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[WertyMiniBot]

From Year 0, the pinpoint of the creation of sentient creatures in your world, the civilizations already have technology on par with the dark ages. In addition, it's always the same stuff; there's no variation in a different world. Sure, Armok could be behind this, making sure the mortals invent certain weapons as were already invented in the last world, or just plain on giving them, but how about a choice were Armok sits back and lets the mortals create their own dang things. Basically, there should be an option in the world gen menu were you can let the sentients of your world invent their own technology, each based on different intentions; a weapon would be made from a violent intention, a net would be made for a fishing intention, and clothes would be made for a covering intention. These things should be unique. Let's say, for example...

Someone invents a weapon.

It is called a fishmurder, after the creators last name.

It is intended for hunting small fish.

It is a sharp rock attached to a stick. It seems to function exactly like a crude spear.

First, the game would describe the name and what the object is supposed to be (a weapon, article of clothing, etc.). Then it would describe the intent behind the invention of it. Then it would describe what it is, which in this case is a rock attached to a stick. Then it would describe it's similarities to other things, if anything. The fishmurder happens to be a simple spear ripoff, but sometimes that might not be the case. Sometimes it can have similarities to more than one thing, such as being like a combination of a spear and axe. Other times it can be fully unique, and almost nothing like most other weapons. This applies to every invention; an article of clothing could resemble a combination of a hood and a vest as much as a spiked chain could resemble a whip. While most of the time, the inventions may be similar to the real world, the RNG may decide to put in a completely unique one that is like few other worlds.

Going to tech advancement, I also think there should be an option for people to start off with certain levels of tech, or to start off as creatures that have just entered sentience. Then from there the technology gets better as history advances, capping off somewhere at a late renaissance or even early industrial level of tech. There could also be redesigns or enhancements of inventions, to make them preform better (a real life example would be Isaac Newton's enhancement of the microscope, originally invented by Robert Hooke). Say that the fish murder was enhanced by some one called Doggems, who called it Doggems' fishmurder. That would be a new design. The favor of a particular invention depends on the quality of the design. If a weapon happened to be just a trimmed twig, it wouldn't be that liked. But if nothing else was invented, people would still choose it over being unarmed. However, when the fish murder would be invented, most of the people would want one over the stick. Then when Doggem invented his version, and if that was a better design, people would flock to the armory to get the enhanced spear. If it was worse, the people wouldn't give two dwarf hairs about them when they find out.

The quality of an invention would depend on a new inventing skill. In addition, as tech got better and better, the required inventing talent would increase, until eventually you need to be quite a bit more talented (and probably smarter) than before to make a new, and good, invention.

It would be nice to have the ability to let the people on the world create different and unique weapons, and have to invent them over time. Thank you for listening to my long essay of a request.






 

[Deboche]

If you could realistically generate our Earth several times over, most likely you would get the exact same weapons with different design and names but essentially the same because they're the most efficient and effective you can make for their purposes.

The line between same as reality and procedurally generated has to be drawn somewhere, where it makes sense. There's no advantage to the world of DF to have say procedurally generated or fictional fruit and plants, stone, metals and so on. Same with weapons.

Maybe you can find a way to mod this somehow

[Bumber]

The line between same as reality and procedurally generated has to be drawn somewhere, where it makes sense. There's no advantage to the world of DF to have say procedurally generated or fictional fruit and plants, stone, metals and so on. Same with weapons.

Kind of a silly thing to say, given one of DF2014's new features. Toady has also mentioned he intends to eventually replace plump helmets, etc. with procedural plants.

[Deboche]

Yes but those are special features and underground plants don't exist in reality.

It wouldn't make sense to generate all metals and all plants for every world because then you'd have to test each metal and plant to see what it was and they'd probably have to fit in somehow with the metals that already do exist.

It's the same with animals and forgotten beasts. Strange mythical creatures should be procedurally generated because they're unique and fantastic but making farm animals procedurally generated would just complicate things and they'd end up pretty much the same as normal farm animals.

You could have a feature where artifact weapons would be procedurally generated, and it would detail exactly where the blades or spikes protrude and where you grab it but would they be so different from normal already existing weapons? And if so, would they be practical and realistic?

[WertyMiniBot]

I see where you are going with this. I admit, I didn't really manage to think of much. But having tech advancement from the stone age rather than being stagnant at dark ages is still something that the developers should consider adding.

[GavJ]

Can you explain a significant advantage over this system versus just having an option for worlds to go through a fixed, prescribed historical tools order?

If your end goal is really just to play at different levels of tech, that would be way the hell easier to code than procedurally generating it each time. And as mentioned earlier, I think procedural history would largely be boringly similar each time if done realistically, because people would just keep finding the same efficient solutions.

Historical tech levels as an option (not necessarily procedural) would probably be pretty fun though.

[GoblinCookie]

Can you explain a significant advantage over this system versus just having an option for worlds to go through a fixed, prescribed historical tools order?

If your end goal is really just to play at different levels of tech, that would be way the hell easier to code than procedurally generating it each time. And as mentioned earlier, I think procedural history would largely be boringly similar each time if done realistically, because people would just keep finding the same efficient solutions.

Historical tech levels as an option (not necessarily procedural) would probably be pretty fun though.

Because the enviroment has to factor into the equation.  A society that does not access to iron will not develop steel-working.  Why would people if we ran history all over again with completely different geography invent things in exactly the same order as they did historically? 

They would not evidently.  It should be requirement to invent some things to have invented other neccessery inventions but there should be no other requirement that technology be researched in an orderly linear way.

[GavJ]

People already had all the same types of geography we have in dwarf fortress...

Including iron poor areas and everything else. They basically just spent longer in the same basic earlier phases of technology until they imported iron. Not super exciting stuff. Also already on historical record and doesn't need to be procedurally generated unless theres some other reason

[MDFification]

I would argue against breaking medieval stasis unless we wanted to rework worldgen so that year 0 doesn't start with large, organized groups consisting of several sites. It makes little sense to me to assume that cultural organization was handed down from Armok but technologies were not.

[StagnantSoul]

It sounded good at first, but if this happened, the wiki, and much of the hard done !!science!! would become obsolete, people would have mis-matched armour systems, you may not have a hammer, you may have a helmet that covers the legs. It would screw stuff up too much. Without some base, constant part of the game, it becomes too hectic to be considered a game, just a procedurally generated mess. Divine metals, the world, and some beasts, maybe a few plants, is where the procedural generation should end. Maybe have procedurally generated artifact weapons. Maybe.

[GoblinCookie]

People already had all the same types of geography we have in dwarf fortress...

Including iron poor areas and everything else. They basically just spent longer in the same basic earlier phases of technology until they imported iron. Not super exciting stuff. Also already on historical record and doesn't need to be procedurally generated unless theres some other reason

The Aztecs developed their obsidian club things that could remove horses's heads. The Spanish never developed them because they did not need to, they had iron. That is an example of how in the 'historical record' certain technologies were invented in some societies that were not in others because other better technology (iron swords) were possible.

The common appearance of silver weaponry in the game does indicate the game's people are already using things in a 'creative' way that departs from actual history.  Not to mention that they use copper weaponry which generally went out of use in Ancient Egyptian times in the real-world while they can also produce steel. 

It sounded good at first, but if this happened, the wiki, and much of the hard done !!science!! would become obsolete, people would have mis-matched armour systems, you may not have a hammer, you may have a helmet that covers the legs. It would screw stuff up too much. Without some base, constant part of the game, it becomes too hectic to be considered a game, just a procedurally generated mess. Divine metals, the world, and some beasts, maybe a few plants, is where the procedural generation should end. Maybe have procedurally generated artifact weapons. Maybe.

You seem to be confusing procedurally generated with randomly generated. 

[GavJ]

The Aztecs developed their obsidian club things that could remove horses's heads. The Spanish never developed them because they did not need to, they had iron. That is an example of how in the 'historical record' certain technologies were invented in some societies that were not in others because other better technology (iron swords) were possible.

This is a great story, except the part where it is incorrect, and early spaniards definitely did have stone axes and tools and weapons prior to learning metalworking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_Iberia

Obsidian weapons are just like any other knapped weapons invented and used throughout the world, with a trivially different local stone type, that is all.

You can easily have a pre-determined technology tree where a given civilization falls along different parts of it based on resource availability etc. without needing to have any of the technology procedurally generated.

[GoblinCookie]

This is a great story, except the part where it is incorrect, and early spaniards definitely did have stone axes and tools and weapons prior to learning metalworking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_Iberia

Obsidian weapons are just like any other knapped weapons invented and used throughout the world, with a trivially different local stone type, that is all.

You can easily have a pre-determined technology tree where a given civilization falls along different parts of it based on resource availability etc. without needing to have any of the technology procedurally generated.

Aztecs once had stone axes and the like as well.  The Spanish certainly never developed advanced stone age technology that the Aztecs did because the former 'left' the stone age.  The Aztecs (I should probably say Central American societies in general) developed advanced civilizations without developing metal tools and skipped many other inventions along the way as well.   

What you describe is actually procedurally generating technology, as I said there is a difference between procedural generation and random generation.  Think of something like technology as it exists in the Master of Orion series, there we have technology tree where not all the stages even exist necceserily. 

And then make it less random.  Unlike in Master of Orion where the missing techs are random, we add techs to the tree or take them away based upon certain conditions being met or not.  We should probably divide the system up into intellectual theories and practical development, the latter is a condition of the former.  Practical developments could end up in the hands of those who lack the theoretical science to have either developed them or the ability to develop them further. 

This would be mostly what adds a random element to the game.  The theories can be procedurally generated as well and some of them are actually wrong/dead-end theories.  Until there are practical applications to a theory, the theory is not fixed in place and can go in an out of favour randomly (whether it is the correct one or not).  If a theory has a monopoly on a practical application it cannot be replaced unless it is with another theory with the same application.

An additional element would be to give theories an ideological charge based upon the existing gods system (war, earth, death, metals etc).  Civilizations would tend to favour theories that are ideologically consistant with their religious beliefs, whether they are true or not.  If a concept is aligned positively to particular concepts that appear in the civilizations religion it would be more likely to be accepted, if a concept is aligned negatively to those concepts then it would be rejected. 

This works both ways so it should not give the atheist goblins too much of an advantage, their development will simply be more uniform across different civilization given the science proceedurely generated in the world. 

[Dirst]

You know, it is possible to write mods for Civilization V.

As for adapting cultures to iron-poor areas and the like, this can be accomplished by having "advanced stone age" technology available but make it costlier than the equivalent "bronze age technology" and so on.  The suggestion then comes down to making civs in worldgen smarter about which reactions to use.

[GoblinCookie]

You know, it is possible to write mods for Civilization V.

As for adapting cultures to iron-poor areas and the like, this can be accomplished by having "advanced stone age" technology available but make it costlier than the equivalent "bronze age technology" and so on.  The suggestion then comes down to making civs in worldgen smarter about which reactions to use.

This whole idea is something that is about a decade down the road anyway.  It really is completely an academic thing given that we have yet to perfect the existing technological level, let alone adding more or less advanced ones.  It really would not do to have the team throw half-baked technological advancement on top of a half-baked game (especially in adventure mode). 

Some technologies are intrinsicly more valuable than others because they are better, bronze weapons are better (have a higher value) than advanced stone weapons causing the latter to be developed if there is a choice. 

There are constraints on what practical research options are available based upon the available resources and the available theoretical scientific knowledge of the society.  A civilization can sometimes not research a practical application because it does not have access to the need resources OR it does not have the required scientific knowledge theoretically. 

While the applications are fixed, the scientific knowledge is proceedurely generated with a set of both randomised applications and randomised ideological controversy directed at particular gods concepts.  Civilizations give value to researching a concept based upon it's applications but also whether it is ideologically desirable or undesirable. 

Also some theories are mutually exclusive, this leads to situations where a civilization has chosen to embrace a useless but ideologically sound alternative to a useful scientific theory that ideologically unsound.