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[Scoops Novel]

If you're doing this seriously, I'd read previous threads. I have a feeling that it will save time in the long run, rather then unknowingly rehashing discussions already 20 layers deep. Strike the net!

[GavJ]

I feel like a lot of these 'techs' are not really techs. For example, murder holes. Dwarf Fortress is not a game about who has the most technologies. It's about engineering and management. While I am in favour of techs, I was thinking that they would be more like perks than actual components in a tech tree. Tech trees are too generic and they also change the focus of the game. Going back to murder holes, I suppose there isn't a way to let Marksdwarves shoot directly down, but why do they need to if their Overseer is a good planner? I'd argue that a lava pit is infinitely more dwarfy than clever humie contraptions.

Also, they're DWARVES for Armok's sake. Their techs should be different to historical human techs. IMO, dwarves are supposed to be good at smithing and mining. The available techs should reflect that. Instead of a tree that unlocks everything, why don't we just have a smogasbord of possible perks that an inspired dwarf can choose from. Almost everything should be available at the beginning, but techs should just provide a small but noticeable boost to a particular area, e.g. Mining, mechanisms, weapons, farming, booze, etc.

Lastly, I sort of alluded to this earlier, but each civ should have a unique selection of perks. Human techs should centre around agriculture and armouring, while the tree-hugging Elves can go refine their long wooden toys laughably pathetic wooden armour or something. Goblins can go do what they want, because they're goblins. Maybe even steal techs?

If you don't like discovering techs every game, just set a starting tech parameter to high. What you're suggesting just guts the entire thing, why bother having techs if they aren't techs anymore and don't matter? If you don't like the whole idea ok but you can just say that you know. Not worth the coding time etc.

[Dirst]

I feel like a lot of these 'techs' are not really techs. For example, murder holes. Dwarf Fortress is not a game about who has the most technologies. It's about engineering and management. While I am in favour of techs, I was thinking that they would be more like perks than actual components in a tech tree. Tech trees are too generic and they also change the focus of the game. Going back to murder holes, I suppose there isn't a way to let Marksdwarves shoot directly down, but why do they need to if their Overseer is a good planner? I'd argue that a lava pit is infinitely more dwarfy than clever humie contraptions.

Also, they're DWARVES for Armok's sake. Their techs should be different to historical human techs. IMO, dwarves are supposed to be good at smithing and mining. The available techs should reflect that. Instead of a tree that unlocks everything, why don't we just have a smogasbord of possible perks that an inspired dwarf can choose from. Almost everything should be available at the beginning, but techs should just provide a small but noticeable boost to a particular area, e.g. Mining, mechanisms, weapons, farming, booze, etc.

Lastly, I sort of alluded to this earlier, but each civ should have a unique selection of perks. Human techs should centre around agriculture and armouring, while the tree-hugging Elves can go refine their long wooden toys laughably pathetic wooden armour or something. Goblins can go do what they want, because they're goblins. Maybe even steal techs?

I agree that Dwarven technology should not be advancing noticeably during a decade or so of fort play.  This requires either a crap-ton of steps so that multiple Moods still don't really revolutionize anything within a Dwarf's lifetime, or keep the Moody Improvements separate from tech tree advances.

For example, each item's raws could have a primitive version, a normal version, and one or more advanced versions.  A Mood could unlock a version, with some mechanism for transmitting that knowledge across one's civ (a bit like domestication experience).  These clever innovations are distinct from tech advancement which might not change during a particular fort's lifetime.  For example, some ludicrously complex forging technique can give you better coverage percentage for armor to represent a clever way to cover joints.  That's not the same thing as developing the next type of armor, and it's not even necessarily applicable to that next type of armor.

[SixOfSpades]

The Clothing, War (Defensive), and Medical section is up.

I feel like a lot of these 'techs' are not really techs. For example, murder holes.

Yes, a lot of them are more behaviors than technologies. But what's important is the idea, not whether or not it results in a new gadget. If the concept is "new", and can be beneficial to the fort, I consider it worthy of inclusion.

Dwarf Fortress is not a game about who has the most technologies.

The innovations are not a way to "keep score," they are a way to feel that you are "winning" at a game that cannot be won. The only way to "win" at life is to keep achieving, to keep outdoing yourself. I feel that the Innovation system is an excellent approximation of that idea, in a way that slaughtering megabeasts could never be.

While I am in favour of techs, I was thinking that they would be more like perks than actual components in a tech tree. Tech trees are too generic and they also change the focus of the game.

As GavJ said, if you set the (hypothetical) starting tech parameters to "Dwarf Fortress Classic", then the vast majority of the Innovations will be nothing but perks to you. The only parts of the original game still locked behind Inspirations would be a handful of the most high-tech and least-used aspects, like Beekeeping, Porcelain, Harmonic Resonance, and maybe steel.
I dislike tech trees as much as you (and Toady) do, I think you saw that I disliked the way how the Crossbow progression was so linear . . . but as that's the only way that really made sense, that's the way I felt I had to do it. I try to break from that as much as possible: If you examine my requirements for making armor, you'll see that it is definitely NOT a lockstep from Cloth to Leather to Mail to Plate. Quite the contrary--if your Inspirations are lucky enough, it's very possible to build up a nice clothing industry, have a Carpenter make a few shields, and then launch directly into making Plate armor without ever having a single Leather or Mail mood, or item. Far from a Tech Tree, my plan is more like a field of clumpy Tech Bushes. Maybe even Tech Grass.

I'd argue that a lava pit is infinitely more dwarfy than clever humie contraptions.

You inspired me to add the Magma Catapult to the War(Offensive) list.

Also, they're DWARVES for Armok's sake. Their techs should be different to historical human techs.

So far, I'm basically writing about humans because that's what I know, so I have a better sense of what is & isn't realistic. Yeah, Toady's planning a Magic arc, but until I know anything about it (besides Necromancers), there's little point in my making blind suggestions. So, give me a few days to get the rest of the Innovations fairly squared away, at least as well as I can do by myself, and then I'll start welcoming any dwarfy suggestions, as well as start data mining the other threads.

Instead of a tree that unlocks everything, why don't we just have a smogasbord of possible perks that an inspired dwarf can choose from. . . . Lastly, I sort of alluded to this earlier, but each civ should have a unique selection of perks.

Emphasis mine. I just want to make sure that everyone knows the player does NOT choose which techs to research. They can encourage progress in specific areas, yes, by having intellectually creative dwarves have high levels of skill in those areas, but apart from that, all the player can do is hope & pray (and savescum). The dwarf that you want to go moody might not do so, even if they do the mood might not be an Inspiration, even if it is it might not choose the dwarf's highest-level skill, and even if it does it might not unlock the Innovation you want. Not all Innovations are good, in fact I'm including at least one that's absolutely useless. Far from unlocking everything, the point of having so many Innovations is to make it very difficult to invent them all in one fort, even just all of the ones in a certain field. One of the major goals of this plan is to help give each fort its own feel, and if they all research the same techs, that doesn't help at all.
As for each civilization (or at least each race) having its own unique technologies undiscoverable by anyone else, there's definitely some value in that. But I'm going to get the dwarves taken care of first, naturally. I've already mentioned how the game can realistically randomize each civ's own Innovations during worldgen, and keep doing it for all of the foreign civs after worldgen, so each society would still be likely to have their own unique feel, whether they have race-specific techs or not.

I agree that Dwarven technology should not be advancing noticeably during a decade or so of fort play.  This requires either a crap-ton of steps so that multiple Moods still don't really revolutionize anything within a Dwarf's lifetime, or keep the Moody Improvements separate from tech tree advances.

Well, if the average mood frequency stays about the same (roughly 1.5 moods per year, I think), and assuming a 25% chance that a mood will be an Inspiration, that's only 4 Innovations per decade. Hardly a sea change, especially if the RNG spat out Innovations that weren't particularly important. As for slowing the march of progress . . . how long does the average fort run, anyway? Once you discount all the ones that die in less than a year, and all the ones founded solely to be endurance forts, and just focus on those forts that are being played for the sake of play, what is the mean Dwarf Fortress lifespan? 50 years? 100? I feel that the Innovation rate should be such that, when the average fort is abandoned to FPS death, the player will be able to look back and recall at least a handful of noteworthy discoveries, inventions that really contributed to civilization . . . the Mountainhome's, anyway.

For example, some ludicrously complex forging technique can give you better coverage percentage for armor to represent a clever way to cover joints.  That's not the same thing as developing the next type of armor, and it's not even necessarily applicable to that next type of armor.

My existing plan will already create hundreds of new reactions and resulting items. Adding variations to almost anything but the last "phase" of an item type's development could multiply the amount of possible reactions & items that must be considered. That's more work than even I am willing to commit to a project that Toady might not even like. As I've said, I'm happy to let the existing Moods keep making small improvements in known fields, while the Inspirations keep finding new ground in which TO improve. That seems like a good balance to me, so I'm going to go with it, at least for now.

[Adrian]

Discrete technologies to unlock doesn't sound particularly Dwarf Fortressy.

A more dwarfy way i think would be something like optimizing an object for a specific purpose over several iterations of innovation. (ie. Several great dwarven innovators/inventors redesign swords over several generations to hold a progressively sharper edge (up to material constraints, of course))

[SixOfSpades]

A more dwarfy way i think would be something like optimizing an object for a specific purpose over several iterations of innovation. (ie. Several great dwarven innovators/inventors redesign swords over several generations to hold a progressively sharper edge)

You mean, something like Teeth on a Stick -> Microlith Blade -> Smelting -> Crude Short Sword -> Casting -> Forge -> Short Sword -> Fuller Groove -> Steel -> Pattern Welding -> Differential Hardening? That's 11 separate Innovations (I'm even discounting all of the side-inventions, like Adhesives, required to support the main chain), requiring at least 5 different skills (Misc. Object User, Knapper, Furnace Operator, Metalsmith, and Weaponsmith), and therefore at least 5 different dwarves. Given the odds that you'd have dwarves that are both intelligent enough and high-level enough to attract a Mood, and then roll the dice through getting the right type of Mood, the right skill, and the right specific Innovation . . . I'd be more than willing to say that that technological progression would take at least 700 years. Yes, that's much, much shorter than the actual march of human history, but it's also much, much longer than my estimation of the average fortress lifespan.

Discrete technologies to unlock doesn't sound particularly Dwarf Fortressy.

Why not? Mining -> Smelting -> Smithing -> Defense.
Hunting -> Butchering -> Tanning -> Leatherworking -> Clothes.
Farming -> Threshing -> Cooking -> Food.
Livestock -> Shearing -> Spinning -> (Dyeing ->) Weaving -> Clothesmaking -> Rope.
Just because these processes are already known to you (and your dwarves) at the start of a regular game, doesn't mean that that was always the case, nor does it change the fact that each step literally depends on the previous ones (well, except for that weird step with making rope). So, logically, playing a fort that is set far back in time from the regular embark (which, I say again, is something that players will by no means be obligated to do) will inescapably have to discover these processes. 
While there is indeed something to be said for very gradual, incremental improvements, it just flat-out wouldn't work for quite a lot of things. You can't partially invent pottery. You can't sort of develop the process of splinting a broken bone. You can't get some of an idea to modify a Catapult so that it shoots magma. As I've said before, if you want incremental gains without technological development, the Quality ratings are already just perfect for that.

[GavJ]

While there is indeed something to be said for very gradual, incremental improvements, it just flat-out wouldn't work for quite a lot of things. You can't partially invent pottery. You can't sort of develop the process of splinting a broken bone. You can't get some of an idea to modify a Catapult so that it shoots magma. As I've said before, if you want incremental gains without technological development, the Quality ratings are already just perfect for that.

?? Of course you can do all those things. In fact, it's almost impossible NOT to invent any of those things gradually, or really much of anything, period.

Whether it's worth trying to program into a game effectively, I don't know, but "innovations" are pretty much fantasies.

Taking your first example, people would have started with probably just air dried greenware for holding grains and things in small containers, and only gradually figured out about firing. Even then, only shitty low-temp firing that isn't even enough to make true ceramic (like campfires, then later pit fired pottery). Then they'd slowly begin to invent beehive kilns and after that multiple chemper beehive kilns that can build larger temperatures.  Then they'd have true ceramic finally, but it would be unglazed until somebody invented glazes. And at first theyd be fairly poor wood ash glazes that didn't uniformly cover, only very slowly would people invent better ones with POTASH instead of just unwashed ash that glassify much better at lower temperatures. In the meantime, better hotter kilns, figuring out how to make good quality charcoal you need for hotter temps. Then they'd start making more modern feldspar and whiting glazes, and theyd be digging deeper and developing international trade for higher quality clay bodies that won't melt at higher temperatures, like fire clays and kaolins.

At the same time, people would be inventing in several gradual steps how to make larger pots, using new techniques that help ensure uniform density you need for them not to crack, etc. etc.

There's also many different gradual developments in tempers that you add to clays. In fact, not only do you have to invent the concept of tempering clay, but you have to re-figure out the best temper to use for every new clay source.

[SlyStalker]

These are all blind suggestions though. What about this: civs will gain XP eveytime they make an item. The XP will only apply to that specific item. These civs can level up their items over time. Note that this is different from quality levels. That way, if you make several metric shitloads of a specfic item, you'll be able to improve future items as well as the dwarf making the items. When the items are improved, they should have flavour text like (for weapons for example) 'curved sword', 'heavy axe', 'recurve crossbow', 'braced crossbow', 'flanged mace', 'lengthened spear', 'two-ended spear', etc. Just throwing this idea out there. In any case, I'm starting to dislike these tech 'bushes' and frankly we could all be wasting our time discussing it here.

[SixOfSpades]

You can't partially invent pottery.

Of course you can do all those things. In fact, it's almost impossible NOT to invent any of those things gradually, or really much of anything, period.

I consider the realization that "clay dries into rock--I can make any shape rock I want" to be the invention of pottery. Of course, gradations and refinements exist, as you so amply pointed out, but that doesn't change the fact that the idea of deliberately molding clay into a desired, permanent shape was pretty much a eureka moment. You can't really split that event.

But you're right in that the pottery industry has plenty of scope for gradual invention. Colored glazes, glazing itself, the type of clay used, wheels, kilns, firing temperatures, and even firing at all could each be individual steps on their own. But, for the sake of my sanity, I hope you don't mind that I intend to limit the steps to just Earthenware, Stoneware, and Porcelain. I wouldn't mind if the more detailed path was preferred, or even implemented, but for now I'm keeping it relatively simple.

Whether it's worth trying to program into a game effectively, I don't know, but "innovations" are pretty much fantasies.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you saying that the Innovation system I'm working on is an unrealistic pipe dream (with which I don't agree), or that the core of invention is wondering "what if this is possible?" (with which I do agree)? I've never seen DF's source code, but I do know programming in general, and this plan would only involve a few hundred new reactions & items, with associated flags for whether or not they're visible/available to the player. That is easily doable, especially in a game with as great a scope as DF is intended to have.

These are all blind suggestions though.

Not really. Almost all aspects of Dwarf Fortress are quite realistic. I know DF, and I know reality, so I'm easily informed enough to suggest tweaks like widening the concept of mail armor to include ring mail, scale, and scale mail instead of just chain mail. I might not know the fat content of roast crundle, or whether or not smoking cave fungus is hallucinogenic, but I do know that dwarves who live in a place that's hot around the volcano, but much cooler just under the glacier, are likely to discover the concept of Refrigeration.

What about this: civs will gain XP eveytime they make an item. The XP will only apply to that specific item. These civs can level up their items over time. Note that this is different from quality levels. That way, if you make several metric shitloads of a specfic item, you'll be able to improve future items as well as the dwarf making the items. When the items are improved, they should have flavour text like (for weapons for example) 'curved sword', 'heavy axe', 'recurve crossbow', 'braced crossbow', 'flanged mace', 'lengthened spear', 'two-ended spear', etc.

Okay, so what you're saying is that you'd like to see basically the same things I want--namely, technological improvements shown through more effective items, and their accompanying descriptions--except that these advances will be triggered by the quantity of the specific item produced, instead of by strange moods. Oh, and you make no mention of "unlocking" new techs, so I assume you'd like them all open to start with. Is that interpretation correct?
If so, that sounds like a perfectly decent, viable setup. It seems tailor-made for a player who wants to start a regular game of vanilla DF, begin making steel weapons & armor, and keep getting more & more bonuses added to them as long as he keeps cranking them out, no Strange Moods required. Oh, and naturally this would be the ONLY path to tech advancement for a player who has set [Artifacts:No], I was forgetting that possibility.
But your setup obviously can't have anything to do with my plan--that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with your setup, it's just at cross purposes with my own, so there's no way they could be combined. Sure, you could take my list of improvements to vanilla DF's items, and use that to supplement your setup. But as for me, I'm sticking to my original plan, of taking DF's dynamic of Strange Moods, and turning them from an obtrusive, unrealistic annoyance into what could be a series of cherished achievements. (Or it could be a series of gabbro mugs. Too close to call.)

In any case, I'm starting to dislike these tech 'bushes'

What alternative would you propose? Embarking in Year 1, encountering candy for the very first time in the history of [world name], and already knowing precisely how to extract the strands, weave them into wafers, and then forge the wafers into weapons and armor like nothing else that anyone on the planet has even imagined before?
Given the option, I'll take the tech bushes, thanks.

frankly we could all be wasting our time discussing it here.

Isn't that what the forums are all about? Total time logged in: 8 days, 5 hours and 0 minutes.

[GavJ]

Whether it's worth trying to program into a game effectively, I don't know, but "innovations" are pretty much fantasies.

I'm not sure what you mean here.

Neither of the things you said just above. I'm saying that "eureka" moment style innovations don't really actually happen. There are moments of realization but 99% of the time, they come at the end of a long, arduous process of research and testing and fiddling around, and starting with earlier findings and assumptions that gradually build.

The iconic example is a "lightbulb moment," (cartoons, etc. use this as the singular symbol for sudden realizations) despite in reality Edison having to test like 10,000 different filaments or something for months before finding one that worked. Pretty much the furthest thing it could have been from the concept of a sudden realization out of the blue.

More relevant to this thread:

I consider the realization that "clay dries into rock--I can make any shape rock I want" to be the invention of pottery. Of course, gradations and refinements exist, as you so amply pointed out, but that doesn't change the fact that the idea of deliberately molding clay into a desired, permanent shape was pretty much a eureka moment. You can't really split that event.

That's not pottery though.  That's just dry mud. Which doesn't act anything like stone by the way -- it's super crumbly and weak and won't hold any water or weight, and will crack in most shapes other than blobs or larger than a ping pong ball.  The lowest grade of actual pottery by definition = earthenware, which is a ceramic, which means firing to a minimum of bisque state which is at least 1800 degrees fahrenheit or so to actually chemically become pottery.

As you might imagine, it would be several steps before getting to that point, noticing dried mud, then developing adobe which is strengthening the mud by adding sand and grass.

Then there's a loooong period of nothing most likely, until somebody figures out how to purify just the clay part of the mud from mixed soil (removing impurities rather than adding more, which is not easy nor obvious! I've done it myself many a time now), AND notices that campfires might make ceramic in tiny little bits dangling too close to the flame. This would take forever, because clay lets you make more shapes, but it is just as useless as dry mud, so there probably wouldn't be many people experimenting with all this. And it uses up resources to purify so it's not just idle messing around either.

Then gradually developing kilns to get closer to 1800 degrees without breaking stuff, blah blah before you get to your first pottery ware in history.

Like I said earlier, for most games, this isn't worth programming in, because gradual technology is confusing for gameplay. But whenever games do sudden, quantum tech leaps, it IS a shortcut, done purely for shortcut convenience purposes. "I'm doing quantum tech leaps because it's easier to understand and code" is fine, but "I'm doing quantum tech leaps because it's more realistic" is incorrect.

[SixOfSpades]

I'm saying that "eureka" moment style innovations don't really actually happen. There are moments of realization but 99% of the time, they come at the end of a long, arduous process of research and testing and fiddling around, and starting with earlier findings and assumptions that gradually build.

These days, that's true, as pretty much everything has already been tested to hell & back for what it might do, and for everything that you're trying to invent, there's 50 others working on the same problem. But back in prehistory, comparatively stunning innovations were much smaller, and far easier to grasp: An act as simple as throwing a rock could have been a major breakthrough. Even medieval times have some examples . . . "What if this hammer had, say, a sharp spike on the back?" Sure, you'd probably have to swing the hammer enough times (in vain) to feel the motivation for this improvement, and there would be some tweaking and trial & error involved (to give the spike the downward curve that I've seen on all pictures of war picks), but I hardly think that's enough "work" work to equal Edison's famous "99% perspiration" quote. And how much "long, arduous research and testing" was needed to come up with the concept of place value in base-10 arithmetic?

I consider the realization that "clay dries into rock--I can make any shape rock I want" to be the invention of pottery.

That's not pottery though.  That's just dry mud.

Hey, if you want to move the defining moment to the first firing stage, that's fine by me, but I consider the concept of deliberate molding to be the more important element here. Perhaps because I don't remember my work with leather-hard clay as being anywhere near as delicate as you describe--your experience on this does seem far greater than mine, but for now I think I'll continue to accept the concept of sun-dried clay as being a perfectly usable material, at least for low-impact uses like small jars to keep stored food safe from vermin, or a cup placed beneath a slow, trickling spring, left to collect enough water for a drink while you're busy doing something else.
Besides, who says it needs to be a vessel? Figurines and necklaces would have been rightfully prized, etc.

"I'm doing quantum tech leaps because it's easier to understand and code" is fine, but "I'm doing quantum tech leaps because it's more realistic" is incorrect.

It might not be realistic, but at least it's a good deal more realistic than how similar games have done tech advancement in the past. Sure, we could break every industry in the game down into hundreds of discoveries, but as the name of this game is not "Slaves to Armok: God of Technological Minutae: Chapter II: Painstaking Mesolithic Reconstruction", I've opted against having the first few hundred years of gameplay be little more than hair-pulling frustration and boredom.

Yes, ease of programming/design is a major argument in favor of "quantum tech leaps". But an even bigger one is this: These are dwarves we're talking about, and more importantly dwarves in moods. Dwarves do some crazy shit when they're moody, I won't even bother with examples, and are not-infrequently under the direct influence of a higher (or maybe lower) power at the time. Under the circumstances, I find the idea of tech breakthroughs perfectly plausible for them. Let the humans keep their baby steps . . . moody dwarves can take strides.

[Enchiridion]

In response to SixOfSpades regarding his dislike towards tech being thematically unfitting for the game:

I understand your point of view and I must admit it does seem like normally the first years of the game would just be the stuff of stone age, however, understand that the world of DF is also slightly magical. Thus, not everyone would be knapping rocks. I actually like the idea of each civ starting out with perhaps just one tech as it boils them down to their bare minimum. Dwarves start out with caves and are the first to settle the earth, some seal themselves away to never emerge again while Men learn to plow the earth and travel the lands often(and hopefully some other neat things, since thematically humans are not as unique as they should be. Sure towns and fortresses but surely that's not the only thing they can have...) All the meanwhile Elves tame the lands and establish safe-havens in their elven retreats while goblins go and desolate the land like the deprived assholes they are.

If anything, i'm certain some technological progress system that is significantly pleasing is possible. I just am not certain it's simple enough to be implemented easily without a lot of effort on Toady's behalf.

[GavJ]

"Slaves to Armok: God of Technological Minutae: Chapter II: Painstaking Mesolithic Reconstruction"

Sounds like a blast to me!

But yes, I think we are on the same page practically for games. I was just nitpicking about historical claims.

In any case, technology would be fun no matter how implemented, and is one of those things that can easily be optional without adding much or any maintenance (unlike, for instance, world continuity being optional, which is almost impossible), because you can just start with techs already and proceed as normal with the same code.

[Enchiridion]

In any case, technology would be fun...

But would it be !!FUN!! ?

[SixOfSpades]

The Agriculture & Diet section is now up--not that there's much of it. A lot of time spent researching for little result. Oh well. Also added Weapon Traps & Combat Training to War (Offensive), and Cage Traps & Animal Armor to War (Defensive).

In response to SixOfSpades regarding his dislike towards tech being thematically unfitting for the game

Oh, I'm perfectly fine with the idea of tech fitting the theme, dwarves are pretty much the most technological fantasy race there is (gnomes are more inventive, but dwarves are more into industry), I just don't want to sweat the small stuff. Having nearly every Innovation open up some new useful or interesting thing would generate a whole different feel than having to go through Innovations A, B, and C before you saw any meaningful results--particularly if the RNG saw fit to give you Innovations A & B, but then kept you waiting on C for many years. That's a sure recipe for getting bogged down in too many details, and while the game may eventually reach that level, I just don't want to go that deep yet.

I must admit it does seem like normally the first years of the game would just be the stuff of stone age, however, understand that the world of DF is also slightly magical. . . . I actually like the idea of each civ starting out with perhaps just one tech as it boils them down to their bare minimum.

Fair enough, I can easily see each civ starting out with a "gift from the gods" or two. The only problem with that is that it will make literally no difference in the long (or even medium) run: With so few Innovations available at such a basic level, 1st-tier technologies like Knapping are bound to be researched before long. That's why stone-age forts are less interesting to me, personally: When all of the techs are basically essential, they must all be researched, and therefore all forts are technologically identical.

Dwarves start out with caves and are the first to settle the earth, some seal themselves away to never emerge again while Men learn to plow the earth and travel the lands often . . . meanwhile Elves tame the lands and establish safe-havens in their elven retreats while goblins go and desolate the land like the deprived assholes they are.

Yeah, I'm trying to run Innovations through the Dwarfiness Filter. I thought it would be a good idea to allow Growers & Woodcutters to transplant seedlings from one spot to another, but then I found out that that kind of forestry work is called "silviculture", and there is NO way that I am going to give a dwarven Innovation a name THAT elven. I might downgrade the Moldboard Plow to something more primitive, as well, but there's no rush.
Just FYI: "deprived" <> "depraved".

If anything, i'm certain some technological progress system that is significantly pleasing is possible. I just am not certain it's simple enough to be implemented easily without a lot of effort on Toady's behalf.

Well, the implied mechanic that food in stockpiles can and actually will rot unless the RNG gives you the magic Innovations to preserve it is guaranteed to cause a lot of famines, and therefore a good deal of irked gamers. Then again, "Classic Mode" could easily start with most of those preservation Innovations researched already. As for ease of implementation, I'm 85% certain that these new buildings, reactions, designations and such will be a good deal simpler than giving dwarves 119 emotions.

But yes, I think we are on the same page practically for games. I was just nitpicking about historical claims.

Nitpick away. As long as it's constructive, you & I seem to be good foils, we keep each other on our toes.
I'll probably get to the "technological minutae" level anyway, in some areas where it's good for flavor. For example, cheese can be preserved in 3 basic ways: 1) By pickling it so air-breathing and freshwater bacteria can't grow on it, 2) By baking the water out of it, making the cheese shrink & harden & be less hospitable, and 3) By washing it in alcohol, to promote the growth of certain beneficial bacteria that eventually form a rind. Obviously, it would be dumb to force the player to get all THREE of these Innovations before they would be allowed to have long-lasting cheese, but I could easily have "sister innovations" that do basically the same thing, just in 3 different ways--so in one fort, your cheese has a waxy rind, and in the next, it's stored in jars of brine.