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[Seraphim342]

I love the golems from Jewish lore, but I don't know if they fit with Dwarves.  Dwarven Golems, in most fiction, are more like mechanical constructs.  They're a shell that's either powered by some kind of clockwork or magic, or some in-between form of "magitek."  The Talmudic Golems would be excellent for human civs, though. 

My idea for Dwarven Golems is this: 

First, two separate types of Golems:  Worker Golems and War Golems.  Worker Golems can only do simple tasks like Hauling and Pump Operating, but never need to eat or sleep.  They can fight, but won't be much of a threat to an armored foe. War Golems can't do anything but kill stuff, but can be extremely powerful depending on components, also never need to eat or sleep. 

Armorsmith builds the body.  Quality and material type determine how effective its armor will be. 
Weaponsmith builds two weapons, one for each arm.  Same rules apply as with regular weapons, quality and material determines effectiveness. 
New "Golemancer" profession puts it all together using silver/gold/platinum and assorted gems.  His skill level affects the behavior of the Golem.  IE, with a Dabbling Golemancer be prepared for a psychotic Golem to start rampaging through your fort immediately.  Building Golems increases his skill level, and eventually a Legendary Golemancer will be able to make a Golem that won't ever go on a rampage... if he lives long enough to acquire the skill.  Higher-value precious metals and gems will also result in more stable Golems. 

In addition to the precious metals and gemstones, Golem-making would also require sentient sacrifices.  It's Slaves to Armok, God of Blood, after all.  Worker Golems would only require a sentient prisoner, like a Goblin for example.  War Golems would require, say, 4 Prisoners and a Dwarf.  For Worker Golems, any GoblinElf/Human/Kobold (Or Dwarf if you've got a lot of Chessemakers or Fish Cleaners hanging around drinking your booze) will do.  Quality of the parts is all that affects their performance in hauling/pump operating. 

War Golems would a different beast altogether, though.  In terms of their combat skills, they get the skills of the Dwarf who is sacrificed.  So if you want an awesome Double-Axe Golem, you're going to have to sacrifice an Axe Lord.  Once created, the Golem can't learn, so the initial skills it has are all it will ever get.  Could even take it a step further and have the skills of the PRISONERS factor in, make it a weighted average like (Prisoner Skills)(4 x Dwarf Skill)=Golem Skill, so for a Legendary Axe Golem you'd need FOUR Legendary Axegoblins and a Legendary Axedwarf.  This, plus the difficulty of getting a decent Golemancer who doesn't get killed off by his flawed creations, would keep you from amassing legions of Legendary Golems easily.  Could even have it so your Dwarf sacrifice gets cold feet at the last minute for added Fun... have that happen if he doesn't have the "doesn't care about anything anymore" tag.  Basically, you'll need to fortify your Golemancer's Workshop as heavily as your front entrance if you want to do some serious Golem-making =p

So, breakdown on Golems:
Pros: Don't eat, drink, or sleep.  Heavy armor, no organs to stab or brains to crush in, powerful attacks.  Don't die of old age. 
Cons:  Can go crazy and slaughter your people if the Golemancer's not skilled.  Can't heal or be repaired, lopped off limbs stay that way (the materials are magically animated, so you can't just slap on a new arm).  Need high-quality components and highly-skilled sacrifices to be effective.  Can't learn.  Can only do specific tasks. 

[Neonivek]

Really there is no need to heap soo many disadvantages on them.

It is kinda one of those situations where I just say "You created a system where in attempting to balance it you forgot that it is fundementally supposed to be an advantage. Yet you created either a disadvantage or a nonadvantage"

[Seraphim342]

They need some disadvantages though, or after a while you'll be running more of a Golem Fortress.  If there were a ton of advantages with no disadvantages, they'd be all you use.  If they have a ton of disadvantages with little advantage, there wouldn't be much of a use for them.  Basically, I feel like they should be absolutely awesome within their roles, but limited enough and hard enough to mass-produce that they'd be as rare as they are awesome. 

Part of what I was going for in my idea is that you can mass-produce cannon-fodder golems fairly easily, but awesome ones take a ton of work to make. 

I'd love to see a giant war golem the size of an adult dragon that mashes entire armies into paste, but building one that powerful should be almost a megaproject in and of itself.  You make them too easy to make and/or have too few drawbacks then having a military will become pointless. 

[Neonivek]

They need some disadvantages though, or after a while you'll be running more of a Golem Fortress.  If there were a ton of advantages with no disadvantages, they'd be all you use.  If they have a ton of disadvantages with little advantage, there wouldn't be much of a use for them.  Basically, I feel like they should be absolutely awesome within their roles, but limited enough and hard enough to mass-produce that they'd be as rare as they are awesome.   

But you didn't create that you didn't create that you created a cool feature that then couldn't handle it so you ruined them.

Your golems are broken in the worst possible sense. They are useless and terrible because of the balance.

Balance should stem dirrectly from the logic. We control the balance dirrectly we don't have to adapt them to dwarf fortress as it is now but a dwarf fortress that can be changed in the future.

I'd love to see a giant war golem the size of an adult dragon that mashes entire armies into paste, but building one that powerful should be almost a megaproject in and of itself.  You make them too easy to make and/or have too few drawbacks then having a military will become pointless

Why? Why would this invalidate a military? You just used vast resources to make a creature. You deserve every inch of battle capability it gives you and the game more then that RECOGNISES that you have a creature of vast capability.

As well you are in a game where enemies can have their own advantages and disadvantage and a few that can have the exact same ones you do.

WHAT magical quasi-balance of psychic ability are you talking about? What game are you balancing this for?

If Dwarves can make godzilla who says that goblins can't tame thier own? Who says humans cannot use battle tactics to take down godzilla. You have to understand that balance comes from an inbalance and when you yourself control how these are implimented there may not be a balance.

Why don't you want your entire fortress to be taken over by worker golems outside of very specific games?

Then you have to ask yourself the logic of the situation and if the player earned it. FINALLY you have to ask yourself if that is standard or the exception.

If Dwarf Fortress is a game that is different everytime and one of those occurances is that Dwarves have the ability, with a lot of hard work, to create golems... Then let the dwarves have golems... Let that world be unique and let it stand on its two feet without trying to tear it down in order to super impose this sense of balance that must proliferate between all world. Simply allow the game to balance itself within context of its own rules and laws and if it doesn't then there is nothing lost anyhow because the player CHOSE to play in a world where Dwarves have a distinct advantage over everyone else.

It creates a sense of wonder in each world and that is what dwarf fortress should be striving for. Not this false sense of balance across all universes.

As well just because golems are made it doesn't mean there is a loss of military especially given that the militaries in future games will not nessisarily be kept within the same fortress. Also if it just so happens that this world has a method that can outperform the military then you simply have a world where one method can eliminate the military without nessisarily presenting a less fun alternative. These golems may not present the same issues that your military does but they often have their own. What about going up against other Fortresses? They can certainly build golems same as you. What about Goblins who have captured dwarves, maybe they can build golems.

This is exactly like that conversation about healing magic where if a world was created where there are these miraculous healers... that healing should somehow be altered in order to make it deadly. Taking any sort of interest that could be created by this and ruining it for this balance that could easily be counterbalanced within the very world it spawned from. Blanketing anything that could be interesting forms of gameplay that spawn from this in a grey blanket of mediocrity and this sense of preservation.

Let me ask you... WHAT is the point of these golems? What should the player think when they see one, when they play with one? What does it say about the gameplay?

[Seraphim342]

What I'm saying is, that which is commonplace becomes mundane.  Boring.  Golems should be awesome.  The more awesome they get, the harder they are to make... the same as anything in DF.  If you could easily slap enough together to run your whole fortress with them, I'd find that boring as hell, and I think a lot of people here on the forums would agree with me.  As far as berserk golems go, it fits with both the lore and with DF.  Minecarts are awesome, but can mangle your Dwarves if you're not careful. Magma is extremely useful, but if you're not careful with it you get a fortress full of magma... which is perfect, because Losing is Fun!  Remember?

It also seems like you're piling on disadvantages I never even mentioned.  In my suggestion, War Golem disadvantages are just that they need a good "golemancer" or whatever you want to call it to be produced reliably in good quality.  The same as weapons and armor.  How many times have people gotten a standard-quality steel weapon and immediately melted it down, then kept making more until they got a masterwork?  Just about every time in my experience.  I think the advantages of having a pet bronze (or steel or candy) colossus that never has to eat, sleep, or drink (not to mention being immune to fire, drowning and magma if it's made of magma-safe materials, which I just realized) outweighs pretty much any downside you could attach to building or keeping it. 

As for the workers only being able to do hauling/pump operating (throw in woodcutting and maybe even mining, they're menial), it just seems to me, at least, that  they should only be good for menial labor.  Unless you want to make them sentient for no reason, menial labor and fighting is all golems would be good for.  But if you want immortal, heavily armored craftsgolems that never need to eat, sleep, or drink, I ask again, what's the point of having Dwarves?  If you use Dwarves instead of Golems in that situation you're intentionally crippling yourself for personal preference. 

Just seems to me like you want to add in Dwarves+, instead of a feature that expands on what's already in the game, offering new options without replacing things that already exist.  That's basically the definition of power creep. 

[Neonivek]

What I'm saying is, that which is commonplace becomes mundane.  Boring.  Golems should be awesome

While it makes golems more mundane it makes the setting even more interesting. Thus making golems a source of awsomeness.

Just seems to me like you want to add in Dwarves+, instead of a feature that expands on what's already in the game, offering new options without replacing things that already exist.  That's basically the definition of power creep

You mistake me so deeply. Not that I am not used to such an event.

The key to my possition is the idea that golems are not part of normal generation but a possibility to exist within the generation sequence.

That and that the time and effort that goes into making a golem means that the player deserves that advantage. Should they play long enough to replace their workforce then they have earned that and every advantage it brings them.

It also seems like you're piling on disadvantages I never even mentioned

I never dirrectly refered to one. It was mostly entirely on going beserk as it alone unbalances it.

But if you want immortal, heavily armored craftsgolems that never need to eat, sleep, or drink, I ask again, what's the point of having Dwarves?  If you use Dwarves instead of Golems in that situation you're intentionally crippling yourself for personal preference.

You exist in a world where craftsmen have the ability to create creatures out of metal. The game should respect that and follow through with that existance logicall.

Why would you want dwarves with golems existing? Resources, filling in gaps in your army, economics, nobility.

Would not using golems be almost like crippling yourself? Definately. You are intentionally giving yourself a handicap by ignoring the setting.

If the Golems have a weakness an intrinsic weakness then the game should also respect that as well. In your case of "Going beserk" that is a major flaw and would probably prevent all but the most desperate and insane builders from ever thinking of using them. Then it becomes something in the domain of your enemies but outside of yours.

The key is however that just because something is useful, very useful, the game shouldn't nessisarily bring in artificial balance in order to fix something that isn't nessisarily broken and is simply fixed by giving the player either natural conclusions to that advantage or opposition.

For example Minecarts arn't balanced at all. Their possitives and negatives stem purely from the fact that they are minecarts.

In the exact same way I wouldn't agree to balancing the golems if a world was generated where only the Goblins could make them.

[Seraphim342]

I really don't know what it was about my idea for handling berserk Golems (the concept of which was already brought up several times previously in this thread) that made you go straight into Bill O'Reilley indignation mode as if a berserk Golem had flattened your grandma, but I suppose that's your problem.  Though if a berserk Golem DID flatten your grandma, my sincerest apologies and condolences. 

Most of the lore for both Talmudic and Dwarfy golems has them getting out of control, and in fact some of the best-known of these stories is when exactly that happens, so why not implement it?  It's fun, and makes you plan for things.  I was never suggesting that they just toss the crazy switch in the middle of your dining hall with zero warning.  It would be chance-based dependent on the skill of the "crafter" like everything else is, either immediate when it was built (Oh crap, Urist drew the wrong rune!), a gradual process with visual clues like tamed animals reverting to their wild state (Hey Urist... that Golem's looking at me pretty funny), or never at all.  Furthermore, I never said anything about putting any cap on the things, if you've got the resources and wanted to put the effort in you could churn out as many as you please.  Even if you did put in a mechanic to limit the number of Golems I'd give it two days before someone !!science!!'d their way past it. 

After all, something that can give you incredible power to kill your enemies without any chance whatsoever of backfiring catastrophically if not properly managed is about the least Dwarfy thing ever.  A tamed dragon can be the greatest defensive weapon ever, or accidentally turn all your dwarves into !!dwarves!! if you don't keep an eye on it.  At least that's how it is in the game I'm playing. 

[Neonivek]

indignation mode as if a berserk Golem had flattened your grandma, but I suppose that's your problem.

What worth is a machine that will kill you?

Usually in those legends the Golems go beserk for a reason beyond lack of skill. Usually disuse.

"Furthermore, I never said anything about putting any cap on the things"

You indirrectly refered to one

[GreatWyrmGold]

Stop arguing. Seraphim, your idea outlined has so many requirements and disadvantages that it's almost completely useless, and it hinges on the idea that dwarves worship Armok. Look at their Relations screen some time, they don't.

Anyways, the war golems are especially broken. You need to sacrifice a weapon lord--not exactly a common resource--to get a decent golem. Plus a huge number of resources and four prisoners. Oh, and it can go berserk. All this for...increased size, weapon-hands, lowered vulnerability to damage, and a lack of metabolic needs. Granted, those are good things, but they're not earth-shattering (a goblin army could tackle it and chip at its armor plating until it lost a limb, for instance), and if you're spending that much effort you should be able to get something good from it.

But this brings me to another point about balance. Giving a gamechanging thing huge costs isn't balanced. 99.9% of the time, things aren't perfectly balanced. Usually, the imperfections are smaller than random chance, but when the cost and benefit are so huge the disparity is more obvious. In addition, something gamechanging is even harder to balance than most things, because it changes the game.

Anyways, I think that a. there should be many types of golems and b. they should have costs proportional to their benefits. Simple, right?

[Seraphim342]

GWG, I was just referring to the actual title of the game and the fact that if something doesn't contain "a spattering of dwarf blood" it generally isn't worthwhile =p

I didn't think the requirements I set were especially high, with the system I outlined I'd be using the hell out of Golems.  I couldn't agree more with your statement that costs should be proportional to benefits, and was just trying to outline a system like that.  I've had axe lords take out 40+ goblin sieges single-handedly, so I can't see how basically taking an axe lord, giving him bigger size, better armor, better weapons, and a lack of vulnerable organs would make him useless at any cost.  I also don't think making said Golem, which would be superior to an Axe Lord, should be easier overall than training an Axe Lord.  Once again, power creep, why put in the effort to train an Axe Lord if you can make a Golem that's better in every category for less effort?  Also, I never said that it needed to be a Lord.  Even a Bronze Colossus Analogue with recruit-level skills is still a Bronze Colossus Analogue. 

You indirrectly refered to one

If you say so. 

[GreatWyrmGold]

1. Dwarf Fortress does mean the fortress is made of dwarves. Guess what? The golems are also dwarven.
2. Um, rare minerals, several units of metal (surely enough to outfit a soldier with armor and weapon of the same material), lots of time, and sentient lives. Not too bad,  if it's actually like you claimed.. Now throw in a good chance of the golem turning, unless you have a high-skill golemmaker (gained by making lots of golems, and therefore lots of rampages)...not really worth considering.
3. Yes, there's benifets. However, the arms and armor wouldn't actually be that much better than an axelord armed and armored with the stuff you could have smithed instead of the golem frame. Less vulnerabilities is the biggest upside, but when you consider the chance of that same golem rampaging through your fortress and killing your dwarves (less trained, armored, and possibly numerous than those goblins...) And your note about axelords taking out sieges on their own only further affirms my point. If conventional militias do fine and can't turn, why bother with golems at all?
4. Don't strawman me. I think that golem making should have costs relative to its benefits. Your proposed system does not.

[Seraphim342]

Just mean to say that if the only requirements are material, then they're going to be very easy to mass-produce no matter how you try to balance them.  Example:  Once you get a steel industry going, it's pretty easy to produce a lot of steel weapons and armor, even Masterworks with a skilled smith.  The most time-consuming part of setting up your military is still training your soldiers, though.  It's a lot harder to train an axe lord than it is to equip him, unless you're trying to get artifact gear.  So, provided all the materials needed for a Golem are available on your map and you don't need to import them, then it stands to reason that as soon as the infrastructure was set up you'd be able to churn them out very rapidly, much more rapidly than training a militia, if it was purely a construction process.  If it was much easier to build a War Golem than train an Axe Lord, then it'd pretty much have to be weaker than that Axe Lord or there would be literally no point in training a military, which would render that whole aspect of the game more or less obsolete.  The general attitude here seems to be that a good Golem should be able to smash that Axe Lord into meat paste, which I agree with, but in that case you'd need to make it harder to get a Battle Golem than an Axe Lord for the same reason. 

As for the berserk thing and skill levels, maybe it is a stupid idea.  It's a suggestion, not a list of demands here. Just throwing it out there because I think it would be fun.  My solution would be to just have your dwarf churn out cheap worker golems to get his skill up with a couple axedwarves on standby to put them down if they flip.  As for them going crazy at all, as I said, have it be like tamed animals going feral.  Have a visual indication in the name, and when it starts to go screwy bring it in for a tuneup. 

I'm not trying to strawman anybody.  Can we at least agree that a fair cost versus benefit is completely a matter of opinion in this case? 

[Manveru Taurënér]

One simple way to limit them would be to have the golemancer only be able to safely animate a set amount of golems at a time (or at least control them ), maybe say 2-3 tops. If you had him animate more the risk of him losing control over them would multiply and probably only be a good idea as a last resort defense against a siege (ie, animate a room full of golems, get the hell out of there and pull the lever to let them loose on the gobbos) ^^

[Starver]

I've lost track now whether it was this thread or not, but I believe I once mentioned (in amongst loads of other things) that each Golem-creation should probably become progressively harder for the Maker.

That might be because some 'concentration' is taken away from the Maker (I think I suggested something like a rust-like side-effect should effectively reduce in half the skill(s) used to create the golem, at least insofar as further Making efforts went, but you'd still be able to buff the background skills up again[1] and have more/better goes.  Or by ignoring this need then by having just reached a sure-thing golem-creation level for the first attempt would mean your second golem-attempt, straight after, is on 50% or so of the skill ability prefered (more chance of failure and/or critical-failure?) and trying again for a third sets you back to 25%...

Or it could be a health cost to the Maker.  They need R&R (and perhaps a little attendance by a qualified physician or even a spiritual adviser if it's some form of spiritual expenditure that helps creates the desired product).  Again probably with some form of permanent physical/mental scarring.

To expand upon this (more than necessary) perhaps if/when a golem is destroyed, the damage (skill/physical/mental) used to bring it into existence 'bounces' back on its Maker.  I'm wondering whether first of all it should reoccur, as a backlash, before (eventually, assuming the Maker survives this process) healing/soothing away the original 'offset damage' so that the qualitative scars fade away.  "Decommissioning" a golem would be a backlash-free (or at least be mitigated in this regard) of the disconnection process.

Now imagine your Golem Army. When (as will probably happen at some point) one of your dozen golems gets discombobulated in some way its Maker is hit by a penalty.  (If he has to be compos-mentis to be in control of hi creations, this could be bad enough, but for now let's assume not.)  A second one destroyed could do him enough harm to kill him.  And when the Maker is killed this could mean the golems are no longer controllable for good or (probably!) ill.  Thus even if you can get a single Golem Maker to create a squad of ten Fighting Golems (or a dozen hazardous-work golems), you might not want to risk it.  Which means you'd ideally need to get more dwarves acquainted with the various methods (scribing, pottery, kiln-using, whatever mysticism might be needed, etc), each of them to create maybe no more than two golems each, and even then you're living dangerously if the destruction of the first one wipes out your golem-maker (also currently your butcher/baker/candlestick-maker, only golem-making) and sets his other golem on a short-lived rampage whereby hopefully he gets taken down before killing other golem-makers (or hurting them, by killing their golems).


Anyway, that's my version of making golem-making a limited industry.  A powerful tool that must be wielded with care and one which you cannot just 'spam' with impunity, regardless of whether you've overcome the physical/mental/production limits in doing so.




[1] Based on the unaffected values...  I wouldn't want it to make it easier to advance further by getting a good skill at progressively increasing costs to level up, nerfing it to a lower one and then benefiting from the new lower costs to get it up a few more levels.  We're talking something like "writing"/"scribing" skills and/or pottery-making/whatever and the like, all of which you'd be training on non-Golem works in preparation for the ultimate task(s) at hand.

[Owlbread]

I think golems should be unlimited, just very costly and difficult to make because of the magic involved. Think about how hard it is already to learn the secrets of necromancy from books, why can't golem making be the same?