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[NJW2000]

   While many DF players enjoy digging deep, and making their homes in the caverns layers, embracing the beasts of the waiting dark, some players enjoy building gigantic towers, or even citadels in the sky. While this is arguably more difficult and fiddlier, as well as more resource and labour intensive, it can seem pretty boring compared to a mountain hall.

Why? Because nothing can happen up high. If your fort is connected by grates, doors or even bridges to the caverns, stuff like creatures and FBs will have a major effect on your gameplay. However, if your ambition is to build a mighty tower with a fully functioning system inside, sealing yourself off from the world is remarkably likely.

  This is not very fun, in my opinion, and here's what I suggest to change it. Please post your own suggestions too.

  How about, when one builds a tower above a certain height, flying creatures become unusually attracted to it. The larger, the higher the workshops and stockpiles, the more interested they are, perhaps, or maybe it's a simple mechanic of height above ground reached triggering megabeast attacks just like population or created wealth in some way. Anyway, suppose you did build yourself a Dwarven tower of Baabel, perhaps a Dragon, Roc, flying Titan if there is one, or giant birds or flying forgotten beasts, giant insects or flying animalmen, whatever, would come and try and inhabit/nest in/loot/burn down/invade/slaughter your Tower. Based on height built, to some degree, though maybe with a minimum floor area to prevent exploits, etc. Maybe the Extra HFS (vaults/angels/archangels) could pay a visit if you become too prideful in your constructions, and thus be enslaved incorporated into DF mode.

  Just thought that this would make tower gameplay a lot more !!FUN!!, with some interesting stories and succession forts about towers doing stuff other than collapsing or being high.

[NW_Kohaku]

OK, I have some preliminary modding of a creature that might work - here. 

In general, though, digging downwards isn't dangerous, either.  Yes, caverns exist, but once you find them, there is zero reason you can't just build a wall and seal it off from your fortress forever. 

Besides that, in the deeps, there are metals to mine.  Any risk there is comes with rewards.  In the sky you get... well, even getting there costs you resources. 

Generally, I think this is something solvable by just having more interesting birds.  (Have you tried undead ravens?)

The ultimate solution would be to have those portals to alternate realms, like some sort of sky realm, that Toady has talked about in the past.  Doing so might give you access to metal in exchange for opening up some sort of possibility of sky-FB invasion.

[dwarfhoplite]

It would be fun to be attacked by a heavenly army.

[NJW2000]

True, NW_Kohaku, it would be good to balance this with sky resources... its pretty empty up there... though I think that for some players, the increased Megabeast/Bird/Angel/Other attention might be the reward in itself.

[Vattic]

In general, though, digging downwards isn't dangerous, either.  Yes, caverns exist, but once you find them, there is zero reason you can't just build a wall and seal it off from your fortress forever. 

Besides that, in the deeps, there are metals to mine.  Any risk there is comes with rewards.  In the sky you get... well, even getting there costs you resources.

Walling off being something Toady doesn't intend to be possible leads me to not take it into account when it comes to suggestions not about fixing it.

Risk also not need come with reward to make it worthy of inclusion as challenge is it's own reward (the deepest depths), and it would be reasonable to expect a tall tower to be visible from range (ties to this suggestion). A tower should be fairly easy to detect and give the fort a reputation.

Capntastic:
DoctorZ asks; 'Will the game be smart enough to determine that the building is shaped - like a tower or a pyramid - will it award you points for style? His example is a room with a pillar in it engraved, would it bump the quality up if you have a high ceiling with paintings and stuff on it; would that be interesting for the game, will it be able to determine those details?'
Toady:
I'd like to further point out that DoctorZ said that 'I'd love you forever if you asked/answered this question' so I think that that means Capntastic right now is loved forever. I still have to do my part to be loved forever, so I've got to answer the question. So the idea with this is that there have been a number of topics where people are like 'I want my tower to be recognised as the tower of something' or 'I want my pyramid to be recognised as the pyramid of something'. That pretty much would have to be user defined; you define an area, you give it a name, and you make sure that that system can't be gamed too much as far as bonuses and so on. But when it comes to smaller things like what you're talking about, a central pillar and things like that, the game can start to pick those out on its own. I don't have a lot of specific plans, but it would be worth discussing. Right now the system picks out engravings isolated, it picks out floor detailing isolated, it picks out the room size and so on, so it goes really just step by step through every tile but things like a central pillar ... it knows where the centre of a room is, it knows that a pillar doesn't have anything else touching it, so doing things like locating a central pillar would be trivial, it's just a matter of building up a list of things that dwarves care about and different groups could like different things; that would certainly be an interesting direction to explore.

From DFTalk .

[Dorsidwarf]

I love the idea of dragons and rocs nesting on tall buildings

[NW_Kohaku]

Walling off being something Toady doesn't intend to be possible leads me to not take it into account when it comes to suggestions not about fixing it.

I know that you're not supposed to be able to wall off the surface, especially from sieges, but I'm not sure that extends to things like FBs.  Taverns actually create a pretty decent reason to keep your fortress open.  Some creatures are already functionally invincible against anything but obsidian/ice casting or cave-ins.  It'd be game-breaking to have steel blobs or fire-generating creatures that can pass through walls.  (At least without having pathing exploits that make sure they tunnel into things designed to cause cave-ins, but even that would create more annoyance than solution.)

Risk also not need come with reward to make it worthy of inclusion as challenge is it's own reward (the deepest depths)

But the deepest depths do come with a reward.  It's what you mine on the way down.  Your risk is the HFS, which was always pretty much supposed to be the Game Over screen.  It's just been changed from absolute you lose to being a blatantly unfair fight that can only be won through severe exploits.

The fact that there is nothing for you down in the depths but endless functional FB++ monsters was always a "OK, nothing to see here" sign. People do it merely because it's so hard that it becomes an epic tale by default. 

it would be reasonable to expect a tall tower to be visible from range (ties to this suggestion). A tower should be fairly easy to detect and give the fort a reputation.

This is more interesting, though.

Toady's quote indicates the general problem, but if we assume that towers are always constructions, you could make some forms of reasonable machine extrapolation of player creations by simply counting the number of constructions above the "natural" z-level plane of a fort. 

That is, if you have 25 tiles of construction at an elevation 5zs above the designated surface level, as indicated by starting soil layers, then another 25 constructed tiles at an elevation 6zs up, 25 constructed tiles 7zs up, and so on with maybe 29 constructed tiles at 14zs up (balcony), then it would be reasonable to label it a "tower", regardless of how well the game can properly understand what it is the player is building or its intent.  A "pyramid" might be the same thing, but with 1 constructed tile at the top, 9 one z below, 25 one z below that, and 49 the next z down, etc.  (Provided it was within a certain horizontal distance, as well to make two different towers seen as two different towers... again, kind of tricky, but doable if you count something like support to see if any of the constructed tiles support one another without having to go through natural tiles, first.  Although whether it is counted as two towers in a single embark or not may be irrelevant for game purposes.)

By extension, open-air pits should be notable, as well, as measured by whether or not stone layers are considered "subterranean".  If the player excavates a whole chunk of embark down to the first cavern, that's notable as being a "pit". 

Giving players the option to arbitrarily declare a given random large contruction something other than a tower makes sense, as per Toady's comment, but the game would just be checking for the "unnaturalness" of how much you have terraformed the map before it considers letting you call something a tower or castle or great statue or whatever.

[NJW2000]

But the deepest depths do come with a reward.  It's what you mine on the way down.  Your risk is the HFS, which was always pretty much supposed to be the Game Over screen.  It's just been changed from absolute you lose to being a blatantly unfair fight that can only be won through severe exploits.

The fact that there is nothing for you down in the depths but endless functional FB++ monsters was always a "OK, nothing to see here" sign. People do it merely because it's so hard that it becomes an epic tale by default. 

Really, it depends on your demons, which can be mighty warriors or gladiators, sources of !!FUN!! extracts, and even resources (salt, metals, meat, webs, etc). Besides, with the demons I have at the moment, 5 legendary dwarven warriors took down 13 demons in a fair fight when they were outnumbered generally at 1:3. So not TOO overpowered. So demons do kinda have a function, other than to scare adamantine miners. They're a function part of the DF world, albeit a difficult one, as found further from where is normal... just like megatowers.
  And one can strip-mine: deeper isn't necessarily better for miners if you live next to a volcano, for example, with high gems and ores at surface.

[Alfrodo]

I like these ideas. The flying mega-beasts, (Dragons, Wyverns)

There's one problem with the birds thing.

Job Cancellations.
Job Cancellations everywhere.

Also, I think a significant challenge would be structural stability.  The taller it is, the harder it is to keep it from collapsing and killing everyone...

[NW_Kohaku]

Do at least try to keep in mind spoilers.

Also, I think a significant challenge would be structural stability.  The taller it is, the harder it is to keep it from collapsing and killing everyone...

That has been discussed at length, and Toady wants to do it, but it's nearly impossible to model appropriately in a way that isn't both extremely counter-intuitive to players and which isn't a severe tax on FPS.

Really, it depends on your demons, which can be mighty warriors or gladiators, sources of !!FUN!! extracts, and even resources (salt, metals, meat, webs, etc).

Most of which can be obtained from far more manageable sources.  Clown webs are significantly less valuable than good ol' GCS webs, for example. 

Besides, with the ***** I have at the moment, 5 legendary dwarven warriors took down 13 demons in a fair fight when they were outnumbered generally at 1:3. So not TOO overpowered.

You apparently got lucky.  Maybe they're nerfed since the days I last dealt with them, but generally, they're total crapshoots.  Some are mist or something, and fold like a house of cards, but others are made of steel and practically invincible.  With enough species down there, you're basically guaranteed to get something that has axedwarf-ruining syndromes, spits something too dangerous for marksdwarves to stand up to, is a flying inorganic webber, or is a steel blob that is basically an invincible "F*** off, don't bother" sign. 

And one can strip-mine: deeper isn't necessarily better for miners if you live next to a volcano, for example, with high gems and ores at surface.

Technically, it depends on what you're looking for, as hematite, which is generally the most valuable non-spoiler, tends towards the surface, anyway.

Regardless, that doesn't change the fact that there is something valuable in the deeps, while there is not only nothing of value in the sky, but it also functionally requires either a lot of mining or severe forestry to build up into there in the first place. 

As it stands, the suggestion largely amounts to "let us spend a lot of time doing something unnecessary, labor-and-resource intensive, and which distracts heavily from defense in order to entice an attack from more megabeasts!" 

Unless the megabeasts themselves somehow bring something special, the only reward for doing this would be the capacity to kill more megabeasts.  (As though people run out of FBs...)

Again, I think it would be more fitting if you could actually get something for going this high.  Making taller towers attract more traders or visitors to a tavern, as Vattic was talking about, would add something interesting.  Making a "Sky HFS" through some openable portal as per Toady's eventual goals would also make it potentially as interesting as a portal to the current deeps.

[NJW2000]

Do at least try to keep in mind spoilers.

Sorry.

As it stands, the suggestion largely amounts to "let us spend a lot of time doing something unnecessary, labor-and-resource intensive, and which distracts heavily from defense in order to entice an attack from more megabeasts!" 

If it didn.t take Toady too long, I would be happy with this.

[Alfrodo]

I guess you could say building up high is its own reward and risk.

[DragonDePlatino]

Hmm...what if there was some sort of above-ground opposite of cave adaptation? If you build up a tower and try housing your dwarves above a certain elevation for too long, they'll get vertigo and start vomiting everywhere. Being naturally underground creatures, this sort of problem would only affect dwarves.

That, or the temperature would quickly drop with elevation which would make storing water and staying warm more difficult. Since the blocks of DF are so hazily defined, any sort of scientifically-correct scale could be ignored here.

[NW_Kohaku]

Hmm...what if there was some sort of above-ground opposite of cave adaptation? If you build up a tower and try housing your dwarves above a certain elevation for too long, they'll get vertigo and start vomiting everywhere. Being naturally underground creatures, this sort of problem would only affect dwarves.

That, or the temperature would quickly drop with elevation which would make storing water and staying warm more difficult. Since the blocks of DF are so hazily defined, any sort of scientifically-correct scale could be ignored here.

Yeah, because those 4-z tall trees are clearly 1000 feet tall, right? 

3m = 1 z level.  That's the height of a standard floor in the real world, and Toady said he was using that assumption for his minecart physics, as well. 

Historically speaking, free-standing masonry structures were largely incapable of being built higher than about 210 feet/70m/21z without being a pyramid or something, just because of the load of stone. 

Besides that, dwarves live in actual mountain ranges, which would probably be more prone to being snowy at the caps than a stone tower...

[angelious]

It would be fun to be attacked by a heavenly army.

it would be fun to INVADE heaven.


just imagine it. "your dwarves hear heavenly singing from above"

and then you send your 100 man strong urist mcfuckyou army to rape and pillage heaven to make it your colony