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[SixOfSpades]

I've been writing up my thoughts & ideas about this concept, and I have to say that you & I, Skullsploder, have been thinking along some very similar lines. I, too, call them Inspirations, and think they should probably be a type of Mood ("Monom Atiramaud, Leatherworker, has been struck by a sudden inspiration!") that cannot kill its recipient, will allow him to work on other projects relatively normally, and will even let him Conduct Meeting with the mayor (or whoever) to specifically request things he (thinks he) needs. But I think it should be possible for Inspirations to fail, causing a quite negative unhappy thought ("His contributions have been rejected by society") which never goes away, until/unless that same dwarf is struck by a Mood again (which is actually not that unlikely), giving him a second chance to realize his old idea.

I also see the feasibility of Inspirations that do not produce physical artifacts--but also Inspirations that do not require workshops, and some that have no material components, and even some that succeed instantly because they take place entirely within the dwarf's mind. But writing the ideas down in book form would be nice, too, in case we need a physical mechanic for trading technological advances with other races (more on that later), or at least sending them back to the Mountainhome.

I also support the idea of artifacts being necessary to unlock legendary status, but I'm not certain this should be anything more than cosmetic. i.e. they can be functionally legendary but they're "only" referred to as Grand Masters.

Yeah, that's exactly what I meant. I failed to articulate that properly near the beginning of my 2nd post, but I did near the end: "Let the dwarves keep advancing through the ranks as always--but until she has a mood, your Legendary+5 will only be displayed as a Grand Master+6."

Also, artifacts and inspiration should not be limited to one per dwarf.

Agreed, my write-up specifically mentions Leonardo & Thomas Edison.

A dwarf with a personality particularly wired towards inspiration (incredibly rare, and would need all variables aligned) could be able to do make a new innovation every other year . . . However, this shouldn't be exploitable to the point where one dwarf becomes an artifactory.

Quoting myself here, "For the most part, Inspirations are limited to dwarves with both great intellectual creativity, and vast knowledge in a specific area. High scores in the personality traits of Assertiveness, Activity, Altruism, Self-Efficacy, Dutifulness, & Self-Discipline, and most especially Imagination, Adventurousness, Intellectual Curiosity, & Achievement-Striving, all make a dwarf MORE likely to become Inspired. High scores in the traits of Anger, Gregariousness, Excitement-Seeking, & Immoderation, however, all factor against Inspiration. But the most important consideration is a dwarf's level of skill in the labor associated with the Strange Mood: Almost exclusively, people only get revolutionary ideas on subjects that they already know about."

So if the above gets implemented, you needn't worry about any "one-dwarf-artifactory". Personally, I feel that Moods should strike only once every year or two (any more than that and they start to become THE dominant feature of the game, drawing your attention away from even Sieges), and only some of those Moods will be Inspirations, and for the most part, dwarves can have Inspirations only in the skills in which they are already high-level. I have an example of a dwarf who is "a High Master(13) Mechanic, Talented(6) Mason, Proficient(5) Grower, Novice(1) Presser, and Dabbling(0) Bone Setter. Each of those skills is weighted by the square of its rank, so the chance that this dwarf's Inspiration will be based on the Mechanic skill is 73%. The odds that the dwarf will have a Masonry mood instead is 16%, for a Grower it's 11%, and the chance that the Inspiration will work on the dwarf's Presser skill is very close to 0%--but it's still technically possible."

This could completely solve the tech advancement issue. Toady could make all civs start out with only the most basic technology and let them develop their own stuff during worldgen through this system.

Quite. I'm definitely not presuming to tell Toady or Threetoe what to do, but here's what I think would work:
1) To basic worldgen, add a slider to set the general technology level of the world at Year 0. Medium? High? Very Low? Everything "below" your chosen setting was invented (or divinely bestowed) during a time before time.
2) To basic worldgen, add a slider to set how rapidly most civilizations advance after Year 0. These two together, combined with the year at which you stopped worldgen, will give the player full control--you could start as troglodytes who only know "Rock good, eat mushroom, kill green thing," OR you could embark in the middle of the High Renaissance.
3) To advanced worldgen, add the previous 2 settings, as well as a third setting to affect how greatly a civilization's technological progression depends on that civ's gods. This is a way to "randomize" the effects of Slider #2 that maintains the flavor of the civ: During times when the majority of the population worships the god of fortresses, volcanoes, and metals, that civilization is likely to make advances in things like masonry and smelting. On the other hand, if the dominant god is the deity of trade, wealth, and hospitality, the civ could have progressed in random areas, by absorbing the knowledge of other civs. If the civ's only gods are those of trees, muck, and suicide, however . . . good luck. Hope you like rocks & eating mushrooms.


In the thread that Novel Scoops posted the link to, there's a very important post by King Mir, at the bottom of the first page--it poses many difficult questions, which I hope my proposed system can answer.

How do you stop a year-0 fort from discovering everything there is to discover?

By setting Slider #1 to anything except Very High.

How do you make a game with less tech as feature-rich as one with all the tech? Tech ostensibly results in more things you can build and do, but then not having the tech would mean less features to play with. But then why would anyone want to play without the tech?

Personally, I think discovering a good tech is almost more fun than having that tech to start with. In a game that cannot be won, inventing the War Pick gives a sense of victory that I think we're all going to need.

How do you make tech advances meaningful, instead of just being bonuses on existing technology? It's easy to make a tech for better steal, but that example doesn't do justice to the concept of invention.

In many cases, by making the innovations unlock things that could not be done before. My next post will have my list (so far).

How do you maintain the present system, where a less mature fort will have fewer industries, and a more mature fort is more advanced, regardless of the time period the fort was founded?

By having Inspirations for pretty much EVERY stage of development, so that even if you crank Slider #1 all the way up, there are still a few things left to invent. ("Ooooh, an artifact steam-powered Pipe Organ! And hey, it's mechanically self-playing, too!")

[SixOfSpades]

And now for the list . . .

[EDIT:] The full list of Innovations has been moved to Page 5 of this thread. Also see Page 7 for the list of new buildings, items, furniture, etc., that are part of this plan. [/EDIT]

Items with an asterisk* are my recommendations for the "Common Core", innovations that I consider to be fairly basic to discover, especially through interactions with other cultures. Common Core advancements have a higher chance of being randomly chosen than other Innovations of the same relevant skill, and (if anything like the system I described earlier gets implemented) they are more likely to be discovered during worldgen.

All told, I think there should be around 250+ discoveries to unlock, so that even if a player builds two successive forts that emphasize the exact same industries, there's still a good chance that each fort will research different technologies, allowing each fort to maintain its uniqueness and flavor. Of course, at present this list has only 52 innovations, which is a long way from 250 . . . it looks like I'll be including Anesthesia, Immunology, Paper Mill, and Pipe Organ after all. And, if we really ARE going as far back as the Stone Age, that means innovations like Draft Animals--which previously I'd thought of as a given (you know, since you arrive with a Wagon & all). Have fun researching the concept of Valves before you can invent a Bellows before you can even develop a single modern Forge.

[Skullsploder]

FFFFFUUUUUUUUU GODDAMMIT. So ctrl+r reloads a page. ctrl+y is the one that redoes an undone action. Sigh. I had got all the way to the discovery of fire, but oh well.

I love your list, SixOfSpades, but I feel that the dawn of time is a really cool place to start, and as such, we should start from there and work our way up. Or, even better, you continue with tech that's fairly advanced or on the level of the current dwarves, and I'll start at the dawn of man dwarf and work my way to you.

List to follow! (With more regular copying for safety) Sneak preview: it all begins with a rock.

[Skullsploder]

So, let's start at the beginning, and see where our inspired dwarves take us (I'm just gonna say "ID" from now on, there're gonna be a lot of these)

Starting at year 0 with the tech slider set to 0 should mean you only have two jobs available, Hunting and Gathering, and a bunch of (shall we say... 7?) naked, weaponless dwarves. Dwarves can all fight if they have to right from the start, and so you could be seeing dedicated fighting dwarves right from the beginning. Hunters use "individual choice, weapon" when getting equipment.
Gathered plants and clobbered animals are, by default, brought to the nearest meeting zone, and butchering them is part of hunting. This returns a third or so of normal butchering returns.

Rock
Requires: nothing
Skill: hunter or gatherer, much more likely for hunter.
ID walks over to the nearest pebble patch, picks up a pebble, and makes it a permanent part of his job's uniform. This must be done separately by hunters and gatherers for it to apply to both! Hunters will use the rock as a melee weapon, gatherers will use it to increase original gather speed to 110%. Once one skill has done it, the other is much more likely to.

Sharp rock
Requires: Rock
Skill: hunting or gathering, whichever which has acquired rock, equal weighting
ID takes his rock to the nearest pebble patch, grabs another pebble, and uses it to make a 1 tile workshop. He emerges some time later with an artifact sharp rock (lol), and you can now build more knapping workshops out of a pebble to make more sharp rocks. Sharp rocks immediately replace regular rocks in both uniforms, provided the ordinary rocks were already being used. Sharp rocks have a smaller contact area than regular rocks, and offer +40% gather speed.
Unlocks knapping job.

Big stick
Requires: none, Sharp rock vastly increases likelihood
Skill: Hunting or gathering
ID breaks off a branch of a tree or a bit of bamboo. The result is a stick. This stick can be used as a club or for digging up plants, giving a +20% gather speed if sharp rocks are not already being used. Enables collect stick job at the knapping workshop if it's unlocked, using woodcutter.
Unlocks woodcutter job.

Sharp Stick
Requires: Big stick and Sharp rock
Skill: knapping+hunting or knapping+gathering (much less likely)
ID claims knapping workshop, goes to the nearest tree, gains a "stick" item, and brings it back to the knapping workshop. After some time he emerges with an artifact sharp stick (yaaaaay) which has a small contact area but a medium penetration depth (say half of a normal spear). Sharp sticks are added to either the hunting or gathering uniform (depends on skill of ID) alongside sharp rocks. A dwarf of the other skill needs to be struck by inspiration for the stick to be added to their uniform though. Allows gatherers to collect root-type plants just that little bit faster. Gather speed +10%
Uses speardwarf skill.

Bone club
Requires: presence of bones
Skills: any military; or hunting
ID picks up a leg or arm bone and uses it as a weapon. This would be limited to bones from animals of a certain bodysize range, since Urist really can't swing that woolly mammoth leg as a club. Depending on body size of the animal, bones would have varying contact areas and velocity modifiers, but overall it should be slightly better than a big stick.

FIRE!
Requires: Sharp rock and: ID's knapping workshop built on grass (very, very low chance) or ID sees a natural fire
Skill: knapping
ID will turn his knapping workshop into a 3*3 firepit workshop with its inaccessible center fire tile on the original site of his workshop (the dwarf either noticed the sparks made when he smacked the two rocks together in sharpening them and realised they looked the same as that big fire, or he accidentally got them on the grass). Requires two ordinary rocks plus a trip to a tree to create a firepit. The firepit can now be used to cook one-item meals! It can also be designated as a meeting zone, much like a well.
Unlocks cooking job.

Butchery
Requires: sharp rock
Skill: hunting
ID goes to an animal carcass picks it up, and build a one-tile butchery out of his sharp rock. This butchery can be used only to butcher dead animals, not slaughter livestock. Mainly because you don't have livestock yet. Animals butchered at this workshop rather than on the spot by hunters return half of our normal current returns, as opposed to the third the hunters provide.
Unlocks butchery skill.

Skins*
Requires: proximity to animal skins, through butchery or otherwise
Skill: none
ID just grabs a raw animal hide and throws it on as clothing. Others follow suit. Still no bad thoughts from nudity though.

Congratulations! If your dwarves have figured all this stuff out, you now have clothed, armed dwarves with fire! Of course, this may be a better start point than the "literally nothing" start point, but I thought it would be nice to be able to start before a dwarf has figured out how to hit things with a rock.

Anyway, the march of progress continues!

Farming
Requires: presence of seeds.
Skill: gatherer, planter
ID spends some time looking at plants, looking at seeds, looking at plants while holding seeds, and eventually makes a small farm plot. This only unlocks planting one type of plant. More gatherer or planter inspirations will be required to gain access to more plants for farming.
NOTE: A grand master gatherer will have only a very small chance of being struck by this inspiration, at least the first time. This is, after all, the invention that essentially led to the rise of civilisation IRL. Also, while each time you get this inspiration makes it easier to get again, the bonus inspiration is less likely to lead to the cultivation of aboveground crops if you have only unlocked below-ground ones so far.
Unlocks planting.

Rawhide
Requires: Skins and Sharp rock
Skill: none
After ID has some skins rot off while wearing them, he's struck with the idea. ID will take a skin and a sharp rock, sit down, and begin scraping. After a while, he'll build a scraping shop and produce a primitive rawhide covering. Rawhide takes longer to rot than untreated skin, and is also way less gross to wear. It's basically just a skin with most of the leftover gore scraped off. Lets you build a scraper's shop out of a sharp rock.
Unlocks "tanning" job (even though it's not actually tanning, this is for simplicity's sake).

Cord
Requires: for gatherer: presence of reed or similar; for butcher: corpses to butcher; for tanner: raw hides to scrape.
Skill: gatherer, butcher, or tanner
ID unlocks the secret of either plant fibre cords, tendon cords, or leather cords. Nothing is produced just yet, but now it's possible to tie things together, which opens all sorts of exciting possibilities! All three can skills can discover cords. Increases the durability of all weapons with more than just one solid piece.

Adhesives
Requires: sappy trees, corpses, or sappy plants, respectively
Skills: woodcutter, butcher, or gatherer
ID spends a very long time inspecting the objects of their skill, and eventually realises that this stuff is sticky, and sticky stuff could be useful! Allows your dwarves to stick things together, which isn't useful yet, but opens up new paths of inspiration. Increases the durability of all weapons with more than just one solid piece.

Military training
Requires: seeing combat outside of normal hunting
Skill: any combat skill
ID simply starts prancing around with his weapon, doing individual combat drills. You can now designate a barracks zone for military dwarves to train in.

Rock on a stick
Requires: Rock, Cord
Skill: misc. object user (or any other military with decreased chance); woodcrafter gets a bonus
ID produces an artifact rock on a stick. Contact area and penetration depth of a normal pebble in melee, but with the same velocity bonus that warhammers get.

Teeth on a stick
Requires: Adhesives, Big stick, and some teeth lying around
Skills: any military skill, woodcrafter gets a bonus
A very nasty weapon consisting of a bunch of teeth stuck to a stick with adhesive. It's your first edged weapon! Large contact area, very low penetration depth.
Uses swordsdwarf skill.

Sharp rock on a stick
Requires: Sharp rock, Big stick, and Cord
Skill: knapping; or misc. object user (or any other military with decreased chance); woodcrafter gets a bonus
ID produces an artifact rock on a stick. Contact area and penetration depth of a normal sharp rock in melee, but with the same velocity bonus that warhammers get.

Moar sticks
Requires: Sharp rock, Big stick, and Cord; OR Sharp rock on a stick
Skill: woodcutter
ID crafts an artifact sharp rock on a stick, thus unlocking that tech (skip this step if Sharp rock on a stick is already unlocked), then takes his Sharp rock on a stick and hews off a larger bough from a tree. He brings that back to the knapping workshop where he crafted his Sharp rock on a stick (or just the nearest one) and turns it into a woodcutting workshop. This can issue a job to hew off larger boughs and can also turn those larger boughs into many sticks.

Woodcrafting
Requires: Sharp rock and Big stick.
Skills: woodcutting or knapping or woodcrafting
ID will take a stick, sit down with it and use his sharp rock to carve it into a craft. You can now use a sharp rock to build a craftsdwarf's shop, where you can make that craft. This inspiration can happen multiple times and crafts unlocked will be unlocked for all crafting types (stone, bone, etc) once any inspiration for that crafting type has happened. Pots not included.
Unlocks woodcrafting job.

Stonecrafting
Requires: Sharp rock.
Skills: knapping or stonecrafting
ID will take a rock OR a mined boulder, sit down with it and use his sharp rock to carve it into a craft. You can now use a sharp rock to build a craftsdwarf's shop, where you can make that craft. This inspiration can happen multiple times and crafts unlocked will be unlocked for all crafting types (wood, bone, etc) once any inspiration for that crafting type has happened. Pots included.
Unlocks stonecrafting job.

Bonecarving
Requires: Sharp rock
Skills: knapping or bonecarving
ID will take a bone, sit down with it and use his sharp rock to carve it into a craft. You can now use a sharp rock to build a craftsdwarf's shop, where you can make that craft. This inspiration can happen multiple times and crafts unlocked will be unlocked for all crafting types (stone, bone, etc) once any inspiration for that crafting type has happened. Pots obviously not included.
Unlocks bonecarving job.

There are more of these, all pretty much exactly the same, for every skill that can produce crafts, but these are the only three you're very likely to see at this stage.

Wood pots
Requires: Sharp rock and Moar sticks
Skills: woodcutter, woodcrafter, or carpenter
ID hews a larger bough off a tree, and brings it back to the woodcutter's shop. There he turns the woodcutter's shop into a craftsdwarf's shop and produces an artifact wooden pot. You can now build craftsdwarf's shops, and make wooden pots there.
Unlocks woodcrafting job.

Stone pots
Requires: Sharp rock and rock mining
Skills: miner or stonecrafter
ID hews a larger bough off a tree, and brings it back to the woodcutter's shop. There he turns the woodcutter's shop into a craftsdwarf's shop and produces an artifact wooden pot. You can now build craftsdwarf's shops, and make wooden pots there.

Sharp rock on a long stick
Requires: Sharp rock, Sharp stick, and: Cord or Adhesives
Skill: knapping; or speardwarf; or any other military skill with reduced chance; woodcrafting gives a bonus
ID produces an artifact sharp rock on a long stick by lashing a sharp rock to the end of a long stick. This is essentially a weightier, harder, sharper version of the sharp stick. Requires a sharp rock and an ordinary or sharp stick to make one.

Pottery
Requires: FIRE! and access to clay
Skills: cooking
ID uses your fire pit to make an artifact clay pot. You can now use fire pits to make very crappy clay pots, yay!
Unlocks pottery job.

STRIKE THE EARTH
Requires: sharp rock on a stick
Skill: woodcutter; or gatherer
ID decides to dig a hole in the ground. After spending a while becoming exhausted on top of soil or rock tiles, the ID will eventually dig a channel into a random soil tile. Your dwarves can now dig, very very slowly, through soil layers only, with channel designations only, using sharp rocks on sticks - but only in a funnel shape. As in, if they try to dig into a wall that has stuff above it, or remove ramps next to walls, that will result in a cave in/landslide. They haven't invented retaining walls or support beams yet!
Unlocks mining job.

Rock mining
Requires: an exposed rock face, very unlikely without STRIKE THE EARTH!, but possible.
Skills: mining
ID will realise that one can chip away rock without as much fear of the lot of it collapsing on top of you, and spends as long as it takes to dig out one tile from a rock face. Rock mining is obscenely slow with only sharp rocks on sticks, but given a couple of hundred years, your dwarves could probably carve out a few bedrooms (each tile is approximately 27m³, digging through that with rocks, even sharp ones on sticks, will take a few months at least). You can now use the standard "dig" designation. You produce no usable rock.

Chiselling rather than chipping
Requires: Rock mining
Skills: mining
ID will start taking even longer in digging through rock, but after finishing a couple of tiles, he will start producing usable rocks as he digs and then go back to normal speed after a few more. By carving out larger bits of rock at a time rather than chipping the whole lot into nothing, your dwarves will now dig slightly faster and the rock you dig will not necessarily go to waste.

Barriers
Requires: Raw construction materials lying around
Skills: Any; military/defense-oriented dwarves more likely
ID grabs some raw materials and throws them in a pile. Then he makes another pile, adjacent to the first, and then another. Then he steps back, looks at his creation, and calls it a barrier. New construction, quick to build, slows movement speed significantly in crossing and prevents units from dodging while doing so but is easily deconstructed, and can be shot through without penalties.

Palisades
Requires: Barriers and Cords
Skills: wood related, stone related, or bar related; military/defense-oriented dwarves more likely
ID grabs a bunch of raw material and lashes it together into a pretty solid barrier. Still easy to climb over, or deconstruct, but can't be simply walked through. Blocks projectiles.

Retaining walls
Requires: Palisades
Skills: miner
ID simply takes his time removing a ramp. Since you now have retaining walls, you can actually remove ramps and thus dig vertical shafts! You still lack a way to keep stuff from falling on your head though. Allows you to use the remove ramp designation on soil ramps and also to dig channels in soil tiles containing ramps without causing a cave in.

Wicker
Requires: presence of reed or similar
Skills: gatherer or farmer
ID gathers or harvests some reeds and makes a wicker basket. Takes place at a craftsdwarf's shop, or a craftsdwarf's shop is built for this purpose. Weaver makes wicker items.
Unlocks Weaver.

Fibre cloth
Requires: Wicker
Skill: weaver
ID will spend some time in a craftsdwarf's shop and eventually convert it into a farmer's workshop, producing some plant fibre thread in the process, and then turning that into a very coarse cloth. Dwarves can now thresh reedy plants to get the narrower fibre threads, and weave them into a low quality sort of cloth at the farmer's workshop.
Unlocks thresher; counts as Cord inspiration if it hasn't occurred yet.

Clothes!
Requires: Fibre cloth or Tanning; and Cords
Skills: weaver, clothesmaker, tanner, or leatherworker
ID makes an item of clothing at the workshop appropriate to their skill, and turns that workshop into either a clothsmaker's shop or a leatherworks depending on what their skill is. The type of item chosen is the only type unlocked, and more inspirations must be had to unlock a full set of clothes. Clothes will be given biome alignments in the raws which will influence which items of clothing inspired dwarves will invent.
Dwarves will now slowly get negative thoughts for being uncovered when clothing is available to their group which could cover uncovered bits. Skins still count as valid coverings. Quivers and backpacks are also included under this inspiration.
Unlocks clothesmaker or leatherworker, if the inspired dwarf was a weaver or tanner respectively.

Here's the first lot. Once your dwarves are this far they can build some basic walls, dig (very slowly) some basic dwellings, and make some basic clothes, while stabbing things with sharp rocks on sticks, or even sharp rocks on long sticks. I estimate that it would take a world genned at this starting point roughly 2000 years to get close to the tech level of current dwarf fortresses. Two thousand year fortress survival challenge, anyone?

I can see why Toady doesn't put too much emphasis on making technological advancement a thing, but, if we can make this list for him so that it's really easy to implement, maybe, just maybe, we'll get to see this epicness happen. Also, I reckon this list will get much easier once I get to the point where all the basic skills are unlocked.

2014-10-06 LIST NOW EDITED FOR MORE BETTERNESS

[SlyStalker]

These lists are good, but I think we're getting a little carried away. What good will they do if the idea never gets implemented. We've struck upon a good idea, and now all we can do is maybe bring it to Toady's attention and see whether he likes it or not.

[Skullsploder]

That is a good point. How would we know if Toady has noticed something though? I'm all set to keep going until renaissance but you're right, there would be no point unless Toady actually decides to implement this.
Oh Great Toad, give us a sign!

[Manveru Taurënér]

Toady reads ALL threads in the suggestion forums, albeit probably just the first post most of the time. So I'm sure he's fully aware of this idea even if he hasn't caught up to reading this particular thread yet, there's been a few threads with roughly the same ideas before :>

[SlyStalker]

Would PM'ing Toady be good or would that just make me/us annoying? I know some game devs don't really participate in forum chatter because they're 'busy' or something.

[SixOfSpades]

Oh, I forgot to mention that technologies can be traded with members of foreign civs--for example, if some human merchants show up in your 4th year and you haven't figured out how to farm above ground yet, they would probably be happy to show you (or arrange to do so next year, when they bring a professional Gardener along) in exchange for your civ's knowledge of how to smelt bronze.
I also should have mentioned that the Inspirations take more materials than they actually use: When I "finalize" the list, I'll include the workshop, and the minimum requirements to make the artifact (if applicable) and complete the research . . . but the dwarf will actually take more stuff than he needs, up to 3 times more, to account for time & materials lost during the experimentation stage. Take THAT, gaming trope of knowing beforehand exactly how much resources & time an invention will cost.

Skullsploder, I'm more than happy if you want to take on the Stone-Age (haha, to dwarves, all ages are the Stone Age) end of things, the Middle Ages are more than enough to keep me busy. Can't believe I forgot Fishing Nets. Anyway, good work so far. One important thing to consider, though: Do these cavedwarves start out in caves . . . or in caverns?? I realize that Toady & Threetoe are the REAL arbiters of where these Ur-Dwarves should come into existence, but we should at least have an opinion on the subject. Me, I'm leaning towards the underground.
(Afterthought: Holy crap, I just imagined prehistoric dwarves embarking aboveground in an Evil biome. Say goodbye!)

I like the list, it's comprehensive & amusing, and gets the basics down quickly . . . unfortunately, TOO quickly. I just can't buy cutting a tree down (no matter how slowly it's done), dragging it home, and getting tons of sticks out of it, using nothing but rocks. I think it's more believable that the dwarves would climb the tree and use the rocks to help break off the 2 or 3 branches that seemed best suited for their purposes. As far as full-sized trees are concerned, the dwarves would probably have to wait until the trees fell on their own--or were knocked down by something far bigger than a dwarf. (Of course, this would depend on the "tree". Could a dwarf take down a big stalk of bamboo with nothing but an Achelean hand-axe? Yes. A fully-grown oak? No.) I would also be more comfortable seeing the taming of Fire first come about through the observation and capture of naturally-occurring fires, rather than one caused by banging the rocks together.

To your list, I would add Big Stick, Big Bone, Sharp Bone, Tooth, and the big daddy of pre-spear weapons, Jawbone. (The jaw of a crocodile must have been a hellaciously powerful weapon in those times.) Later on, after the invention of Adhesives (Neanderthals developed a glue by carefeully heating pitch, and then there's the wiki article, read the section on History), they could develop Tooth on a Stick, Many Teeth on a Big Stick, and finally the actual Spear.

Also, as well as objects and strictly mechanical actions, be sure to include concepts and behaviors that must be researched. Language. Pack Hunting. Leadership. Home. Touching Suspicious Black Monolith. Watching One's Children. Watching Other Children.

Extraneous Interesting Thought #1: Starting from scratch means that dwarves have no culture, and therefore no cultural taboos. It seems quite possible that (provided they survive) one dwarven civilization might develop [EAT_SENTIENT_KILL:UNTHINKABLE], while another might deem it perfectly [ACCEPTABLE]. Dwarven [BABYSNATCHER]s? Who knows?

Extraneous Interesting Thought #2: These proto-dwarves clearly have no metals, borders, or literature. What happens, then, to their civilization's god of metals, borders, and literature? Will some dwarf have to invent him?

I'm sure he's fully aware of this idea even if he hasn't caught up to reading this particular thread yet, there's been a few threads with roughly the same ideas before :>

As far as you know, did the other threads have the idea of technological innovations piggybacked onto Strange Moods? Because that's what I think is the real selling point here, unpredictable advancement, rather than the tired old "Save up 400 Gold & 300 Wood, then click on the Blacksmith to upgrade all weapons to +1" mechanic that all the OTHER games seem to do.

Would PM'ing Toady be good or would that just make me/us annoying?

For my own part, I'd definitely hold off until either Skullsploder and/or I said that their part of the list was finished, at least tentatively. Once my "latter half" of the list of possible Inspirations is about 4 times longer than it is now (which may take quite a while), then I'll think about asking for a general yea or nay. As for Toady, he's already got his hands more than full with the thought rewrite, which will doubtless bring a dazzling array of new & fantastic bugs, and then there are all the other bugs that 40.13 already has, and all that good stuff, and then he might have the leisure to give this idea a good thinking over. I figure that Toady, and my half of the list, will be ready for each other at about the same time.

[SlyStalker]

Tanning
Requires: Skins
Skill: none
ID spends a long time messing around with animal hides, and eventually builds a small workshop that can tan a hide every month or so. Tanned hides are treated the same as raw hides, except they don't rot away nearly as fast.
Unlocks tanning.

Did you forget the ID pissing over the skin/soaking the skin in his own urine? Speaking of that, I wonder about the mental stability of the first person to tan a hide (they used dog urine and chicken droppings in medieval times, right?)

For my own part, I'd definitely hold off until either Skullsploder and/or I said that their part of the list was finished, at least tentatively. Once my "latter half" of the list of possible Inspirations is about 4 times longer than it is now (which may take quite a while), then I'll think about asking for a general yea or nay. As for Toady, he's already got his hands more than full with the thought rewrite, which will doubtless bring a dazzling array of new & fantastic bugs, and then there are all the other bugs that 40.13 already has, and all that good stuff, and then he might have the leisure to give this idea a good thinking over. I figure that Toady, and my half of the list, will be ready for each other at about the same time.

I see. May I submit some suggestions for the list? I have a few in mind, although not nearly as extensive as yours or Skullsploder's

[Skullsploder]

Sure, go ahead! And thanks for all you the tweaks SixOfSpades. I'll be editing my original list now, splitting  up weapons and tools quite a bit, and I'm also going to start on some more advanced things, like language and culture. Hmm... wikipedia doesn't seem to have anything to say about the first instance of tree felling. In fact, the tree felling article on wikipedia says nothing about actually felling trees at all! I'll make the distinction that until better construction methods are available, sharp rocks and sharp rocks on sticks can't be used for felling full fledged trees and tree-fungi, only things like tunnel tubes and bamboo. In fact, perhaps I should make it so that sharp rocks are an absolute requirement for harvesting sticks from trees, and that sharp rocks on sticks speed up the process. Sharp rock on a stick is a major technological breakthrough by the way, there is a lot of stuff that goes before that that I just hadn't got to because I was focussing on one possible line of advance.

With the Aboveground/Underground dwarves thing, I always thought of dwarves as having evolved in caves, but with surface access. I just can't picture dwarves as beings that spend their lives entirely in the deep caverns, or entirely on the surface. However, I'm intentionally trying to make it so that it's possible to get access to all the basic stone age technologies without ever seeing the surface, and vice-versa. So it should be possible to embark in the caverns and still develop into an advanced culture, or embark on the surface. With that in mind, I'm gonna make it so that STRIKE THE EARTH! is not a requirement for rock mining, only something that vastly increases its likelihood.

And with deities, since this is a fantasy world and not the real one, I figure deities should exist form worldgen, but only make themselves known by granting your dwarves inspirations associated with their spheres from time to time. If a dwarf is granted divine inspiration, it works exactly like a normal inspiration, but in addition he becomes a devout worshiper of the god that granted him the inspiration. This should be pretty random. However, this dwarf will attempt to convert other dwarves in the course of conversation, and gods will be more likely to grant inspiration to their worshipers. There could even be a legends event for it that replaces the normal artifact crafting thing: In the year 2, Catten Smilerocks (deity) granted divine inspiration to the dwarf Urist McLikesrocks (ID), and so The Caves of Loincloths (civ) discovered/invented (which of those two words to use could be a raw tag for the techs) Rock mining (the tech).

Ok, enough waffling. I'll edit and expand my original list, then start on the next batch of technology.

[SlyStalker]

Cooking was an important discovery in our human history (more important than farming, I'd say). It increases the amount of nutrients absorbed by the digestive system. Also, language most likely originated around the campfire from people waiting for the meal to cook and talking about things. IMO though, I don't think Dwarf Fortress should start so far back in time. I mean, you can't even have civilisations or even towns without farming.

[Manveru Taurënér]

...

I'm sure he's fully aware of this idea even if he hasn't caught up to reading this particular thread yet, there's been a few threads with roughly the same ideas before :>

As far as you know, did the other threads have the idea of technological innovations piggybacked onto Strange Moods? Because that's what I think is the real selling point here, unpredictable advancement, rather than the tired old "Save up 400 Gold & 300 Wood, then click on the Blacksmith to upgrade all weapons to +1" mechanic that all the OTHER games seem to do.
...

Tried to find whatever thread I was thinking of, and while the technology megathread talks of inventions in the form of artifacts it doesn't expand on the idea, and in other threads it was suggested later on and not included in the OP so guess my memory was playing tricks on me unless there's some other threads I'm not remembering.

[Skullsploder]

Cooking was an important discovery in our human history (more important than farming, I'd say). It increases the amount of nutrients absorbed by the digestive system. Also, language most likely originated around the campfire from people waiting for the meal to cook and talking about things. IMO though, I don't think Dwarf Fortress should start so far back in time. I mean, you can't even have civilisations or even towns without farming.

Yeah, with regards to cooking, I am making the pre-farming and early farming stuff very simple, so that you'll advance through it fairly quickly. I mean, I am getting in as many non-redundant technologies as I can (and some redundant ones), but you'll still skip the couple of hundred thousand years between "rock" and "sharp rock on a stick," and part of that is making it so that the discovery of fire instantly unlocks primitive cooking. As to towns and things, hopefully by the time this suggestion would be implemented, Toady would have completed the arc that allows you to send out embark parties as the mountainhome (I think that's part of military). Every site and group on the map at the end of worldgen/start of history will count as a separate civilisation. Since you will be the only outpost of your civilisation, you will be the mountainhome automatically, and as a bonus on top of seeing the technology develop, you'll get to see civilisations rise and fall as well. The popcap will be the point at which dwarves start starving to death due to limited resources, which means you will be desperately assigning more gatherers to get more food, which means someone will think of farming eventually. Or, alternately, you become such a successful hunting society, that you decide to set those hunters of yours against smarter prey. Or a bunch of other possibilities. It'd just be cool to see how far the Dwarf Fortress engine could take us.

The only big non-decorative things in metallurgy up until the industrial revolution, apparently, were:

tin and lead smelting (Toss some ore into a campfire and you'll see the metal, very easily discovered by chance)
copper smelting (Requires a much higher heat than a standard campfire. Accidentally put some ore into a kiln maybe?)
bronze alloy (Copper and tin in the right proportions makes bronze, possibly discovered due to a source of copper ore contaminated with tin)
iron smelting (First discovered millennia after bronze. Probably involved people experienced in working with ores doing some experimenting)
wootz steel ( discovery probably a complete accident in building an iron furnace)
Blast furnace

So I think I'll be taking everything up until the iron age or so, right SixOfSpades?

With regards to language, that would require a true procedural language generation engine, which is very difficult. Toady has stated that he doesn't want to leave it as is, with no sentence structure or anything, and that means I'll have to figure out something capable of starting with grunt noises and ending in Renaissance-level literature.

Anyway, moar tech! I'm gonna try to get everything you can possibly get without metal tools before moving on to copper age tech.

Sling
Requires: Fibre cloth or Rawhide
Skills: weaver, tanner, clothesmaker, or leatherworker (order of increasing likelihood)
ID makes an artifact sling. If he is a weaver or clothesmaker, he will make it out of plant fibre cloth at a craftsdwarves shop (If craftsdwarf's workshop is not unlocked, ID will knock down a farmer's workshop to build a craftsdwarf's shop). If he is a tanner or leatherworker, he will make it out of rawhide at a leatherworks (knocking down a scraper's workshop to build a leatherworks if necessary).
Slings use rocks as ammunition, dwarves can only carry a handful at a time without quivers. Slings are quite long range and quick-firing, but don't do much damage at longer range.
Will need a new slinger weapon skill.

Special stones
Requires: Sling
Skills: slinger, knapper
ID makes some smoothed rocks at a knapper's or craftsdwarf's workshop. Smoothed rocks are ammunition for a sling that provide much greater accuracy and slightly increased range.

Throw the spear, Urist!
Requires: A dwarf who uses a spear-type weapon
Skills: Speardwarf
ID will suddenly get the idea to throw his spear at his current target. Allows dwarves to throw spears as ranged weapons.
Uses throwing skill.

Javelins
Requires: Throw the spear, Urist!
Skills: woodcrafter, weaponsmith, thrower
ID grabs a stick and a sharp rock (or a metal spearhead if you're that advanced) and turns it into a primitive javelin at a craftsdwarf's workshop. Javelins have better accuracy and range for throwing than spears, but are poorer melee weapons.

Atlatl (spear thrower)
Requires: Javelins
Skills: woodcrafter, bonecarver, thrower
ID makes an artifact Atlatl, an arm-length shaft with a sort of cup at the end for holding the butt of a spear, out of bone or wood. A dwarf can use the Atlatl to fling spears much further and much harder (but with less accuracy), thanks to the increased leverage it provides. Essentially functions as a ranged weapon which uses javelins as ammunition.
Uses thrower skill.

Fletching
Requires: Atlatl or Bow and arrow
Skills: woodcrafter, bowyer
ID messes around with either a javelin or an arrow for a while at a craftsdwarf's shop, then emerges with a fletched arrow or Atlatl dart. From now on, you can produce Atlatl darts as ammunition for Atlatls that remove the accuracy penalty. You know have long range, accurate, powerful spear slingers (provided Atlatls have already been invented). You can also produce fletched arrows instead of unfletched ones, as soon as Bow and arrow has been invented, also removing the massive accuracy penalty for bow and arrows.

Bow and arrow
Requires: Throw the spear, Urist! and Cord. VERY unlikely with just those two, likelihood increased for every ranged tech known to your dwarves, especially fletching.
Skills: woodcrafter, thrower
ID makes an artifact bow and an arrow at a craftsdwarf's shop, converting it into a bowyer's workshop. Currently, arrows lack any fletching and thus are pretty inaccurate. They are, however, cheaper and quicker to produce than javelins, and deadlier than slung stones. Arrow are produced using the fletching skill at a craftsdwarf's workshop.
Unlocks fletching job.

That's all for today, folks! (I did also revamp my original list...) Pre-metallurgy tech will still have another few entries.

Note that small improvements can keep happening as inspiration moods continue which don't necessarily open up whole new technologies. So your spears are constantly having their shaft design improved, knappers are constantly improving their sharpening techniques, slingers are developing slightly better slings for themselves, butchers are finding better animal glues resulting in increased durability for everything... All these sorts of things can probably be handled by a procedural engine without us making a new tech for each and every single one, without too much issue. I mean, the idea is the same in the high renaissance or in 2000BCE when it comes to holding an tip onto a shaft, and yet, the techniques have obviously been improved over time. It's just in a very linear direction, so every step need not be manually detailed fully.

For these linear advances, Toady could create and assign a tag like [INNOVATION:GLUE:7:BUTCHER:25:MAKE_ITEM:NONE] to fat in the general tissue template, to indicate that any dwarf who handles any generic fat has a chance of 25*butcher_level^2/1000 percent chance to be struck by an inspiration to improve gluemaking technology without producing an item, and handling of fat can provide 7 distinct inspirations in that area, also meaning that a fat-based inspiration. We already know that dwarves can detect what they're handling already thanks to them being pleased at work when they get to work with materials they like. This tag could also be used for things like [INNOVATION:FLETCHING:20:ARCHER:2:FLETCHER:5:MAKE_ITEM:ARROW] to the raws for arrows, to ensure that whenever a dwarf handles arrows, they have a (2*archer_level^2/1000)+(5*fletcher_level^2/1000) percent chance to become inspired and advance fletching tech one of 20 possible times, creating an artifact arrow in the process. The degree of advancement that happens each time would be set in the raws for each tech, and so would the effects thereof. This models a dwarf using an arrow, either by firing it or making it or carrying it, and thinking on his experience as an archer and his experience as an arrowmaker and thinking "now what could I do to make this better?" The simplest way to do it would be so that the game engine runs through the raws for a tech each time an inspiration for that tech is completed, and then modifies the data values in the raw entries of other objects accordingly.

Raw entries for techs could look something like:

[TECH:FLETCHING]
[UNLOCK_INSPIRATION:REQUIRES:TECH:CORDS:LEVEL:1:TECH:BOW:LEVEL:1]
[UNLOCK_INSPIRATION:REQUIRES:TECH:CORDS:LEVEL:1:TECH:ALCATL:LEVEL:1]
[ADVANCE:1:1:MODIFY:ITEM:ARROW:RANGE:ADD:5]
[ADVANCE:1:1:MODIFY:ITEM:ARROW:ACCURACY:SUBT:10]
[ADVANCE:1:1:MODIFY:WORKSHOP:CRAFTSDWARF:ADD_REACTION:ALCATL_DART]
[ADVANCE:2:7:MODIFY:ITEM:ARROW:RANGE:ADD:1]
[ADVANCE:2:7:MODIFY:ITEM:ALCATL_DART:RANGE:ADD:1]
[ADVANCE:2:7:MODIFY:ITEM:BOLT:RANGE:ADD:1]
[ADVANCE:2:20:MODIFY:ITEM:ARROW:ACCURACY:SUBT:1]
[ADVANCE:2:20:MODIFY:ITEM:ALCATL_DART:ACCURACY:SUBT:1]
[ADVANCE:2:20:MODIFY:ITEM:BOLT:ACCURACY:SUBT:1]

What this would mean is that:

• The fletching technology can be the unlocked by an inspiration if cord tech and bow tech are both at at least level 1 OR if cord tech and alcatl tech are both at at least level 1
• The first advancement, the initial unlock, in fletching tech will be a much greater change than the rest.
• For advancements 2 through 7 in fletching, arrows, alcatl darts, and bolts all have 1 added onto the first number in their [RANGE:x] tag
• For advancements 2 through 20 in fletching, arrows, alcatl darts, and bolts all have 1 subtracted from the first number in their [ACCURACY:x] tag.

Toady could also make tags to add to creatures which allow you to detail actions performed by those creatures that can [INSPIRE_SELF] or [INSPIRE_OTHERS]. For example, a cow could have [INSPIRE_OTHERS:GRAZE:DOMESTICATION:7:PLANTER:1], which means that a dwarf that sees a cow grazing will have a 1*planter_skill^2/1000 percent chance of advancing domestication tech by one of seven levels.

Or you could have [INSPIRE_SELF:STAB:SPEAR:100:SPEARDWARF:1:WOODCRAFTER:2:KNAPPER:3:WEAPONSMITH:3] on a dwarf to signify that a dwarf stabbing something will have a chance to become inspired with an improvement to spear technology according to the sum of the squares of their speardwarf, woodcrafter, knapper, and weaponsmith skills.

There would also need to be a separate set of raws for each civilisation to avoid one dwarf inventing a better boot causing all dwarves everywhere to be able to make better boots.

Of course, Toady would have to program the game to be able to change the raws on the fly, but that shouldn't be too hard. Hopefully. At the very least, a stopgap would be to automatically save, surreptitiously quit, apply raw changes and reload each time an innovation finishes.

It's worth mentioning here that I only have a very rudimentary idea of how the raws work, so I could be spouting gibberish, and I'm almost certain I should be attributing range and accuracy to weaponry not ammunition. But you guys get the idea. With these tags added to materials and these techs in the raws and doing their thing, it would be very possible to make a dawn of time mod even if it wasn't included in the main game.

Someone with more RAW experience, what do you think?

[Enchiridion]

I love how this is an entirely different thread now XD. Great lists guys btw. I suppose the most primitive material that is usable to create anything is bone.

Nothing -> Bone pickaxe -> stone -> stone anvil \
|                                                                       \
|                                                                        -> furnace and smelting -> metal tools -> ?
V                                                                      /
Bone axe -> wood logs and tree cutting -> fire  /