I like the way most of it would work, except for allowing "rejected" migrants to settle on a part of the embark map.
Yeah. Sub-forts is an interesting idea, but upon further pondering, it just doesn't seem to offer enough potential benefits to outweigh the definite drawbacks. We could get almost as much flavor from simply increasing the possible bedroom & dining room designations: As well as the existing bedroom / barracks / dormitory, just tack on new designations to specify that the room is for
non-fortress folk: I'm sure that after their long march, the caravan merchants and their guards would like to put their feet up for a bit. Etc.
I think it would be better if they joined the hill dwarves which have been implemented (even if we can't do anything with them in fort mode) should they choose to stay in the area. . . . I'd also like to see the Immigration Noble also be able to ask/conscript local hill dwarves into the fort, though that would probably use similar mechanics to recruiting true "outside" dwarves join.
Staying with the hill dwarves is just fine, in fact that ties in perfectly with your being able to offer goods to your rejected migrants--goods that they can then turn around & offer to the hill dwarves, to more successfully barter their acceptance into the hill dwarves' settlements. I also agree with being able to recruit from the hill dwarves, in fact you might easily get some "second chancers" this way: Migrants from the Mountainhome who were turned away once, but tried again after spending a couple of years with the hill dwarves put some new skill ranks under their belts (probably low-tech skills like farming, woodcutting, and combat).
As for
how the hill dwarves could be recruited, they could easily just send migrant waves just like the regular ones (although noticeably smaller, due to the much lower base population), and/or trading caravans (allowing the player to buy things that exist in the local area but not in the actual embark zone). But they also provide an interesting opportunity: Due to their proximity and presumable much greater vulnerability, in the event of a goblin siege they could run to your fort for safety. They're not asking to join you, just looking for a place to hole up until things blow over, and
you benefit as well because they bring you
advance warning of the siege (much better than the old BOOM! Hi, here we all are). Now, I expect only a small portion would flee to your fort (the rest would just scatter further into the hills), but the Immigration Officer could easily look over the ones that
did come, and Conduct Meeting with those that (approximately) meet the desired profile. Hill dwarves with combat skills (and equipment) could also take action on their own, and try to convince any militia captain to let them help fight the goblins. To prevent awkwardness, these meetings should probably take place either before, or after, the actual siege itself.
The only thing I want to work every single time is the "NO NEW ARRIVALS!" bit :> Something like this is the only way we'll ever be able to reliably play low-pop forts, or to play a wealthy fort that doesn't have seven million dwarves scurrying all over the place
Not quite. I think the only way to ensure absolutely
zero migrants should be the INIT file, with its population & baby caps (and yes, I agree that the first 2 migrant waves should be subject to that cap, & no longer hardcoded). If your goal is to create a hermit or Adam & Eve fort (or whatever), you'll want to set that in the INIT right at the start, not sit around turning away every migrant year after year, until people finally learn to stay the heck away. Conversely, even the very strictest of forts can suffer disaster, and if the survival of your fort is hanging by a berserk, dehydrating Mason & a kid who just turned 12, you NEED more warm bodies as soon as dwarvenly possible--you very well might not make it a whole other year. So yes, it turns out that you actually DO want that one-legged Potash Maker who came in spite of all your "GET LOST" signs.
There is already this caravan of people, guards and goods traveling regularly between the Mountainhomes and the colonies, so why the populations don't travel with them is a mystery.
With the additional mystery of how the migrants always seem to set off from the Mountainhome with
exactly as much food and drink as they will need to consume along the way, so that they always arrive with not a morsel left over--or any cooking or camping equipment, for that matter. Having all of your visitors arrive in a unified body makes a world of sense, of course, though I worry about the size of migrant waves. The early waves, that can sometimes double or even triple a fortress's population, are already bad enough--can you imagine what would happen if we took a whole year's worth of migrants & had them all arrive
simultaneously? The obvious solution would be to make the waves much, much smaller (BIG yes), at least in the first few years, and also to allow the possibility of more than one Mountainhome caravan per year. If we're playing a game where distance from the Mountainhome is a factor, then naturally this could be quite a major undertaking, and the capital would only touch base with the distant border colonies on a strictly annual basis . . . but if you're nearby and/or ignoring travel time, I don't see why you shouldn't have a caravan (and potential settlers) every season.
It would be so much easier if non-refugee immigrants were treated like caravan animals until they were "bought" (hired). If the dorfs could be "sold" the same way: caged/restrained criminals serving time are indentured to a caravan for the remaining part of their sentence or unhappy dorfs signing on to journey with the caravan to find a better life (emigration as well as immigration)
I was going to argue against selling unwilling creatures, but then I considered roleplaying a pro-slavery culture (especially goblin slavery) or a prison fortress sending chain gangs out to do road work (problem: the chain gang would have to come
back). And yes, voluntary (or forced)
emigration should be a thing, too. There's little reason for a Legendary Fisherdwarf to stay on a map that has NO access to any fish, so why not move out?
As for "buying" migrants, I think the idea runs into problems if you try to do it for everybody:
* Buying desirable dwarves away from their (undesirable) friends/family makes sense, because the desired dwarf knows that by leaving them, he is giving them wealth, & therefore a better shot at life.
* Buying desirable dwarves simply into your fort works less well, because a) the dwarf in question receives no benefit whatsoever from the goods that will now go straight to the Mountainhome, and b) the dwarf is already AT your fort. Why did he come all this way, if his decision was so wishy-washy it could be swayed by a couple of bins of cloth? This type of transaction would best be negotiated, and paid, while the dwarf was still in his old home & could derive some actual good from his "purchase price".
* Buying migrants that were sent by your government/monarch (rather than just moving to your fort of their own volition) doesn't work: If they were
told to come here, by allowing them in you're just obeying orders, so they should be free, no "purchasing" involved. If anything, you should have to give up some goods in order to
refuse those migrants, by way of appeasement/apology to your superiors.
* Migrants that came to your fort of their own accord should have to prove their worth, by
paying to be allowed in; you're not going to accept just any would-be beggar, you want people who can pull their weight. Real-world precedents for this policy number in the . . . thousands?
* Emigrants
leaving your fort should have a sort of "purchase price", too, in the sense of the same goods you would give rejected immigrants. They might not need weapons & armor if they're going to be heading back to the Mountainhome (and are thus under the caravan guards' protection), but you would still have to pay them in food & drink for the journey.
Now here's the kicker: The computer would have to consider each dwarf, decide which of the above conditions applied to him (possibly more than one), check his intended destination (your fort? the mountainhome? the hill dwarves? somewhere else?), evaluate his skills & compare them with how well those skills are valued at his destination, possibly throw in a modifier for his Persuader and Liar skills, and THEN decide how much you should have to pay to purchase him into your fort. Or pay to see the back of him. If at all. For every single dwarf. So I think it's better to NOT have to buy or sell the majority of dwarves, at least for the time being.
If refugees were handled the same way, and the Outpost liaison/broker meeting discussed immigration requests (including requests of dwarves heading back to the Mountainhomes, so that certain skill types were considered more worthy than others), and the entirety was contained in the Trading sub-game, with the Trade Depot designated as a temporary "meeting place" where dwarves could come and either decide to emigrate or immigrate (including caravan guards and militia members), then the entire process would be all sewn up tight.
Agreed. Since I made such a big deal about newcomers to your fort not being trap-immune, and Wagons needing a trap-free path to the Trade Depot anyway, the Depot seems the logical place for the migrants to hang out while you decide their fate. (This could be rather a slap in the face to those players who design for pack animals instead of wagons [and I'm one of them], and pave the
entire entrance with traps, but arguably they were just taking advantage of an unrealistic exploit anyway.) Then, the player could oversee the meeting between the Outpost Liaison & the Immigration Officer, then the meeting between the merchants & the Broker, and finally between the Outpost Liaison & the ranking Noble.
I love the idea of reputation so that you have more control, maybe it could also be tied to a specific skill for the immigration officer. . . . Think of it as the personal gravitas of the officer, a veteran officer will have more influence than the peasant you just appointed. . . . With the officer acquiring xp for every denied dwarf or for every processed dwarf.
I started with the idea of making it a skill specific to the Immigration Officer, in the same way that only the Bookkeeper uses the Record Keeper skill. But then I decided that the Martinet skill could have other uses, particularly by militia captains and the fortress guard. A dwarf would need to be above-average in both Assertiveness and Lawfulness in order to gain ranks in Martinet, and would gain EXP by chastising On Break dwarves when every other available dwarf is busy and/or there's an active Siege in progress, or by yelling at their militia squad to all take their sleep & meal breaks
at the same time (or do most players prefer to stagger them?), or by slapping around any dwarf who's emotionally traumatized by a dead badger, or by kicking the Broker around when he decides that being sleepy or thirsty is more important than the fact that Trader requested at depot. Also, if the deadline for a noble's mandate is soon to arrive, dwarves with some Martinet skill might also discourage, or even outright
prevent, the craftsdwarves working on meeting that mandate from taking any kind of break. But naturally, the fastest gains in the skill would come from developing, and rigidly enforcing, an immigration policy, so of course the biggest Martinet would be the Immigration Officer, and any members of the militia who witness and/or directly take part in the refusal of migrants. The skill has its drawbacks as well: No dwarf likes being yelled at, or being accused of laziness, so watch out for bad thoughts, especially when the dwarf has a reason to consider himself socially or militarily superior to the Martinet.
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Topic: Dwarven Customs Officer (Immigration Specialist Noble Position) (Read 2845 times)