Civilizations are fairly static throughout their history; they will always have the same ethics, laws, and positions that they had at the start of world generation. Even if one dwarf monarch is personally different from the next, dwarf civilizations always have a monarch. Much of the conflict consists of conflicts between civilizations, but what if civilizations themselves could change over time? This would add more dynamism to world generation, and there are many forms it could take:
- Goblins rebelling against their cruel masters and starting a civil war, with the rebels having new ethics and laws
- Competing dwarf claims to the throne resulting in a war of succession
- An elf civ coming to value war and martial prowess after years of disputes with hostile neighbors
- A civ along a busy trade route realizing the importance of commerce
- After deposing a particularly inept human law-giver, the position becomes elected by a council of lords
- A human civ creating the druid position and coming to value nature after decades of intermingling populations and peaceful coexistence with a nearby elf civilization
- Following years of flagrant corruption and mismanagement, a dwarf civ topples the monarchy and proclaims a republic
- A human civ splitting in two after a religious schism, with one of the new civs headed by a religious figure
I realize these changes would be years away, but it's fun to think about. What ideas do you have?
I like this. A lot of games have dynamic government structures and culture, like Civilization and Crusader Kings.
I guess for the values cultures would be like there's a bunch of variables like production-commerce, peace-war, defense-offense etc and then maybe cultures could get changed their values of the variables according to events?
For governments I think both there should be variations within government types. Say the monarch-and-nobles type of system must have a monarch, but it's optional if it's got barons, dukes, counts etc.
I'd love there to be different inheritance systems like in Crusader Kings. That game has cultures where the monarch oldest kid gets the entire kingdoms, but also cultures where each kid gets a slice of the kingsom, resulting in heavy franctioning. It's also possible in that game for "civs" to merge due to marriages. I'd find it so cool if DF had that - then your status could change wildly if your monarch felt like marrying a higher-ranking monarch so that your fort become part of a new civ. And vice versa, you could go from a small civ to rule an empire of the oppposite thing happened.