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[PersonGuy]

Technology Advancement for most of history has never been linear or something that played a huge part in life however technological advancements that had allot of practical uses and where easy to make with what was available quickly became the standard as no real nation if they had the choice would turn down something that could make life easier, increase efficiency, give a advantage over your enemies, or allow one the ability to easily travel long distances.


Technological advancement also have always been limited by available resources and manpower massive public works of the roman era like the aqueducts and the various roads and buildings where not possible again in Europe until the modern age the reasons for this can be explained by how there wasn't any nation or group of cooperating nations that had infrastructure or materiel needed to build them. During the dark ages and middle ages there where a good deal of technological advancement and such but there weren't many massive empires that could gather enough manpower and direction to make massive public works and such and also resources needed to make concrete where not available in most of Europe as one of the main parts of roman concrete that helped give strength and longevity was volcanic ash from a specific volcano which was something not available in other places this also occurred with Greek fire.


Also technological advancements where just plain not of much use to the people at the time as shown by early steam engines which where either so expensive and or inefficient manual labor was a great deal cheaper or where only good in situations where showy performances and parlor tricks where needed a example of this would be temples in ancient Greece where many proprietors had inventors build them things to either fool people or just plain extravagance.


Also in regards to military technology allot of things that where new and better in a direct competition with existing gear where turned down for various practical reasons such as distribution and use they would have to make enough of said gear and then give it to personnel that would likely have to be trained in its use and supply things like maintenance tools and ammunition and transport said gear in the event where such becomes neccesary And they would have to pay for this and make sure enough of said gear is made and it doesn't have any defects.


Also some things have been invented because of a lack of something the breech loading swivel cannon in the above post is a example of this as it was a invention that was supposed to be a cheap substitute cannon made of wrought iron for bronze the thing was that wrought iron was to weak to make a conventional cannon out of and they needed a design that didn't put that much stress on the certain parts of the structure and the cannon was a result of this. this also shows how manufacture effected technology with cases where if something is to expensive either in its materials needed or time and labor put into it.

[10ebbor10]

1. You can use the Name of link here tag to more easily link things. Like thisRocket Launcher.
2. The 1450 guideline is just that, a guideline. It's not an absolute law, and it's no guarantee that everything before that will be implemented. After all, Dwarf fortress is a generic fantasy world simulator, not a pre1450 Europe simulator.

[PersonGuy]

Well then i considered that but i was just pointing out some of the things that existed during that time period but also the 1400s is still in the  medieval warfare era and i am pretty sure including all of the various technologies from then won't be the end of men's er dwarve's valor its just many of the things from that era where somewhat more advanced then many think but also what if DF went to the 1500s or even the 1600s i am mainly thinking of these centuries as metal plate armor and melee weapons still served a role in those time periods.

The 1500s didn't see to many major inventions mainly vastly improved versions of previously mentioned weaponry with somethings like the wheel lock coming into existence but pike and shot warfare became the norm during that time and fortress designs began to change significantly the sixteenth century saw the invention of the flintlock and many of the tenants of modern warfare started out in this era. Breech loading guns where invented during this era but they where mainly the weapons of kings that they would mainly use to hunt.

The total abandonment of castles and medieval fortification was completed in this time period as iron cannonballs became the norm which made many kinds of older fortification obsolete this led to the development of star forts which where specially designed to deflect cannonballs and minimize the amount of places it can be fired at they also had very thick and short walls.

The 1600s where also the twilight era of metal plate armor with professional soldiers still being equipped with it but it being near completely worthless against the firearms of the day(Except possibly pistols and long range shots from muskets) or it weighed a ton and was extremely expensive. Rockets where also very common in this time period with many different kinds of rockets and their production was well known with quite a few books from that era detailing there construction and use. They also saw the first known appearance of repeating firearm weaponry in the form of hte Kalthoff repeater.

[PersonGuy]

I don't know that much about heroics and such but i think we should ponder this statement before we say anything further about gunpowder "By Hercules this is the end of man's valor" this was said by king archidamus of sparta according to Plutarch upon seeing a projectile shot from a catapult (Yes i got this from tv tropes) what does this say about the nature of heroics in combat and how technology affects it does it reduce the heroic value of battle or does it enhance it as we already have things like traps, catapults, ballistaes, and assorted player built doomsday devices how would the inclusion of the rest of the 1400s era technology destroy the feel of combat?

[Icefire2314]

I think it'd be cool if you could mod something like "eras" into the game. You could define what type of things were inside of an era (for example, ancient era, stone pickaxe, medieval era, metal pickaxe, modern era, drill,) or something to that degree. You would be able to mod the era in itself, and then also mod what goes into the era.

[PersonGuy]

Okay technology levels do sound interesting but i think technology should be dependent on local expertise and resources and assorted things like possibly societal values like if they value invention or not and have technological advance over time be based on those factors.

[MDFification]

Technological advances are far from linear, historically. Theory tends to be expanded depending primarily on the sociopolitical climate, and application of theory (e.g. new devices) tends to come with need and crisis. It would probably be better to, instead of tying a development to a date, have the chances of a development occurring increase over time. This will lead to temporary technological imbalance between civs (assuming the developments can be spread by trading/warfare) and some nice legends messages (In 351, Urist da Vinci discovered how to make trifle pewter in Scienceplace)

I propose that a system could mimic this by splitting up techs to a system of tech trees:

-Farming tree: A constantly developing tech tree, leads to population expansion and new animals/increased crop yields. Some notable developments; availability of food processing, fertilization. As the tree progresses, less hunters/herbalists are generated and more millers/planters/cooks are generated. Elves never develop this, but have extremely good rates of plant-gathering and animal capture/training to compensate.

-Metallurgy tree: A constantly developing tech tree with imbalance in favor of the dwarves. Has several sub-trees for various alloys. How to smelt adamantine is a secret given to the dwarves and the dwarves alone, but they possess it from the dawn of time (let's just say a deity gives it to them). That's not to say they'll have dug to it by that point - adamantine should still only be smelted in player forts.

-Weapons tree: This tree increases its rate of progression if the civ in question is actively engaged in a war. Developments include new weapon types (i.e. two-hand swords developing from swords, crossbows developing from regular bows), availability of siege tactics (digging, ladders, battering rams if they get added). Availability of new war animals and mounts is not linked to this tree, but is instead linked to the agricultural tree.

-Architecture tree: Purely bloat, only real purpose is to delay development of world constructions/add purely aesthetic design plans.

-Mechanical tree: Development of basically anything triggered automatically, by lever, or by pressure plate. Also minecarts and hydraulic engineering. Again, heavily biased in favour of dwarves.

-Medical tree: Progress from hocus-pocus to informed if unsterilized surgery!

-Magic tree: Magical developments. Could majorly affect warfare, provide strange new plants/animals,  unleash horrific hordes of monsters upon surrounding civs/corrupt the area where the magic user lives.

-Society tree: Not really a proper tech tree, but related to changing civs over the time. This could be different for each civ, randomly altering their morality over time based on who they trade/fight with or just random drift. Again, purely bloat.


The above is just an example, but it would allow DF to keep its random generation element that makes it so immersive. Probably far too big a change to worldgen to be accomodated in the next major update, maybe the next major update after that.

[PersonGuy]

Technological advances are far from linear, historically. Theory tends to be expanded depending primarily on the sociopolitical climate, and application of theory (e.g. new devices) tends to come with need and crisis. It would probably be better to, instead of tying a development to a date, have the chances of a development occurring increase over time. This will lead to temporary technological imbalance between civs (assuming the developments can be spread by trading/warfare) and some nice legends messages (In 351, Urist da Vinci discovered how to make trifle pewter in Scienceplace)

I propose that a system could mimic this by splitting up techs to a system of tech trees:

-Farming tree: A constantly developing tech tree, leads to population expansion and new animals/increased crop yields. Some notable developments; availability of food processing, fertilization. As the tree progresses, less hunters/herbalists are generated and more millers/planters/cooks are generated. Elves never develop this, but have extremely good rates of plant-gathering and animal capture/training to compensate.

-Metallurgy tree: A constantly developing tech tree with imbalance in favor of the dwarves. Has several sub-trees for various alloys. How to smelt adamantine is a secret given to the dwarves and the dwarves alone, but they possess it from the dawn of time (let's just say a deity gives it to them). That's not to say they'll have dug to it by that point - adamantine should still only be smelted in player forts.

-Weapons tree: This tree increases its rate of progression if the civ in question is actively engaged in a war. Developments include new weapon types (i.e. two-hand swords developing from swords, crossbows developing from regular bows), availability of siege tactics (digging, ladders, battering rams if they get added). Availability of new war animals and mounts is not linked to this tree, but is instead linked to the agricultural tree.

-Architecture tree: Purely bloat, only real purpose is to delay development of world constructions/add purely aesthetic design plans.

-Mechanical tree: Development of basically anything triggered automatically, by lever, or by pressure plate. Also minecarts and hydraulic engineering. Again, heavily biased in favour of dwarves.

-Medical tree: Progress from hocus-pocus to informed if unsterilized surgery!

-Magic tree: Magical developments. Could majorly affect warfare, provide strange new plants/animals,  unleash horrific hordes of monsters upon surrounding civs/corrupt the area where the magic user lives.

-Society tree: Not really a proper tech tree, but related to changing civs over the time. This could be different for each civ, randomly altering their morality over time based on who they trade/fight with or just random drift. Again, purely bloat.


The above is just an example, but it would allow DF to keep its random generation element that makes it so immersive. Probably far too big a change to worldgen to be accomodated in the next major update, maybe the next major update after that.

A fairly good idea it keeps it random but something should be expected because what would happen if we needed to invent booze or axes or the concept of architecture/building and mining and forging this would remove allot of fun as it becomes immensely difficult to set up a base of power on which to work with and achieve things. The key is allowing enough to allow the fortress to attain a degree of safety/prosperity, as having one thing that is easy to make and pretty much assures total domination in a wide variety of circumstance with little chance of setback or countering would render the game unrewarding but probably okay if you enjoy stepping on ants. Cannons and gunpowder in general the kind used during and before the 1400s could add a useful element in without compromising the challenge it gives a notable advantage but can be worked around or is limited by resources/availability and so forth.

[Scoops Novel]

You know, this makes me think that surely not all "innovations" were helpful. More then a few revolutionary methods have turned out to have unintended consequences or ended up a net setback, so perhaps it's worth being rigorous with investigating the bright eyed youngsters proposal. Then again, perhaps sending invigilators with vested interests might end badly. Then again, who's to say he came to you first? You'll lose your grip!

A good way to make discoveries unique to the player, aside from fiddling about with physics and materials unique to their world, would be to put all kind of mind-boggling approaches, methods and nuisances to invention, and different attitudes towards the eventual creation. Say a new form of dam, according to it's inventor, *needs* obeisances to their god of choice and say 5 or 6 fertility celebrations near his house, not to mention that his design borrows from all kinds of harebrained architectural "laws" from mistranslated satirical thousand year old manuscripts, which he treats as utterly essential. When you finally have the damn thing built, hopefully with much refinement on the design, who's to say that if a colossus attacks and you only reclaim the site in a few centuries that the "Iron Swamps of Hjsdee" aren't considered to be for an entirely different purpose or used only when the East star shines green?

[Matoro]

Why there should be any pre-existing Innovation trees"? That's what mainstream games do. This is Dwarf Fortress. Dwarf Fortress doesen't need "science system", it's up to the players to innovate and find new things. Remember the innovation of minecart shotguns? Or magma pistons? That's what is called innovation in Dwarf Fortress.

[Scoops Novel]

Why there should be any pre-existing Innovation trees"? That's what mainstream games do. This is Dwarf Fortress. Dwarf Fortress doesen't need "science system", it's up to the players to innovate and find new things. Remember the innovation of minecart shotguns? Or magma pistons? That's what is called innovation in Dwarf Fortress.

POWER TO THE DWARVES!

With the introduction of AI forts, do you think/know whether such designs have or can make it in? On topic, i feel that you need technological advances and losses in the world before, during and after play, if only to avoid the usual fantasy plothole. It will certainly happen with magic, everything else should get it's fair share. I agree that straight up, easily manipulated, consistent tech trees are best avoided though. Fortunately, there's more then one way to skin an onion, and Dwarf Fortress isn't known for it's efficiency .

[PersonGuy]

Technology progress could likely only be implemented as something that happens randomly during worldgen.

[Melting Sky]

It could be interesting to add some technological advancement within the game. Given each races predilections and natural aptitudes you could have this drive the sort of technology they are likely to come up with.

For instance given their extremely war like natures, both goblins and humans would naturally far outpace elves and dwarves when it comes to pursuing technology whose purpose is to destroy their many enemies. Given their natural hostility to other life forms they would pour far more focus and effort into weaponizing their technology.

The humans, being more clever than goblins, could come up with nasty new tactics like poisoning water sources, salting the earth, siege weaponry, undermining and burning out walls and fortifications etc.

Goblin technology would also tend towards military focuses but would likely be more direct such as advanced melee weapons for tearing through armor etc. This would also help keep the late game from getting stale as you would find yourself facing increasingly dangerous foes using new weapons and tactics that outpace your dwarves'.

I could see dwarves naturally excelling in technologies revolving around mining, metallurgy and stone crafting, gradually allowing them to develop superior alloys and primitive machines more readily than other races. Dwarve's are an inherently less blood thirsty and murderous people than goblins or humans thus their technology would lend itself towards more creative uses and would tend to help with millitary applications indirectly in much the same way much of our current dwarven science! benefits from seemingly benign inventions like pumps and mine carts.

Elves being the tree loving hippies that they are could excel at peaceful technologies such as those related to farming, animal domestication, medicine, magic, art etc.

Given how slowly technology advances in the real world and how it tends to pop up in all sorts of different locations, technology should advance similarly in dwarf fortress with it playing primarily a roll during world generation where vast amounts of time pass and dozens of societies are involved. During an actual game play, local technological discoveries should be a very rare event. In the course of a fort that survives for several decades maybe one or two significant technological advancements such as a new simple machine or a new alloy would be monumental accomplishment that furthers the progress of your entire civilization.

Less significant advancements could be a bit more common such as a medical dwarf discovering that basic sanitation techniques leads to less infected patients or a metal worker that discovers a new technique which allows something to made of metal that was impossible before such as a bed.

It would also be neat to tie how familiar and talented your dwarves are with a given subject to how likely they are to innovate in that field. For instance in the example of the medical dwarf who discovers the value of basic sanitation it would make sense that this sort of discovery would be made by a dwarf who has treated many open wounds and infections. Likewise, the new metal working technique for making a bed would be more likely made by a dwarf who has spent a lot of time making other furniture out of metal.

Scholarly elements could be added to dwarven society including things like trade guilds, libraries etc. where skilled dwarves can congregate with like minded folk to hone and share their skills and knowledge with each other. The creation of these guilds and scholarly elements to society would in turn increase the chances of innovation. It would be a nice organic way to increase the odds of a technological advancement while still keeping it very organic and in line with the rest of how dwarf fortress feels and works. I think a classic linear technology tree where discovery A leads to B leads to C doesn't fit this game well and that technological development should be a bit like a strange mood where you can influence it but not force any sort of concrete outcome.

[Eidre]

I think it'd be cool if you could mod something like "eras" into the game. You could define what type of things were inside of an era (for example, ancient era, stone pickaxe, medieval era, metal pickaxe, modern era, drill,) or something to that degree. You would be able to mod the era in itself, and then also mod what goes into the era.

Seems like this could be something that is chosen at worldgen, just like size, savagery, and availability of minerals.  What if there were a "Technology" slider with options like:

- I: no smelting of ore or metalworking, no potash or lye, no farming, no crossbows, no mechanisms.  No gem-cutting or encrusting.  No glass.  No pottery.  No charcoal or coke.  No manufacture of blocks.  Shields, leather armor, and wooden spears/swords/axes allowed.

- II: as above, but can smelt copper, tin, silver, gold, lead, and all of their alloys (e.g. bronze, pewter) using charcoal.  Farming, rendering, potash/lye/soap available.  Crossbows allowed.  Gem-cutting and encrusting available.  Green glass allowed.  Pottery allowed.  Mechanisms and screw pumps allowed, as well as levers, mechanism driven traps and bridges, and trap components (corkscrews, serrated disks, etc).  Siege engines allowed.  Blocks allowed.

- III: as above, but can also smelt iron, nickel, zinc, bismuth, and all of their alloys (e.g. brass).  Clear glass allowed.  Windmills, waterwheels, and axles allowed.

- IV (default): as above, but can also make steel and smelt platinum and adamantine.  Crystal glass and plaster casts allowed.  May produce coke.  Gears and pressure plates allowed.

- V: as above, but can also smelt aluminum.  Additional wackyness not currently available in the game (black powder?  bombs?  bombards/gonnes?  steam power?)

Making it a chosen factor would allow it to be used as a challenge (or refinement), but somewhat mitigated because the whole world would be at largely the same tech level (if you chose the stone age option, you wouldn't be fighting against iron-armored goblins).  The biggest hardship would be against non-technological threats like demons, forgotten beasts, megabeasts, and giant animals, since fighting them with wooden spears and leather armor would be extremely challenging.

[Rencini]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The biggest problem with tech trees in any game is that inventions are already programmed into the game, and they are merely unlocked as game progresses. This brings up the situation that at some point "science is done", there's nothing left to invent, and it's time to fire researchers and recycle laboratories.

I like the systems for secrets and taming knowledge and thought about how randomly generated improvements would fit in it. A moody dwarf inventing the secret of weighted/serrated swords would seem nice at first, but longer worlds would still end up with every civilization using the super-hyper-duper-swords because they are simply the best. I think this kind of (adjective) items would work best if they could be made only by the dwarf who invented them, making them forever special like the Stradivarius violins.

Unfortunately, I just can't see advancing technology as a part of DF. Either you'd wait for the dwarves to invent things you know they will, or you'd be endlessly upgrading items to +1 variations of themselves.

EDIT: Rambling pipedream about how cool rare swords would be:
[spoiler]Imagine that you walked into a tavern, and saw another adventurer with a rare sword produced hundreds of years ago. A forked sword by Urist McHanzo, one of only 97 of its kind he made before being killed by a magma crab. Basically a common soldiers semiartifact, it is rare to see one outside the military of the fortress that produced them. Actually seeing one is enough to make any aspiring adventurer consider just how far he'd be willing to go to obtain it.

[/spoiler]

I like this idea of better artifact descriptions and a second type of artifact which is more frequent than actual artifacts as well as being able to be reproduced by their original creator. Personally, I was all against the tech progression, but this post made it for me. Being able to wear and hold a artifact produced by my legendary swordsman & smithy adventurer-turned worker (adv-to-fort mode) as a descendant of him/her would just be plain awesome, -BONUS- if they are family heirlooms.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Seems like this could be something that is chosen at worldgen, just like size, savagery, and availability of minerals.  What if there were a "Technology" slider with options like:

- I: no smelting of ore or metalworking, no potash or lye, no farming, no crossbows, no mechanisms.  No gem-cutting or encrusting.  No glass.  No pottery.  No charcoal or coke.  No manufacture of blocks.  Shields, leather armor, and wooden spears/swords/axes allowed.

- II: as above, but can smelt copper, tin, silver, gold, lead, and all of their alloys (e.g. bronze, pewter) using charcoal.  Farming, rendering, potash/lye/soap available.  Crossbows allowed.  Gem-cutting and encrusting available.  Green glass allowed.  Pottery allowed.  Mechanisms and screw pumps allowed, as well as levers, mechanism driven traps and bridges, and trap components (corkscrews, serrated disks, etc).  Siege engines allowed.  Blocks allowed.

- III: as above, but can also smelt iron, nickel, zinc, bismuth, and all of their alloys (e.g. brass).  Clear glass allowed.  Windmills, waterwheels, and axles allowed.

- IV (default): as above, but can also make steel and smelt platinum and adamantine.  Crystal glass and plaster casts allowed.  May produce coke.  Gears and pressure plates allowed.

- V: as above, but can also smelt aluminum.  Additional wackyness not currently available in the game (black powder?  bombs?  bombards/gonnes?  steam power?)

Making it a chosen factor would allow it to be used as a challenge (or refinement), but somewhat mitigated because the whole world would be at largely the same tech level (if you chose the stone age option, you wouldn't be fighting against iron-armored goblins).  The biggest hardship would be against non-technological threats like demons, forgotten beasts, megabeasts, and giant animals, since fighting them with wooden spears and leather armor would be extremely challenging.

You beat me to it; however, I would find it better to split V into V and VI. V being the current tech-level of DF and VI containing all the wacky stuff.

I do suggest that after this, there would be an additional option of technology progression, which simply allows for technology to advance after x happens or x times goes by.

Defeating non-technological monsters would just be part of the experience of lower technologies. Our ancestors hunted herd animals such as deer/stags in hunting parties back in the stone ages, even then nothing was for sure, it was a gamble to hunt large game. Now any village idiot can go around and kill the alpha/dominant male with a single shot from his rifle under an hour, even when it would take days for a group of experienced hunters days to just kill the sickest and weakest large game animal they could.

Overall, I think this advancing technology stuff should be more of a plug-in (or even a mod) than part of the actual game. It takes space, memory, and time (oh boy, I spent about two hours trying to generate a large world to 125 years with unlimited population, sites, and an extra modded race, it was finishing deploying/dropping/whatever civs when the whole thing just closed, not crashed, but closed. In the end, I settled for basic gen with medium world & history, high civs & minerals, and very high everything else.). Plus, I would have for DF to become one of those unlocking games where you need x or y to advance to the next stage. Even with no linear progression (e.g., high farming but very low metalsmithing, or visa-verse), I already feel that it would be too linear for me.

My two cents