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[Random_Dragon]

Yeah. Basically I'd be restoring it back to the way it used to be, having other civs able to send thieves while removing it from kobolds. I did that in prior versions due to a trade bug that has since been fixed, which made the workaround necessary for intended behavior to function at all.

But removing it of course removes a good buffer against sieges. This is a problem IF enemies take a million years to send sieges like normal. But if the alternative is a swarm of early sieges, I might have to restore the old behavior.

What I'd like to do is see if I can rig it so that thieves will be sent reliably at an early point. That's also painfully inconsistent, as with sieges.

[Ulfarr]

I gave each civ the [AMBUSHER] tag and so far (about a year in) i had no contact but a necromancer. Granted I have only 23 kobolds so only* the dwarves should trigger right now.

* I've noticed that the rest of the civs have higher pop triggers than dwarves and goblins have a low trade trigger for first contact. Is this intentional?

[Random_Dragon]

I gave each civ the [AMBUSHER] tag and so far (about a year in) i had no contact but a necromancer. Granted I have only 23 kobolds so only* the dwarves should trigger right now.

* I've noticed that the rest of the civs have higher pop triggers than dwarves and goblins have a low trade trigger for first contact. Is this intentional?

Yeah, it's intentional that dwarves show up first, partly for flavor and partly for balance reason. Elves also have ambushers (which are a nightmare) and exotic animals (which are unpredictable), while humans are the most swole. Though the fact that dwarves have steel might be enough that I should rank them above elves, maybe?

As for that, hmm. Yeah, that's a problem I'm trying to sort out. Balancing things out so you get SOMETHING on your case at 20 kobolds, but not a horde, is a pain in the ass.

[Ulfarr]

Just had my first (undead*) siege  1.5 years in with 30 kobolds...didn't go very well. They only had 25 undead +2 necros + 1 living human so I think with a better defense plan it would be winable. I'll have to start a new one to test how the other civs behave : (

About dwarves having steel, they usualy have 1-2 steel pieces each (if they have steel at all) so, I don't think it makes that much of a difference. I'mwondering if giving each civ all active seasons tags (like what goblins have) and the old thief logic, would help with siege/thieves frequency.


*First necro was alone, so a scout, maybe?

[Random_Dragon]

That's weird because normally necromancers aren't really normal civ members, I didn't know they'd inherit properties from their parent civ like that.

But yeah, been out late due to some things going on, when I get home I'll do so.

[Ulfarr]

I don't know if this was obvious to you with kobolds being carnivorous and all but I've almost starved my kobolds to death before realising* that meals containing any combination of plants, boose from plants, (helmet snake) eggs or tallow are inedible for kobolds. At this moment, I don't know for sure if meals containing these ingredients along with meat/fish/prepared intenstines etc are edible or not.

*I wasn't expecting eggs and tallow to be considered inedible.

[Random_Dragon]

Huh. That's...how the hell. I didn't know eggs and tallow would count as inedible. Crap. Not even sure how to fix that. >.<

Since I'm fairly certain they can drink booze just fine, booze making it inedible also sounds like a bug.

[Ulfarr]

I don't think it's because of booze* , my kobolds would ignore meals made of 4 x eggs or 4 x tallow too. So, it seems like it has to do with what vanilla df recognize as meat. Anyway the whole problem can be avoided by forbiding using these ingredients in cooking and periodicaly dumping** non-brewable plants/eggs


*which is perfectly drinakble on it's own
** so they don't show up as "other food" in the (z) menu

[Random_Dragon]

That sounds like it should be reported to mantis, yeah. ._.

[Ulfarr]

I think I solved the egg/tallow mystery.

In both vanilla DF's and Kobold Kamp's material_template_default.txt,  egg yolk, egg white and tallow while having the necessary  edible tokens they  lack the [meat] token which is present in other  materials like muscle,brain.lungs etc.  So I guess it's just standard DF behavior to not recognize them as meat.

[Random_Dragon]

Hmm. That might be it, I just hope that giving them the [MEAT] token won't break anything, I'll go ahead and test that.

[Random_Dragon]

Okay yeah, this would not be a solution:



I tested making egg and tallow roasts out of them afterward, and they STILL didn't seem to be edible.

[Ulfarr]

I've got some results from my siege related tests.

Quick reminder: I just gave all civs the [Ambusher] token while still using the original Kobold Kamp triggers and thief logic.

After my first fortress fell to the local necromancers ( the one I mentioned some posts ago) I started a new one, on the same world but in a  different location so I only have dwarves, elves, goblins and humans as neighbors. For the first three years (126-128) I had no contact with other civs, but from the summer of the fourth year (129)  I have been getting regularly ambushes. Still I haven't had any actuall siege yet. Current year is 134.

All ambushes had been sent from the same Dwarf civ (The Dabbling Sacks) and according to Legends Viewer they came from at least two different groups/sites.
The list of ambushes is as follows:

Summer 129 - Dwarves from The Portentous Crystal group.
Autumn  129 - Dwarves+ Goblins from The Mine of Blotting group.
Autumn  130 - Dwarves from an unknown group/site (Legends viewer showed only that they were from the same civ).
Autumn  131 - Dwarves from an unknown group/site, probably from the same site as the one from 130 ( at least one dwarf that took part in the 130 ambush was
                     also present in the 131)

Spring    132 - Dwarves of unknown civ. Ambushing forces left right after they got spotted.
Autumn  132 - Dwarves of unknown civ. Total enemy forces were at least 75 dwarves. Enemy left shortly after the first casualties. No notable (historical?)  figures died
                      during the siege, so there is no info on legend viewer to link them to a specific civ or site...

Spring    133 - Dwarves from a third group, The young Sword, same civ as before. At least 71 soldiers.
Spring    134 - Dwarves of unknown group/site. 104 total soldiers and horses. Enemies fled after contact with local wild life.


Observations:

-Both of the known Dwarven sites are relatively far away from my fortress (the same civ has at least two more sites that are closer to me) which might explain the initial calm period.  There is also one more dwarven civ that I had no contact with.

- I had no contact with elves (trigger limit have been reached), humans (trigger limit not reached yet) or goblins ( I've reached the trade trigger limit but not the pop siege trigger)

- The number of soldiers in each ambush seems to increase every year. Sadly I forgot to write down the number from the first 3 ambushes, the 131 one had 69 soldiers.

- Both of year 132's ambushes where rather uneventful, because both forces would depart almost imidiately.

Conclusions (so far) :

- The game had been easier than before, mostly due to the initial peace time during which I managed to create proper defences (traps and trained military). However I still had to rely on cheesy tactics (door locking/bait animals/cage traps).


edit: I forgot to specify, that the world is rather small (32x32) with most of the land mass located in one big island. There are 2 dwarven , 3 elven, 3 human, 2 goblin and 2 kobold civs plus 3 necromancer towers.

In terms of total civ population, the list goes as follows (original species + outcasts other species , number of sites):

Elven 1:      6264 + 51 , 13
Dwarven 1: 2989 + 351 , 27  ( <-- The Dabbling Sacks)
Dwarven 2: 2255 + 321 , 21
Human 1:   899 + 9, 9
Elven 2:     749 , 8
Goblin 1:    385 + 82 , 8
Human 2:   212 , 7
Elven 3:     186 + 23 , 4
Human 3:  175 + 2 , 4
Kobold 1:   159 + 6 , 2 ( <-- my civ )
Kobold 2:   91 + 53 , 1
Goblin 2:    5 , 1

edit 2: Added two more ambushes.

edit 3: Hooray for day off. I have also a small update on the non edible food part.  Prepared meals containing non edible ingredients along with edible ones appear to be
          edible themselves ,judging by the fact that some of my military is carring these type of meals and right now they are among the few ones who aren't hungry.
           

[Random_Dragon]

So this time you didn't get swarmed. I'm not sre how much of that is from the ambusher tag versus sieges being inconsistent.

[Ulfarr]

I've updated my previous post to include the latest ambushes.

I think it is safe to conclude that as long as the game is willing to send enemiy forces against you, then giving the ambusher tag to enemy civs isn't going to stop them. Regarding the initial peacefull period, I'd say it was because of both the game respecting the pop triggers and luck ( it lasted for two more years after I had reahed the trigger limit of 20 kobolds). Overall this workaround, seems to be enough to achieve (my) goal of softening the startup phase of a new fortress, without making the game too easy in it's entirety.

On the other hand ambush behavior is somewhat unpredictable. Sometimes the enemy will keep sending troops over my weapon traps in hopes of reaching a lone helmet snake and other times will leave as soon as they get spotted. In addition, the constant "pause + camera move" that happens every time that an enemy squad is spotted can become annoying.

The next phase of my experiment will be to inrease the pop limit so I can activate the triggers for humans (elves should have activated when I  briefly hit 53 kobolds, but they haven't appear yet) and see how they 'll act. ThoughI don't expect any different behavior than the dwarves.

In case there is anything else that needs testing I'd be happy to help you, Kobold Kamp has been a lot of fun for me so far.

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Finding a use for all this vegan buffet garbage