That is not how the game works at present or even on the development pages, it is how you want the game to work; a power fantasy of you lording over everyone else. Hillocks and Mountain Halls frequently have barons, so there is no connection between Fortresses and nobility at all. Actually I have seen kings living in hillocks before, so it could just as easily be the 'Hill Dwarves' lording it over you than your 'fortress dwarves' lording over them.
For starters, don't use my name please unless this is going to devolve into a shouting match. When names start coming up (in my experience anyway,) either someone is starting to get condescending, or it may be a sign an argument is going to get ugly, and nobody wants that. And in this case, the mutual frustration being displayed towards eachother is a sign of the latter far more than the former.
Kings living in hillocks is usually a symptom of a civ being badly beaten or the last monarch being killed very recently. They normally live in major settlements, of which Hillocks are not. I've seen human leaders living in ruins too, for the same reasons, while they send people out to try and retake the major hubs.
Your own fortress can also have the unfortunate honor of housing a half dozen nobles of varying levels if they happen to be the heir or next of kin to one who was recently booted off his site or killed, so Barons being in hillocks isn't relevant either. I have personally never met anything higher than a Mayor in the hillocks of healthy dwarf civs, but maybe it's just because I don't play adventure mode much anymore.
Yes I knew the economy was abandoned because it did not work, I do not need to be reminded of that fact; nor is it in any way relevant to anything.
I used it as an example of something that was there, but didn't work right for a variety of reasons. In the same vein, a political system could probably be implemented, but it more than likely wouldn't work in anywhere near a sufficiently fun and purposeful way, and would be largely irrelevant until you reached noble holding anyway, what with players typically setting up in the middle of nowhere with nothing but goblins and humans in all directions due to distance. Especially if nobody wants to set up smaller towns nearby for whatever reason.
As an example, if a war breaks out between your civ and some distant human civ, you won't get involved at all because the civ in question is too far away to harass your site. Likewise, you wouldn't be expected to do a damn thing because your own site is too far away to lend any meaningful aid besides shipping food and weapons back to the capital. But you'll still hear the endless reports of sites falling and being retaken from the liaison.
You are never a hillock in the middle of nowhere. You are always a fortress, because a fortress is a the type of dwarf settlement you are. A hillock refers to an overground dwarf settlement, a mountain hall refers to a dwarf settlement that is built in the caverns. A fortress refers to a settlement that is built between the caverns and the surface; it is not a name for an important dwarf settlement but the TYPE of settlement that it is.
Sure you may be classed as a fortress as far as the game is concerned, but until you really get cooking in terms of wealth, architecture, and so on, you're not much better than a hillock.
Ergo, you may as well be a hillock
starting out. Until you meet the requirements, your only leaders are the Militia Commander and Expedition Leader/Mayor. Generally, these will be the only leaders in hillocks from world-gen as well. I'll also note that hillocks and similar lesser sites can't be reclaimed by the player, only major ones can. That seems to imply your own fortress is intended to become a major site akin to the other mountainhomes or the capital, around which lesser sites can potentially spring up later down the line in the game's development.
Otherwise, where would we get our soldiers from to attack local elves and nearby pits once we have the ability to do that? No player fort has the manpower to successfully do that alone.
It is quite possible as an embark scenario, provided that Toady One introduces little dwarf "caves", human hovels, goblin holes, elf treehouses during world-gen. Without those things already being there prior to your arrival this embark scenario is not possible. By caves I mean tiny indentations in the rock that house say a dwarf peasant family and their stuff, the dwarfy equivalent of peasant hovels for humans. They would have to exist already or else the Feudal dwarves will either starve to death or have to become the regular setup.
They're already there. Dark Pits, hillocks, and smaller tree cities fill the role of lesser towns, and are generally built around a fortified or larger center: Dark Fortresses, Keeps/fortresses, Mountainhalls, and larger Tree Cities. Humans have had their lesser sites for literally years in the form of hamlets/villages/non-keep towns.
Cave is also a bit of a misnomer really. Commoner Dwarves live in their little 2x2 apartments (in world-gen fortresses,) or in shared living mounds in world-gen locales based on firsthand observations. Goblins seems to prefer sharing large towers, while slaves and trolls live underground below those in Dark Pit sites, humans live similarly to dwarves (commoners live in small houses or shops while nobles and their personal guards/family live in the big keeps,) and elves do have their tree houses. The things are just a bitch to find. I'm guessing the royals among them live on or near the local mega tree (that is, the named ones.)
Seriously. I wandered around an elf site for 20 minutes before I realized they don't build walls or anything resembling them. Or ladders/stairs. Elves pretty much live on woven branch platforms, the dirty savages.
Some settlements such as fortresses or towns are classified in the code as MARKETS. A position that can only appear in a settlement like a fortress has [REQUIRES_MARKET] in it's raws. A broker is an example of such a noble. A market provides the basis for other non-market settlements to be created during Word-Gen and a new market can only appear a certain distance from an existing one. However their relationship is entirely a commercial one and has no necessary political matchup.
A dwarf hillocks will quite happily go to a goblin dark fortress to trade but it does not belong to the goblin's civilization nor provide it with troops in wartime. The existance of a nearby dark fortress will prevent any new fortresses being built (goblin or dwarf) but it is quite possible for a hillocks to grow up around a dark fortress provided that the space is not taken up already by dark pits. There is absolutely no relation in the game between trade relations and political/military one's.
I've never seen dwarves not conquered by goblins trade in their settlements, nor have I ever seen a market in goblin territory. I'm sure they're there and I just never found them, but I've never seen it personally. Usually hillocks, hamlets, and smaller treetowns are derelict when they're near major goblin centers, at least in virtually all of my games, for whatever reason.
My guess is usually goblins, unless beaten to a pulp and conquered, will generally destroy nearby lesser sites. Hell, even during gameplay they often go after hillocks instead of you, even if you're a much easier target, and you can often come upon towns and hillocks being raided by the goblins.
You speak as if you know with near certainty the whole future trajectory of the game. Even if something is actually explicitly on the dev pages it will not necessarily end up being implemented exactly as it says.
I never claimed to know exactly how it will play out. I do claim to be making guesses, conjectures, whatever, in regards to them. And if it's in the dev pages, then it will be implemented in
some fashion. Probably not exactly how any of us think, but it will be implemented.
I can see I have confounded you badly with what I am saying. There is no monarch and there is no general because we are not talking about the present DF but a basic sandbox where none of those things have yet been implemented; to all intends and purposes the monarch *is* you and there are no external laws or rules yet implemented and there is no external world modelled in detail either. It is the Feudal "might have been" that DF is not.
The fact they aren't implemented
properly yet is the point. They're there, but not functioning in the way they could or quite possibly will be. That can lead to more than just me making these assumptions. As to the General, at least in world gen they do exist, and are always the ones to lead the dwarves offensively with the exception of what are classed as "minor raids" according to legends viewer, and even then they seem to like leading those, too.
It can be assumed mayors and lesser nobles are thus responsible fortifying their areas of the country and driving off the enemy raids, while the general attacks the country's enemies which can have the effect of drawing off enemy leaders to fight the general's army. Monarchs also often join the General in battle (which seems to be a leading cause of dead monarchs for dwarves, now that I think about it...)
It's not wrong to assume a proper political system will be put into place past just having idiots who get mad if your residents have nicer crap than them. There'd be literally no purpose for nobles to exist at all if there weren't plans to put them into place in a meaningful way at some point. Even if it isn't exactly like it, it will still greatly resemble some sort of semi-feudal or maybe con/federation (as the present game more closely has all entities resemble a confederacy or federal government than any actual monarchy,) once properly implemented. In the same vein, it'd be reasonable to assume we can eventually put all the useless little sprog in schools or apprenticeships eventually, because those systems will be more fully done next release. Would we be
able to next release? My guess is "not quite yet."
I am not talking about any future plans for the game nor anything that I am arguing for. I am talking about what DF would have looked like had Toady One actually intended to model a Feudal society. I was pointing out what a Feudal DF game *would* look like, how it does not look anything like the present setup and how it would not need a whole set of existing institutions in order to exist, it could have been implemented right from the go.
The implication for it is enough to make assumptions, guesses, whatever you wanna call them. They're guesses, and my reasons for them. Unlike economics, I can at least say here I have a vague idea of what may be put in place further down the line, based on what's already here, very close to being here, or was once here, such as having a dedicated Tax Collector for example.
Something akin to a feudal monarchy is meant to be represented, it just isn't fully done or requires the player to make guesses as to what purpose nobles otherwise serve besides being lazy idiots who cry about Urist McWeaponsmith having a very slightly nicer bedroom.
The current communistic model is there not because of pragmatism but because Toady One initially set the mechanics and the game to be inherently communistic when he first made it. We start off with 7 civilian dwarves going off into the wilderness to collectively work together to establish a new fortress. We do not start of as a band of 7 warriors determined to establish their rule over the local population. We do not start off as a bunch of 7 stakeholders determined to establish that they "own" the area and hence everyone that comes after them must pay them rent or work for them.
All these options could have been implemented in a pure sandbox right from the go; but they were not. Now the different options are being explored via the concept of starting scenarios essentially, the form of society we are going to have is to be based upon what our starting scenario is.
You start with 7 random nobodies generally in the middle of nowhere. There is no local population. Not until you start building up a fortress and giving people reason to come to the general area. At present, you could feasibly have your embark party be 7 war vets who want to carve out their own little empire. They could be worthless societal rejects or refugees with literally nothing to their name. They could be a bunch of rich shitheads who have piles of starting materials. But until we have scenarios, one can easily just default to: Here's some nobodies, build a place other people will wanna live in/near. And no, you can't have ones that like eachother. But for all that, it's mostly your own Roleplay that permits that right now.
Hit Embark Now! And you get the most worthless mix of skills ever.
If the game didn't start communistic though, nothing could get done. There's no money, no services, nothing. How do you pay people with nothing to pay them with? You need to build up to that.
In the older game, it starts off communistic for this exact reason presumably. The economy (which was very heavily capitalistic, though by the sound of it not fully so,) didn't kick in until you were basically set up for the most part. Until that point, famine and dehydration is a constant danger and there was often too much work and not enough hands to get it all done. By the time the economy activated, from what I can tell the problem was more finding enough work for everyone to do.
If there hadn't been a reason behind it, it wouldn't have been included at all. It was supposed to be there, it just didn't friggen work right.
And to that last point, technically you are. Anyone else better have one of three reasons to be here, at least initially: To die (invaders) Trade (merchants and presumably eventually, local hilldwarves,) or settle (migrants.) Otherwise, move on.
Eventually though we'll have visitors who will be spending money stopping at your fort. What purpose would a purely communistic sandbox have for money? Nothing. Which means commerce is coming, which means a functioning political system will be coming as well, as civs start fighting over resources or trade routes in addition to ethics you may be expected to help support the war effort by raising continents of surrounding hilldwarves to go join the General's army or supply weapons and armor at a discount. But all of this is probably a very verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry long ways off.
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Topic: Alternative Dwarven Economy: Revolts, Schools, Taxes, and Industry. (Long) (Read 25029 times)