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Yes, please give us Vikings and Ninjas and Knights.

Yes, but only if it doesnt take too much work.

Maybe better to only make one civ, as close to vanilla DF humans as possible.

Maybe better to only make one civ, as close to MDF humans as possible.

No, I dont like it because it doesnt fit a procedually generated fantasy world.

No, I dont like it, because... (please post the reasons)

[bennerman]

Humans in Dwarf Fortress seem to be based off of both Middle Eastern (pyramids, head veils, predominantly square buildings, scimitars, ect.), and Mediterranean (bronze and copper are the predominant metals, pantheons and temples) cultures more then they are medieval western European. On religion, I'd say it should be possible for humans to be either monotheistic or pantheonic based on the civilization in question, but until Toady allows such variance, it would perhaps be more accurate to make them polytheistic given the current assets. Definitely keep an option for human civs to variate heavily in the future, however.

Nice catches. For some reason, I assumed they were Western European (England, French, etc)

[LMeire]

Is it possible for one race to value a particular type of item more than others? 'Cause I figure that those of a race with as much focus on wealth and agriculture simply wouldn't tolerate having to eat fresh greens, roots, and berries all the time if specialty breads, seasoned cheeses, and cured meats were available. So how about some intermediate-late game food preparation buildings for making more decadent ingredients to prepare meals with?

First of all, humans would need some method of procuring salt. I figure the easiest ways would be either grinding rocksalt at a mill or evaporating sea-water somehow.

Second, an extension of the vanilla butchery: the "Smokehouse". The most basic function of a smokehouse would be to take a bag of salt and a stack of meat and combine them into an empty bag and a higher value "cured meat" stack. Further functions would take this cured meat and a log to produce an even higher valued "smoked meat" stack and maybe some ash, there could be a different "flavor" of meat for every type of log burned in the reaction.

Third, an "Artisans' Cheesemaker" the whole concept would be taking a barrel of milk, an over-ground spicy plant of some sort, and a bag of "yeast" made by either grinding an underground plant or a boulder of cavefungus at the mill, and turning it into a few wheels of high valued artisan-cheese.

Fourth, a "Bakery" that would take flour, yeast, eggs, fuel, and milk to produce loaves of bread in bulk. In addition, the bakery could have additional recipes that require sugar and a berry plant to produce high value pastries.

Last, have the higher-tier foods give sort sort of temporary happiness buff when they're eaten. Like, maybe increase their resistance to tantruming/insanity or something, or maybe a small boost in speed to simulate how much healthier they are now that they're actually cooking their food instead of just eating it raw.

[danmanthedog]

There alchole should be limited to beer, mead and wine from only surface plants. For animals I feel that they should only get surface animals but are some how able to ride them giving buffs to speed but losing in dodging.

[blapnk]

A lot of stuff I think about for humans is already done by orcs. Mass produce bricks at the factory for above forts and mass producing low quality gear compared to dwarven masterworks. Even building on the turnip farm idea they can turn excess food into trade goods at the labour cells, although that's only later once you've got the raiding going. Humans could do that better, with more and earlier ways to use up excess food. Buying out caravans with lavish meals is silly but there ought to be plenty of other thematic ways use up excess food and even encourage mass food production factories. Feasts could be a way of giving buffs, especially to the military (an army marches on its stomach). The better feasts could only take advanced foodstuffs like the ones LMeire suggested.

Could there be a way to boost the meat output of livestock with buffs similar to how turning undead increases size and muscles. Clearly it's something that could be weaponized, but maybe using the same mechanic to buff the war animals could work. The problem of balance is one is a pure economic decision: the cost should be less than the extra meat you'll get out of it. The other is improving the cost effectiveness of a war unit. It's all fine when you're just giving steroids to your sheep dogs but then you buy some war elephants from the elves...

And speaking of the animals, I feel they should be able to armour horses if nothing else. Being followed around by a steelclad horse is the next best thing to actively riding one. Could they have an interaction to give a speed buff, possibly to humans only? I'm guessing it'll be impossible to have it targeted at their assigned partner, so would the other options be too counter-intuitive or fiddly? If it's a single target you know they're going to chose the wrong person. Or if they have a general low level buff to everyone around them to represent the general use of work animals in day to day life improves productivity and combat effectiveness, is that too abstract? A low enough buff that's not game breaking, it might not be worth going out of your way to get it, and definitely not worth micro managing, but you can a least feel that those horses blowing out gas around your meeting area are giving you a net boost and a reason to have them over some more productive meat producers.

For producing mass bricks for constructions, maybe they can have a way of turning dirt into mud bricks like the orcs can quickly turn clay into earthenware blocks (I haven't checked to see if that reaction can take dirt as well as clay. I do remember the dwarves used to be able to turn dirt into slade...).

Silly ideas: Humans can do a lot with dirt. Some are even employed as full time mud farmers. They can even make food out of it for the poorest of them. You can tell if someone's important because they're not covered in mud.

[CptCrunchy]

In regards to mounted humans, could they potentially be like werecreatures/druids? Earlier in the thread someone mentioned the idea of having a mounted human caste kind of like a centaur, is it possible to have a human transform into a mounted human when they see an enemy? Maybe have the 'mounted human' transformation have the equivalent of steel armor/steelclad horse armor, and a sword/mace/axe arm like the animated armors do.  It would seem a bit silly to have them constantly in horse-mounted mode when not in battle, and it doesn't seem like a new transformation would be difficult to do. 
There could be a reaction in a workshop somewhere called Become a Cavalryman that requires steel armor and bars for the man, horse and weapon. 
There is the problem with them dropping their gear when they transform, though I suppose you could just not assign anything toyour military mounted humans.

[bennerman]

In regards to mounted humans, could they potentially be like werecreatures/druids? Earlier in the thread someone mentioned the idea of having a mounted human caste kind of like a centaur, is it possible to have a human transform into a mounted human when they see an enemy? Maybe have the 'mounted human' transformation have the equivalent of steel armor/steelclad horse armor, and a sword/mace/axe arm like the animated armors do.  It would seem a bit silly to have them constantly in horse-mounted mode when not in battle, and it doesn't seem like a new transformation would be difficult to do. 
There could be a reaction in a workshop somewhere called Become a Cavalryman that requires steel armor and bars for the man, horse and weapon. 
There is the problem with them dropping their gear when they transform, though I suppose you could just not assign anything toyour military mounted humans.

The problem is, killing either the horse OR the human would kill both, because they would count as one entity. While falling from a horse in battle would POSSIBLY kill you, and almost certainly cripple you, I wouldn't think the odds are high enough to justify a death like that

[BlackFlyme]

-snip-

The problem is, killing either the horse OR the human would kill both, because they would count as one entity. While falling from a horse in battle would POSSIBLY kill you, and almost certainly cripple you, I wouldn't think the odds are high enough to justify a death like that

Depends on how they die. If one gets bisected, they both die, but if one loses a head, the other will still survive.

That creates the problem of a headless horse still moving and attacking just fine, or a headless rider still swinging their weapons.

[bennerman]

-snip-

The problem is, killing either the horse OR the human would kill both, because they would count as one entity. While falling from a horse in battle would POSSIBLY kill you, and almost certainly cripple you, I wouldn't think the odds are high enough to justify a death like that

Depends on how they die. If one gets bisected, they both die, but if one loses a head, the other will still survive.

That creates the problem of a headless horse still moving and attacking just fine, or a headless rider still swinging their weapons.

When you say it out loud, it seems more awesome than problematic XD

[Avacado]

Like, maybe increase their resistance to tantruming/insanity or something, or maybe a small boost in speed to simulate how much healthier they are now that they're actually cooking their food instead of just eating it raw.

I kind of like this idea of the diet slowly influencing a human's stats; something like eating preserved meats would boost Strength a tiny amount, baked goods would increase endurance, Hard Alcohol/Beer would increase pain tolerance, fine wines would increase social stats, etc.

[Propman]

Heh, ya are what you eat, after all.

[Meph]

1. Diet influencing stats: I think if they drink fine wines, eat cheese and bakery goods all day, they will simply get slow and fat, not strong and fast. They would have to train, not eat. But I see the valua as a gameplay mechanic, its a nice idea

2. Hybrid human/horse cavalary: No. Really. They couldnt even get their own graphics(since civ member graphics are profession, not caste dependant)

3. Full time Mudfarmers? Mudfarmers. ... JAYNE! THE MAN THEY CALL JAYNE! (sorry, had to do it.)

4. Vanilla df humans as mediterean/greek: Good catch. They also have western articles though. It seems Toady wanted to cover Europe and bordering regions (near orient, but no indians, mayas incas, chinese or japanese, aboriginies, maoris or red indians) Its mostly european, ottoman/arabic...

No idea how to add this. Maybe I can make several versions of humans and only the entity file is different. Changing the weapons/armor/clothing/language and creature sprites should be enough to make several human races. That way people could tick "play as king/sultan/caesar/shogun"

[blapnk]

It's too bad there isn't a way to send people to just collect buckets of water from the water source like you can, otherwise bucket of water + dirt/clay = adobe block. If they can still extract water from booze there's that.

However some basic wikipedia research says mudbricks use organic material like straw and manure in the mixture too which could work as a reagent. Following the orc fort pattern of brick production you could have something like:

Mold clay/dirt (5) into bricks (40) with plants: 5 clay/dirt + stack of any plant = 40 adobe bricks
Mold clay/dirt (5) into bricks (40) with water: 5 clay/dirt + bucket of water = 40 adobe bricks + empty bucket

The batch of bricks would then need to be sundried the same as other pottery products but not need fuel for firing at the end. Technically using a wicker bale or bundle of hay might be better but the idea is for a way to make lots of cheap bricks quickly. You could have options to make adobe bricks out of sand bags too.

[Meph]

I am not sure if I would want mud/straw bricks in the first place. The game treats a 1tile mud wall as strong as a 5 tile granite wall. Its absurd.

[blapnk]

It worked well enough in the bronze age for fortifications and there are some pretty impressive buildings still standing made out of mudbricks. It might not be as strong as a granite wall but I think we're still talking about needing proper siege engines/huge monsters to bring it down.

[lcy03406]

While i can belief that powder sometimes didnt fire, I dont think that they ever exploded. Its a big chunk of metal, after all. If I add misfiring, I predict people coming by with "bug reports" about cannons that dont always fire.

They can miss their target, I count that as missfire enough.

Maybe a 5x1 and a 1x5 workshop would be good. Human works in the middle, cannons stand at both ends near open space or fortifications.

The tower would be as follows. I assume the two tiles between the cannons and the working place is solid and cut the line of sight.

Code: [Select]

FFWWWFF
FCBHBCF
FXWXWXF
FCBHBCF
FFWWWFF
where F=fortification, W=Wall,X=up/down stairs, B=the solid tiles in the workshop, H=human, C=Cannon
The problem is that it's not a square tower, and it doesn't cover the space directly to the north or south.

I suggest 1x3 and 3x1 workshops.

Code: [Select]

OOOFFFOOO
OOOFCFOOO
OOOWBWOOO
FFWWHWWFF
FCBHXHBCF
FFWWHWWFF
OOOWBWOOO
OOOFCFOOO
OOOFFFOOO
where O=open space
This particular tower needs more micro-control to build because you must build floors first and build the workshop and put the cannon, and replace the floor with fortifications. But it's more beautiful.

EDIT: I find this tower design is amazing for dwarves. Replace B with floodgate and fill the central stair with fun.