Soooo Hill Dwarves.
They are working. They embark with above ground food and they like being outdoors, just as planned, but they just don't feel different enough from regular dwarves. I feel almost like I'm playing a cheater version of dwarves, there are no drawbacks for what has been added-
And it's not unexpected but the emissary still jabbers on about the mountain home, not sure if there is a way to fix that.
One work around I tried was changing the entity in the raws from MOUNTAIN to PLAINS, seemed like it could work, right? This however had the bizarre side effect of changing the dwarves into humans. In every way human - it was very strange.
This got me thinking, much as i like hill dwarves and seeing their cities popup on the map they just really arn't different enough from normal dwaves to make it worth them being a second playable race.
Humans on the otherhand, I see alot of potential for them. Lots. I think the next thing I will work on is purposely making humans a playable race and making the hill dwaves adventure mode only.
One thing that comes to mind for hill dwarves is having their industries take off in a different direction than dwarves. Mountain dwarves are focused on metals, gems, and stone underground. Hill dwarves live aboveground; perhaps they're more pastoralists, and/or crafters of wood and clay. Also, there's a method that sorta reverses cave adaptation; ask someone who comprehends it what it is and use it. This encourages aboveground building, as would reducing skill learn rates on mining and especially masonry and stonecrafting. In exchange, increase learn rates on carpentry, pottery, and perhaps woodcrafting/burning. Add some reactions that allow them to:
--Make wooden mechanisms (perhaps at an average rate of 1.33 to 1.5, to encourage it?), using the Mechanic skill and perhaps occuring in the Advance Carpentry Workshop (see below).
--Make multiple charcoal from one log in a big, complex workshop/furnace (the Advanced Charcoal Burner?, which is 5X5 to 7X7, depending on what you'd prefer and probably requires two fire-safe blocks and a fire-safe mechanism). Perhaps it eats one fuel, spits out two or three charcoal bars, and has a chance of producing more charcoal and/or some smoke which causes nausea and stuff.
--Make more stuff out of wood at a special workshop (Advanced Carpentry Workshop, requiring two building materials and probably taking up a 5X5 space). This stuff includes statues, 2-4(#?) wooden blocks (out of one log), ~35(#?) blocks out of 10 logs, and other stuff you can think of to do with logs.
--Make pottery furniture, perhaps requiring two or three lumps of clay.
--Etc.
Finally, remove their ability to use subterranean stuff. Why do surface dwarves still grow plump helmets as a staple crop?