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Author Topic: Alternative Dwarven Economy: Revolts, Schools, Taxes, and Industry. (Long)  (Read 24882 times)

GoblinCookie

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You're not seeing it because you don't want to. The idea is that citizen status is not equal to all individuals. In some situations, depending on the starting scenario you're going for, you'll have different levels of citizenship and status for different classes of dwarves. Some will be peasants/serfs, that are the type of dwarves you can order around, others will be more higher status individuals whom you'll have less direct control of. For the nobles, we'll probably go back to having no control whatsoever. Of course, deppending on the starting scenario, the rules for control will be different. Probably when you are just beginning a settlement, you'll always have direct control over your dwarve's activities like if you were the captain of a ship and they were crew members, but later on you'll have less control over your dwarve's activities (as Toady described before).

Here we are clinging onto every word of Toady as holy writ.

You are seeing what you want to see even though it is is not here.  What is there is a plan to replace VPL with a system of labour classes, that as a mechanic is a considerable improvement in interface terms over the present arrangement.  That we know because unless Toady One intends to spend forever chasing his own tail he must build new mechanics on top of existing mechanics,  classes are taking over the role of the VPL system; meaning that there really just VPL lists underneath the class wrapping.  You are the one that deduces that just because the dwarves are divided into professions (essentially) with defined jobs there must by dint of this *automatically* must be some kind of class heirachy by which some people are better off than others.  Remember that the whole system is still compatable with everyone just taking whatever they want from the stockpile, so nobody need be better off.

For the dwarves you do not have direct control over they could have a preset class that is hardcoded into the game and the player cannot change their class.  They would do the labours of their preset class while other dwarves can be freely assigned to classes of the player's own devising.  Yes Toady One does intend to reduce proper classes into the game but by means of starting scenarios, you cannot really have a prison without a jailor class.  However starting scenarios represent completely different societies to the society that presently exists from the ground up, not a development of present settlements and most of the proposed one's represent exceptional circumstances that distinguish them from normal settlements. 

For instance the prison starting scenario could well represent some kind of gulag where all the DF Communist civilizations 'counterevolutionary' dwarves have been thrown.  There is a 'class system' in the sense of jailors and prisoners, but this does not mean that the civilization as a whole is Feudal or Capitalist or a giant prison camp. 

That's just magical thinking to me. First of all, Russia wasn't exactly the prime example of a 'capitalistic country' back when the bolsheviks took power. It certainly wasn't Britain, and in fact it wasn't even Germany: it was a backwards, borderline feudal country with an old-style monarchy. But I digress.

What you're implying there is figuratively like saying you could reform a society into not lusting for sex. The christians tried that. They had over a thousand years to do it, and they certainly suceeded at making it into a taboo. But do you think they stopped the majority of people from masturbating? Did cheating on yours and other's spouses was unheard of during the middle ages? Did they get rid of homossexuality?

What they did was to convince people that all those things were a lot more reprehensible than european societies thought before christianity came along. Same thing with the idea of usury(in the context of moneylending) and a lot of other things that were seen as mortal sins by the church: they were strictly forbidden, but coexisted with those societies.

They had over fourteen hundread years to "reform" society, and they did to some extent. But they could never get rid of human nature; they could supress it and shame people into feeling of behaving in a way that was contrary to the christian dogma, but never even got close to getting rid of certain institutions or customs.

Well firstly the one who indulges in 'magical thinking' is you.  What is 'human nature' but a magical bogeyman that exists to diffuse the political elite of any given era from any responsibility for the ills of their own societies and at the same time avoiding naming any actual villain that they could have the responsibility of having to smite?  Slavery was 'human nature' and then it was not, Sexism was 'human nature' and then it was not.  Racism was 'human nature' and then it was not.  Homophobia was 'human nature' and then it was not.  Class divisions and poverty are 'human nature' today, just as it was in previous societies but despite how many times the bogeyman lost his invocation is still considered a strong argument.  It is clear then that bogeyman was only ever a metaphor for a vast interlocking system of insitutions and ideologies against who the individual feels powerless.  Since behavior that contradicts 'human nature' always exists, even if it were genuinely "flesh and blood" then it could still be overcome by society through selective breeding of the next generation to change human nature itself. 

The comparison you are using with Christian efforts to combat Lust are not very apt.  Sex is a basic biological drive that exists in the overwhelming majority of post-pubescant humans and exists regardless of what sexual ideologies you happen to believe.  You having sexual desires is not an ideology, you believing that "I must be completely faithful to my wife and forsake that beautiful young maiden even though I hate my wife and cannot stand the sight of her" is an ideology.  We could say that total victory for Christianity war against Lust would consistute convincing everyone to both believe in and follow that ideology. 

This is where it gets interesting.  In some contexts such as monasteries a total war was fought between ideology and sex drive, the result being a large number of people who were actually celibate, in violation of all biological sanity.  Since biology is stronger and more enduring than ideology, this does rather vouch for the sheer power of a 'total insitution' where the whole society is institutionally organised in obediance to an ideology.  If biology itself can be overcome then why would ideas hostile to the institution be able to survive in the absence of external reinforcement? 

Thing is however that the Christian war against lust is actually a myth, they never waged any such war in reality.  The Christian Church compromised with the enemy quite early on, establishing it's own version of 'human nature' in the form of the doctrine of Original Sin as orthodoxy.  They ended up with 'Winchester Geese', that is prostitutes actually working for the Bishop of Winchester and St. Thomas Aquinas arguing that Prositutes were neccessery for the same reason that sewers were.  That is because at no point did the Church actually dispose of the existing pagan elites, they embraced them and their practices.  As a result a number of sexual institutions that would have to be challenged in order for any war against lust to be won were left intact for all 1500 years of Christian rule. 

The implicit deal was that the Church turn a blind eye to the sexual practices of the wealthy elite (which came to include it's own bishops) and in return they would leave them alone to live holy lives in thei own monasteries, seperated from the 'sinful world'.  Having no means to increase their own numbers, despite the effectiveness of their own communist system in making them economic centres and rather wealthy they obviously could never replace the feudal 'real-world', despite it's inferiority to their own society in every value but fertility. 

Communism, to me, tries to do exactly what the christians did back in those times: it's a dogmatic, utopian belief that attempts to change human nature. If the USSR hadn't fall, and lasted for another thousand years, I'm sure that people would be a lot more 'reformed', as you put it. But you'll never convince me that most people who work harder don't feel more entitled to earn more, no matter how effectively you brainwash the masses.

Imagine you only have one dwarf in your fortress with medical skills, and for some reason you can't import another one. Everyone comes to him seeking help. He's constantly busy. How long would it take for him to realise his own importance? Or even better, for others to realise that. People would probably start sending him gifts. Maybe you mayor, seeing his importance, would decide to give him better quarters. Perhaps they would start treating him and his family better. If he has a greedy personality, maybe he'll even start demanding more oce he sees how valuable he is. That's just human nature.

No, the fact he is more valuable to the fortress directly motivates him to work harder; he knows that there are no other medical dwarves to take over his job if he decides to take the week off.  You are confusing the desire to have certain material comforts with the ideology of "I deserve X because I did Y".  In the present Dwarf Fortress social order there is no connection between hard work and material reward.  Nobody can give gifts to him because he already has full access to all the material wealth that he desires, which satisfies his greed motive without creating any link between that and his own work. 

Since there is no ideology of "I deserve X because I did Y", either taught to him through culture or embedded in the institutions of society then how can our medical dwarf articulate to others or to himself why as a dwarf who already like everyone else has access to the whole of the wealth that the fortress produces the fortress should put anything special aside for him.  If his basic non-ideological greed causes him to want a nicer shirt then he will go get one from the stockpile.  If no shirt is available then he (along with all other folks of the same inclination) will complain to the nobles in charge of the fortress for nicer shirts to be made, automatically making it a collective thing.

The only way that the ideology of "I deserve X because I did Y" can arise is if the nobles in charge choose to invent it.  They could spread the idea as a concept in order to justify arbiterily depriving lazy dwarves of things they want as a punishment or they could establish it as an institution in order to get valuable dwarves to work harder by harnessing their own basic greed, which would then result in the concept emerging.  The idea could also arise from external sources, either because migrants bring them with them or cultural mediums are imported from outside.  This brings us back to the subject of real-life Communism.

Naturally the fall of the Soviet Union is no more of an argument against Communism than the fall of Tzarist Russia that created it in the first place is an argument against Capitalism.  It is interesting that the Communist countries that are still with us are the small and weak one's who survived despite the vast hardships endured as a result of the fall of the Soviet Union, which was the richest and most powerful of the lot.  This brings us back to the above mentioned scenario about accidentally introducing "I deserve X because I did Y", except that in this case there are already people who believe that left over from Capitalist or bred by contamination from existing Capitalist countries and are badly motivated to work under Communist arrangements.

Now the Soviet Union, due to their superpower status genuinely believed that one day they would be equal to their US rival, Krushev's "We will bury you".  Now if you are driven to develop as quickly as possible in a competative (including military) race then you are likely to sacrifice principle for pragmatism, indulging ideas of "I deserve X because I did Y" when they should not and forging an implicit compromise with your enemies.  Your enemies of course are not enamoured of your efforts and as they grow in number they no longer see why they should abide by it any longer, hence fall of Soviet Union. Cuba and North Korea are still with us because as minor countries they had no hope of actually 'winning' and becoming equal to the USA, so were not so driven as to undermine their own principles to the point of destruction. 

That's ridiculous. There are plenty of old bugs the didn't get fixed simply because Toady never got around to it. Hundreads, to be honest.
here's another one: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=2512
You can manually replace mayors, and have been able to for a long time. These things are not a features. It even says so in the wiki:

"The selected baron(ess) may still perform useful labour from his/her normal life (as a miner, for example). However, as the baron is supposed to be a lazy noble, this seems to be an unintended, broken behaviour in all 0.34.xx versions (so far) and might be fixed in future releases."

Of course, the only real way to confirm it is to ask for Toad directly since he hasn't adressed it in the bug tracker (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=7977), like he hasn't several other bugs.

There is no point in using the wiki as an authority, any one of us could come along and change it to be whatever we wish as long as it makes some sense.  Anyone can also report anything he thinks is a bug to the bug tracker, does not mean it was. 

Idle nobles is a feuture that was never implemented.  The reason that this was so is because Toady One clearly wants to replace VPL with a system of classes eventually, nobles would simply be one of those classes; no point in implemented a feuture that is just to be replaced.  The other one is hardely even a bug, it is not like elected officials have never been overthrown by unelected subordinates. 
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Alfrodo

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How about instead of having an INTERNET FIGHT (SOVIET UNION SIMULATOR vs LIBERAL FANTASY SIMULATOR) We discuss what we should do with subsidization?

Like, what happens if we want something done (say, carving a statue), and how are dwarves rewarded for it? If they even are? Does the money come from the fortress treasury?  and where does THAT money come from? (Taxes, which comes from shops and the people.)

*raises shield
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Bins stacked full of mangoes were laid out in rows. On further inspection of the market, Cog came to the realization that everything was mangoes.

Ribs

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How about instead of having an INTERNET FIGHT (SOVIET UNION SIMULATOR vs LIBERAL FANTASY SIMULATOR) We discuss what we should do with subsidization?

Like, what happens if we want something done (say, carving a statue), and how are dwarves rewarded for it? If they even are? Does the money come from the fortress treasury?  and where does THAT money come from? (Taxes, which comes from shops and the people.)

*raises shield

*playfully taps shield twice with friendly battleaxe

Don't worry, friend. It's just a tame, civilized discussion until we start calling each other names.
I'd say that at some point your dwarves would start to want money for their services. That money could very well come from taxation, as well as from trade. You could import metals to melt coins, as well as trade goods for coins that are already in circulation in the game.




Here we are clinging onto every word of Toady as holy writ.

You are seeing what you want to see even though it is is not here.  What is there is a plan to replace VPL with a system of labour classes, that as a mechanic is a considerable improvement in interface terms over the present arrangement.  That we know because unless Toady One intends to spend forever chasing his own tail he must build new mechanics on top of existing mechanics,  classes are taking over the role of the VPL system; meaning that there really just VPL lists underneath the class wrapping.  You are the one that deduces that just because the dwarves are divided into professions (essentially) with defined jobs there must by dint of this *automatically* must be some kind of class heirachy by which some people are better off than others.  Remember that the whole system is still compatable with everyone just taking whatever they want from the stockpile, so nobody need be better off.

For the dwarves you do not have direct control over they could have a preset class that is hardcoded into the game and the player cannot change their class.  They would do the labours of their preset class while other dwarves can be freely assigned to classes of the player's own devising.  Yes Toady One does intend to reduce proper classes into the game but by means of starting scenarios, you cannot really have a prison without a jailor class.  However starting scenarios represent completely different societies to the society that presently exists from the ground up, not a development of present settlements and most of the proposed one's represent exceptional circumstances that distinguish them from normal settlements. 

For instance the prison starting scenario could well represent some kind of gulag where all the DF Communist civilizations 'counterevolutionary' dwarves have been thrown.  There is a 'class system' in the sense of jailors and prisoners, but this does not mean that the civilization as a whole is Feudal or Capitalist or a giant prison camp. 

By "clinging to every word" you must mean "reading in between very obvious lines". If some of your dwarves have less freedom and it's more appropriate to tell them directly what to do, while others have more freedom and you can't force them into whichever labor-force you want them to do, that sounds like a class system to me.

I don't even know why I'm discussing the fact that a society that has nobles in it opperates under a class system... wait and see, is what I say. If the DF society appears to be some sort of communist utopia after the starting scenarios update and not a vaguely mercantilistic feudal fantasy kingdom thing, I'll eat my hat.


Well firstly the one who indulges in 'magical thinking' is you.  What is 'human nature' but a magical bogeyman that exists to diffuse the political elite of any given era from any responsibility for the ills of their own societies and at the same time avoiding naming any actual villain that they could have the responsibility of having to smite?  Slavery was 'human nature' and then it was not, Sexism was 'human nature' and then it was not.  Racism was 'human nature' and then it was not.  Homophobia was 'human nature' and then it was not.  Class divisions and poverty are 'human nature' today, just as it was in previous societies but despite how many times the bogeyman lost his invocation is still considered a strong argument.  It is clear then that bogeyman was only ever a metaphor for a vast interlocking system of insitutions and ideologies against who the individual feels powerless.  Since behavior that contradicts 'human nature' always exists, even if it were genuinely "flesh and blood" then it could still be overcome by society through selective breeding of the next generation to change human nature itself. 

The comparison you are using with Christian efforts to combat Lust are not very apt.  Sex is a basic biological drive that exists in the overwhelming majority of post-pubescant humans and exists regardless of what sexual ideologies you happen to believe.  You having sexual desires is not an ideology, you believing that "I must be completely faithful to my wife and forsake that beautiful young maiden even though I hate my wife and cannot stand the sight of her" is an ideology.  We could say that total victory for Christianity war against Lust would consistute convincing everyone to both believe in and follow that ideology. 

This is where it gets interesting.  In some contexts such as monasteries a total war was fought between ideology and sex drive, the result being a large number of people who were actually celibate, in violation of all biological sanity.  Since biology is stronger and more enduring than ideology, this does rather vouch for the sheer power of a 'total insitution' where the whole society is institutionally organised in obediance to an ideology.  If biology itself can be overcome then why would ideas hostile to the institution be able to survive in the absence of external reinforcement? 

Thing is however that the Christian war against lust is actually a myth, they never waged any such war in reality.  The Christian Church compromised with the enemy quite early on, establishing it's own version of 'human nature' in the form of the doctrine of Original Sin as orthodoxy.  They ended up with 'Winchester Geese', that is prostitutes actually working for the Bishop of Winchester and St. Thomas Aquinas arguing that Prositutes were neccessery for the same reason that sewers were.  That is because at no point did the Church actually dispose of the existing pagan elites, they embraced them and their practices.  As a result a number of sexual institutions that would have to be challenged in order for any war against lust to be won were left intact for all 1500 years of Christian rule. 

The implicit deal was that the Church turn a blind eye to the sexual practices of the wealthy elite (which came to include it's own bishops) and in return they would leave them alone to live holy lives in thei own monasteries, seperated from the 'sinful world'.  Having no means to increase their own numbers, despite the effectiveness of their own communist system in making them economic centres and rather wealthy they obviously could never replace the feudal 'real-world', despite it's inferiority to their own society in every value but fertility.

Naturally the fall of the Soviet Union is no more of an argument against Communism than the fall of Tzarist Russia that created it in the first place is an argument against Capitalism.  It is interesting that the Communist countries that are still with us are the small and weak one's who survived despite the vast hardships endured as a result of the fall of the Soviet Union, which was the richest and most powerful of the lot.  This brings us back to the above mentioned scenario about accidentally introducing "I deserve X because I did Y", except that in this case there are already people who believe that left over from Capitalist or bred by contamination from existing Capitalist countries and are badly motivated to work under Communist arrangements.

Now the Soviet Union, due to their superpower status genuinely believed that one day they would be equal to their US rival, Krushev's "We will bury you".  Now if you are driven to develop as quickly as possible in a competative (including military) race then you are likely to sacrifice principle for pragmatism, indulging ideas of "I deserve X because I did Y" when they should not and forging an implicit compromise with your enemies.  Your enemies of course are not enamoured of your efforts and as they grow in number they no longer see why they should abide by it any longer, hence fall of Soviet Union. Cuba and North Korea are still with us because as minor countries they had no hope of actually 'winning' and becoming equal to the USA, so were not so driven as to undermine their own principles to the point of destruction.   

The fact that the church obviously had to compromise their beliefs with the reality of human nature is exactly why I used it as an example. The reason why the Cubans had to allow their highly skilled workers to have a much better lifestyle than the low-skilled population was also compromise. To me, some degree of "greed and selfishness" is as big a part of human nature as sexual desire. You imply that it isn't, but offer no proof. Saying that the only reason why people still behaved the way they did under communist regimes is because said communist regimes didn't have enough time to beat the evil capitalistic and classisistic demons out of the recently converted heathens is not good enough for me.

What I am implying is that they would never be able to. Unless you create an Orwellian nightmare of a society where everyone is watched and anyone who shows even the slightlest of "capitalistic" tendencies is dragged to a Goulag or executed on the spot, you'd have to compromise. Forever.


No, the fact he is more valuable to the fortress directly motivates him to work harder; he knows that there are no other medical dwarves to take over his job if he decides to take the week off.  You are confusing the desire to have certain material comforts with the ideology of "I deserve X because I did Y".  In the present Dwarf Fortress social order there is no connection between hard work and material reward.  Nobody can give gifts to him because he already has full access to all the material wealth that he desires, which satisfies his greed motive without creating any link between that and his own work. 

Since there is no ideology of "I deserve X because I did Y", either taught to him through culture or embedded in the institutions of society then how can our medical dwarf articulate to others or to himself why as a dwarf who already like everyone else has access to the whole of the wealth that the fortress produces the fortress should put anything special aside for him.  If his basic non-ideological greed causes him to want a nicer shirt then he will go get one from the stockpile.  If no shirt is available then he (along with all other folks of the same inclination) will complain to the nobles in charge of the fortress for nicer shirts to be made, automatically making it a collective thing.

The only way that the ideology of "I deserve X because I did Y" can arise is if the nobles in charge choose to invent it.  They could spread the idea as a concept in order to justify arbiterily depriving lazy dwarves of things they want as a punishment or they could establish it as an institution in order to get valuable dwarves to work harder by harnessing their own basic greed, which would then result in the concept emerging.  The idea could also arise from external sources, either because migrants bring them with them or cultural mediums are imported from outside.  This brings us back to the subject of real-life Communism.


He has access to all the material wealth he desires? Are we even playing the same game? He doesn't, unless your fortress is some sort of paradise where everyone has quarters that feel like personal palaces, there's more than enough masterwork clothing for everyone and masterfully prepared food and drink is so plentiful that you could literal drown in dwarven wine.

For the sake of this argument, let's say that isn't the case. Let's say that the average dwarf has a 2x2 room and mediocre furniture, and clothing is scarce enough that most dwarves need to wear worn out clothes. So not everyone has access to every material good they can have. That's the catch here: scarcity. If he's so valuable, maybe he'd want to live as well as a noble. Maybe, pressured by these turn of events, the nobles would even decide to make it official and give him a title or prestigious position.

Whle dwarves "collectively" complain about not having a few things, it's only nobles that complain about not having more than the average dwarf. They also complain about "lesser dwarves" having it better or as good as them (does this strike you as particularly collectivist or socialist, by the way?). Do you really see it as impossible that some dwarves, given determined circumstances, could start seeing themselves as more valuable and start to want a better life than the rest if the peasants like nobles currently do?


There is no point in using the wiki as an authority, any one of us could come along and change it to be whatever we wish as long as it makes some sense.  Anyone can also report anything he thinks is a bug to the bug tracker, does not mean it was. 

Idle nobles is a feuture that was never implemented.  The reason that this was so is because Toady One clearly wants to replace VPL with a system of classes eventually, nobles would simply be one of those classes; no point in implemented a feuture that is just to be replaced.  The other one is hardely even a bug, it is not like elected officials have never been overthrown by unelected subordinates.

You say that with such certainty, that it must be true. I sincerely doubt it is a feature (is "feuture" like a "future feature" or just a typo?), because it is the sort of thing that Toady would have probably mentined, but I have no way to prove it. So if it is indeed a feature, I'll have to eat my pants along with my hat. Good day sir.
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GoblinCookie

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How about instead of having an INTERNET FIGHT (SOVIET UNION SIMULATOR vs LIBERAL FANTASY SIMULATOR) We discuss what we should do with subsidization?

Like, what happens if we want something done (say, carving a statue), and how are dwarves rewarded for it? If they even are? Does the money come from the fortress treasury?  and where does THAT money come from? (Taxes, which comes from shops and the people.)

*raises shield

They would not be rewarded for it intrinsically by the mechanics.  The player however could choose to implement rewards or punishments for doing/not doing work.  The key word is choose, nothing is forced by the mechanics but there are issues with the initial Status Quo that have to be addressed that nudge the player towards such things. 

The reason the player would do this is that it helps overcome the declining motivation to work that dwarves suffer when certain conditions are met (or not met).  This should be a nudge, but not a game crushing nudge to the extent that if a player determined to keep having their dwarves work freely for free they cannot do so but they still have to take into account the price and come up with ways of sorting out the problematic conditions.

However there are drawbacks in that in order to pay people to motivate there has to be something up for sale, which means that commonly desirable items must be restricted from general availability, potentially creating poverty.  While in order to punish dwarves there must be a system of prisons and there are the costs of those punishments borne by the dwarves themselves. 

By "clinging to every word" you must mean "reading in between very obvious lines". If some of your dwarves have less freedom and it's more appropriate to tell them directly what to do, while others have more freedom and you can't force them into whichever labor-force you want them to do, that sounds like a class system to me.

I don't even know why I'm discussing the fact that a society that has nobles in it operates under a class system... wait and see, is what I say. If the DF society appears to be some sort of communist utopia after the starting scenarios update and not a vaguely mercantilistic feudal fantasy kingdom thing, I'll eat my hat.

No, it is a division of labor between two groups of dwarves.  It is only a class system when one group is privileged over another group, this is means that they as a group enjoy power, status and material goods that are denied to other group.  It has nothing to do with the range of tasks that they are expected to perform or indeed what tasks they perform at all.   

If we have a carpenter dwarf 'class' that only does carpentry and then we have a woodworker dwarf 'class' that does all wood related jobs.  Nothing about the arrangement inherently makes the carpenter the 'ruling class' and the woodworker the 'commoner'.  It would however be a class division if things were say working under the old economy setup and the former but not the latter were [ECONOMY_EXEMPT]. That means they could have everything they wanted in the Fortress without having to pay for it; however it could equally be the generalist woodworkers that have this status. 

It is the case that some starting scenarios are intended to have a definite class division but starting scenarios are clearly something that is intended to represent social arrangements OTHER than the one that we have at the moment.  They have no bearing on the social arrangements of the present setup and since they are largely exceptional institutions (like prisons) they generally do not tell us much about DF society in it's normal form (unless generated AI settlements will have them). 

If Toady One had initially wanted to implement Feudalism then he had implemented entirely the wrong game mechanics to start off with.  What he did do was implement a handful of nobles from generic fantasy Feudalism, but there is no underlying Feudal economy meaning that what we have is a contradiction between what a superstructure that is supposed to be Feudal and the actual Communist structure that underlies it. 

This means that the 'nobles' of the game end up in a social position that is far more akin to the social elites of Communist societies than the actual Feudal nobles they are named after (DF king is basically like North Korea's 'dear leader).  This is because a Feudal society consists of a huge number of small peasants and craftsmen that are not collectively organised on an economic level (the very opposite of DF setup).  Those few collective/public institutions that exist are owned by the government and they extract wealth from the swarm of small producers.  The government is a distinct group from the small producers that produces the wealth that supports it and it's members use the majority of the wealth that they extract from the small producers primarily to support their own privileged lifestyle, with a small amount of it used to maintain and expand the collective/public institutions they run.

Basically Dwarf Fortress can never actually be Feudal unless we fundamentally change the nature of the game so that instead of focusing on producing wealth for our dwarves, we instead have a huge number of individual dwarf craftsmen and peasants living outside the fortress that bring us all the stuff we need as taxes.  Instead of producing or trading for the goods our dwarves need we would spend our entire time building roads and bridges off-map, patrolling roads, building roads, building bridges, establishing temples, hunting bandits, judging criminals, punishing and above all else raising armies to fight wars. 

A genuinely Feudal DF would have to essentially be another of those generic fantasy-themed strategy games obsessed with controlling territory, conquest of enemies, fortification of lands and construction of basic infrastructure to maintain or expand an abstracted economy that appears to us solely as a income of resources for use in sustaining a bigger army. 

The fact that the church obviously had to compromise their beliefs with the reality of human nature is exactly why I used it as an example. The reason why the Cubans had to allow their highly skilled workers to have a much better lifestyle than the low-skilled population was also compromise. To me, some degree of "greed and selfishness" is as big a part of human nature as sexual desire. You imply that it isn't, but offer no proof. Saying that the only reason why people still behaved the way they did under communist regimes is because said communist regimes didn't have enough time to beat the evil capitalistic and classicist demons out of the recently converted heathens is not good enough for me.

What I am implying is that they would never be able to. Unless you create an Orwellian nightmare of a society where everyone is watched and anyone who shows even the slightest of "capitalistic" tendencies is dragged to a Gulag or executed on the spot, you'd have to compromise. Forever.

Remember that you do not have to prove a negative; I do not have to prove that greed and selfishness is as much a part of human nature as sexual desire, you do.  Also there is a difference between basic desires to have stuff and ideological formulations like "I deserve X because I did Y".

Compromises get compromised; in both directions.  There are certain compromises that have to be made but the compromises are not generally made with a fixed 'human nature' but with your ideological enemies.  As a Communist your enemies the "capitalistic demons" (as you put it) have a certain amount of strength, in order to maintain a functioning society you have to make some compromises with them or else they will use that strength to wreck your society to the best of their ability.  Their ability to do so is much increased if you do not have an inclination towards "Orwellian Nightmare society" though as prisons are inherently class societies this is itself a compromise of sorts, one that is still driven by the strength of your adversary. 

It is not really just a question of time.  It is also a question of, since compromises get compromised in what direction is the compromise going? Is it going in the direction of Communism or in the favor of the Capitalistic demons?  Ideas are taught by the very nature of the institutions in which a person is part of and not just by means of consumption of culture.  If you are forced to compromise and introduce or maintain an institution in which some people get more stuff than others because they personally produce more then "I deserve X because I did Y" is taught to everyone involved, regardless of whether they were actually explicitly taught this through means of cultural mediums or education. 

Thing is that compromises are made according to the strength of the parties involved. But since compromises to the Capitalistic demons involve the propagation of institutions and ideology that breeds more Capitalistic demons then compromise is actually a trap, you might enjoy material gains a result of your compromise reducing resistance but by so doing you make your enemies stronger.  Being stronger they can now force you to concede more ground, making them even stronger and so it goes on. 

That is in my opinion why the Soviet Union fell; it is ultimately necessary to weather the storm and pay the price of your enemies best efforts in order to drive the compromise in your direction but the Soviets were too enamored in trying to win the Cold War to bear any such price and the compromise went in their enemies direction.

He has access to all the material wealth he desires? Are we even playing the same game? He doesn't, unless your fortress is some sort of paradise where everyone has quarters that feel like personal palaces, there's more than enough masterwork clothing for everyone and masterfully prepared food and drink is so plentiful that you could literal drown in dwarven wine.

For the sake of this argument, let's say that isn't the case. Let's say that the average dwarf has a 2x2 room and mediocre furniture, and clothing is scarce enough that most dwarves need to wear worn out clothes. So not everyone has access to every material good they can have. That's the catch here: scarcity. If he's so valuable, maybe he'd want to live as well as a noble. Maybe, pressured by these turn of events, the nobles would even decide to make it official and give him a title or prestigious position.

Whle dwarves "collectively" complain about not having a few things, it's only nobles that complain about not having more than the average dwarf. They also complain about "lesser dwarves" having it better or as good as them (does this strike you as particularly collectivist or socialist, by the way?). Do you really see it as impossible that some dwarves, given determined circumstances, could start seeing themselves as more valuable and start to want a better life than the rest if the peasants like nobles currently do?

In this case, unlike real Communist countries there are no Capitalistic demons left over from when the society was Capitalist or from outside cultural influences.  Since there no inherent need for the Dwarf Fortress society to make any compromises with them in order that society functions, there is no ideology or institutions propagating Capitalist demons.  "I deserve X because I did Y" therefore does not exist.   

The shirt that the medical dwarf wants because of his "basic greed" prior to any ideological formulations of why he should have it either does or does not exist.  If the shirt does not exist then he cannot demand it, if the shirt does exist it is freely available to claim and he has it already.  If the fortress as a whole is short of stuff, this merely imparts urgency into the collective labors of the dwarves, causing them to work harder to make the stuff that is missing.  If this still does not solve the problem then the dwarves "basic greed" will decline due to lack of reinforcement and/or cultural ideals about what prosperity means will change so nobody wants the scarce items anyway. 

You actually do not understand how the nobles room demands work.  Nobles do not object to other dwarves having nice rooms, they object to normal dwarves or nobles lower-ranking than themselves having nicer rooms than they personally do.  They also have no objection at all to sharing their bedrooms area with any number of lesser dwarves bedroom areas, they actually 'like it' since all the beds of all the other dwarves bedrooms add value to their own room.  Us giving all our dwarves their own separate individual bedrooms is actually role-playing on our part, in gameplay mechanics terms it is actually optimal for us to house every dwarf we have inside the nicest noble bedroom that we have. 

The highest ranking nobles do however clearly use their personal power to secure a certain quality of life for themselves and potentially the rest of the fortress along with them.  What is being taught by this is not "I did X and so I deserve Y" but instead "I should use my power to get X to give me Y".  The latter lesson taught directly contradicts with the first since the former is an appeal to a higher power for what is due while the latter is getting what you want because you are a higher power.

If emigration does not exist then the medical dwarf does not have any real power to extract anything from the fortress government since they do not believe in "I did X and so I deserve Y".  The moment emigration exists though then it makes sense for the more valuable dwarf workers to demand more stuff than others because their ability to personally leave the fortress gives them more leverage to influence the authorities to give them things than the average dwarf.

You say that with such certainty, that it must be true. I sincerely doubt it is a feature (is "feuture" like a "future feature" or just a typo?), because it is the sort of thing that Toady would have probably mentined, but I have no way to prove it. So if it is indeed a feature, I'll have to eat my pants along with my hat. Good day sir.

We are talking about definitions here, I speak with certainty because I know how I define things.  A bug is something that a feature *has* that stops it from working properly.  When a vestige of a feature that has never functioned in the game at all is located, it is not bugged since never having functioned at all in the game the feature was simply never implemented in the first place.

There never was any noble work exemption because the job of implementing it was never finished as finishing implementing a feature is defined by it working in the game. 
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StagnantSoul

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Well Toady is working on a system that's just that- letting us take over other territories and have dwarves send us items and produce back. I think he called it Hill Dwarves. It'll also come with sending armies.
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Splint

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I think he called it Hill Dwarves. It'll also come with sending armies.

That's them exactly. Basically the player sites will fill the same role as world-gen ones, being local hubs Hillocks are built around and pay tribute to.

Personally I won't probably do much on the sending armies front, though if possible I'd have my hill dwarves running constant patrols. It'd be nice to hear from the liaison about forces your local hillies repelled or patrols that went missing nearby.

StagnantSoul

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I'll be conquering as many sites as I can. Human villages and towns, goblin fortresses, any site I can get my hands on. If mounts are a thing then too, I'll be sending them out on at least lions and tigers, hopefully on rocs from my roc hatchery. Imagine the humans, fleeing from my roc riding, adamantine swinging dwarves.
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I threw night creature blood into a night creature's heart and she pulled it out and bled to death.
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Places to jibber madly at each other, got it
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If any of them are made of fire, throw stuff, run, and think non-flammable thoughts.

Splint

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I'll be conquering as many sites as I can. Human villages and towns, goblin fortresses, any site I can get my hands on. If mounts are a thing then too, I'll be sending them out on at least lions and tigers, hopefully on rocs from my roc hatchery. Imagine the humans, fleeing from my roc riding, adamantine swinging dwarves.

It'd be easier to use things like Jabberers or even draltha (because those horns will straight fuck you up. They're like hellish giant cave unicorns.) As fun? Nah. As efficient? Fuck no. Dwarves have access to horses in vanilla. But if you want some real mean mounts, they're easier to get and just as mean as giant tigers and lions.

 Plus Rocs rely too much on blind luck, unless you do what I do and have them be "natural" mountain creatures (as in, not megabeasts.) Though that requires a bit of modding, and takes some of the fun out of it.

I wouldn't waste adamantine on soldiers who will potentially be fucked by the RNG off-site anyway. Standardized steel though? That'd be good.

StagnantSoul

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Well I've had two roc hatcheries in my time. An they produced, over fifteen years, a ton of fast maturing rocs. I love jabberers, and they'd be great mounts. Giant tigers and lions too, and I've sadly never gotten a breeding pair of grizzly bears. Piles and piles of males? Yes, but no females ever. I want mounts that can fight along with my dwarves.
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Quote from: Cptn Kaladin Anrizlokum
I threw night creature blood into a night creature's heart and she pulled it out and bled to death.
Quote from: Eric Blank
Places to jibber madly at each other, got it
Quote from: NJW2000
If any of them are made of fire, throw stuff, run, and think non-flammable thoughts.

StagnantSoul

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I'll be conquering as many sites as I can. Human villages and towns, goblin fortresses, any site I can get my hands on. If mounts are a thing then too, I'll be sending them out on at least lions and tigers, hopefully on rocs from my roc hatchery. Imagine the humans, fleeing from my roc riding, adamantine swinging dwarves.

It'd be easier to use things like Jabberers or even draltha (because those horns will straight fuck you up. They're like hellish giant cave unicorns.) As fun? Nah. As efficient? Fuck no. Dwarves have access to horses in vanilla. But if you want some real mean mounts, they're easier to get and just as mean as giant tigers and lions.

 Plus Rocs rely too much on blind luck, unless you do what I do and have them be "natural" mountain creatures (as in, not megabeasts.) Though that requires a bit of modding, and takes some of the fun out of it.

I wouldn't waste adamantine on soldiers who will potentially be fucked by the RNG off-site anyway. Standardized steel though? That'd be good.

Just checked, draltha don't have horns. They're essentially grazing lions.
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Quote from: Cptn Kaladin Anrizlokum
I threw night creature blood into a night creature's heart and she pulled it out and bled to death.
Quote from: Eric Blank
Places to jibber madly at each other, got it
Quote from: NJW2000
If any of them are made of fire, throw stuff, run, and think non-flammable thoughts.

Splint

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I'll be conquering as many sites as I can. Human villages and towns, goblin fortresses, any site I can get my hands on. If mounts are a thing then too, I'll be sending them out on at least lions and tigers, hopefully on rocs from my roc hatchery. Imagine the humans, fleeing from my roc riding, adamantine swinging dwarves.

It'd be easier to use things like Jabberers or even draltha (because those horns will straight fuck you up. They're like hellish giant cave unicorns.) As fun? Nah. As efficient? Fuck no. Dwarves have access to horses in vanilla. But if you want some real mean mounts, they're easier to get and just as mean as giant tigers and lions.

 Plus Rocs rely too much on blind luck, unless you do what I do and have them be "natural" mountain creatures (as in, not megabeasts.) Though that requires a bit of modding, and takes some of the fun out of it.

I wouldn't waste adamantine on soldiers who will potentially be fucked by the RNG off-site anyway. Standardized steel though? That'd be good.

Just checked, draltha don't have horns. They're essentially grazing lions.

Wait... Then what the fuck went poking holes in my glacier fort soldiers with a horn a year ago? I coulda sworn it was a draltha.

StagnantSoul

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I'll be conquering as many sites as I can. Human villages and towns, goblin fortresses, any site I can get my hands on. If mounts are a thing then too, I'll be sending them out on at least lions and tigers, hopefully on rocs from my roc hatchery. Imagine the humans, fleeing from my roc riding, adamantine swinging dwarves.

It'd be easier to use things like Jabberers or even draltha (because those horns will straight fuck you up. They're like hellish giant cave unicorns.) As fun? Nah. As efficient? Fuck no. Dwarves have access to horses in vanilla. But if you want some real mean mounts, they're easier to get and just as mean as giant tigers and lions.

 Plus Rocs rely too much on blind luck, unless you do what I do and have them be "natural" mountain creatures (as in, not megabeasts.) Though that requires a bit of modding, and takes some of the fun out of it.

I wouldn't waste adamantine on soldiers who will potentially be fucked by the RNG off-site anyway. Standardized steel though? That'd be good.

Just checked, draltha don't have horns. They're essentially grazing lions.

Wait... Then what the fuck went poking holes in my glacier fort soldiers with a horn a year ago? I coulda sworn it was a draltha.

Was it underground? The only thing with horns underground is the elk bird, and that has no horn attack. Minotaur? Titan? Forgotten Beast?
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Quote from: Cptn Kaladin Anrizlokum
I threw night creature blood into a night creature's heart and she pulled it out and bled to death.
Quote from: Eric Blank
Places to jibber madly at each other, got it
Quote from: NJW2000
If any of them are made of fire, throw stuff, run, and think non-flammable thoughts.

Splint

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I'll be conquering as many sites as I can. Human villages and towns, goblin fortresses, any site I can get my hands on. If mounts are a thing then too, I'll be sending them out on at least lions and tigers, hopefully on rocs from my roc hatchery. Imagine the humans, fleeing from my roc riding, adamantine swinging dwarves.

It'd be easier to use things like Jabberers or even draltha (because those horns will straight fuck you up. They're like hellish giant cave unicorns.) As fun? Nah. As efficient? Fuck no. Dwarves have access to horses in vanilla. But if you want some real mean mounts, they're easier to get and just as mean as giant tigers and lions.

 Plus Rocs rely too much on blind luck, unless you do what I do and have them be "natural" mountain creatures (as in, not megabeasts.) Though that requires a bit of modding, and takes some of the fun out of it.

I wouldn't waste adamantine on soldiers who will potentially be fucked by the RNG off-site anyway. Standardized steel though? That'd be good.

Just checked, draltha don't have horns. They're essentially grazing lions.

Wait... Then what the fuck went poking holes in my glacier fort soldiers with a horn a year ago? I coulda sworn it was a draltha.

Was it underground? The only thing with horns underground is the elk bird, and that has no horn attack. Minotaur? Titan? Forgotten Beast?

Nope, it was a goring attacking. Positive it was from Draltha.

As to your Roc hatcheries, not everyone is as fortunate. In fact, most people count probably themselves lucky if they manage to catch a non-breeding pair of any trainable beasts.

StagnantSoul

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This is the attacks of the draltha.

[MAXAGE:20:30]
   [ATTACK:KICK:BODYPART:BY_CATEGORY:FOOT_FRONT]
      [ATTACK_SKILL:STANCE_STRIKE]
      [ATTACK_VERB:kick:kicks]
      [ATTACK_CONTACT_PERC:100]
      [ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:4:4]
      [ATTACK_PRIORITY:MAIN]
      [ATTACK_FLAG_WITH]
      [ATTACK_FLAG_BAD_MULTIATTACK]
   [ATTACK:BITE:CHILD_BODYPART_GROUP:BY_CATEGORY:HEAD:BY_CATEGORY:TOOTH]
      [ATTACK_SKILL:BITE]
      [ATTACK_VERB:bite:bites]
      [ATTACK_CONTACT_PERC:100]
      [ATTACK_PENETRATION_PERC:100]
      [ATTACK_FLAG_EDGE]
      [ATTACK_PREPARE_AND_RECOVER:3:3]
      [ATTACK_PRIORITY:MAIN]
      [ATTACK_FLAG_CANLATCH]
   [ALL_ACTIVE]

This is it's body.

   [BODY:QUADRUPED_NECK:2EYES:2EARS:2LUNGS:HEART:GUTS:ORGANS:THROAT:NECK:SPINE:BRAIN:SKULL:MOUTH:TONGUE:GENERIC_TEETH:RIBCAGE]

No horns, no goring.
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Quote from: Cptn Kaladin Anrizlokum
I threw night creature blood into a night creature's heart and she pulled it out and bled to death.
Quote from: Eric Blank
Places to jibber madly at each other, got it
Quote from: NJW2000
If any of them are made of fire, throw stuff, run, and think non-flammable thoughts.

GoblinCookie

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That's them exactly. Basically the player sites will fill the same role as world-gen ones, being local hubs Hillocks are built around and pay tribute to.

Personally I won't probably do much on the sending armies front, though if possible I'd have my hill dwarves running constant patrols. It'd be nice to hear from the liaison about forces your local hillies repelled or patrols that went missing nearby.

Hillocks do not presently pay tribute to Fortresses.  They count Fortresses as major trading partners and Fortresses trade with other major settlements but not minor ones.  The only time the word tribute is ever used in the game is when a settlement buys off an invading army.  I know that at some point hill dwarves will arrive at the Fortress to trade stuff like caravans do at the moment but I am not aware of any plans to have us rule over hillocks as such, merely interact with them.
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