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[Bumber]

I suppose the most primitive material that is usable to create anything is bone.

Bone would be useless for mining and woodcutting. You'll want to knap stones instead.

[Enchiridion]

I suppose the most primitive material that is usable to create anything is bone.

Bone would be useless for mining and woodcutting. You'll want to knap stones instead.

Yeah probably true. I was just wondering what one might obtain with nothing but bare fists and corpses came to mind.

[Skullsploder]

Rocks. One would obtain rocks

[Enchiridion]

I can see the appeal in a progression system but I can also see how difficult it could be to make.

I once had an idea about weapon invention, where just for the sake of making the game slightly more interesting, when a weaponsmith had a mood, there was a chance that he would be able to create a new type of weapon that your fortress could now produce.

The basic idea was that weapons consist of two parts: a handle and the damaging bit. So the easiest way to do so was to just make a list of handle and weapon types(even though df has no handles right now, I know. This basically indicates reach). And define the currently in-game weapons with the propper combination so that urst doesnt re-invent the sword or something.

Handles : Short hilted handle, short handle, medium handle, long handle, and variants of all those but with chains.

It was the weapons part that was interesting. I had like 21 different odds and ends to stick on them. I will try to scan that drawing at school today later and post it.

So basically he would make something new like a long handle with a ball on a chain and then that would be a new thing to toy around with. Even though it seemed that some combinations would be totally useless.

[SlyStalker]

Copper smelting comes before mining, actually.

[Enchiridion]

Copper smelting comes before mining, actually.

But how would a drwaf obtain copper without a pick?

As a side note, would elves start out with their magical tree growing powers? Because if so, that means that Elves would probably dominate the early years of worldgen. After all, wood beats nothing. right?

Also, pottery is a thing that requires no prequisite tech... kinda... maybe fire.

[SixOfSpades]

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?)

Actually, the key to tanning is tannic acid, obtained by soaking the hides together with lots of chips of oak bark. As few sites will have oak trees, I think we're safe in just making the reaction require a couple of generic "sticks". The wiki says that the urine is only used to help separate the hair from the skin--which might not even be desirable, in Cold climates.

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

Go right ahead. My list is at 112ish now, but I'm running out of brain--I'm going to have to start locating & mining the other threads on this topic for more potential Inspirations. There are also quite a lot of innovations that are going to common to both Skullsploder's AND my lists--I'm going to be going through the Item_Clothings in the raws, and including every single one of them as a potential Inspiration. Skullsploder, you'll be the one covering most of clothing creation, so here's my plan: All clothing Inspirations are Common Core, until an item of that type has been invented. (If everybody's barefoot, somebody WILL invent shoes--but once you have 1 type of shoe, there's little need for another.) So each civilization will come up with 1 or 2 "native" examples of each type of garment, and that will be their style. But if clothes (weapons, armor, etc.) from a different civilization are owned by your fort, then the Inspiration for that particular item becomes Common Core again. So if you kill some goblins and they like high boots, you've got a chance to develop high boots for yourself (eventually). So the full list of clothes, weapons & the like will be part of both lists--until it becomes one unified list.
Similarly, clothes & armor developed by your civ can become part of another civ's repertoire, if they manage to get them home. Beware of letting goblins leave your map with a Flanged Mace or Barbed Spear still stuck in them, or with any bits of armor that they collected from your slain dwarves.

I'm also going to start on some more advanced things, like language and culture.

And names. I realized last night that it would be pretty dumb to have a Stone Age dwarf whose name translates to "Abbey Theaterfountains", given that none of those things will exist for thousands of years. Good thing the language_SYM file has a "Primitive" section.
Also, at some point, some dwarf is going to be Inspired to Honor Dead. You (almost certainly) can't make coffins or slabs, but you could probably bury the fellow by . . . um . . . hm.

In fact, the tree felling article on wikipedia says nothing about actually felling trees at all!

I forgot, before the advent of real axes, a common method of felling trees was fire: slow, smoldering fire around just the parts of the wood that you wanted to remove. Dugout canoes are still made in this way.

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.

That god of scholarship, poetry, and discipline is going to be twiddling his thumbs for an awfully long time. Becoming a devout worshiper makes sense, but just make sure not to drag the Religion Arc into this--we've already got more than enough to chew on as it is.

IMO though, I don't think Dwarf Fortress should start so far back in time.

For the record, neither do I--but some people will. And since DF is the first game that can actually give a detailed, realistic model of that period, and maintain that level of detail all the way down the ages, you just KNOW that somebody's going to want to take their civ from the Dawn of Man Dwarf all the way through the Renaissance. We may fail, but hell, let's shoot for it anyway.

I am making the pre-farming and early farming stuff very simple, so that you'll advance through it fairly quickly.

Good. Staying mostly-true to actual human history is all well & good, but I highly doubt anyone wants to spend 100 years looking at dirt--and ASCII dirt, at that.

I mean, I am getting in as many non-redundant technologies as I can (and some redundant ones)

IMO, go for redundancy whenever it's feasible, especially if the next tech is important. For example, I've added Winch and Treadmill Power to my list, and they both let you do all of the things that Block & Tackle allows. So, not only are there now 3 ways to run things like Drawbridges, making them more accessible, the fact that it's three different ways leaves room for cultural flavor. Is your elevator moving up & down under the power of one dwarf pulling a really long rope, three dwarves turning a handle that only moves in 1 direction, or six dwarves climbing up the inside of a huge, rotating wooden drum? Tech differences like this help to keep each fort distinct from the last, while still covering all the bases.

. . . 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.

Hm. Realistically, I'd say that the domestication of fire, the creation of fire, and the use of fire for cooking should be 3 separate discoveries, requiring 3 separate Inspirations. But in the spirit of saving time, and redundancy, how about this setup:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

a) Domestication only (The fire has passed. This stick is still burning, but it won't hurt us--look, I can even pick it up.)
b) Creation only (Just bang the rocks together, guys. It's really that simple. This should be a pretty good chopper WHAT THE HECK THE GRASS IS ON FIRE!!!)
c) Creation + Domestication (I accidentally made fire. It's okay, though, only Angrir's pile of sticks will burn. Sorry, Angrir, take some of my sticks.)
d) Domestication + Cooking (Hey, this fallen tree is burning, but only very slowly. It won't hurt us! I will warm my hands. Hey, Angrir, you made me drop my meat in the fire! . . . my meat tastes funny now.)
e) All 3, simultaneously.
So viable paths could be: abd, abe, ace, ae, bcd, bce, cd, ce, de, or obviously just e. 5 different Inspirations, some of which are better than others because they unlock stuff faster, and they all take you to the exact . . . same . . . endpoint. So it doesn't matter in the least which path you took, except that some are a bit quicker. You know what? Screw this.

Never mind, I just spent 15 minutes thinking into a dead end. Do all 3 at once, Fire = Cooking.

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

Pretty much, yeah. As long as you make sure that every civ is pretty much guaranteed to be able to provide all the basics for a "classic" DF embark, we should be good to go, so . . .
Food industry, including some forms of food preservation and storage
Liquor industry, including storage (Should this be optional? I think a civ that lives on water alone should at least be considered as a possibility, and you can't transport beer anyway, not without refrigeration.)
Clothing industry, covering at least the bare bones (what an apt turn of phrase!)
Husbandry industry, everything from Capture Animal to Pack/Draft Animal
Vehicle industry, everything from Wheel to Wagon (Wheelbarrow, Minecart and Chariot all optional, however)
Blacksmithing industry, including Iron Casting (for anvils)
Weaponsmithing industry, including copper or iron picks & axes.

The development of agriculture is optional, surprisingly. Sure, it would take a hell of a lot of meat and wild plants to sustain a reasonably-large population for any reasonably-large length of time, but it's technically possible. Figuring out the seed->plant connection should not be an absolute requirement, particularly for a nomadic people (which dwarves, admittedly, are not).

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.

Don't even bother. Just have the Language inspiration as a requirement for anything that involves transmission of ideas, and assume that everything else will go according to plan.

Anyway, moar tech!

Your Javelins and my Javelin have (almost) the exact same name. Which is okay, really, because by the time "modern" dwarves re-invent the weapon, they'll have almost completely forgotten about its fore-runner, so they won't get confused . . . but any poor humans reading the list just might. Maybe I'll call mine Returning Javelin.

Before dwarves attempt any kind of agriculture, there should be an Inspiration where somebody realizes the concept of the Year.

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

Seems a solid enough idea, but will the player be able to check how advanced his gluemakers are, or will he just have to remember how many glue-related innovations there have been? And I'm not dumping on incremental improvements by any means, it's just that looking at an arrow and seeing that it's a, say, "Hollow-shaft Broadhead with Rifled Fletching" feels more real to me, while looking at an arrow and seeing that it's "Level 9" is way more gamey. That's why I've been pushing for the major advancements having names & their own unlockable reactions in the RAWs, while subsequent moods (that don't research any new tech) cause improvements in the quality.
On another note, animal glue is made from skins & connective tissues, not the fat.

I once had an idea about weapon invention, where just for the sake of making the game slightly more interesting, when a weaponsmith had a mood, there was a chance that he would be able to create a new type of weapon . . .
Short hilted handle, short handle, medium handle, long handle, and variants of all those but with chains.

I could be wrong, but I think just about every feasible type of melee weapon has been invented & named, even the crazy-ass ones like the three-section staff and the kusarigama. But hey, go for it!

So basically he would make something new like a long handle with a ball on a chain and then that would be a new thing to toy around with.

Sounds like a Footman's Flail.

What I'm doing with my weapons is having either the Weaponsmith or the weapon User get an Inspiration for the weapon itself, and then for most types of weapons, there's a second Inspiration for a design improvement for that particular weapon. There could even be a third, but I want to keep it balanced: Right now, my design has blunt weapons possibly getting a bonus Innovation, Bimetallic Construction, but I think that's fair because in my experience, blunt weapons aren't anywhere near as effective as their counterparts. Swords (both short & long) also get 2 upgrades, Fuller Groove and Metal Folding (or Pattern Welding, whatever you want to call it), but that too is balanced because in my system, Swords have the highest chance of breaking, and both of those upgrades specifically reduce that disadvantage. Oh, and (wooden) Crossbows get 2 upgrades as well, but again, that's only right,  because one of them (Bayonet) expressly counteracts the fact that that Crossbows are pathetic in melee.
So far, in my system the only weapons that don't get their own upgrade are the ones I consider to be too unwieldy for dwarves: 2-Handed Sword, Halberd, Great Axe, and Maul.

[SlyStalker]

But how would a drwaf obtain copper without a pick?

The humans who first discovered copper found it alluvially, ie they found some hot, melted stuff on the ground and experimented with it. Afterwards, when they used copper to mine out stone, they found veins of native copper and various other ores.

[Enchiridion]

But how would a drwaf obtain copper without a pick?

The humans who first discovered copper found it alluvially, ie they found some hot, melted stuff on the ground and experimented with it. Afterwards, when they used copper to mine out stone, they found veins of native copper and various other ores.

No no, I get that. In life things like this occur naturally. You can even find glass from thunderstikes in the seashore.

Im just saying that in Dwarf fortress this is more or less impossible. You need metal to make a pick(unless there is a substitute, and usually there isn't), you need a pick to get metal. both are needed, the pick and the metal to mine, to obtain either. To go past this, the game would require some slight tweaks so that you can find ores just lying around, or that you can dig without tools, or have temporary weak materials to build pickaxes out of. I mean, this isn't minecraft. Dwarves can't just punch trees to get wood or hit the dirt to dig it.

[Skullsploder]

But how would a drwaf obtain copper without a pick?

The humans who first discovered copper found it alluvially, ie they found some hot, melted stuff on the ground and experimented with it. Afterwards, when they used copper to mine out stone, they found veins of native copper and various other ores.

No no, I get that. In life things like this occur naturally. You can even find glass from thunderstikes in the seashore.

Im just saying that in Dwarf fortress this is more or less impossible. You need metal to make a pick(unless there is a substitute, and usually there isn't), you need a pick to get metal. both are needed, the pick and the metal to mine, to obtain either. To go past this, the game would require some slight tweaks so that you can find ores just lying around, or that you can dig without tools, or have temporary weak materials to build pickaxes out of. I mean, this isn't minecraft. Dwarves can't just punch trees to get wood or hit the dirt to dig it.

Native copper is essentially pure(-ish) copper metal. You can take a chunk of native copper and hammer it into a flat shape with a rock, then grind a rock along the flat piece's edge, and with that you will have a copper axe. A prehistoric native copper axe was found in Germany, sooo...

Also, What is currently impossible in the game is not relevant. This is the suggestions board, and it was possible IRL, so I'm suggesting it be possible for the dwarves to advance like prehistoric man did IRL. Hitting a tree with your fist won't provide usable wood, but breaking off a branch will. Basically, the ideal future of Dwarf Fortress in my mind is a procedural simulator for whatever the hell you feel like simulating. Anything you can do in real life, you should be able to do in Dwarf Fortress.

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?)

Actually, the key to tanning is tannic acid, obtained by soaking the hides together with lots of chips of oak bark. As few sites will have oak trees, I think we're safe in just making the reaction require a couple of generic "sticks". The wiki says that the urine is only used to help separate the hair from the skin--which might not even be desirable, in Cold climates.

I did more research, and tanning has been replaced with primitive rawhide making in my list. True tanning will come later.

Skullsploder, you'll be the one covering most of clothing creation, so here's my plan: All clothing Inspirations are Common Core, until an item of that type has been invented. (If everybody's barefoot, somebody WILL invent shoes--but once you have 1 type of shoe, there's little need for another.) So each civilization will come up with 1 or 2 "native" examples of each type of garment, and that will be their style. But if clothes (weapons, armor, etc.) from a different civilization are owned by your fort, then the Inspiration for that particular item becomes Common Core again. So if you kill some goblins and they like high boots, you've got a chance to develop high boots for yourself (eventually). So the full list of clothes, weapons & the like will be part of both lists--until it becomes one unified list.

This is a good idea. +1 to that.

And names. I realized last night that it would be pretty dumb to have a Stone Age dwarf whose name translates to "Abbey Theaterfountains", given that none of those things will exist for thousands of years. Good thing the language_SYM file has a "Primitive" section.
Also, at some point, some dwarf is going to be Inspired to Honor Dead. You (almost certainly) can't make coffins or slabs, but you could probably bury the fellow by . . . um . . . hm.

I completely forgot about burial rites. But I did initially spend 15 mins typing a ramble about names that didn't quite get off the ground, so I scrapped it for later Lemme work on that now.

I forgot, before the advent of real axes, a common method of felling trees was fire: slow, smoldering fire around just the parts of the wood that you wanted to remove. Dugout canoes are still made in this way.

Definitely going on the list.

That god of scholarship, poetry, and discipline is going to be twiddling his thumbs for an awfully long time. Becoming a devout worshiper makes sense, but just make sure not to drag the Religion Arc into this--we've already got more than enough to chew on as it is.

Yeah, I figure we can just do our thing and religion can be dumped on top when it arrives.

Pretty much, yeah. As long as you make sure that every civ is pretty much guaranteed to be able to provide all the basics for a "classic" DF embark, we should be good to go, so . . .
Food industry, including some forms of food preservation and storage
Liquor industry, including storage (Should this be optional? I think a civ that lives on water alone should at least be considered as a possibility, and you can't transport beer anyway, not without refrigeration.)
Clothing industry, covering at least the bare bones (what an apt turn of phrase!)
Husbandry industry, everything from Capture Animal to Pack/Draft Animal
Vehicle industry, everything from Wheel to Wagon (Wheelbarrow, Minecart and Chariot all optional, however)
Blacksmithing industry, including Iron Casting (for anvils)
Weaponsmithing industry, including copper or iron picks & axes.

There's surprisingly little between wheel and wagon. It goes almost directly from wheel to axle to hand-drawn cart to animal-drawn cart.

The development of agriculture is optional, surprisingly. Sure, it would take a hell of a lot of meat and wild plants to sustain a reasonably-large population for any reasonably-large length of time, but it's technically possible. Figuring out the seed->plant connection should not be an absolute requirement, particularly for a nomadic people (which dwarves, admittedly, are not).

I am trying to make it possible for a civilisation to take a completely aggressive/nomadic route to technological advancement. It's be difficult, and require actively rejecting farming, but possible nonetheless.

Seems a solid enough idea, but will the player be able to check how advanced his gluemakers are, or will he just have to remember how many glue-related innovations there have been? And I'm not dumping on incremental improvements by any means, it's just that looking at an arrow and seeing that it's a, say, "Hollow-shaft Broadhead with Rifled Fletching" feels more real to me, while looking at an arrow and seeing that it's "Level 9" is way more gamey. That's why I've been pushing for the major advancements having names & their own unlockable reactions in the RAWs, while subsequent moods (that don't research any new tech) cause improvements in the quality.
On another note, animal glue is made from skins & connective tissues, not the fat.

Whoops, I did absolutely no research for that section. The naming thing was bothering me too, but then I had an idea about how to fix that and keep it a valid raw system.

[ADVANCE:1:1:FLAVOUR:1:" Fletching! Now your projectiles will fly straight and true(-ish)!":DESCRIPTOR:ITEM:ARROW:" is fletched with two feathers":"":DESCRIPTOR:ITEM:ALCATL_DART:" is fletched with two feathers.":none]

This tag would add the possibility of this set of flavour text being used for the first to first (so just the first) innovation in fletching, the discovery.
The number after FLAVOUR indicates the weighting of this set of flavour text for selection.
The text string after that is the text that will be displayed on the screen when the innovation is finished. The screen will automatically have "Urist McInspired has discovered", and after this is where that first string goes. This can be all you put in the tag, if you want, but the main idea of it is to include the DESCRIPTOR tags. These will add the first string after the item selection tags to the list of descriptors for the item selected. The descriptors are displayed as:

This is a [material] arrow. The arrow[descriptor1] The arrow[descriptor2] The arrow[descriptor3] and so on.

The second string in the descriptor bit is a descriptor that this will remove. As in, after adding the specified text to the list of descriptors for the item, the tag will search for a descriptor whose text matches that in this second string, and remove it if it finds it. If it doesn't find a matching descriptor, nothing happens. This is so that you can remove a descriptor like " is fletched with two feathers" when some bright cavedwarf decides to add a third feather. You can add as many DESCRIPTOR:TYPE:THING:"text":"text" tags as you want to an advancement flavour tag, which can be necessary when a single advance makes many others obsolete or something, but each new flavour set requires its own tag.

So what you'll start with is:

This is an obsidian arrow. The arrow has a knapped stone tip. The arrow's parts are held to the shaft by raw animal tendon. The arrow's parts are held to the shaft by hardened plant sap.

And what you'll end with is:

This is a steel arrow. The arrow has a hollow shaft. The arrow has a broadhead tip. The arrow has rifled fletching. The arrow is fletched with three feathers. The arrow's parts are held to the shaft by woven plant fibre cord. The arrow's parts are held to the shaft by a glue of boiled leather.

Also, I've thought of a way to work new items into the civ's raws slowly: If a dwarf thinks of a slight change for a stone arrow, the raws for the stone arrow are copied and the changes are applied to the copy. All of that civs reactions to produce stone arrows are changed to reference the improved version's raws, and when no instances of the old version exist anymore, its raws are deleted from the civ's raw set.

They do, however, still exist in the raws of every civ who possessed that same variant of the stone arrow.

Thoughts?

As to language and names. Here's a procedural engine for you:
Once an early dwarf decides to assign a particular grunt noise to a particular object, the engine gets in gear. Dwarves will gain first names only at this time as well, but they will all be individually formulated and unique noises. Children will be named after parents, friends of parents, family, or favoured objects of parents. Additional names based on profession, family/clan, and birthdate are all separate innovations, with each one getting less likely depending on how many have already appeared.
In the beginning, there is a list of all possible vowel sounds. (a, e, i, o, u, ou, ee, ay, oy, ui, ow, etc) and all possible consonant sounds (b, s, z, soft g, Germanic g, etc), split into soft and hard consonant sounds. When a dwarf sees a new thing, be it a newly invented creation (rock on a stick!) or a natural terrain feature (like a tree), he assigns it a name, made up arbitrarily of vowel sounds and consonant sounds, following these rules:

• There are no restrictions on placing vowel noises next to each other. The game will simply place an umlaut over the first letter of the second and any subsequent vowel noises.
• A maximum of three consonant noises can be consecutive, but only if the first of the three is a soft consonant sound, and the group is both followed and preceded by a vowel sound.
• A maximum of two hard consonant sounds or two soft consonant sounds can be adjacent to each other.
• A brand new thing can not be given the exact same name as a pre-existing thing. They may, however, mutate over time
  
• The game will draw a maximum of half the syllables (not sounds) that make up a newly discovered object's name from other objects within its sphere. There will be a good chance that the thing's name includes, includes part of, or is the ID's name if it's an invention, depending on the self-centeredness of the inventor.
• When a different civ brings a new object to you peacefully (i.e. you don't take it from their cold, dead fingers, at least until you've chatted a little about it a little), your civ will develop a word for that object that is a slight mutation in the sound of that civ's word for it, and vice-versa.

Every few years, the game will check how often an object is used by a civ. This can be a accumulation of reference in artworks, overall civ alignment with the object's sphere, how long the object has been present in the civ, and so on. The total use-frequency score for an object determines the chance that the language engine will shave off a syllable or some superfluous sounds from the civ's name for that object, trying not to turn it into the same word as something else. The chance of shortening a word is modified by the square of its length in sounds: a 4-sound word (like s-p-ea-r) is far less likely to be shortened than a 7-sound word (like e-l-e-ph-a-n-t), provided equal usage. A modifier of 16 versus one of 49, and shortening is fairly rare overall.

I think that this system will allow civs to develop distinct languages and dialects in a way that actually makes sense. The more of their formative years that two civs spend trading tech with each other, the more similar their languages will be. There will be a tendency over time to shorten common words, and thus connections between two words can be lost.

[SixOfSpades]

Sharp Stick
Requires: Big stick and Sharp rock
Skill: knapping+hunting or knapping+gathering (much less likely)
. . . Uses speardwarf skill.

We need more of these. I was going through my list of Inspirations for stuff already in the default game, and saw that I had described the Bow as something that could be invented only by a high-level Bowyer or Archer. Which, of course, is impossible, because you can't become a Bowyer or Archer until there's such a thing as a Bow (and, yes, I did the same thing for inventing the Crossbow & Blowgun).

So! I propose a (mostly) consistent progression for each weapon type:

• Rock-Stick version: Requires nothing but the Innovations for the components, can be invented by anyone. Making it teaches Knapping, Misc. Object User, and/or a relevant Crafting skill. Using it teaches a specific weapon skill.
• Stone weapon: Requires the Innovation for the Rock-Stick version, can be invented by anyone of low level (or higher, of course) in either the skill used to make it, or the skill used to wield it. Making it teaches Knapping, Misc. Object User, and/or a relevant Crafting skill. Using it teaches a specific weapon skill.
• Crude weapon: (The first introduction of metal, though not yet with actual forges: we're still cold-hammering it, or casting.) Requires the Innovation for the Stone version, OR the Crude version of a related weapon type. Can be invented by anyone of medium or higher level in the skill used to make it, the skill used to wield it, OR the skills used to make the Rock-Stick or Stone versions of the weapon, OR Bowyer or Weaponsmith, as applicable. Teaches Bowyer, Weaponsmith, or Furnace Operator (if the weapon is cast).
• Weapon: (The vanilla DF version of the weapon, needs a real forge with an anvil.) Requires the Innovation for the Crude version, OR the Crude or Vanilla version of a related weapon. Can be invented by anyone of high level in the skills used to make or wield it. Teaches Weaponsmith or Bowyer.
• Advanced weapon: Requires the Innovation for the Vanilla version, can be invented by anyone of high level in the skill used to make or to wield it.

Not all weapons will follow this pattern: Some have no primitive versions, as they are variants of a different weapon, branching off at a later stage. Side-developments, such as Cord, Adhesives, and Fletching, may cause increased performance, but should not move items further along the 5-step progression. Other exceptions and requirements may exist, as well--for example, the invention of the Crossbow should probably require knowledge of the Atlatl. But, as always, this is just a proposal.

Weapon Skill: Rock-Stick -> Stone -> Crude -> Vanilla -> Advanced
Knife User: Sharp Rock -> Stone Dagger -> Crude Dagger -> Dagger -> Stiletto
Swordsdwarf: Teeth on a Stick -> none -> Crude Short Sword -> Short Sword -> 3 possible upgrades
Swordsdwarf: Teeth on a Stick -> none -> Crude Long Sword -> Long Sword -> 3 possible upgrades
Swordsdwarf: Sharp Bone -> none -> Crude Scimitar -> Scimitar -> 3 possible upgrades
Swordsdwarf: none -> none -> none -> Two-Handed Sword -> 3 possible upgrades
Speardwarf: Sharp Rock on Long Stick -> Stone Spear -> Crude Spear -> Spear -> Barbed Spear
Speardearf: Thrown Sharp Stick -> Stone Javelin -> Crude Javelin -> Javelin -> Returning Javelin
Speardwarf: Really Long Sharp Stick -> Stone Pike -> Crude Pike -> Pike -> Braced Pike
Speardwarf: none -> none -> none -> Halberd -> no upgrade
Axedwarf: none -> none -> none -> Great Axe -> no upgrade
Axedwarf: Sharp Rock on a Stick -> Stone Axe -> Crude Battle Axe -> Battle Axe -> Bearded Axe
Woodcutter: Sharp Rock on a Stick -> Stone Axe -> Crude Wood Axe -> Wood Axe -> Double-Bit Axe
Miner: Sharp Rock -> Hand-Axe -> Crude Pick -> Pick -> Mattock
Lasher: Vine -> none -> Crude Whip -> Whip -> Bullwhip
Lasher: none -> none -> none -> Scourge -> Hooked Scourge
Macedwarf: Bone Club -> Stone Club -> Crude Mace -> Mace -> Flanged Mace
Macedwarf: Bone Club -> Stone Club -> Crude Morningstar -> Morningstar -> Tempered Morningstar
Macedwarf: Rock tied to Stick -> none -> Crude Flail -> Flail -> War Flail
Hammerdwarf: none -> none -> Crude War Hammer -> War Hammer -> War Pick
Hammerdwarf: none -> none -> none -> Maul -> no upgrade
Archer: none -> none -> Crude Bow -> Bow -> Composite Bow
Marksdwarf: none -> none -> Crude Crossbow -> Crossbow -> Composite Bayonet Crossbow
Blowgunner: Hollow Reed -> none -> Crude Blowgun -> Blowgun -> no upgrade

[EDIT:] Added Furnace Operator to the list of skills that can gain experience for making Crude weapons--if the weapon (or anvil) is made of cast metal, the Furnace Operator should get credit for it. Also, I completely forgot about the Flail. [/EDIT]

[Skullsploder]

-snip-

All of these are great. Great work. I totally agree about peripheral stuff like cords and adhesives providing limited bonuses while every so often there will be a major leap in the type of weapon you can make.
 I would add a stone scourge in though, by tying a rock or two to the end of a vine you have a very basic scourge, and you could even have an option for teeth.

Also, I think Obsidian "teeth" on a stick to make a macuahuitl should have an optional spot between "teeth on a stick" and "crude sword." It is dependent, of course, on your embark spot being on an obsidian flow, but realistically obsidian is a fantastic material for making weapons out of.

I reckon that the development of composite bows should unlock the manufacture of all different varieties of bow - short, recurve, long, and of course crossbows - in composite form, rather than recurve bows being in and of themselves the pinnacle of bow-making.

Also, there should be quite a few steps for crossbows to do with the trigger mechanism, and, separately, the drawing system, so crossbows would have three different sets of upgrades:

crude bow -> bow -> composite bow (alongside normal bows)
hand drawn -> belt hook -> Greek slider -> lever -> rack-and-pinion -> windlass
groove-and-rod -> roller nut

There should also be separate innovations for light and heavy crossbow variants. Heavy crossbows obviously suffer a penalty in rate of fire for increased range and power, while light crossbows have the opposite, and if your dwarves are feeling particularly oriental, they should be able to invent the repeating crossbow as a light crossbow variant - very low power, range, and accuracy, but obscene rate of fire (modern reconstructions have achieved 2 bolts per second). I just love the idea of handing every one of 200 dwarves a repeating crossbow and telling them to go to town on the lightly armoured goblins. There'd be 400 bolts in the air before the first one hits.

Alongisde all this crossbow tech, of course, should be a change to the marksdwarf skill that makes it have only a very small effect on the rate of fire of crossbows and instead change accuracy. Bowdwarf, on the other hand, should improve both. (as in real life)

Looking back on this - holy crap there are a lot of different paths for crossbows to go down. Last point: crossbows and ballistae should not be common core until either crossbows or ballistae are invented, and then it's only a small step to scale them up or down.

[assasin]

This thread looks interesting. One thing I'd like to mention is a mechanic to vary tech levels between broad regions in a logical fashion so one continent might work mainly with stone and be damn good at it (like meso-americans) while others may be pretty terrible in general and others be renaissance. Of course limited trade could work to solve this but if every region has the same core techs and has the same chance for inspiration it might be a bit off. So maybe just take it into account in the algorithm. It'd serve two functions. The first is to add more variable difficulty (so a new player could set up a colony in a low tech area and only have to worry about raids with slings and burnt sticks and an experienced player could try build an empire starting from the stone age while renaissance goblin civ is right next door.) The second is its more realistic in larger worlds with limited travel.


Also don't forget slow social changes over time. Things like slavery, marriage customs, economic reforms etc. would probably be more efficient to shove into the same system. Of course it could work with the inspiration system (nobody can say people like Wilberforth, Luther, Luther King, Marx, Confucius etc. weren't inspired. No matter what you may think of them personally) though unrest could also be added at a later date to model the resistance to that sort of thing.

[GavJ]

I suppose the most primitive material that is usable to create anything is bone.

Bone would be useless for mining and woodcutting. You'll want to knap stones instead.

Bone was used for both of these things all the time.

http://www.primitiveways.com/wood_carving.html <--here's a dude chopping down a tree with a bone axe.
http://www.topsixlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Western-Pacific-turtle-bone-axe.jpg here's a turtle bone axe
http://www.ashokaarts.com/img/product_images/image/detail/chaco-jawbone-axe-from-patagonia-bolivia-paraguay-argentina--wwwashokaartscom-fine-antique-oriental-arms-and-armour-swords-and-weapons-13-2511.jpg horse jawbone axe
http://www.high-pasture-cave.org/index.php/latest_finds/comments/74/ probably a deer antler pick. This one is a bit ambiguous, but many others have been found in actual mines obviously used as picks, I just can't find actual photos (seen in documentaries). In both North America and prehistoric Britain for sure, probably all over.

Antler points are also used to do detailed pressure knapping, usually of the final edge of a blade.

Even wood is used for knapping -- in fact, for many things it's much better than stone. If you want tiny slivers for delicate objects, you use softer hammers like wood more often, because they won't break the sliver after it knaps off.

Also, I think Obsidian "teeth" on a stick to make a macuahuitl should have an optional spot between "teeth on a stick" and "crude sword."

I'll say there should be a step! They're called microliths (the tiny stone bits), and they are the defining historical characteristic tool of about 5,000 years of history give or take (the mesolithic period). So that's a pretty important step. Not just in North America -- all over the world people went through that phase. Specifically, the mesolithic is largely categorized by the usage of compound tools made from multiple larger knapped stones and microliths lashed together in creative ways. Such as a harpoon with a bunch of lashed backward facing microliths, or fish hooks from two combines, etc.

[SlyStalker]

Chronologically, swords were developed a lot like this:
Sharp Stone -> Flint Knife -> Aztec Obsidian Blades -> Copper Short Sword -> Bronze Short Sword -> Iron Short Sword -> Steel Sword -> Longsword -> Hand-and-a-half Swords -> Zwei/Twohanders
I may have muddled them up (maybe) but I'm pretty sure this is how it was.