It should be possible if the adventurer pays a land tax. I'm not sure how it could be handled in a communal property system. Maybe better reputation (service) earns you more land?
Their probably should be some land rates for onsite property owners, payable with coin or valuable items (dragon bone, steel items or full blown artifacts).
I'd assume that in a communal system payment is made in service to the community, so killing the bandits next door or hunting the local dragon would pay your rates to different degrees.
Once you bring reputation into it things get a little more complicated, does the legendary hero of the entire nation have to pay this community or is his service to the nation enough? do you even want to try and charge the guy who single-handedly wiped out an entire dark fortress of goblins or just give him a free pass?
A hero with enough renown would probably be able to just claim land from a site owner or civ because of "services rendered" much like claiming a site now only with more legitimacy and once you get to that point you end up with starting scenario's like.
Urist Mc adventurer: "My lord it is I Urist Mcadventurer I have return from the fallen fortress of Laborpass with great news, I have slain the beast Ithbi Siegedattack the Spidery Lobster!
Urist Mckingly: "This is indeed great news Urist Mcadventurer! In recognition of this great feat and your other services to the Crown I hereby dub thee Urist McBaron and award you stewardship of the fortress of Laboredpass and the surrounding lands."
Urist McBaron: "Thank you your Majesty, this is a great honor."
Urist Mckingly: "You may now choose six dwarves to help in the reclamation of the fortress properer and gather supply under the authority of the crown for this endeavor but remember to ect...
Which is a completely different thing from adv housing.
It is not quite that simple. Dwarf Fortress is at the very core a site-based universe that is basically tribal, with all those The Whatever of Whatever groups. Real history was a land/people based universe in which sites in the DF sense were not self-supporting but dependant upon the land they owned/controlled/influenced/traded with for their very survival.
I think one of the goals is to make the lands surrounding sites play a larger part of the simulation resulting in less self-sufficiency.
I know Toady said something about wanting hillocks to buildup around your fortress during play, not sure if he meant having the fortress as the "lords" keep and the surrounding being you dependents or something else.
Fingers crossed.
Yeah
I am glad you think I am an expert.
It just seems like you've study economics on some level even if in an armature way, where as I like most people only care in so much as it effects my daily life.
The Star-Trek economy appears only to exist in fortress mode, the rest of the world seems to be living in a normal reality where surplus value is finite.
Actually I think Toady said that he still needs to code the quantity of a resource a site has access to because as it stand it just checks if its available and gives an unlimited quantity.
Well pheromones are just the smells that ants use to 'talk' to eachother. We use sounds to communicate to much the same effect, except for one crucial difference. Smells can stick to things while sounds cannot, which means that we have to invent writing while ants simply apply a strong enough pheromone to something that it sticks to it. This is how ants tell which ants belong to their own colony, every ant walks around with a pheromone 'tatoo' on it which was that informs all other ants as to it's allegiance. This is applies when an ant reaches adulthood, which means that while ants are unable to 'adopt' adult ants from a defeated colony they often adopt larval ants and steal eggs.
Pheromones directly effect brain chemistry unlike words and all thought is influenced by the brain's chemical levels that why for example depression and ADHD are treated by altering the chemistry of the brain so as a primary method of communication I imagine it would have roll on effects to the way the creature actually works psychologically which in turn would change how their society functions and grows.
Individual ants do not need a queen ant to survive. They can survive for the whole of their limited lifespans without ever seeing a queen ant, what they need a queen ant *for* is to lay eggs and produce more ants (they do get lonely and die quicker with no other ants around though. A queen ant is the ant that lays eggs, many ant species have multiple unrelated queens in the same colony meaning that the ants of those colonies are not necceserily actually siblings at all.
An individual ant doesn't need the queen but unlike dwarves they do need a queen for the propagation of the species and one of the primary driving force of any species is the need to procreate, dwarves don't have this limitation and can therefore be more selfish before it results in the destruction of the site (fortress) or extinction of the species.
I only know of a couple ant species that allow for multiply queens per colony and the ones that do allow it are often related.
The viability of hermit dwarf fortresses is only because surplus value is too great and mining is too easy.
I see no reason that lowing surplus value would mean a single dwarf couldn't survive by themselves, they could live in a fungi wood cottage on the edge of an cavern lake like a human on the surface and very slowly mine a small personal fortress area.
The biggest danger of the caverns are the forgotten beasts and Giant Cave Spiders but with titans, dragons, Cyclops's , Minotaur's and giant animals above ground living alone in the caverns both fishing and gathering food wouldn't be that much more dangerous.
I said that the perfect dwarf would be the ant-person because what the dwarf is trying to do, the ant-person would do perfectly. This means whether the evolution is biological or social, dwarves are going to be evolving towards becoming ant-people, whether they like it or not. If dwarves lived like humans in the cavern-layer, then it either means they would have been unable to build a fortress in the first place or it means that they would have to start evolving to shed their 'humanity'.
in the absents of "magical" dark sight and magical caverns I think they would evolve towards being ant-people first by losing their eyes and then adapting further in that direction but they have dark sight and caverns filled with life so there's less pressure to evolve so radically.
I don't see why a fortress would be impossible, if dwarves start in the cavern an build a human society in those caverns, fishing in lakes gathering mushrooms and cave-wheat while hunting cavern animals for meat it would be possible for their society couldn't develop like the roman empire with the initial site gradually expanding up thought the stone over years until they reach the surface, with the first fortress being Rome itself.
Biology is an effect not a cause. Ants have progenitor queens but the vast majority of insects do not, therefore nothing about progenitor queens created the hive-mind existance; it was the ant's hive-mind existance that created progenitor queens.
The normal insect female produces 100s of eggs at a time and lays them into something. Infant and oval mortality is pretty high, that is why they do not overpopulate their enviroment as a result and destroy their enviroment along with themselves. Once insects start living in hives however, the eggs and babies start to enjoy a near 100% survival rate and as a result the total number of eggs laid needs to be reduced. As only a small minority of the social insects are hence able to reproduce, but the cost is still there of mantaining the reproductive systems of all members even though they are consigned to celibacy. The logical next step is simply to undevelop the reproductive systems of the majority of the ants, leaving only a small number (the queens) with a fully developed reproductive system.
As I stated previously I've always believed biology to reign supreme, that article I link challenge that belief by stating that biology and nurture are equals in the development of an individual's personality and this mean it is
equally cause and effect the two playing off of each other resulted in the current circumstance neither biology of sociology being the sole driving force.
Among dwarves, 'married dwarf women' presently carry out the progenitor queen function.
50% of the population is breeding capable then individuals can be more selfish because their long term survival isn't hinged on one lynch pin.
Superabundance in one area leads to superabundance is another area dependant upon that area. The reason is that once replicators produce a superbundance of material goods, this frees up the whole population to produce intellectual property. Since some people are willing to share intellectual property for free (Toady One for instance), then with an superabundance of intellectual properties everybody simply uses the freely shared ones.
Thing is though that the remaining paid intellectual properties discourage the development of free intellectual properties. For instance in order to make my free mod I have to buy Forgotten Realms sourcebooks, this means that paid intellectual property is a nuisence to those who wish to make free intellectual property. Since the later group now have the upper hand however in economic terms then it is likely that intellectual property rights will simply be abolished by the government just as they were created originally (there were no intellectual property rights before the 18th Century).
I get what your saying I just believe that the powers that be (wealthy) wont allow it to reach that point, they put in stop block by what ever means necessary to keep the status quo including limiting what people are allowed to produce for free by claim it copies their "private" intellectual property and enforcing restrictions (tightening) whats considered "free" use property by buying and owning entire idea's, anybody who uses elves has to pay the company that own the idea of elves even if yours elves are "different".
I also believe that enough people would prefer a system which can benefit their personal wealth over collective benefits for everyone that it won't be that hard for big companies to push their agenda.
To put it simply I see Shadow Run, Blade Runner, Deus Ex and Judge Dread as more likely futures then Star Trek.
There is a reason that nearly all social insects (ants, termites, bees, bumblebees, wasps) live most of the time in hives or the equivilant and we never find the majority of individuals of a social insect group scattered above liberally across the area. The reason is the Hive-Mind only works if there is a proximity between the majority of individuals in order to exist, since it is a function of having the same set of information and a general consensus among individuals as to the correct course of action to follow in relation to that information.
And yet I don't think that even with smart phone technology which can scan your thumb print no one would support a system where everyone thumbs are used to identify individual voters and enable every on to take part in an everyday consensus.
All that Enders Game tells us is that Orson Scott Card did not really understand how a Hive-Mind works and confused it with the concept of the Over-Mind. The Overmind is when we have a greater intelligence that uses the lesser intelligences that support it as tools to it's ends (pretty much any government). An ant is very much an individual that obeys no other creature, it just happens to be that due to their proximity together they all have a common set of information and all simataneously make the correct individual decision for the collective welfare of the whole.
I see a hive mind as being closer to an overmind then what we have now because it lowers the boundary's between individuals making them less then what we are now imho, that's mostly because I see our individuality as one of the most important aspect's of being human and the more you lower those boundary become the less individual we are, I am invoking the "Slippery Slope" fallacy but I still feel its true.
Ants then are basically an adaptation of insects to a dwarf-like existance. What dwarfs will end up becoming in the end is whatever the mammalian primate equivilant of a social insect happens to be. Interesting thing is we already have a mammel that has adopted an ant-like biology with a Hive-Mind existance due to living in a dwarf-like manner, the Naked mole rat. Behold the ultimate fate that waits dwarves (maybe).
I still think your to focus on the fact that because they build their society underground that are ants or Naked mole rats but the DF world have cavern for them to live in and I feel the fact that their current sites are all fortress like is a place holder until Toady builds a dwarven hamlets and towns in the cavern layer at which point the current dwarven society can broken down far more easily.
Does not change the fact that it is the optimal form of society, which dwarves would adopt as much as possible if they want to survive and prosper. The only question is to what extent does the inheritance (both biological and ideological) of dwarves left from before they lived in the present manner 'get in the way'.
The fact that its the optimal society doesn't mean dwarves adopt it any faster then humans have irl.
I feel like the majority of dwarven society should live in hamlets scattered around the 1st cavern layer and that the first fortress should be their Rome and not the standard of their society.
It is not something that can just be 'fixed'. The reason is the very nature of the game, you see a palace or fortress is not a self-sufficiant site that does not need other sites around but the nature of the game is never going to be changed so that you need preexisting native populations to embark because your fortress depends upon the existance of pre-existing dwarf peasants spread across the region. No evil glacier embark for you veteran player, because your fortress needs a preexisting peasant population to exist (sorry).
Much like how the active world reduced the frequency and size of sieges was complained about? its not a bug but a change in the way DF's simulation works and the player has to adapt.
I'm pretty sure Toady said something about deepening the relationships between sites and the tribute system and making it so that hillock develop around your fortress so in the same way the active world required players to change the way they play so would the requirement of surrounding dwarven sites and if that means no embarking on an evil biome then the player will have to adapt their play-style because its the result of the simulation deepening and if you don't like it "Sorry but its to bad so sad" imho.
I do not think you understand the sheer importance of the economic reliance of the fortress or palace upon it's creators. It is not the peasants scattered about that make the laws, it is the people in the fortress or castle. As result the palace has to create laws and concepts not according to it's own internal collective reality but according to the individual reality of the peasants that feed it. Additionally it's need to extract surplus value from the peasants to survive clashes with the peasants desire to keep that value to themselves (or work less) and this means that it desires that the peasants are KEPT scattered about in order to reduce their ability to organise. As a matter of course no palace creates something equivilant to a DF hillocks/hamlet or allows such a thing to exist since such a thing has absolutely no need for anything the palace has to provide it.
If framing, fishing and hunting is changed to cost more time and provide less food then hamlets and hillock need other site for protection there should also be mining sites that need food, the only purpose of farming hamlets and hillocks would be food production for fortresses and towns and other sites that can't produce enough for themselves.
This can act as an expansion upon the nobility system where hillocks around your fortress are the "Lands" of your baron, count or duke paying tribute to you in the form of the food your no longer able to produce for yourself.
Once the dwarf peasants bring a functioning dwarf fortress into existance the dwarf fortress now simply has no more need of them. A palace does not compete with the peasants that created and is dependant upon them forever but a dwarf fortress once it exists is quite free to legislate and create culture to suit the fortress dwarves themselves. Since the fortress has no need of the peasant dwarves and the latter do not make the laws, the fortress makes the laws that best increase the fortress's own wellbeing, ignoring the peasants that created it in process. In the end the fortresses inherant hunger for labour causes it to devise ways to actually destroy the peasant hovels and absorb their inhabitants.
This has never happened in real-life, as never has a peasant population gave birth to a palace that did not need them.
Which is why we alter the simulation to make a palace or "fortress" need those peasants.
The other sites are organised along dwarf-lines. Since the historical development of the human race seems to be following dwarf-lines rather than human lines, with hamlets replacing the dwarf fortress of the centralised hive-mind friendly site and the elves society would not naturally arise at all, it follows that everybody else is imitating dwarf society on the surface. In a word the normal development of the human race by which scattered peasants form dependant sites that are bound to them and their lifestyle forever.
They are thus the equivilant of wasps or bees, replicating the ant's manner of life on the surface even though it was living in a constructed underground that created that lifestyle in the first place. However since the first hamlet is far cheaper (give realistic mining limitations) to build than the first fortress, for both to be finished on Yr 0 then it follows that yes the dwarves did come first before Yr 0 and the others quickly copied them.
Dwarves coming first kills three birds with one stone, the relative cost of hamlets/forest retreat vs fortresses, the divergance of human society from it's regular development and the very existance of elf society.
I would instead want dwarves to develop like I've suggested before, as humans underground with the first fortress being their Rome fueled by the surplus of other dwarven sites.
I just don't find what the current setup entails economically to be anything other then boring, I like stories with a darker tone both in the world itself and in the society's in that world.
By that logic only the dwarves ought to have metals at all. Adamantine is only found deep in the earth so it would be concievable that only dwarves would know how to use it, but the materials for steel are no deeper down than anything else.
I don't think so, dwarves would get metal development first because its right in their face (cavern walls), over their head (cavern roof) and under their feet (cavern floor) but everyone else would get their on their own just slightly later because its not everywhere they look.
The prevalance of something is no guarantee of it's functionality. If there are 10 people in a room that are all infected with some disease and an 11th healthy person turns up then it does not imply that being sick is superior to being healthy, nor than sickness is more functional; even if the 11th person should then get infected. The 10 people should all still become like the 11th person even though they are the majority.
I have already explained why Capitalism became the prevalant system, because of the interdependance existing between the palaces that make the laws and the scattered peasants that supported the palaces. Due to the way that human society universally developed they 'got there first' and they have socialised all the people to think along their own lines, along with possessing the means to violently suppress any localised challenge.
"shrugs" It beat socialism and it doesn't really matter to me how or why just that it did.
I suppose to me its victory just makes it look superior, I'm sure if they had of develop at exactly the same time we would be in a different would but we don't because capitalism won the battle of ideology's.
I think that capitalism motivates hard work better then socialism, with a community based sharing system you only work as hard as necessary to "pay" for yourself, an example is that when I used to work at a factory their was a quota system and as long as you hit quota you where fine but the manager noticed that people worked to the quota never going over it so they tried a system where for every unit over the quota you did you got paid an extra $0.82 after they brought that in they stood a chance to make themselves more money they went up to between 50-90 over quota each day taking home an extra $200-$300 a week, money and personal wealth is a better motivator then "The Greater Good" of the company or community.
Which cannot realistically be done because at the core of the game is the idea of self-sufficient dwarf fortresses.
I don't think it is the goal though, the dev page says
he long-term goal is to create a fantasy world simulator in which it is possible to take part in a rich history, occupying a variety of roles through the course of several games.
Again I think your stuck on the idea the DF is complete and that their adding "expansions" where as I see it as incomplete and every new feature expands the simulation, I feel that eventually you wont be able to run a self-sufficient fortress and will be at least partially dependent on imported goods just to keep running.
If you do not have a consensus then you do not have a Hive-Mind. Then you start needing people in authority (nobles) to act as an Over-Mind instead to forcibly create a consensus. We do not have a consensus (Hive-Mind) because the dwarves were not always living like dwarves presently do.
I don't think they will continue to live as they presently do as the game develops.
The very existance of dwarf fortresses realistically puts an end with the very processes that led to Feudalism and Capitalism in real-life. The dwarves are evolving from the collectivist tribal setup into an actual hive and the rest of the world initially modelled their societies after the dwarf fortresses that were being built rather than developing along historical models.
Of course Toady One could create a different setup for humans with the processes happening, but the real issue is then why the dwarf fortress society would not cannibalise that society with it's starving peasants.
Unless you make it so fortresses are not self sufficient hives but a palace or nobles keep dependent on the the community's around them.
Exactly what I was talking about. The team were given the option of creating the whole game around the economy they wanted the dwarves to have, giving the initial setup money to spend. They clearly realised, "that won't work for the initial setup" and decided "that is because things are not developed enough". The illogic of the whole setup was pretty great because it involved the arbitery addition of a system when they had previously functioned quite happily according to an old system.
If a particular economy cannot even build a fortress, then why would the dwarves ever have adopted it?
but if fortresses becomes the Rome of dwarven society feeding off of the surrounding dwarvn sites it make sense right? then a new fortress is an attempt to expand the empire/kingdom and the starting seven are just the first colonists funded by the crown.
There are plenty of new tropes and scenarios that would logically arise given the setup at the moment, surely it is more interesting to do something different rather than mindlessly replicate the darker tropes of other fantasy games at any cost? We already have one scenario already.
Refugee Camp Wars
more interesting to whom? I've already said I find the current system boring so I'll give some example of my personal preferences.
Warhamer 40k > Fallout > Deus Ex > Shadow Run > Firefly > Star Trek
Warhammer Fantasy > Call of Cthulhu > Vampire the Masquerade > Dungeons & Dragons
I love dark and sinister settings where their is little or no hope of a better tomorrow and you'd best just hope you can survive until tomorrow, so personally I'd rather the game have those dark fantasy elements.
So you are afraid of something different, is that it? The whole idea of moving into uncharted waters with a whole new history, with all the possibilities that involves scares you.
I find the idea of all civ values and social more developing during world gen with vast differences between two dwarven civ resulting in conflict between them to very interesting... What "scares" me is the idea that DF will have this (imho) boring perfect economy and social system when its "Complete", it just doesn't interest me in the slightest to have ant-people whom are all working together for the common good.
They did not exactly have an easy time. Despite being pacifists and quite harmless people still felt threatened by them enough that they had to go all the way from Austria, into Russia and then finally into America. All the while being killed and persecuted by the people of the 'other economies' around them.
You seem to overestimate the extent to which the 'other economies', which as I have already explained got there first are willing to tolerate and support alternatives. You also forget that since they 'got there first' all the people who might have available to build a different system come from the existing system and the 'raw material' for other ways of doing things are heavily indoctrinated/socialised with attitudes that rule out any alternative way of doing things. Aka what you wrote just before.
I understand that its the competition between the existing system and "other" systems that resulted in the other systems failing, part of why communism failed is that it couldn't compete with the entirety of the rest of the world working against it.
When I think of things like this what goes though my mind is that it doesn't matter how you win just that you win, history after all is written by the victor.
Poverty can still exist at a site level if you introduce some kind of social breakdown that disrupts production, crop failures, volcanic eruptions, trade disruptions, raids by rival sites and so on. Relative poverty can also exist where there are people within a site that are less powerful than others, if there was site level poverty this could easily become actual absolute poverty (your beloved starving peasants).
but as you've said such a site would end up being cannibalized by the utopian society.
This whole discussion is beyond silly. You do not leave home with an armed mercenery if you want to increase your life expectancy.
Its silly how? how does having an armed mercenary decrease your life expectancy?
The adventurer by nature goes looking for danger. If it is not something that is too afraid to fight him that kills you, it will be something new.
Toady I remember you saying something about the player affecting adventure mode personality's, can you choose both personality facets and beliefs and does it work like attribute distributions with points that you spend to increase or lower your value or do you just select a value you want?
Edit:with the addition of bards and traveling musicians will there be followers who's motivation is not death and glory?
You can either randomize your personality and values according to your creature type and culture (just tapping 'r' until you get a paragraph/needs you like), or you can go in and set your values/personality facet by facet manually (in a gigantic slider list). Your personality in the latter case is still restricted by creature type (so you can't make a very altruistic goblin), but you can set as many values outside of your culture as you want (instead of the standard 3 or so). It isn't based on a point system, since one personality isn't supposed to be better than another (though there will always be min-maxy settings that you can use to make your character have fewer needs, etc.).
Yeah, you can have your performance troupe that just wants to perform, with no wanna-die checks at all.
Adventurer is just a term for player controlled characters because its "Adventure Mode", just look at the adventure mode arc "Merchant" his goal is profit and wealth not danger, also the most dangerous thing to any adventurer is the player themselves not the creature they run into, you don't try and fight a web spitter without cannon fodder and if you do its the player fault that the adventurer died.
40k is just a world that makes little internal sense at all; I used to play it though.
It depend on how deep into the lore you get, but its possible to make some sense of it with enough lore book.
At the personality represents the creature's inherant nature and values+ethics represent it's socialised/learned nature. At the moment creature behavior is determined by a mixture of personality and values. I think that the creature's economic+legal development over time should be determined by a mixture of those things but values should be independant, meaning I do not welcome the idea that personality should initially determine values.
Randomised starting values is coming up by the way.
I understand that you don't welcome the idea and I don't think many would.
I know random starting values are coming up and I'm really exited for it, I think it'll be done by extending the weighted preference system that personalty facets have to civ values.
for example dwarves would have
[HARD_WORK:0:30:50] a minimum starting civ value of 0 the median being 30 and max being 50
A very small hole applied to a key artery results in death, you should know that DF Player.
Your claim was is that human nature in the modern world mandates a particular form of economy+society. Therefore if any instances at all that demonstrate that a successful human society can exist in the modern world according to a different form of economy+society logically kills your argument quite dead.
Actually my grandfather survived a ruptured aorta thanks to "private" health insurance, capitalistic health care saved my grandfather
, so while it is a potentially lethal blow its does not guaranteed death.
The fact that a small insignificant society whom entire population is less then one capitalist town exists was an almost lethal blow but didn't kill because I feel that they use an inferior system and have achieved inferior results.
Dwarves are only slightly more greedy than humans but greed is the logical flaw that would lead to the development of the present system. Dwarves have values of hard-work, craftsmenship and cooperation so what we see at the production level makes sense. They should not be happy however to share everything equally but that logically makes sense when everybody collectively produced it, this is what in the dwarf society would cause change and FUN.
Dwarven values of hard work and cooperation are civ values and not inherent to the dwarven creature like greed is, when you take random starting civ values, the change of civ values over time and though scholars and then combine it with fortresses being partially dependent of hillocks you get dwarves closer to what I feel is natural then the current ant people.
I want real change to happen over history. I want to see rulers and movements actually implementing/abolishing elements of society and economy, whether good or bad in my opinion. I am happy to see things I do not personally like depicted in the game, as long as these are not presented as some unalternable and eternal nature. The starving peasants are the result of the malevolant or misguided policies of King X, they are not just there because starving peasants are part of the basic game code/unalterable economic order.
I want change to happen over the course of history with the implementation and abolishment of social and economic standards and while I'm accepting of thing I don't like existing in game I would like to see some sort of basic economy that isn't like the current one exist at year 0, I don't want to have to troll though legends mode every time to ensure that the dwarves have developed an interesting economy that will be fun to play, other then that I don't really oppose such an economy simply existing anymore (you' have shown that it can exist) I just don't want to play with it as
my economy.
It actually makes sense for the site to actually employ you to build a house for them within site boundries.
I want to build a house for
me not them, at most buying the land and materials for the house from them.