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[Reudh]

It's a forgotten beast pony made of adamantine.

[Eric Blank]

I think any of the big cat species with a volume more than the dwarf and less than a horses' would be around the right size for dwarves to ride, by height and weight. They could also concievably ride deer. These are guys about half to two-thirds the height of humans, and humans are comfortable on a horse, donkey, or cow-sized animal. Deer, black bears, and some of the big cats like tigers and lions are about small enough dwarves could get their stubby legs around them comfortably, without being too small that it would injure or overencumber the animal, preventing them form working as a mount. Dogs and wolves are a little too small (smaller than the dwarf), and cougars, leopards, and jaguars are also on the small side (same or similar volume to a dwarf).

I could also see them riding cave crocodiles (they're short and wide; you could mount a chair on them and sit comfortably), or treating elephants like Indians do and mounting them with a platform for multiple occupents and mini-ballistae. Or even gorillas. Gorilla cavalry? That could be pretty awesome, but they'd have to worry about them trying to stand upright or other crazy ape shit.

[Vattic]

The only thing I've ever seen kobolds ride are dinosaur sized cave beasts o.o

Well, I still think it would be weird watching dwarves on something large. They are DWARVES after all...

I've always been fond of the idea of dwarves riding boars. They seem the perfect size and have a similar attitude.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Just imagine them armoured and charging into battle.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

THIS is the mount of dwarves, and they're already partially in the raws so just need Toady to flesh them out and implement them 

[lorb]

But conflicts with the "all dwarves have pteromerhanophobia"-hypothesis which i think is a well established one.

[Manveru Taurënér]

But conflicts with the "all dwarves have pteromerhanophobia"-hypothesis which i think is a well established one.

Can't say I've ever heard that before

[MrWiggles]

I think that pony is blue.

[misko27]

So, In light of the recent post by toady, the one which established he is working on partial control of sites by groups, I think I can declare him officially side-tracked. It might be able to tie into badits by allowing them to take over towns, and might give forced administrators a use.

[Putnam]

So, In light of the recent post by toady, the one which established he is working on partial control of sites by groups, I think I can declare him officially side-tracked.

This is literally the very thing he announced he was going to work on when he was done with 34.11. What makes you think he's sidetracking?

He said he's activating the world now, and site ownership is the most important part in that. The combat changes were a sidetrack.

[misko27]

So, In light of the recent post by toady, the one which established he is working on partial control of sites by groups, I think I can declare him officially side-tracked.

This is literally the very thing he announced he was going to work on when he was done with 34.11. What makes you think he's sidetracking?

He said he's activating the world now, and site ownership is the most important part in that. The combat changes were a sidetrack.

But what about the bandits harrasing people?

[Putnam]

That's just petty annoyance. Site ownage is what entity goals are all about.

[Telgin]

Quite right.  This is one of the most important features needed for ongoing global conflicts, which is a large part of the upcoming update.

I suppose just having populations continue to fluctuate after world gen would have been a big step, but international conflicts will certainly be a welcome addition.  Having sites change hands after world gen would be interesting.  Having battles and such occur after world gen would be interesting too.  This is going to be underpinning a lot of later changes like the army related stuff in the future.  Having partial ownership of sites seems like it might be a step toward multi-species forts too.

There's a huge amount of potential for content to be added in this release, and a lot of potential side tracking.  I'm actually curious just what Toady plans to add for this release (which isn't likely to be what actually ends up in the release, of course).  "Activating the world" could mean anything that happens during world gen could happen afterward now, which is quite a lot.  I'm guessing it's mostly going to be sites changing hands, maybe establishment and abandoning of sites after world gen, and maybe other stuff related to positions of power being used and tracked after world gen.  Population maintenance seems like a given too.

I'm also curious how the game is going to handle this.  Will it perform world "time steps" per year of playing in fort mode or adventure mode?  Per season?  Month?  How will he amortize the processing cost of that?  Or is it going to be a very much simplified model that doesn't involve such complicated calculations?

All stuff I'm anxious to see.

[daveralph1234]

I'm also curious how the game is going to handle this.  Will it perform world "time steps" per year of playing in fort mode or adventure mode?  Per season?  Month?  How will he amortize the processing cost of that?  Or is it going to be a very much simplified model that doesn't involve such complicated calculations?

All stuff I'm anxious to see.

During worldgen, at least in smaller worlds with relativly short histories, several years can be calculated in under a second, so I doubt it will be too significant an impact. I imagine it would be done either seasonaly, or possibly when the caravan arrives, as then it at least makes sense. I can see some intresting discussions coming up as to the nature of the gameworld if it is done by caravan arrivals, possibly something along the lines of quantum observation (Schrödinger's cat).

[misko27]

Hmm, I've been doing some !!Science!! on loyalty cascades, how this ties in is very interesting. Summary of Tests: You, the player, are aligned with your group or government, not your civ. It is possible with some effort to creat a fort of seperatists, who attack your caravan, and hate on migrants, but are loyal to your orders(as opposed to those hostile to your gov, they appear as citizens but ignore you).Details:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 Animals are civ-aligned, so If you happen to have a tame dragon or other terrifying thing running around during a loyality cascade, it is entirely possible they will win the fight for the citizens. First attacl on caravan makes military opposed to your civ, if they attack other citizens they become unfriendly. If a citizen kills one of your seperatists, they becom a loyalist, friendly to civ, not to you. if a loyalist or seperatist kills , a citizen, (those who are friendly to civ and you) they become renegades, people who hate you and civ. Goblins are unfriendly to all but the renegades, i think. 

[FearfulJesuit]

I suspect that "activating the world" is going to be a project that will take at least a year and a half, possibly more. It may be one release, but it's more likely to be three or four (with the usual spat of post-release bugfix versions).

What this really means, I think, is that this is going to combine the functions of Army and Caravan Arc, and work on them as a single unit. I expect that within a year or so, Toady is going to expand the "sites can now really change hands" to extend to "sites can change into YOUR hands". It'll be especially interesting to watch non-military ways of doing so. Rather than killing elves, for example, you could capture them and coerce them into organizing a pro-dwarf revolt inside their forest cities, allowing you to get the spoils of capturing the site without having to send out an army (which you could also do). Negotiations with diplomats would have to be expanded, i.e. if you kept losing dwarves to sieges, you might be able to get peace at the price of 25 steel bars a year. If you had the king in the fortress, this would be further expanded as you'd be running a civilization, so for example rather than 25 steel bars a year you might be able to annex a few small settlements from the other side- so it would be much like Civ diplomacy.

This is likely to extend into a rehashing of how entities interact with each other. More specifically (and now we're starting to leave an educated prediction as to the feature creep in the immediate future and into the territory of speculation), each civilization will comprise a hierarchy of sites, since most civilizations seem to operate on some form of feudalism. It seems likely that the hierarchies will be loose frameworks more than strict guidelines- i.e., for Dwarves, the hierarchy in descending order is Mountainhome-Duchy-County-Barony-Settlement, but it will be allowed for a county to have no vassals or for a barony to skip the duchy/county steps and answer directly to the king. It will remain to be seen per each civilization and each species how much intracivilization conflict will be allowed. Dwarves seem to me to be a Lawful Good species (remember that it's us, the cheerfully sadistic and genocidal players, that make them engage in atrocities, not them), and as a result of this it seems to me that wars and squabbles within the civilization will be fairly rare and perpetuated more by oppression than by ambition (ie a dwarven baron might try and declare himself independent from the count above him because the count is being a dick and demanding more taxes and military might than the baron could provide, but probably not because the baron is power-hungry). Goblins, on the other hand, strike me as being more Chaotic Evil, and are likely to be involved in all sorts of bickering within their civilization.