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[Death Dragon]

I think I'm most hyped about the ability to instigate wars between civs. Really hope that the player will be able to send out agents in fort mode with that goal.

Can you give a little example of a villain who instigated a war in your testing? What made him do it? A grudge with a ruler perhaps?
Because of this addition, will there be more wars in general than we have now or will it be balanced out in some way? Will it be possible (or more likely) that the player's fort starts out immediately at war with the humans for example?

Other questions:
It sorta came up before, but wasn't really addressed: Are there cavalry mercenary companies?
Also, when hist figs spend their funds to buy equipment, does that just mean items or can they also acquire pet animals or mounts?

... and I really like the part where people can escape.

Yeah, it will be pretty cool to read a random hist fig's legends and see they spent 10 years in someone's dungeon until they managed to escape. I think someone recently brought up Monte Cristo, too.

By the way, if anyone's interested, here's the list of changes in the villain update so far:
https://pastebin.com/gtMVUHDa

[PatrikLundell]

@Death Dragon: It's certainly possible for your dwarven civ to start out at war with other civs, and it happens from time to time that such civs happens to be the "neighbor" civs visible pre embark (where you can see that they're at war with your civ). This has been possible at least since 0.40.X, and probably much longer. One factor when selecting which civ to embark with is whether the neighbors at various sites are at war with that civ (some want them to be at war, and some want caravans instead).

[Schmaven]

...One factor when selecting which civ to embark with is whether the neighbors at various sites are at war with that civ (some want them to be at war, and some want caravans instead).

I had no idea you could choose which civilization you embarked with  

It may be too soon to tell, but what are the chances you think existing saves from 44.12 will work with the new villains release?

[therahedwig]

... and I really like the part where people can escape.

Yeah, it will be pretty cool to read a random hist fig's legends and see they spent 10 years in someone's dungeon until they managed to escape. I think someone recently brought up Monte Cristo, too.

Yeah, that was me, and then someone else formulated a question about it regarding buying property.

My conclusion was that the only thing missing was boats and finding treasure by listening to your fellow prison mates... but it seems you could turn that into 'prisoner escapes, steals artifact' and from there there's the taking up a silly name, assasination, poison, but I am not sure about revenge...?

A part of me feels it's a bit sad you need to go into legends mode to learn stuff like this about your dwarves, but another part is a little skeptical that having dwarves list their strongest world-gen events as memories won't end up being very buggy.

[Shonai_Dweller]

...One factor when selecting which civ to embark with is whether the neighbors at various sites are at war with that civ (some want them to be at war, and some want caravans instead).

I had no idea you could choose which civilization you embarked with  

It may be too soon to tell, but what are the chances you think existing saves from 44.12 will work with the new villains release?

From previous releases, I'd say 99% chance of it being compatible unless some major corruption happens suddenly.
Saves are always compatible except on major development rewrites, like the Big Wait (and previously world activation in 2014), and we know about those in advance.

Steam release might end up that way, I suppose? Not sure how much underlying code is being replaced there.

Now, you won't have any villains in your old world of course (except the occasional new one who crops up, but it seems like they'll take a while to develop networks so likely all but non-existent during a fortress' lifespan). Probably no Merc companies, trading companies, religions, etc either.

But all the new Adventurer options should be available.

[PatrikLundell]

...One factor when selecting which civ to embark with is whether the neighbors at various sites are at war with that civ (some want them to be at war, and some want caravans instead).

I had no idea you could choose which civilization you embarked with  

It may be too soon to tell, but what are the chances you think existing saves from 44.12 will work with the new villains release?

One of the tab views shows the available playable civ and you can select which one to start as (changing the civ also changes which dwarven fortress is your starting point [it's a blue rather than white fortress, I think], so you can start far away from the "home" if you want to ensure all enemies attack your fortress, for instance).

As Shonai_Dweller said, compatibility is high on Toady's list of priorities. However, while saves are compatible, new things do not magically appear in an existing world. Things that the new release generates during world gen wasn't generated in the old save, and still won't appear (instruments and art forms fairly recently), and new equipment won't appear (e.g. pedestals and display cases recently, and step ladders earlier). It varies whether it's better to stay on the old version or to continue on to the new one. My current guess is that the new stuff won't cause harm to an existing fortress (the stress system rewrite did, as the old mitigation methods were removed, and many of the new ones weren't available), and getting the fatal raiding related bugs fixed (in the bug fix releases after the villains release, if Toady continues using the old production formula rather then the one to be adopted for the commercial version) will probably be worth an upgrade once those fixes are in. Bugs in villainy probably won't be much a problem if villainy itself isn't present to any extent...

[Shonai_Dweller]

...One factor when selecting which civ to embark with is whether the neighbors at various sites are at war with that civ (some want them to be at war, and some want caravans instead).

I had no idea you could choose which civilization you embarked with  

It may be too soon to tell, but what are the chances you think existing saves from 44.12 will work with the new villains release?

One of the tab views shows the available playable civ and you can select which one to start as (changing the civ also changes which dwarven fortress is your starting point [it's a blue rather than white fortress, I think], so you can start far away from the "home" if you want to ensure all enemies attack your fortress, for instance).

As Shonai_Dweller said, compatibility is high on Toady's list of priorities. However, while saves are compatible, new things do not magically appear in an existing world. Things that the new release generates during world gen wasn't generated in the old save, and still won't appear (instruments and art forms fairly recently), and new equipment won't appear (e.g. pedestals and display cases recently, and step ladders earlier). It varies whether it's better to stay on the old version or to continue on to the new one. My current guess is that the new stuff won't cause harm to an existing fortress (the stress system rewrite did, as the old mitigation methods were removed, and many of the new ones weren't available), and getting the fatal raiding related bugs fixed (in the bug fix releases after the villains release, if Toady continues using the old production formula rather then the one to be adopted for the commercial version) will probably be worth an upgrade once those fixes are in. Bugs in villainy probably won't be much a problem if villainy itself isn't present to any extent...

There's the question of whether player fortress dwarves will be villaneous by themselves due to grudges and lust for power I suppose. And if they can, will dwarves from old saves get the new stats of respect, fear, loyalty and trust or the intrigue skill? Might be a bit weird at first.

[therahedwig]

Given that the villains can now start wars, and that civs can now have a claim on artifacts, are you considering getting rid of the siege triggers? Or do you guys still have a bunch of other... fun you want to implement to make sieges a naturally occurring thing? Similarly, will villain-caused wars listen to the invasion toggle in the configuration, or will it be like the raid-response sieges? I'd ask the same thing for the megabeasts, but I already know they live very boring lives outside of initial worldgen.

I've been reading/watching people's DF let's plays lately, and I am noticing a lot of them aren't interacting with the civ screen much despite it being one of the most important screens when it comes to DF throwing dangers at you. And I am wondering if that's not because most of the dangers just kinda come at you out of nowhere. As for the init setting, was mostly wondering because then we can reliably test how good villains are at generating fort mode Fun without the game having to fudge it a bit.

Actually continuing on that thought a bit:


* Are there plans to flesh out refugees a little in the last bits of the pre-magic arc? They seem to be a very underdeveloped symptom of bleak stuff happening in the world, and there's a whole lot of new bleak stuff for them to run away from. Like, is there anything fundamental stopping them from showing up at your tavern like performance and quester troupes do?
* Will we see escapees show up at our forts?
* Do you think worldgen actors will be smart enough to chase after refugees and escapees?

[Criperum]

Will interface changes (especially mouse support and better control windows) be available on classic version or they are steam/itchio exclusive like tileset and sound effects?

[PatrikLundell]

Will interface changes (especially mouse support and better control windows) be available on classic version or they are steam/itchio exclusive like tileset and sound effects?

The difference between the classic and the commercial versions will be tile set, music, and vendor guff (such as e.g. achievements), if I've understood the discussions correctly.

[Criperum]

Just wanted to be sure

[Magistrum]

We can now request people from our holdings and all, so:
Will we see anytime soon the mountainhome request military aid in the form of soldiers or attack orders?
I could see conscription being pretty easy to implement as it can simply be the liaison telling you to "expel" this or that dwarf or some number of able bodied dwarves back to wherever, but that would probably be too annoying if you couldn't refuse.

[PatrikLundell]

We can now request people from our holdings and all, so:
Will we see anytime soon the mountainhome request military aid in the form of soldiers or attack orders?
I could see conscription being pretty easy to implement as it can simply be the liaison telling you to "expel" this or that dwarf or some number of able bodied dwarves back to wherever, but that would probably be too annoying if you couldn't refuse.

Given that civs are currently unable to muster armies, but rather send whatever warm bodies they can round up in the site selected to perform an attack, the logical basis for such a request is currently missing, and doesn't seem to be even in the vicinity of the already horrendously bloated To-Do list before the Big Wait, I'd say there's no chance for it in the near term.
If a soldier request feature was implemented, I'd expect the soldiers' exploits to be visible in Legends Mode, i.e. that they participated in this attack and that one, kills (or getting killed), etc. Another important question is whether the feature would be desirable for players. If you just get a request to sacrifice citizens, I'd expect it to be an annoyance to most players (although it might be another opportunity beyond sending away to get rid of stressed ones). Sending mercs and monster slayers (if you've got any surviving ones), might sting less. However, if there was a reward attached, such as the survivors returning with experience and possibly some useful/interesting items (medals?), it might even things out. This is deep in the Suggestion territory, however.

A request to attack a site could be interesting, but apart from being outside the short term scope, it wouldn't be trivial to implement it in a reasonable way. For such an order/request to be reasonable, the target strength has to somehow be compared to the military might of the player fortress so an attack makes some kind of sense (yes, there are real world leaders without any sense...). This is something that might fit better with a starting scenario where the fortress is some kind of military facility.

[Shonai_Dweller]

We can now request people from our holdings and all, so:
Will we see anytime soon the mountainhome request military aid in the form of soldiers or attack orders?
I could see conscription being pretty easy to implement as it can simply be the liaison telling you to "expel" this or that dwarf or some number of able bodied dwarves back to wherever, but that would probably be too annoying if you couldn't refuse.

Given that civs are currently unable to muster armies, but rather send whatever warm bodies they can round up in the site selected to perform an attack, the logical basis for such a request is currently missing, and doesn't seem to be even in the vicinity of the already horrendously bloated To-Do list before the Big Wait, I'd say there's no chance for it in the near term.
If a soldier request feature was implemented, I'd expect the soldiers' exploits to be visible in Legends Mode, i.e. that they participated in this attack and that one, kills (or getting killed), etc. Another important question is whether the feature would be desirable for players. If you just get a request to sacrifice citizens, I'd expect it to be an annoyance to most players (although it might be another opportunity beyond sending away to get rid of stressed ones). Sending mercs and monster slayers (if you've got any surviving ones), might sting less. However, if there was a reward attached, such as the survivors returning with experience and possibly some useful/interesting items (medals?), it might even things out. This is deep in the Suggestion territory, however.

A request to attack a site could be interesting, but apart from being outside the short term scope, it wouldn't be trivial to implement it in a reasonable way. For such an order/request to be reasonable, the target strength has to somehow be compared to the military might of the player fortress so an attack makes some kind of sense (yes, there are real world leaders without any sense...). This is something that might fit better with a starting scenario where the fortress is some kind of military facility.

1) There's no reward for fulfilling daft noble demands, why would annoying Mountain home requests be any different? Experience would be good, but only when training gets nerfed some. Punishment on the other hand might be interesting.

2) Army Vs army battles is part of the bloated to-do list. That involves sites other than your own raising armies to fight each other. So I'd say "no chance" is pretty harsh. An army development arc post-Steam, if it happens, would very likely include worldgen army raising work. Would be strange if it didn't.

[PatrikLundell]

There's no need to refine the army raising process to achieve army vs army battles, as armies are raised currently, although in a fairly simplistic fashion that will need to be improved eventually. The item on the list is for those armies to engage one another rather than pass right through each other. Anyway, Toady will provide his answer at the end of the month.