Hello, have you ever considered toying with the idea of having time when history is made also reflect on discovery of metal, and its application? My idea is that as time progresses, different civilizations acquire different metals, slowly going to higher tiers.
For example you have civ A and civ B, both starting with stone/wood equipment (not all of them known), that would in fact make obsidian quite valued in those eras, however as civs don't really trade at start of time, the transfer of knowledge would be slow. Thru time of peace, such as rapid expansion of a civ, new metals would be "discovered", such as copper and tin and others (I'm guessing
unbeknown materials would have a description, like black colored, quite brittle, etc..) and civilizations that like to dig such as dwarfs would get to know more raw materials, but perhaps not so many alloy types.
In times of need (war), civs would slow down their discovery rate exponentially and instead focus on improving the applications of existing materials (more on that below).
Let's say that about 200 years have passed and that aforementioned civ A already knows about copper. So as B is situated on the farthest edge of the map where they sit peacefully they discovered both copper and bronze (having discovered Tin ofc.), but their usage is really raw(unrefined), they tend to make bronze vases/barrels and have quite bad applicational use (below!). The peace loving civ B is more advanced than the warmongering one, but they quickly
stagnate! Thus, the civilizations that are frequently in wars usually tend to have better metals! (Reverse logic!)
The knowledge of materials and production would be different. For example, civ A would get to know of a material called "Bronze" thru having done trade with B, but wouldn't be able to actually make it yet. Knowing it exists is a good first step, but producing it is a different story. Perhaps thru time the materials/metals would become more "common", and knowledge being transferred with migrations. However, civ A being in wars has a higher need of better metals, and would perhaps send a diplomat/spy to B in order to gain that basic knowledge, or perhaps trade for the exact method, or maybe A would just employ more "scholars?" on trying to discover Bronze. Anyhow, there's two
things that I'd differently change, as i really hate
PRESET values of certain things:
- Value of objects to be traded would now depend on civilization you are currently trading with. As before mentioned, civ B made a taste in bronze equipment, while they made a lot of those items, their value would be somewhat mediocre. Unknown shining gem or metal like silver could dazzle them and they would potentially pay a lot for such item. Perhaps because they make bronze items, they would like to pay a lot for tin or such material. Because of such civilization tastes, material value multiplier would be dynamic depending on demand, for example, perhaps civ B is crazy about pewter and would like pewter made items, while they for example would potentially take no interest in gold. As far as supply and demand goes, wouldn't you want to see the world designate weird currency, like having Nickel, Iron and Electrum coins and perhaps something like (Billon) of both. (Instead of boring bronze silver gold).
- As i mentioned before, here's how practical application of metals would work. For example, civ B as it was in peace for some time, their application usages would be lush and rough, from smelting tetrahedrite they would get maybe 1-2 copper bars and 0-1? silver, while counterpart civ A would get at-least 3 copper bars and 0-3 silver ones (about 70% more), being far more efficient with their war industry (Ofc, the process would depend both on the civilization technique of extraction and smelters skill), do note that we're talking about copper here. Or perhaps if civ B has gone stark raving mad and has spent their all resources into researching more about how to make pewter, their reactions(alloy process) would be perhaps more efficient for that material, however it would be useless from the side of civ A, as they perhaps want better war material. The goal here is to remove the constant quantity you gain from making a material, while i agree it shouldn't vary much in-game (As in, you shouldn't get 0-5 copper per smelting), the technique your civilization made for this material should affect the general quantity of which you get out.
- Now that's not exactly the application i had in my mind, while the above point went to general metal production, what i wanted to make a point in is product quality. While civilization B has a lot of experience making Bronze objects (let's say they like to make bracelets and barrels out of it), if you could play as their civilization, your crafters skills wouldn't have that much of an impact on products (as they have now), what i mean by that is, the bronze bracelets would be made out of quite good quality despite of the crafter being badly skilled as his disposition to such objects (civilizations inclination and the teachings that are passed down), while if he attempted to make something like a Golden toy, the objects quality would be really bad/average, despite if the crafter had decent skills.
- Weapons, now this is where it gets interesting. The application of usage of metal-crafting on weapons would differ a lot! By this i'm not referring to the obvious that civ A is far better at it than civ B, by that i mean Id est Weapon smiths would have a preference in making certain weapon types. For example, in some long wars with goblins, civ A found out that light limb tearing weapons are most effective, and thus their weapon crafters would produce light weapons. Now let me explain the changed "system" in a bit more detail. For example, in the menu where you produce arms, you would have extra options. Those would have something like blade Thickness, edge type and weapon shape. For example you could set the bar on thickness to 0.8654, making it lighter, but also risking that it breaks faster (of-course it'd depend a lot on material), making it have sharp(normal) or perhaps herringbone/tearing edge (for example the second one would have a small xx% bigger chance of causing bleeding and some extra pain, but wouldn't penetrate as much), while the general shape could be of a crescent moon, which would increase the effectiveness on tearing the limbs off. Also not that an experienced weaponmaker could make weapons of higher quality and make them more denser/lighter/heavyer with better usage of the techniques of his civilization (Heating it to better/closer to perfect temperatures, folding the metal, etc etc...) You can play around with such ideas, but generally it's purpose is that civilizations matter more, they have more of an impact on what kind of weaponry you'll have and what kind of material knowledge they have. By that, it's more befitting of style as for example, it would make a certain civilization (in adventure mode?) have most mele units wear axes (if that's what they found effective against their enemies), basically it'd means that there would be epic goblin vs dwarf battles where most goblins have let's say clubs? And the dwarf civilization responds with mostly axe type soldiers (as they have found that to be effective against previous enemies). That way you would have a more natural/realistic, universal/uniformed armies. There's always exceptions of course and perhaps some civs like humans would like small variety (based on persons income?) more.
While it sounds fairly complicated it is in fact not, such ideas aren't as hard to implement, and it would make the game a lot more dynamic and fun (at-least in my opinion) 
Again, the above-mentioned changes about weaponry would affect the civilizations you interact with in a way, some would find that bashing is useful against stone creature problems they have, thus they would look for dense/heavy materials (perhaps not the ones we're used to such as iron/silver/steel, maybe they'd go for Platinum and Gold if the supply/demand allows it, wouldn't it be awesome to see a squad of gold hammer troops), and as they'd have a need for heavy materials perhaps you could see that you could trade some of your extra usless gold for some stuff you need
(On a side note here, why can't there be any kind of throwers in df mode? I'd like to see dwarf axe chuckers and human spear throwers, or perhaps pilums that are thrown before going into a fight, it would be fairly easy to implement, and just changing the equipment section in game).
Now to part 2. the minor realism changes to current metals.
What i don't like is the fact that bronze is fairly useless in this game. In the weapons wiki page
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Weapon In the Combat testing part and material part it shows the differences, and i was not satisfied as they don't reflect realistically enough. In real life, BRONZE is better than IRON, (It goes like Copper -> Iron -> Bronze -> Steel), how come that under FAIR stands bronze and under GOOD stands iron. The material qualities of BRONZE are in fact better for a sword, but as always a lot of you will start to argue about that without any kind of knowledge about history or metals. Now here comes the shocker, ROMAN infantry wore iron swords, but the general and officers wore BRONZE swords? Can you explain why? Well the truth is, bronze is harder than iron, but even tho, the bronze age was replaced by "iron" age, when the great migration waves in 12-11 century BC (1200-1100 BC) ended the Tin trade, which limited the supply and raised the prices. BRONZE was still quite commonly used in iron age, but for most needs the softer iron was adequate. For example, officers in the Roman army had bronze swords while foot soldiers had iron.
If you don't believe me, read it up on wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze
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Topic: Metal ages (with relative value) + small realistic changes to metal equipment (Read 820 times)