Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[aralkis]

The title says it. What causes these ambitious little creatures to war during worldgen?

Territory? Leaders personality? Greed? Proximity? Opportunity? What makes the AI decide for war?

And what parameters could I change to influence more belligerence? Site Cap? Smaller maps? Pop Cap? Pop/site Cap?

Ps:The most incredible war I saw on legends was a horde of goblins led in battle by its Demon fought an dwarf civ for a century, until they finally defeated them. When they reached the other side of the mountain they try to invade a elf civ but they failed every time. Until, in an epic battle of tens of thousands of warriors, the elves slayed the demon. That goblin horde was never the same again. But there were so many goblins that all the other dwarf civs ended up with goblin kings!!!

[Shonai_Dweller]

Do you want the technical answer or the fun answer?
The fun version is recorded in Legends, usually a 'dispute over the treatment of plants' or something similar sparks off the wars.

Technically, there's a high chance of civs with differing ethics to go to war. And nobody likes goblins because they're baby-snatchers, so they start off hostile to everyone else usually making wars more common.

[Untrustedlife]

also leaders' personalities effect how often a civ goes to war aswell.

[thatkid]

Just going to link this handy summary of what we the players know about behind-the-scenes war stuff here.

With all that mind, there are a few ways to encourage wars.

If you want wars to be more frequent, but not an always-happening sort of thing, you can set Ethics for each Civ to hold more extreme differences. The df wiki page on Ethics has a helpful chart to compare point values for that.

If you want specific groups of civs (ie. Dwarf + Humans vs Goblins + Elves or something) to go to war with one another more frequently, you can use tags like BABYSNATCHER and/or ITEM_THIEF to prevent friendships along a certain line. These tags work together and separately: Let's say Civs 1-3 have neither BABYSNATCHER or ITEM_THIEF, Civs 2-5 have only BABYSNATCHER and Civ 6 has both BABYSNATCHER and ITEM_THIEF. Civs 1-3 will be hostile (and thus inclined to go to war) with all civs who have either BABYSNATCHER or ITEM_THIEF -- so 1-3 will be hostile to 2-6. Civs 2-5 will be hostile towards anyone who does not have BABYSNATCHER or anyone who does have ITEM_THIEF -- so they are hostile to Civs 1-3 and Civ 6. Civ 6 will be hostile towards anyone who does not have BABYSNATCHER and does not have ITEM_THIEF -- civs 1-5, therefor.

You can alter the VALUES of each Entity and the FACETS of each creature to make them more inclined to violence. This should, hypothetically at least, encourage warmongering. Things like a high POWER level and a low PEACE level would probably do the trick. Tweak it around a bit to try and get whatever works best.

You can use very specific worldgen parameters in conjunction with entity biomes to force everyone to start in more or less the same area, once they hit the world/civ site limits they'll need to fight to expand. I'm not sure if this actually encourages wars, but having everyone close enough to fight will help remove obstacles to warfare. A smaller map helps with this. Other worldgen stuff that can help (and you can further increase some of these in the entity files): Lower site cap, higher pop cap + higher pop/site cap (results in larger battles, larger armies, etc.).

You can combine the above methods, and while that won't guarantee constant warfare it will contribute to it.

If there is a civilization that you want to always be at war with everyone, you can give their creatures the UNINTELLIGIBLE tag. Since they won't be able to communicate, they'll never be able to form peace treaties and any wars they start or have started on them will not end until one side is wiped out. UNINTELLIGIBLE does not create pseudo-factions (true factions/alliances/whatever aren't possible) the same way that BABYSNATCHER and ITEM_THIEF does - UNINTELLIGIBLE kobolds will be hostile to UNINTELLIGIBLE orcs or whathaveyou. CRAZED should accomplish the same goal with the added bonus of being able to talk to the creatures, though I haven't tested it.

[aralkis]

Thx for the answers!

I don't want to add or remove tags, that seems too artificail, but ajusting their ethics, that seems promising. Maybe overpopulation population don't influence on starting wars, but perhaps over populated sites makes battles bigger and more significant.

Alright, I will give it a try.

I would like for toady to elaborate more on how history gen works. How the AI assembles its armies, attack, defense, siege...are those stuff "modble" (hum...modifiable?) or is it hardcoded?

[Shonai_Dweller]

And if you want a civ to flip out whenever an adventurer walks into their backyard, like goblins do now, just change their 'Kill Neutral' ethic to 'Required'.
Forget to do that and your civilian orcs will be all 'I say old chap, watch out for the bogeyman...' at least until their death squads show up.

[thatkid]

Thx for the answers!

I don't want to add or remove tags, that seems too artificail, but ajusting their ethics, that seems promising. Maybe overpopulation population don't influence on starting wars, but perhaps over populated sites makes battles bigger and more significant.

Alright, I will give it a try.

I would like for toady to elaborate more on how history gen works. How the AI assembles its armies, attack, defense, siege...are those stuff "modble" (hum...modifiable?) or is it hardcoded?

Larger populations are guaranteed to lead to larger armies and larger battles.

I would like it if Toady elaborated on how world gen/world activation decisions like starting wars works as well. Maybe someone will ask the right questions in Future of the Fortress someday. I'm much too lazy and I'm really not sure what questions will make sense and be worth Toady's time to answer.
Unfortunately, the actual decision making process that NPCs go through is hard coded and we cannot mod it. Though we can alter variables that effect the decisions they make, insofar as we understand it, as in the case of Facets/Values/Ethics.

[pikachu17]

if they have [ETHIC:KILL_ENTITY_MEMBER:REQUIRED] will they end up having civil wars