to sand provided you have sand in the fort you just founded, as without modeling knowledge, everyone knows how to do everything and could do it.

But let's say we also add "knowledge" into the mess... which could facilitate the "invention" sort of thing and make for a more interesting world history.  I think I have some ideas for "invention" sort of... and which I will try to represent with an example of a hypothetical situation in DF were it to have magical game mechanics to do this...

Let's say knowledge mechanics like I sort of mention here exist in the game.  Say there is a distinction between "knowing of" and "knowing how".  Also, say there is a game mechanic in place that allows for professionals to spend some of their free time to "play and experiment".

Say you are playing a fort that started off with dwarves that know of and know how to make pottery.  Such an industry involves kilns or firing pits, which at least one of your dwarves knows how to build.  Say Urist McCurious Kiln Operator accidentally or intentionally sticks some native copper ore into the kiln while working one day.  Say the kiln has a chance (or maybe it just can, period) of burning hot enough to melt copper.  Urist notices that there is some stuff that is melting out of the rock.  Urist happens to like working with stone, and decides to play with the resulting heated rock and shiny orange stuff that melted out of it.  Urist, being creative and intelligent soon realizes that hammering the orange stuff yields a substance that is malleable, can hold an edge, and looks pretty if polished.  In this way, knowledge of refining ores and copper working is born and can be disseminated by Urist to the rest of the populace.  Pretty much anyone in the fort would automatically gain knowledge of the existence of copper, and copper tools and stuff (depending on how this is modeled), but knowledge of how to work with copper would have to be taught by Urist. 

Moving on, perhaps the local mason, Thikod, knowing of copper and that it requires a place to heat it, decides (perhaps the player orders him to... I dunno) to make furnace more appropriate for the ore extraction, that burns hot enough to melt copper more consistently.  Say Thikod has a chance of building a furnace hotter than it needs to be to melt copper... Thikod then gains knowledge (invents) this model of furnace, and can disseminate this knowledge to others.  Anyone with this knowledge could possibly build this furnace of this design and characteristics.  Perhaps this furnace, since it could burn hotter than needed, would be able to smelt iron ores when someone decides to experiment with that...

Well, this kind of stuff would be very hard to model, but it is food for thought... I dunno.  Maybe it would be too much to do.

And this sort of contains a tech-tree of sorts, though not a restrictive one.  In this example, discovery of copper working (generation of "knowledge of" and "knowledge how" of copper working) requires a firing chamber of sorts (kiln or fire pit) operated by someone with a wild hair up his butt that decides to put a native copper rock in there and see what happens.  And invention of a furnace able to melt copper requires a builder with motivation to make/design* one who knows of copper working and maybe even knows how to work copper.   I dunno.  This all seems a bit too convoluted... and would require a hard-coded, well-researched tree of what knowledge could lead to what knowledge... but again, it's food for thought!

*hmmm! that would be another use for the "designing phase" for furnaces and other buildings like trade depots that require designing by a dwarf... maybe everything should have a design phase that not only determines quality of a product, but introduces the opportunity for a dwarf to experiment or improve or generate a design.

Also... this kind of a tech tree might not be too restrictive depending on how things are done...

Like, say Urist never tried anything with copper ore.  Maybe Thikod made a hot-burning furnace for another reason (like for glazing or glass-making), and someone tried iron ore in it and found out iron working, bypassing copper or bronze. 



Oh, and if this were to be in the game somehow, I'd make it so that pretty much everyone starts with some basic level of technological development... like dwarves would be guaranteed to have people who know how to make picks, and work copper, and stuff in the first place.

[NW_Kohaku]

I'd say that you're kind of backwards in your "discovering that you can melt copper" idea - ceramics and glassblowing were discovered out of metallurgy, not the other way around. 

Besides, much of my response would already be in the same thread you just linked back to - knowledge of basic metallurgy, glassmaking, and ceramics were available from the Late Stone Age or Early Bronze Age.  The only real changes were in improvements in how quickly or efficiently they were made or in how high quality or sophisticated the final products were. 

Maybe the ability to make steel or not could be a scientific breakthrough, or making clear glass instead of just green glass, but really, anyone with a kiln and sand should be capable of making some form of glass, and as Irmo says, even without that, we shouldn't be creating a game where we might embark with a civ that can't make a pick, anyway. 

I would, again, much prefer a system more akin to the exotic taming or alchemy thread here for "knowledge upgrades", as well as cultural bonuses to the ways in which given materials are made rather than outright "you don't understand metal, you cannot make any metal items". 

Even for cultural bonuses to work, we'd need to have ways in which workshops or tools could be upgraded, and we'd need to make time spent actually working on crafting something take up a more significant period of time in the crafting process.  Right now, crafting a piece of clothing at a loom might take a dwarf of a given skill level 5 turns, but the trip to and back from the stockpile for the next bolt of cloth could be 30 turns.  Even if you somehow invented a super power loom that let you make a sock in just one turn, that still does nothing about the 30 turns spent going to the stockpile for the next bolt of cloth. 

If you have a more efficient supply route, that would, again, not be something generated by in-game knowledge, but by player efficiency, the same way that I was talking in that thread about how farming improvements that led to the great leaps in prosperity of the Ottomans were mostly from irrigation projects and better planning, which are player-focused activities, rather than just simple +20% farm yield improvements. 

[Andeerz]

I disagree about the timing of metal working and pottery.  I'd say they could have arisen independently.  All you need is for someone to make the connection between liberation of metal from rock and fire.  A person would just need to play around with rocks in a fire...  I used the pottery thing as an example as it provided a situation where the dwarf would have had a somewhat believable reason to experiment as the dwarf did.  I guess I could just rewrite it with someone just playing around with fire and rocks.  Also, pottery could rise completely independently of metalworking, too.  And that entire example was just the first thing that came to mind.  Not that that would actually happen in the game... Perhaps I should have used a later-period-technology example.  But the principle would be the same!

I would, again, much prefer a system more akin to the exotic taming or alchemy thread here for "knowledge upgrades", as well as cultural bonuses to the ways in which given materials are made rather than outright "you don't understand metal, you cannot make any metal items". 

I like the alchemy thread pretty much and the ideas there.  However, I like the idea of knowledge as something needed to do certain things.  With the distinction between knowledge of and knowledge how, however you could still have a situation where a person who doesn't understand metal (doesn't know how) could attempt to work metal (because he knows of metal working), and teach him or herself the process and discover it independently.  Or maybe my idea is bullshit altogether.

Also, the thing I like about it, too, is that it would allow for guilds (provided the appropriate developments make it into the game) to do one of the most important things they did: control educational capital.

Even for cultural bonuses to work, we'd need to have ways in which workshops or tools could be upgraded...

True!  Perhaps what I suggested about the way the "design phase" could work might help with that?  Like, a person designing a tool or workshop could design a new, better plan during that phase, which would then become a item of knowledge that can be disseminated throughout the game world... or adopt a better plan from elsewhere (from another culture?)

If you have a more efficient supply route, that would, again, not be something generated by in-game knowledge, but by player efficiency, the same way that I was talking in that thread about how farming improvements that led to the great leaps in prosperity of the Ottomans were mostly from irrigation projects and better planning, which are player-focused activities, rather than just simple +20% farm yield improvements. 

In the case of a player fort, yes!  It would be by player efficiency.  BUT, say it's an NPC fort or whatever.  What design strategy, architecture, or whatever the computer-controlled entity might use could be determined by the computer-controlled entity's in-game knowledge... and how that knowledge could be acquired, generated... I need to think about how to model that kind of stuff, but in my gut, I think I know how that could happen.  Perhaps I will discuss it later.

[NW_Kohaku]

In the case of a player fort, yes!  It would be by player efficiency.  BUT, say it's an NPC fort or whatever.  What design strategy, architecture, or whatever the computer-controlled entity might use could be determined by the computer-controlled entity's in-game knowledge... and how that knowledge could be acquired, generated... I need to think about how to model that kind of stuff, but in my gut, I think I know how that could happen.  Perhaps I will discuss it later.

As far as that goes, it's fairly reasonable - just making the off-screen cities more efficient in making certain things than in making others.  It would make trade make more sense, as well, if glass was cheaper to produce in one civ than in another. 

It just wouldn't have much meaning or impact to the player at this current state of the game to have this knowledge that had no particular impact on how you, as a player, played.

If your dwarven civ knows about irrigating its fields or not would have no impact on how much you, as a player, know about irrigating fields.

[Arkenstone]

From what I understand, the concept of 'technology' is really an erroneous association of three different things: General Knowledge, Specific Knowledge, and Infrastructure (which is also a collection of different things).

General Knowledge is knowing that something's possible, and perhaps a few hints on how to make it.  Specific Knowledge is practical experience in actually doing something.  While Infrastructure represents the tools and materials to actually make it.  A fourth factor might be Society, representing the need or desire to produce en masse or on a large scale.

For example, as a society we all have a General Knowledge of 4th gen. computers, while presumably someone has the Specific Knowledge and the Infrastructure exists.  For a 1st gen. computer the specific knowledge might be found in old books, but the Infrastructure (i.e., vacuum tubes) doesn't exist anymore.  Or let's say you wanted to forge a sword: we have furnaces (Infrastructure) still but the Specific Knowledge is all but forgotten.


...I'm not quite sure why I'm rambling on at this point...


Um, well, I guess I'd say what you'd really be looking for is some form of education system.

'Knowledge' could be a trait tracked separately from skill, and initially would be gained the hard way by highly skilled dwarves.  They could pass most of this skill on to their apprentice(s), maybe even write a book about it if so inclined.  Scribes would copy these books and put them in libraries, increasing the level of knowledge which dwarves from that civilization would start with.  The Guilds could also set up schools with lots of books about their craft in them, improving the overall knowledge of guild members.

Of course, this would also imply that gaining skills from scratch would be very hard without a mentor.  What you'd probably do (in the hypothetical finished version) is request an appropriately skilled dwarf from the Mountainhomes to come tutor a dwarf or possibly stay himself, for a fee of course...  (I'm thinking that as a high-ranking guild member, he'd start making demands on behalf of the guild.)

EDIT:
Lastly, I imagine you might find some very specific books in the library as an adventurer.  Like "On the Fashioning of Scepters of Microline".  I'm not sure if it would be better to track knowledge by skill, material, product, or some combination of those. (So a mason who works with marble would be able to craft it better too, or one who makes statues a lot would be able to make at least a decent statue out of bronze.

Actually, I think that this would probably be best as a skills rewrite then...