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[GavJ]

The early game is already really easy to make as hard as we want it to be. For instance, by simply embarking with no equipment or skills.
However, these challenges tend to either kill you or be overcome in a year or two.  It is much more difficult to find ongoing challenges for a competent player in the late game beyond that, without resorting to arbitrary imaginary role playing limitations, which can be less fun (because they are arbitrary, and because of the difficulty of sharing your experiences as meaningfully with other members in the community, and because it's impossible to spring a random surprise on yourself).

The game needs things that poke us in the ribs on an ongoing basis and force us to stay on our toes no matter how long we play a fort. Or at least very far into a fort.

Specifically, things that are:
1) absolutely impossible to avoid by trivial methods such as turtling.
2) significantly disruptive enough that they can put any fort in actual danger of survival unless carefully and thoughtfully prepared for well in advance. Or possibly not even then.



Examples:

Plagues - Not syndromes brought on by identifiable and avoidable sources like forgotten beasts. But just microbial plagues that are impossible to predict and start killing your dwarves. You can fight them, by quarantines and soap and so forth. But even the very well prepared, totally sealed off fort might be in serious danger, because plagues can be given qualities like long, contagious incubation periods, so that many of your dwarves throughout a fort might be secretly infected before you know anything is happening. And you'll need to act swiftly, cleverly, and predictively, while still allowing individual pockets of quarantined dwarves to produce all their own necessities in the meantime.  Very challenging. Vectors could be anything from passing each other in hallways, to STDs, to fluids like vomit that aren't cleaned up, to fleas, to general airborne particles, etc.

Blights, or animal plagues - sudden catastrophic disruption of food supply.  This of course requires first that the food system be overhauled to actually be challenging, but I think that's on the agenda already, so okay. Once it is challenging to get food stores built up, then sudden disruptions of those would make for excellent late game challenges. Half your food is from beef grazing and half from plump helmets? Oh sucks to be you, plump helmet blight just wiped out your entire crop and will continue to affect future plantings if any of the (invisibly) contaminated resistant few crops might have gotten mixed in with your stores. Or livestock-only airborne ebola rabies killed all your grazers, or whatever.

Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions - potentially unforeseeable and causing arbitrarily wide scale cave-ins or insta-death from pyroclastic surface flows to anything topside, wiping out all grass and crops above too, etc. Volcanoes could wreck destruction far beyond literally being on your map (if it is on your map, you should be especially and completely screwed).

Only tell us about damp stones being found if the type of stone in question is actually water-permeable - yay, surprise potentially catastrophic floods on occasion! this one is more preventable than the others (setting up precautions before ever digging near coasts or aquifer-y areas when a fort exists below), but still will catch you unawares often enough to help the situation.

Invaders that can stealthily path through solid rock into your dining room if easier/safer paths aren't available - already planned, I think, and the relevance is obvious. just including for completion.

Natural gas pockets - similar to surprise floods, but nastier (deadly and rises in air...) and harder to predict.

Mutinies - ratcheting up the intensity of tantrum spiral type Fun. Dwarves might not just throw a chair. Depending on personality, they might instead play it cool, not make themselves noticed, but instead quietly and persistently raise an entire rebellion against you that strikes suddenly when the time is ripe.

Cutting back on too much wood / spare fruit / overly easy farming, etc. Resources too abundant on an ongoing basis - Makes the game easier in the long term / late game, and is a sort of thing to be avoided, for the opposite reasons.

Existing dangerous features that are completely avoidable can help out the situation by being made less avoidable, with minimum effort - HFS, for instance, would be a much better late game challenge with minor variations. Namely: what if mining adamantine also removed the floor ("it has to do with the crystal structure blah blah") and also the hollow tubes inside only had to be 1x1 not 2x2, and also invaders ramped up over time to steel such that you NEEDED adamantine to reliably out-equip them? This would put the pressure on to mine it while also cranking up the risk of doing so = lots more unexpected, perturbing of the status quo type late game fun, leveraging an already-written feature that collects dust otherwise for most players.

[Swonnrr]

Mutinies - ratcheting up the intensity of tantrum spiral type Fun. Dwarves might not just throw a chair. Depending on personality, they might instead play it cool, not make themselves noticed, but instead quietly and persistently raise an entire rebellion against you that strikes suddenly when the time is ripe.

I have slight PTSD from Crusader Kings 2 on this topic.
Please no.
There is nothing more frustrating than "Hey! You lost. Since 23 saves ago."
Because some rebelious elf decided to overthrow me with an all-out war despite the game telling me he loves me, and in the middle of an invasion.

I mean, calm and cold murder, vampire style, ok.
Silent and suden loyalty cascade, that's a no-no.

[GavJ]

A characteristic of all of these suggestions is that they should be balanced in a way that it DOESN'T mean completely unavoidable "you died 23 saves ago" that would be a failed feature, IMO.
The correct point of balance should be something along the lines of:

Did you not even know it was a feature ahead of time or how it works, and then you go by your wits? 90% chance your fortress will die.
Did you stop right after it happened and go read up on it on the wiki for the first time before unpausing and trying but still without any preparation or experience? 70% chance your fortress will die.
Did you know ahead of time and make half-hearted efforts to have some contingencies? 40-50% chance your fortress will die.
Are you sufficiently respectful and knowledgeable about this particular thing happening and make careful routine preparations? 0-20% chance your fortress will die (most nearer to 0 but one or two truly catastrophic things nearer to 10-20)
Did you build a fort explicitly designed as a testament to the physical possibilities of preparing for this particular threat? ~0% chance your fortress will die.

For the mutiny example - it wouldn't be just random. You can avoid by keeping your dwarves happy in general. And more specifically, if you're proactive, you can make note of which dwarves have the relevant "brooding" "machiavellian" or whatever personality traits that are necessary, and keep an eye on their thoughts now and then. That sort of thing. You could also do things like having at least two military squads that train and socialize separately, so it can't spread to the majority of the physical strength of your fort. Yes?

So: Silent and sudden for the clueless person, sure. But impossible to prepare for, no. And silent for the watchful, no.



Also like everything in the game ever IMO, there should be "off" switches anyway in the options.

[Neonivek]

Mutinies - ratcheting up the intensity of tantrum spiral type Fun. Dwarves might not just throw a chair. Depending on personality, they might instead play it cool, not make themselves noticed, but instead quietly and persistently raise an entire rebellion against you that strikes suddenly when the time is ripe.

I have slight PTSD from Crusader Kings 2 on this topic.
Please no.
There is nothing more frustrating than "Hey! You lost. Since 23 saves ago."
Because some rebelious elf decided to overthrow me with an all-out war despite the game telling me he loves me, and in the middle of an invasion.

I mean, calm and cold murder, vampire style, ok.
Silent and suden loyalty cascade, that's a no-no.

That is because Crusader Kings 2 SUCKS at handling people as people (it is the one reason why I hate the game even as a free play simulation)... and will pretty much always stab you in the back if it suits their interests with your relationship levels pretty much being set dressing.

The issue with Mutiny is... No matter who wins... you don't lose.

To admit one interesting mechanic in some games is some factions could ONLY be played if you chose to be them after a mutiny. Such as the demons in Fall from Heaven (I think that was the name), or the Americans in Empire Total War.

[GavJ]

The issue with Mutiny is... No matter who wins... you don't lose.

Assuming that they don't get upset about their own murders or whatever. Which I guess they probably shouldn't (or minorly so). That's a good point...

[Orange Wizard]

Urist McMachiavellian has started a mutiny/coup d'etat!

The following dwarves have joined him:
<dwarves>

The others remain loyal to Urist McExistingNobleLeaderPerson:
<dwarves>

Which side will take control of the fortress?
<player picks side to control>

[Scruiser]

Plagues - Not syndromes brought on by identifiable and avoidable sources like forgotten beasts. But just microbial plagues that are impossible to predict and start killing your dwarves. You can fight them, by quarantines and soap and so forth.

This would be fun and FUN.  The syndromes system comes close to fully supporting it as it stands.  Add in some more tags and this could be implemented with few other modifications.  A tag to identify origin (initialized in first populations, cross-species origin, curse from gods/demons, etc.), a tag for vectors (airborne_close_proximity, airborne_long_range, blood, saliva, tears) and associated thoughts (Urist was frightened about the quarantine lately, Urist was happy that a infectious disease has been stopped, Urist was terrified of diseased migrants).  Some tags to let syndromes affect food items and/or crops and things get really interesting.  Also, configurable number of plagues and diseases at advanced world gen?  Crank up the number to make everything try to kill you, set it to zero for noobs.  Procedural generation will be FUN also.  Better hope your civ has encountered the disease before.  Paranoid players will of course avoid every species of animal on the off chance that is has been selected by the RNG to start plagues.

Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions - potentially unforeseeable and causing arbitrarily wide scale cave-ins or insta-death from pyroclastic surface flows to anything topside, wiping out all grass and crops above too, etc. Volcanoes could wreck destruction far beyond literally being on your map (if it is on your map, you should be especially and completely screwed).

Natural disasters are good.  A few others: hurricanes/monsoons (from being near tropical ocean), flooding (set off by heavy rain, needs better water handling), tornadoes (set off by weather conditions), thunder storms (Urist was truck by lightning!), hail (triggered by weather condition), blizzards, landslides, tsunamis.  Flooding balances the benefits of embarking next to a large river, volcanoes balance benefits of embarking for free magma, tsunamis and hurricanes are trade off of ocean embark.  The game should give warnings on embark for new players or those looking for a safe area.  Also, maybe a "Natural Disasters Frequency" world gen parameter as a single variable to control?  Or at least ways of setting other parameters to make things more or less dangerous ("volcano activity" for eruptions, "tectonic activity" for earthquakes and tsunamis, "weather instability" for weather hazards, )

Mutinies - ratcheting up the intensity of tantrum spiral type Fun. Dwarves might not just throw a chair. Depending on personality, they might instead play it cool, not make themselves noticed, but instead quietly and persistently raise an entire rebellion against you that strikes suddenly when the time is ripe.

    I actually like this one, despite sharing some of the concerns raised by Swonnrr.  The paranoid player can always monitor every dwarfs relationships and thoughts and manipulate burrows and rooms to isolate rebellious elements (or bring them together for FUN).  The more reasonable player still has the option of checking group histories and alignments to try to identify obvious problems.  This suggestion needs the game to provide the player with more information so they can take proactive measures.
   The personality update got a lot of the key components in place, maybe better in fort groups (religion, guilds, or interest groups) and this suggestion is good to go.  This feature wouldn't have a direct off switch, so much as modding everything that causes problems in the civ definition (remove tags allowing guilds, remove tags allowing religious groups, remove nobility positions that cause problems) and possibly modding dwarf personalities (make them all love authority and tradition).

Existing dangerous features that are completely avoidable can help out the situation by being made less avoidable, with minimum effort

I don't agree with this one.  They are there if you want them, avoid them and don't get the benefit, that simple.  It would be too gamy if the goblins decide to kill me because the game want me to breach HFS.  That said it would make sense in game for the king or mountain home to demand spoiler metal from a wealthy and stable fort.  Representative from Mountain Home: "Your fortress has been prosperous for the last [5] years.  The Mountainhome order that you create at least [5] bars of adamantine and export at least [3] bars".

Invaders that can stealthily path through solid rock into your dining room if easier/safer paths aren't available

I already design my forts to minimize this, just to get in the habit.

My own suggestions for late game difficulty.
   In fort politics.  Late game once your dwarfs are fat and happy and there are 200+ of them running around, they start to concern themselves more with their politics, ideology and religion.  Some religious groups demand rooms/respect, other groups don't want that, guilds demand trade adjustments that would hurt your beautifully setup economy.  Worse case scenario leads to the mutinies as described by your suggestion.  Other failure modes include strikes, resource shortages, and general unhappiness.  The sadistic player can intentionally set these groups against each other for FUN.
   World map politics.  As the player gets more and more high level nobles, they have to worry about world politics more.  Once they have a king, they pretty much have to manage the civilization.  Bad decisions result in invasions, world economy collapse, uprisings etc.  The bored player can always create these situations to force fun to happen.
   World-gen events happening on map.  Keep a fortress going long enough and have enough death, and you can have a dwarf retreat from society to research the secrets of life and death.  Same for other secrets as they get added.
   Invaders engage in propaganda, bribery, and other underhanded tactics.  Requires travelers and such.  A goblin traveler might bribe a dwarf to ensure that a key lever is jammed and a bridge stays open.  An elf may spread an ideology promoting love of trees.  Should counter turtling nicely.  Pure isolationists counter this, so internal fort politics should punish isolationists by making stir-crazy bored dwarfs more likely to cause trouble.
   

Did you not even know it was a feature ahead of time or how it works, and then you go by your wits? 90% chance your fortress will die.
Did you stop right after it happened and go read up on it on the wiki for the first time before unpausing and trying but still without any preparation or experience? 70% chance your fortress will die.
Did you know ahead of time and make half-hearted efforts to have some contingencies? 40-50% chance your fortress will die.
Are you sufficiently respectful and knowledgeable about this particular thing happening and make careful routine preparations? 0-20% chance your fortress will die (most nearer to 0 but one or two truly catastrophic things nearer to 10-20)
Did you build a fort explicitly designed as a testament to the physical possibilities of preparing for this particular threat? ~0% chance your fortress will die.

This.  This 100%.  Pretty much sums up my thoughts on balance.  If you map out a threat perfectly you can always counter it.  Right now it is possible to do this with every threat in the game within the first 5 years and to make things really boring.  If the threats counterbalance each other in cause and source then this keeps things interesting.  Example: isolationists player isolates completely from outside, ensuring no invaders, seditious travelers, etc.  As a side effect, dwarfs get bored and go stir crazy and start gossiping, then plotting mutinies out of sheer boredom (people do this IRL when they get isolated).  Example: player manipulates trade and such to discourage migration and keep fort small and poor (thus out of interest of invasions and uninvolved in world politics/economy).  A traveling army happens to decide to use your fort for shelter/food because it is small and peaceful.

[Jorn Stones]

siege engines, destructible drawbridges, that would give later game invaders a chance.

..actual criminals and not dwarves that are unhappy
With help of the personality system. like the extremely jealous one that loves material wealth may end up sneaking into a noble's house, steal the Candy artifact bed, and then place it somewhere in his own room. The unhappy noble, after getting back home all tired, discovers his bed is gone, goes into a mad rage and looks for an officer to report it to. If an officer is found, they'll start looking for the bed, criminal may try to use his sneaking skills to get away, possibly even abandoning his home, eventually gets caught; dwarven justice, a hammering. Happy noble. If there is no police, the noble will simply take justice in his own hands, look for his bed, beat up the thief in a mad rage until that subsides, and then take his bed back home. happy noble. Or, the thief fights back, kills the noble; happy thief, happy everyone.

In similar ways with the personality and relationship system, you might have a dwarf go and murder someone that he absolutely hates.

Although I fear such would all lead to dreaded tantrum spirals(those really need some work, the penalties for some things are way to high), it would undoubtedly mean fun.


The plagues sound like really fun, but please no 'dwarf is infected and instantly the entire body rots and dead follows in 10 frames flesh eating bacteria'  thingies.

Mutinies, decent idea, I can especially see this work with religions, where a group of fanatics of one specific (or rarely multiple) gods try to convert (threaten to covert or die) those with an opposing god; think god of light vs god of dark thing. Something for your guard forces to play with.

[SixOfSpades]

1) Plagues: I would dumb the title down from "Plagues" to "Illness". We don't need things like every dwarf in the fort hemorrhaging out the eyeballs because they stepped in a puddle of 6-month-old blood (which should have dried up on its own after 1 dwarf day), what we need is things like the common cold. Sinus infections. Whooping cough. Malaria. Some with a higher mortality rate among children & especially babies, some (like chicken pox) rather mild in children but much more severe in adults. There would finally be some consequence to naked dwarves standing outside in the rain, in below-freezing weather, and happy thoughts generated by coming back inside to sit in front of a Wood Furnace & put dry clothes on. Each dwarf's Disease Resistance stat would finally become meaningful, and their character screen could carry a list of diseases to which they'd acquired immunity. The medical professions could gain a new skill, Pathology, and Legendary Pathologists could invent vaccines.

2) Food: In addition to making the farming system WAY less ridiculously productive, I would like to introduce one critical factor: Food rot. Once a barrel or stone pot of prepared food has been opened, there is X time before the food inside spoils & becomes inedible, creating miasma that can lower the quality rating of nearby (and opened) prepared meals. The same also goes most unprocessed foods. The X rotting time is influenced by the type of food (raw meat & fish are nearly instant, stews & roasts are next, followed by raw fruits & veggies, biscuits can last for about a month) and the conditions of the stockpile--specifically, temperature & humidity. Even raw grain will rot if it gets wet. Also to be considered is the skill level of the Cook who sealed the container: A Cook who doesn't know how to can food can produce a barrel that never got sealed properly at all, which then just sits there, quietly aging, while the dwarves ignore it because "we should focus on eating up the already-opened barrels first".

3) Mountainhome demands. I couldn't agree more with this. My current fort is sitting on a HUGE reserve of magnetite & hematite, while my home civilization has apparently NO other access to iron. (They have steel, oddly enough, but no actual iron.) My site could very well have been founded for the express purpose of being our nation's iron mine. Why the hell do Mountainhomes not demand an annual tribute of X amount of Y good [to which your fort has reasonably plentiful access]? The trade liaison should deliver a list of imperatives, not requests. The penalty for not meeting these requirements would be an invasion from your own civilization, whose army sweeps into your fort and . . . abducts some of your Legendary workers. (What, did you think they were going to do you a favor by demoting your noble, or killing a few useless children?)

[Scruiser]

1) Plagues: I would dumb the title down from "Plagues" to "Illness". We don't need things like every dwarf in the fort hemorrhaging out the eyeballs because they stepped in a puddle of 6-month-old blood (which should have dried up on its own after 1 dwarf day), what we need is things like the common cold. Sinus infections. Whooping cough. Malaria. Some with a higher mortality rate among children & especially babies, some (like chicken pox) rather mild in children but much more severe in adults. There would finally be some consequence to naked dwarves standing outside in the rain, in below-freezing weather, and happy thoughts generated by coming back inside to sit in front of a Wood Furnace & put dry clothes on. Each dwarf's Disease Resistance stat would finally become meaningful, and their character screen could carry a list of diseases to which they'd acquired immunity. The medical professions could gain a new skill, Pathology, and Legendary Pathologists could invent vaccines.

Yeah, the name "Plague" does evoke images of the black death sweeping through a fort, illness is a more palatable term.  Also, I think vaccination is a bit past the technology limit, but maybe Toady would be okay with really simple vaccinations, like the original cow pox to vaccinate small pox, or with magical/fantasy versions.  Also, identification of diseases and immunities should also depend on civilization knowledge, it could use the same system taming knowledge does now.

2) Food: In addition to making the farming system WAY less ridiculously productive, I would like to introduce one critical factor: Food rot. Once a barrel or stone pot of prepared food has been opened, there is X time before the food inside spoils & becomes inedible, creating miasma that can lower the quality rating of nearby (and opened) prepared meals. The same also goes most unprocessed foods. The X rotting time is influenced by the type of food (raw meat & fish are nearly instant, stews & roasts are next, followed by raw fruits & veggies, biscuits can last for about a month) and the conditions of the stockpile--specifically, temperature & humidity. Even raw grain will rot if it gets wet. Also to be considered is the skill level of the Cook who sealed the container: A Cook who doesn't know how to can food can produce a barrel that never got sealed properly at all, which then just sits there, quietly aging, while the dwarves ignore it because "we should focus on eating up the already-opened barrels first".

I think food rot is in for food left outside... and maybe a few other cases (vermin eat food occasionally also already).  But a major overhaul is still needed to the system.  (Right now if you store food inside and stick a few cats around it, its good indefinitely).  This would make the record keeper job important again (right now you assign a record keeper and forget about it).  The record keeper could keep track of aging and rotting of food.  Salting, pickling, drying, curing, etc. should be implemented to give the player a few ways out.  Container quality should probably be as important as cooking/preserving skill.  A masterwork barrel would keep food dry even if the area flood.  But yeah, it would be good to stop super massive food stockpiles from serving as an easy reserve.

3) Mountainhome demands. I couldn't agree more with this. My current fort is sitting on a HUGE reserve of magnetite & hematite, while my home civilization has apparently NO other access to iron. (They have steel, oddly enough, but no actual iron.) My site could very well have been founded for the express purpose of being our nation's iron mine. Why the hell do Mountainhomes not demand an annual tribute of X amount of Y good [to which your fort has reasonably plentiful access]? The trade liaison should deliver a list of imperatives, not requests. The penalty for not meeting these requirements would be an invasion from your own civilization, whose army sweeps into your fort and . . . abducts some of your Legendary workers. (What, did you think they were going to do you a favor by demoting your noble, or killing a few useless children?)

(The steel versus iron thing is because steel is produced by a reaction the dwarves have and the game assumes reaction product availability without checking for reagent availability).  This suggestion does require some generalized trade improvements, the adamantine case I proposed was specifically to force high risk behavior on the player.  But yeah, this in general would force players to expand their fortresses production.  There should be a few ways of opting out: provide the bare minimum of quota, political manipulation, bribery to trade liaison, even outright declaration of independence.

[mnjiman]

The purpose of the game is to have randomly generated content from nothing. Most of your suggestions would have to be artificially introduced into the game just to give the players a challenge. That will not happen.

There will be a lot of internal issues that will likely arise when castes are finally placed into the game. There will also be a lot of challenges that occur when global army combat is finished too, so there isn't too much worry there.

Something else others have mentioned... most of the suggestions here are unavoidable even if you prepare. That isn't real life. real life is atttempting to prepare for something correctly only to fail due to your own mistakes.

Surprise floods and gas pockets? Why? People flood their fortresses enough through their own mistakes already. Gas pockets is an interesting feature but if your going to use that their has to be a reason and a way to deal with it like in real life. Dwarves are going to know they exist and will have a way to deal with it. Dwarves are masters of the earth. It just makes sense.

I think that in terms of "mass illnesses" that hospital system needs to be cluttered up before anything to that extent is added. Cleaning tasks are kinda of broken so right now dwarves are always stepping around in their own blood. Again, if castes were introduced, you could have a peasant caste which dealt with cleaning the fortress preventing the spread of infections and illnesses.

Illnesses could be generated from Fortresses that have too low of peasent castes vs their current population. More illnesses could occur early in the world vs later based on these generated numbers. Illnesses however can not be huge issues on every single generation. It should occur more rarely or allow players to play with numbers in advanced generation for this to occur more often. For worlds that have huge illness issues, it could be called "The Age of Illness and Disease."

Earth quakes and issues with Volcanoes. I like it however the FPS issues causes would be unimaginable, and sorry unless better optimizations are done this isn't going to be possible for any persons computer to deal with. Saying that of course... if it ever got to a point where we could deal with it... these type of dangers should only occur near fault lines and close to volcanoes. Fault lines and tetonic plates may be a future thing so this is a possibility... however again players should be able to choose to go and the danger levels of this occurring.


My last thoughts as a reply is this: If your having issues with challenges embark on a more difficult area.



 

[GavJ]

My last thoughts as a reply is this: If your having issues with challenges embark on a more difficult area.

As I outlined in the OP, difficult embarks make the EARLY game easy, not the LATE game.
Evil biomes simply either kill you outright, or if you have an idea what you're doing, you survive and seal off the entrance and then it's boring after year 1.
That's the whole point of the thread. Embark/early game challenges don't carry onward, so we need additional things that come in and poke you in the ribs in the future.

The purpose of the game is to have randomly generated content from nothing. Most of your suggestions would have to be artificially introduced into the game just to give the players a challenge. That will not happen.

Are you trying to say "no features allowed unless they have an explicitly defined source modeled in the game? For one things, the game already has all sorts of stuff that comes out of nowhere, with no in game or programmed explanation.
* infections in dwarf wounds - where do the microbes come from?
* Caravans bring goods that are generated out of nowhere
* The first migrant waves come even if your civilization is dead, out of nowhere
* Invasions come out of nowhere. Perhaps they have historical figures, but not their equipment or motivations.
* The entire world we play in comes out of nowhere, mountains just cause mountains are fun, they don't come from plate tectonic subduction volcanic arcs or whatever...
* Water in rivers and oceans at the edge of the map comes out of nowhere and gets drained to nowhere.
etc. etc.

Secondly, it's not logically possible for all features to come from somewhere, because if I explain X as coming from Y, then Y needs to be explained as coming from Z, etc. etc. all the way down, and to satisfy your requirement, you'd have to simulate everything down to soil bacteria and the big bang and blah blah and it would be impossible to ever make.

Thirdly, yes, all of those things above are conceptually coming from somewhere. And they are all things that Toady could conceivably write code for to account for where they came from in the FUTURE. But guess what? You can say both of the exact same two things about all of the suggestions above... This is all business as usual type stuff, no different than half the other features.

that hospital system needs to be cluttered up before anything to that extent is added. Cleaning tasks are kinda of broken so right now dwarves are always stepping around in their own blood.

The hospital system, as well as people walking around in their own filth routinely, are both quite realistic for 14th century Europe. As well as the consequences of that for health being quite realistic with plagues. Plagues (specifically the Black Death) wiped out almost the entire population of Europe smack dab in the middle of Toady's specified time period that he is trying to simulate, for exactly those reasons.

That said, there are still plenty of things you can do including quarantines, isolated stockpiles of food (so that quarantined people can survive better even while industry is limited due to the quarantines), routine quarantining of immigrants (which would be one possible vector for disease getting into your fort.) all sorts of things.

Gas pockets is an interesting feature but if your going to use that their has to be a reason and a way to deal with it like in real life.

There is a reason - natural gas exists. That's the reason... is has to do with separation of organic molecules and matter from old dead marine creatures during usually extinction events.
There is also a way to deal with it -- be more careful when you dig and make sure to sink long vertical ventilation shafts into your deepest mines, so that in the event you hit gas, it has a place to rise to other than in your fortress living room.
You can also dig mines with an S curve, similar to the trap in your sink, but upside down, to catch gases from killing your civilians if hit.
There's tons of stuff you can do.

And it being more difficult to safely mine deeply is an excellent and healthy side effect for the game anyway. it's too easy right now to just run down carefree and grab magma forges and adamantine almost as if it were a sunday stroll through the park.

Earth quakes and issues with Volcanoes. I like it however the FPS issues causes would be unimaginable

How can you possibly know the FPS effects of a feature that hasn't even been conceptually outlined in pseudocode or how it would practically exist in game yet?

It should occur more rarely or allow players to play with numbers in advanced generation for this to occur more often.

As I said earlier, "Also like everything in the game ever IMO, there should be "off" switches anyway in the options."

[mnjiman]

If you want people to reply to you with intelligent responses your should do the same. 60% of what you have written is on the side of acting like a douche and a lot of claims are not true. I do agree with some of your points, but I am not going to take the time to have a serious talk with someone what part of their reply is "* infections in dwarf wounds - where do the microbes come from?" You know the context of my post and this type of comment is so far off context its disrespectful to your own thread. I even gave an example of how plagues and illnesses would make sense and you skipped over that just to criticize my entire post.

If you really were interested in having this idea implemented you would take time to actually look at everything said by everyone good and bad, and reply to everything being said with respect. You seem smart enough to realize the context of my reply yet ignore it just to place your self in a defensive stance. That isn't needed.


One last point: Everything that comes into your fortress is sent from the fortresses themselves and ToadyOne is going to add tectonic plates. Derp. Read everything before replying next time.

[Scruiser]

If you want people to reply to you with intelligent responses your should do the same. 60% of what you have written is on the side of acting like a douche and a lot of claims are not true.

I really don't see anything to disrespectful in his posts.  To be honest, you didn't really articulate your points clear enough to begin with.  I try to outline exactly where you need to explain the issues better.  If the person is missing all your ideas... it might just be that they need more explanation and not that they are out to get you... 

For example:

My last thoughts as a reply is this: If your having issues with challenges embark on a more difficult area.

As I outlined in the OP, difficult embarks make the EARLY game easy, not the LATE game.
Evil biomes simply either kill you outright, or if you have an idea what you're doing, you survive and seal off the entrance and then it's boring after year 1.
That's the whole point of the thread. Embark/early game challenges don't carry onward, so we need additional things that come in and poke you in the ribs in the future.

You try to dismiss the entire point with "embark on harder areas".  In response is an explanation that harder areas raise early game challenge more than late game challenge.  I agree with this point for the most part.  It is a constant challenge, surviving in an undead area, but one that lessens as the game goes on.

The purpose of the game is to have randomly generated content from nothing. Most of your suggestions would have to be artificially introduced into the game just to give the players a challenge. That will not happen.

Are you trying to say "no features allowed unless they have an explicitly defined source modeled in the game? For one things, the game already has all sorts of stuff that comes out of nowhere, with no in game or programmed explanation.

All of these features we have suggested so far are derived from the real world or from normal fantasy world tropes.  Ideally we would want them modeled realistically, but it would be nice if they were playable also.  Could you clarify what you mean by:

randomly generated content from nothing.

and

artificially introduced into the game

Something else others have mentioned... most of the suggestions here are unavoidable even if you prepare. That isn't real life. real life is atttempting to prepare for something correctly only to fail due to your own mistakes.

Also I really have to disagree here.  In real life people have failed for random stuff they had no way of knowing how to prevent.  Peasants in the middle ages had like zero chances of inventing antibiotics during the black plague.  Kingdoms in the path of the Mongols had no choice but to surrender.  We have actually been pointing out ways of avoiding late game hazards we have proposed if the player is super cautious and paranoid.  So this is pretty much the opposite of reality.  In the game you can at least prepare in theory, real life isn't even that fair.

that hospital system needs to be cluttered up before anything to that extent is added. Cleaning tasks are kinda of broken so right now dwarves are always stepping around in their own blood.

The hospital system, as well as people walking around in their own filth routinely, are both quite realistic for 14th century Europe. As well as the consequences of that for health being quite realistic with plagues. Plagues (specifically the Black Death) wiped out almost the entire population of Europe smack dab in the middle of Toady's specified time period that he is trying to simulate, for exactly those reasons.

That said, there are still plenty of things you can do including quarantines, isolated stockpiles of food (so that quarantined people can survive better even while industry is limited due to the quarantines), routine quarantining of immigrants (which would be one possible vector for disease getting into your fort.) all sorts of things.

Again he points out why he disagrees (gritty realism+a few realistic ways of surviving).  I don't really read any condescension or not true claims.  Could you try restating it clearer?

Earth quakes and issues with Volcanoes. I like it however the FPS issues causes would be unimaginable

How can you possibly know the FPS effects of a feature that hasn't even been conceptually outlined in pseudocode or how it would practically exist in game yet?

I think you have a reasonable point going, but GavJ also has a reasonable point.  Erupting volcanoes could be a major challenge to design in a way that doesn't lag.  If you look at how ocean waves are implemented... they are basically an extra thing tacked onto the water system that ignores a lot of its mechanics, but it was necessary for FPS (at least I assume that was one motive behind the really simple waves).  Volcanoe's and earthquakes are similar.

Look, just try to be more charitable when reading people comments.  Just because they strongly disagree you don't have to interpret that as a fight.  And just because they give a lot of details they are not necessarily trying to act like a douche...
Anyway if you want to give more detailed explanations of your thoughts I will definitely continue this conversation.  But I need something specific enough that I can address it.  Good criticism and disagreement lets can make an idea stronger and more developed.

[mnjiman]

Eh, your right. I could of articulated my thoughts better. I forget that is needed sometimes, thank you for pointing that out. With poor level of descriptive detail given on my part my post can be taken out of context. I do forget sometimes that people do not read the same way that I do and sometimes it is needed to give constant and consistence examples to help guide the reader. As I still believed the OP did take a defensive stance, I myself continued and perpetuated that ideal instead of going into detail to try to explain my points. If I myself believed in the idea's written I should of at least attempted to explain myself better rather then reply with emotion.

I do apologize GavJ. Thank you Scruiser for seeing the lack of description given in my post and pointing it out. Can't be offended at someone if I myself didn't position myself correctly in the first place. If I do reply again to this thread Ill attempt to be more detailed in my points.