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[Malleator]

I was wondering if it would be possible to create a plant civ.

The inspiration for said civ would be from Orks from the game Warhammer 40k.
For those not familiar, the Ork life cycle is as follows...

Spores -> Mycelium -> Creates/subverts environment into something like lichen but more complex and on a larger scale -> Spawns lesser lifeforms -> Lesser lifeforms make preparations for larger more intelligent lifeforms -> Larger lifeforms spawn -> lesser lifeforms servants to larger -> Larger lifeforms warlike and constantly at war with each other or anything that can actually wage warfare -> Every life form in cycle constantly releases spores throughout life -> Exponential subversion/creation of environment -> Massive spore release upon death

I suppose it would be more of a fungus civ than plant civ, but I feel it would be more plant raw wise.

I imagine I would have to create a plant that spreads aggressively (destroys other plants) and can create creatures, but I'm not sure if it could be done in Dwarf Fortress. At least well enough so that the infestation isn't unstoppable, and while I have experience making creatures, I actually haven't looked into plants at all, and I don't know if one could even add new plants such as the ones described.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? Tell me if it's possible? Would it be a series of castes? Would it be odd age groups? Would it all be artificial? Can you set a plant to controllable civ?
I'm not asking for someone to make the civ or anything; I want to make the civ myself. I just don't know if it'll work out, but I do think it would be fun to discover an ork infestation in the caverns in fortress mode as dwarves or to play as orks themselves.

Thanks.

[IndigoFenix]

Most of what you are asking cannot be done.  Plants can't become creatures, and transformations are tricky to work with in general since a creature can only have one active at a time.

But don't give up!  If you're willing to work with the tools DF gives you, you can do some pretty creative things.

For example, you can make a species with a common caste that drops seeds for a special plant in nest boxes.  You can then cultivate this plant which, when eaten, transforms the common caste into a rare, more powerful caste.  It isn't exactly what you were looking for, but it does have the creature - plant - mature creature cycle.

[Malleator]

Would it be possible to create a creature that doesn't move (or at least VERY slowly) that represents a fruiting mushroom body and spawns a grass like plant (representing mycelium) around it?

Then have said creature eventually mature into a lesser or greater?

Would it be possible to make castes that, with ratios, determine the physical attributes of the species accordingly?
Make the fungus base creature reproduce like crazy with a high ratio of being the product of reproduction.
Lessers have a far lower chance of being the product of reproduction.
Greaters have lowest pop ratio.

[IndigoFenix]

You can make castes into practically different species if you want.

Make the mushrooms female and non-sapient, with the other castes male.  Non-sapient females can produce children without marriage, as long as a male touches them.  Give them a big littersize and they should be popping out babies like crazy.  You don't even have to give them a child phase.

Females can be immobile and still reproduce.  I think you can pasture non-sapient civ members, so you can move them into position that way.

You will need to have a reasonable chance of males being born from reproduction though, since you'll need at least one male among your starting seven in fort mode.  Non-sapient females won't work or reproduce on their own.  A 2:1 ratio should suffice.  Or, you can add a slow-moving male mushroom caste to fertilize them.  Just keep in mind that your starting seven units (as well as all historical figures outside of fort mode) will be based on pop ratios and you'll have to find some way to survive until metamorphosis.

The easiest way to do metamorphosis is to secrete a material that causes the transformation after a set time - make sure it is long enough that they will mate and have babies first (about a year should be enough).  Although pregnant females that turn into another female caste will have babies.  I don't think it will work if they transform into a male caste.  This will not have an effect on historical figures.

You can use item cloud material emissions to produce the mycelium, but I think your other members will try to clean it up, so it might not be worth the trouble.

[Malleator]

I'll think I'll try to make a prototype sometime this week, I don't have too much time.
Thanks for your help Indigo, but I don't completely understand how to implement the secretions, transformations from secretions, nor totally how to do cloud emissions.
Could you point me towards the correct learning materials?

[Dirst]

Caste-like life stages are a perennial suggestion, but it's not likely to be implemented anytime soon.

If you don't like adding a continuous (syndrome-laden) secretion, you could try hiding the transformation effect in a greeting interaction.  The interaction is described as exchanging bow or whatever, but the effect is to add a syndrome with a delayed transform.  With the increased variety of social activities, I'm not sure if greeting interactions happen often enough any more.

I recall a Lovecraftian mod that used greeting interactions to make one immune to the go-crazy-from-being-alone-in-the-dark-too-long effect, at least for a while.  If that still works reliably in 0.42 then greetings should work in your situation as well.

[Malleator]

I really want to be able to keep a clear population balance of many shrooms, fair amount of lessers, and few greaters.

Will a system such as secretions and greetings throw this out of proportion?

[Dirst]

I really want to be able to keep a clear population balance of many shrooms, fair amount of lessers, and few greaters.

Will a system such as secretions and greetings throw this out of proportion?

You could make it work on average by assigning probabilities to the syndromes, but there's no guarantee that would work out in a given fort.  Or world.

[Meph]

I was looking into a plant-civ a long time ago. Growing seed pods in farms, turning them into new civ members, drinking only water, no food, etc. Of course its only fake-plants and the creatures would be OBJECT:CREATURE not OBJECT:PLANT, but overall it can be done.

I would have used true-transform and spawnunit, the dfhack scripts, which make custom civ-members like this a lot easier to do.

[Malleator]

The Dfhack scripts sound intriguing, but I'll see what happens without the use of external programs, first.

Unfortunately, I won't have much time, other projects and all, but I look forward to sharing what I do end up with.