Meh. I'm not so sure. To be honest, it sounds like a huge chore. And a solution is recruiting relatives into the trades? What? Do I need a massive lineage line for all of my hundreds of dwarfs, too? I'm sorry but I hate that solution. I mean if factions always form by default, always get into conflict, and there is nothing to limit the forming of all sorts of factions, then how do you deal with it? For the most part, you would be stuck painstakingly babysitting every last faction to make sure they would not start too much trouble and resolving any conflict that came up instead of actually accomplishing what you want with your fort. And it seems like this would be getting to overkill. As cool as some of these suggestions are, they add up. I don't want it to get to the point where I literally have to spend ALL my time babysitting all my dwarfs and every little thing they do. Perhaps factions and conflict can result from other mechanics, rather than be a default thing. I mean it adds an interesting dimension, but not one that should always be constant IMO. If it comes to it, I do prefer my suggestion of having this be related somehow to some of the consequences of the self actualization pursuits, rather than be it's own automatic and practically unlimited thing. Or at least limit it substantially.
I must not be explaining myself properly. I wasn't suggesting that factions would always get into conflicts without careful micromanagement, or that the family recruitment option should be the only way to mitigate that sort of thing - it was just meant to be an idea for the sort of things that might happen and one possible solution. Scruiser's reply to your post sums it up pretty perfectly as something that could be managed to avoid (or create) problems, or left alone for a chance of trouble in future.
While any large fort should be very very likely to develop factions as a side-effect of dwarves getting friends and families, a reasonably-designed fort should under normal circumstances be unlikely to have those factions get into outright civil war.
Some of my ideas about faction-formation are kinda contingent on the development of new mechanics, note - things like:
- Workshops being turned into Zones, and supporting multiple workers
- New rooms for entertainment/religion
- Ability to assign burrows and rooms to groups
- Increased dwarven autonomy, including buying their own possessions from a marketplace or even (hopefully) furnishing their own rooms to some extent.
- Changes to education, with dwarves being best taught trades by working alongside skilled dwarves (initially having slightly slower production but leading to faster production with a journeyman dwarf and then getting a skilled tradesdwarf at the end). Obviously dwarves would still be able to figure things out on their own as well, but they'd do it a lot slower.
- Changes to how time flows in-game - ideally making it work at the same speed as adventurer time with options to speed up or slow down so it's not boring - that result in dwarves eating, sleeping and taking breaks in a more realistic fashion. (It would nerf farming too by having dwarves eat more, which is a good thing). Ideally they'd mostly be eating and sleeping at similar times, depending on their personalities.
Personally I think it should be extremely difficult to stop most dwarves from making friends - dwarves should make friends with their workmates and those they eat with; they should take breaks in the tavern and make friends; the dwarf shuffling minecart loads of food and ore between the magma foundries and the farms and mines in the second cavern should be more or less likely to linger to chat and make friends depending on their sociability; dwarves who get into trouble ought to be able to make friends with the dwarves who save them from that trouble. Etc.
This should depend on a dwarf's personality, obviously - antisocial dwarves should have a much higher friendship threshold than other dwarves and spend more time alone (so it shouldn't be impossible to keep them from getting overcrowded).
It should also be pretty likely that some dwarves would take a dislike to other dwarves and avoid them if the space is available. If it's impossible to do so their dislike will increase and they may start getting into the odd fistfight. If things escalate too much they may even develop a grudge or even a vendetta. It should also be possible for dwarves to have a change of heart towards those they dislike, or even grudges (if, say, a dwarf saves the life of one with a grudge against them, or something similar).
Managing this wouldn't involve constant babysitting unless it was near a crisis - if you want to prevent that sort of thing from getting out of hand it should be a matter of having multiple dining rooms, separate living spaces (dwarves who dislike their neighbours ought to be able to change rooms, not to say there shouldn't be the occasional ornery old grouch who you need to evict), larger corridors and/or multiple routes to more-frequented areas, and similar sorts of things. However these problems should get worse when the fortress is in trouble (in late-game when your population has more sensitive dwarves and better defenses).
For instance in a siege, when the fortress is shut, goblins keep trying to break down the drawbridge or tunnel inside, and the dwarven flour is running low - that's when disgruntled dwarves start cultivating grudges and doing things like leaving their grudgee to the goblins or defacing their rooms. Add in the agriculture changes, trap nerfing, siege weapons and tunneling and it would give sieges real teeth in late-game rather than making them a minor inconvenience.
Well, I'm not 100% sure on "hilldwarves" simply because I don't understand where you draw the line on what factions or conflict with other dwarfs that creates by default. And if it follows your idea of the leaving mechanic then it just gets crazy. What chaos do "hilldwarves" create exactly when combined with the other ideas?
I'd say that nothing happens "by default", but some things are very likely to happen unless you're working hard to prevent them. Like, you could have a fortress in which everybody was in one single faction if you put a lot of effort into it - something like keeping your fort isolated, refusing to deal with or encourage hilldwarf sites, making your fort self-sufficient and exiling everyone who wasn't part of a particularly fervent religious order you happened to have attracted. Like, if you want a factionless hermit fort, well, that should be your goal in the game, not something you can just kind of do incidentally.
In terms of hilldwarf issues it can probably be abstracted pretty safely - disgruntled hilldwarves may run away to the big fortress, disgruntled fortress dwarves may run off to the country, but mostly it would be things like refusing to supply food to a fortress/jacking up their prices, or giving a guide to a sieging/raiding enemy to show them where the traps are, that sort of thing.
I see. I do mostly like that mechanic. However, it might be nice to get an initial wave or two regardless because the seven starting dwarfs is rarely enough. Worst case scenario, you can always isolate the migrants and kill them if you don't want them and want to stay hidden ASAP and survive with just the initial dwarfs. Maybe the initial migrant waves would be smaller. But you should get at least some extras in a couple safe waves to start.
...Is literally everybody only embarking to evil biomes or glaciers or what-have-you? I honestly don't see the difficulty keeping your initial seven dwarves alive under normal circumstances, and if anything find it difficult to deal with the huge early migrant waves showing up before I've had time to smooth out my starting seven's bedrooms, or then the next ten bedrooms, or then the next thirty, let alone set up initial industries or whatever. At the moment I'm usually too busy building furniture and smoothing rooms to make trade goods for the first caravan - there's no feeling of carving out a little section of the wilderness and turning it into a homestead, just, I dunno, desperately housing a bunch of refugees.
Still not sure I like it. What constitutes intolerable? Is it unhappiness? Because after a certain point, that leads to going insane and tantrum spirals. If unhappiness was the condition for leaving, and it was after a couple dwarfs lose their minds like you say, then it sounds like dwarfs leaving could actually make it easier late game based on the fact that the unhappy dwarfs who would be about to go crazy anyway would leave instead of going berserk and contributing to a tantrum spiral. And that's not much of a late game challenge.
Intolerable would be unhappiness, but that depends on the dwarf's personality, the fort's situation and other things like loyalty to friends/family/faction. Some dwarves wouldn't leave at all, and would just go insane. Some would leave after throwing a few tantrums but before going insane. Some would leave before they went insane. It should be relatively easy to see when any given dwarf wants to leave, and you should be able to persuade them to stay in various ways similar to the ways you can try to cheer up tantruming dwarves at the moment.
On the other hand, if intolerable is just because they don't like the new dwarfs or they don't like interacting with them, then it would be a challenge during the entire game (not just late game) just to keep your dwarfs.
The way I see it, the earlier dwarves would be more psychologically resilient in general than the later dwarves. Dwarves who don't like socialising would avoid it if it's possible to do so. Most maps have plenty of room to build huge corridors and isolated burrows.
And what would constitute anti-social? The amount of dwarfs with anti-social traits I get is often way higher than the social ones. So would I have to put them all in their own separate burrows to keep them all from leaving? I don't like it. I especially don't like it if you factor in that you want to limit migrant waves.
I'd say "anti-social" here really means more "introverted" - dwarves who have a higher tolerance for isolation (so they take a long time to get unhappy when they're cut off from the outside world), don't enjoy socialising very often and prefer to do so with those they know well. An introverted dwarf wouldn't get unhappy from socialising with their friends (that would include things like eating together, attending parties and so on), and would be relatively alright working with strangers, but wouldn't enjoy socialising with strangers. You wouldn't have to burrow them separately, but it might be worth giving them bedrooms in their own little part of the fort, away from the parties and festivals of the more extroverted newcomers. You should be able to expand their circle of friendships by things like working with other dwarves, meeting those dwarves individually and chatting while in a good mood (eg, with the minecart-lugging dwarf who brings them their food), being saved from peril or what-have-you. They should also have an easier time dealing with their family and other people in their faction, if they have them.
I'd assume that the initial seven were already friends, from their journey together. Ideally they would be better able to cope if their friends died in the early part of the game due to their pioneering spirit, but take it really hard if their friends died in the later parts and left them alone with these strangers. Not entirely sure how that would work though.
How do I replenish my population after everyone I need leaves? How do I replace my legendary workers?
Well leaving aside the "losing is fun thing" (because seriously, I haven't lost a game in far too long), if you can't hang onto your isolationist dwarves you replace them with more cosmopolitan ones. You replace your legendary workers by training up more legendary workers, or having sociable legendaries migrate in.
Well I do like the idea of overhauling trade mechanics. As far as your take on the isolation mechanic, it seems really complicated. It's also seems like it's rather reliant on friend making. Or if your in a fort where your dwarfs don't tend to make as many friends, then it would be considered more isolated? That seems kind of off from what most people would consider an isolated fort. And normally, too many friends were a bad thing because minimal deaths could lead to major tantrum spirals. But now if we are going to punish isolationist forts then. Or maybe you just solve that with large dining rooms or something to force interaction? Hmmm... I'm not sure it entirely fits but it makes sense and I don't have any better ideas right now. I'm trying to think how one might refine it. The problem I have is that generally isolationists forts are forts that shut themselves in and avoid outside contact, rather than forts where the dwarfs don't make friends with each other. I think it might be more appropriate if the outside influences (or lack thereof) at least had significantly more weight to them when it came to isolation measurements.
Also, I feel like it's worth mentioning that some of your ideas for anti-social dwarfs could combine with this to make a mess. If they don't like social interaction, then they force you to isolate them or they leave. Then isolation leads to further problems specifically designed for isolationist forts...
Again, probably messed up my explanation. The idea I'm really going for is that there's a difference between friends and strangers. Sociable dwarves would enjoy socialising with strangers and acquaintances (so, merchants and travellers) and get unhappy thoughts from not being able to do so, and most, especially particularly civilised dwarves, should want to hear some news from the outside world - whether heard from a merchant/traveller directly or from dwarves who had recently spoken with outsiders.
Isolation-tolerant dwarves would dislike socialising with strangers and acquaintances, and not care so much (or at all) about hearing the news, but be fine with their friends. Friendships should form in a large number of ways and be both difficult and (often) undesirable to avoid, so most dwarves - even most isolation-tolerant ones - should get unhappy thoughts from having no friends at all, but introverted dwarves would naturally have fewer friendships because they would avoid partying and eating with strangers and mostly make new friends through work.
I agree that an isolationist fort should be, if anything, more close-knit than a cosmopolitan one - it should be one way of keeping introvert dwarves happy staying, because they'd have had time to befriend the rest of the fort and wouldn't be as worried about socialising with them. Dwarves who couldn't live without their news would be something you'd have to either deal with or let go, and personally I think that's fine because no fort should be perfect.
That said, it should be possible to have some dwarves who are perfectly happy with no friends, including isolation-tolerant ones who just want to be by themselves and extroverts who just prefer to be with strangers. Some of those dwarves may be doing this to avoid attracting attention - vampires and exiled criminals for instance, or goblin spies - others may just prefer to be alone or with strangers.
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Topic: DF needs more LATE game challenges (with lots of examples of solutions) (Read 7158 times)