My biggest problem with the nobles (and by "noble" I mean any dwarf in a leadership position) isn't even the fact that they don't have any real use in your fortress, but the fact that they seemingly have no real power to them other than making stupid demands and harassing your workers.
The problem is that without representing politics or a complex economy in the game, it's hard to convey the meaning of a nobility/administration, or even explain why would the dwarves tolerate that kind of weak parasitic aristocracy without appealing to their own sadistic culture and nature as to the only reason why they would allow their "leadership" to operate the way it does.
The Expedition Leader, and perhaps all your initial dwarves should have a more important role in the game, depending of course of the initial motivations for the expedition in the first place. And since we currently lack extensive exposition on the subject and that makes this whole thing very difficult, I guess I'll have to assume some of the possibilities.
If the economy is activated at least in some capacity from the beginning (I know that a functional fortress economy is only a distant hope in the development cycle, but please bear with me), and we could say that the expedition was funded by some merchant company or another, it could make everything much more interesting. You'd start with your own little budget to buy aimals, food and tools necessary to build your initial settlement, and slowly pay back what you own (probably through the caravans). Not only that, but you'd eventually have to start paying wages to your dwarves. When the fortress is more or less organized, the dwarves should start demanding compensation for their labor sooner rather than later.
As soon as the first dwarves are acommodated, the whole dynamic of labor should change. The fortress becomes an entity, and leadership central. There should be three basic options:
- The dwarf works directly for you, and everything he produces belongs to the "fortress", represented at this time by the expedition leader (who got the position of course for being one of the orignal settlers and oganizer of the expedition).
- He works independently, and pays the fortress taxes instead.
- Or mabe you could even give him your blessings and allow him to settle nearby and make his own little farm/village. I guess this option would fall into the "hilldwarf" idea that Toady has been teasing us with, and would help to control the population and migration waves quite a bit.
Now, there's hundreds of threads that theorised and talked about the economy to death, or certainly way more in depth than what I just did. But the reason I'm talking about it is just to point out how important the idea of a early economy is to give dwarven leadership some meaning. Because the way it works right now is very confusing. Everyone seems to work for the fortress, and the "fortress" has complete control of their duties and jobs and don't have to pay them any wages other than food and clothing being free. And they get a little upset if you have not bothered to carve them a little room, regardless of the amount of work they actually did.
And before someone says it, I'm not just confused because dwarf fortress seems so alien to our modern capitalist society. I really don't think the game works like this intentionally, being that a fully functional economy seems to be what Toady and Threetoe have in mind for the completed version of the game. But what really bothers me is that this "fortress" has no representation.
I think one of the better changes in the game regarding the nobility was when the game started to allow you to promote your baron from within your own fortress, rather than having one sent in from the outside. That one change gave your fortress an air of accomplishment that wasn't there in earlier versions. It gave you the seal of approval from the king, who recognized your settlers as successful in their mission and decided to promote one into nobility. Of course that's not how it should always go... The king could decide to promote your settlement into a barony and then give your lands to some outsider noble to administrate them as his own personal fief, if you (The fortress, represented by the expedition leader) should accept. Of course, becoming a barony and therefore a integral part of the dwarven kingdom should have a much deeper meaning than it does now, but that's another discussion.
But the thing is, after a long time as a vassal of your king, and after finally being promoted to a
duchy, I'm opposed to the idea of simply "becoming the capital" by having the king appear into your territory after you give him enough offerings. There's no way a duchy and a king should rule the same settlement simutaniously . It makes absolutely no sense. Again, just another game mechanic that makes the nobility seems even more pointless than it actually is.
tl;drI got a little wordy here and there but my main proposition is that instead of becoming a capital by having the king just slide over your fortress with his dumb face and a couple of elite speardwarves after you sent him a stinking barrel of *prepared cow intestins*, what should happen is an event that allowed your duke to declare the fortress an independent kindom, and enjoy whatever concequences he gets over his decision. What do you guys think?