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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)

[Samarkand]

We already have a progression (money), and it makes no sense whatsoever to tie your technological advancements to "how nice you are". Especially when I think back to the second world war and all the tech that has been invented at the time. ^^

I was thinking more along the lines of paladins being semi magical undead slaying knights. In which case it makes sense to kill a few undead first. :-)

[Meph]

I havent even started with anything that has to do with combat castes or knights and all that. Its all guilds and traders atm. ^^

[Corundum]

Regarding mercenaries, maybe make it so you have to hire them for a specific time frame? You have a reaction that hires a legendary-skilled mercenary for gold/paper money. Make the contract last for a year and make it renewable by the human hired. In other words, he/she runs a reaction to renew the contract.

I don't know if it's possible, but maybe have some sort of warning message that 'Mr. Axeman's contract is about to expire' a month before it happens? This might get too hard to manage but that could be part of the the cost of hiring a legendary warrior.

Another part of hiring them would be giving them a noble position(not really a noble, but a position similar to captain of the guard in dwarf mode) that requires giving them quarters and furnishings. After all, if you want the best you have to pay for it.

[Meph]

Regarding mercenaries, maybe make it so you have to hire them for a specific time frame? You have a reaction that hires a legendary-skilled mercenary for gold/paper money. Make the contract last for a year and make it renewable by the human hired. In other words, he/she runs a reaction to renew the contract.

I don't know if it's possible, but maybe have some sort of warning message that 'Mr. Axeman's contract is about to expire' a month before it happens? This might get too hard to manage but that could be part of the the cost of hiring a legendary warrior.

Another part of hiring them would be giving them a noble position(not really a noble, but a position similar to captain of the guard in dwarf mode) that requires giving them quarters and furnishings. After all, if you want the best you have to pay for it.

Hire them for a time frame: Possible, they could turn "friendly" and leave with the next caravan. That can be done. I think I can even make them "renew contracts", maybe. But not the noble thing.

I can allow a noble position that only accepts mercenaries, but they wouldnt be assigne automatically.

[Snaaty]

First off, Meph, keep up the good work, the humans are really making me curious now.

Now for the (late and general) criticism:

As far as I can see, money is generaly a very important factor in the average human fortress. Yet, I feel that money never really fits in the df universe. The simulation that is dwarf fortress, lets you take on the role of a purely producing and consuming economy, the only exchange of goods is through "item for item" trade with caravans (at least in vanilla df), and everything in the fortress belongs to you and can be freely disrtibuted (except in some noble situations). Wealth is being counted anyway, you don't have to amass piles of gold coins in your chambers.

The actual problem I see with putting emphasis on using coins and "money", is the following. Depending on how much gold you mine, you can make more, or less gold coins. Fair enough, in medieval times it was probably somewhat similar. Still I feel like something is "wrong", if you can just mine for gold and print your own money to eventually buy stuff with that. Basically this chain of production is the same as mine for gold, make masterwork gold bracelets, and profit (through caravans). Increasing the importance of coins also creates the impression that there are actually two seperate "currencies" in your fort; coins and "items".

Now, as far as I can see, humans even have plenty of reactions to create coins from not-mining, so maybe that's not that much of a problem.

Also, this is not intended to belittle your ideas for the humans, I just wanted to give my two cents. I hope I could somehow show what my problem with coins in Dwarf Fortress is.

[Meph]

Snaaty, I am making a wild assumption here: You do not know about the vanilla DF economy, in which people have to pay rent for rooms. With money. In vanilla DF. Its still in the init, there is a tax-collector noble in vanilla, tax-escort soldiers and currencies for entities.

All this has been disabled by Toady One because it wasnt too refined and caused lag because of all the single coins floating around.

Economy and money is a DF thing. And Toady One will write his own system one day.

Still I feel like something is "wrong", if you can just mine for gold and print your own money to eventually buy stuff with that.

That is exactly how it was in RL history. Or, if you like a fantasy example, how the Lannisters got so rich.

[Samarkand]

Erm, not to sound dismissive but couldn't you just play dwarves. Money maybe isn't terribly dwarfy, which is what I think you're getting at. But shiny coins is 100% a normal human thing to do.

[Meph]

Idea about the mercenaries: What about "hire a thief/warrior/barbarian/mage" ? Classical RPG stuff here, with the thief being good at ranged combat and dodging, the warrior in shield, weapon and armor skill, the barbarian in wrestling with some strength bonus, and the mage with some support/ranged spells?

The building would be "adventurers tavern" or something similar, and you can hire them for coin, adding them as a newly spawned unit to your fort. I think I'd make the price very high and let them stay permanently. They could even spawn with equipment (which would lie on the floor next to them).

[draeath]

Still I feel like something is "wrong", if you can just mine for gold and print your own money to eventually buy stuff with that.

That is exactly how it was in RL history. Or, if you like a fantasy example, how the Lannisters got so rich.

Yep. This (commodity) is exactly the way money works before development of a fiat currency.

[LMeire]

Small question on renting to non-humans: Does renting say, a stage prevent workers from trying to rent out the stage again until the first group clears out? I prefer using Manager Orders for the really tedious things that can't be run on repeat, so if queuing up a few hundred "rent stage to Warlock Magician" jobs ended up using the entire stock of Warlock contracts without giving me the appropriate income (Or worse, if this would collect on hundreds of 3-month rent payments from a single stage at once.)- well that would be rather nice to know ahead of time.

[Meph]

Does renting say, a stage prevent workers from trying to rent out the stage again until the first group clears out?

yes. The building changes, so the first "rent out" reaction is not available anymore.

[Erivor]

just a random thought don't know if this has been posted before.

what if humans could carry bags of money around as a type of belonging, it might help simulate wealth and it might tempt players into causing "unfortunate accidents" to the richer citizens.

again completely random idea.

[Samarkand]

Wait for Toady to fix the economy system. Then everyone will do that.

[moseythepirate]

Well. Old topic is old.

Anyway, I've been playing with a human town, and I like what I see so far (though it is still admittedly in very early phases). I especially love how the foreigner shops charge rent.

My biggest problem has been getting building materials. Since humans are an above-ground race, It's really important that they obtain enough stone and wood for building materials, but they can't quarry really effectively because of their cave sickness. I don't think free building materials (like the Warlocks have) is the answer for thematic reasons; it makes sense with Warlocks, since they are magically pulling blocks from the aether, but humans? Naw. Though it might make sense to be able to buy a late-ish game workshop from Warlocks in which you can get such things, but that's a different post.

Perhaps a solution might be if they could split logs and stone into low-or-zerp value materials in large quantities? For example, boulder > 8 cobblestones, or even block > 4 cobblestones (though I think it would be more streamlined to let it go directly from boulders). I know that there could easily be clutter issues, but it would help ease the burden of getting your initial buildings up and running.

[Arcvasti]

I think that the new absurdly spacious trees in the new version should help with this once Masterwork updates to 40.xx, but some way to do this sort of stuff is probably important. Especially if you're making something that LOOKS like a town rather then something aboveground you can use.