Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Author Topic: Sacred/Not-For-Meat Animals  (Read 680 times)

Tachytaenius

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Sacred/Not-For-Meat Animals
« on: November 15, 2022, 11:52:35 am »

It would be cool if entities could have animals they treat as sacred or at least don't use for meat.
For this there'd be entity tokens for randomly picking out a few animals from the civ's available animals, or non-randomly defining specific animals. Like with entity values, it can be random and predefined.
I was thinking of this because don't want dog/cat meat in my civ's caravans lol.
You could also benefit from this if you wanted to, say, make an entity type based on certain parts of India where cows are sacred. Or have foxes be sacred like in Japan. That sort of thing.
And randomly generated rules around animals would just add an extra bit of depth to the game.

Variation on this idea: Would they still be milkable or shearable? Still able to be bought in cages? Would units from the entity get bad thoughts whenever said prohibited things are done? Could it be defined by deities and violating the rules would lead to a curse?

Token ideas:
[DO_NOT_BUTCHER_ANIMAL:DOG]
[DO_NOT_BUTCHER_ANIMAL:COW]
[DO_NOT_MILK_ANIMAL:COW]
[DO_NOT_CAGE_ANIMAL:FOX] Maybe not? Would be a PITA to be fair
[GENERATE_ANIMAL_RULES] Maybe this could work over time with a quota of, say, 1-3 animals as the entity expands and discovers more animals
Logged
"Even if they are natural laws, I cannot allow it!"

SixOfSpades

  • Bay Watcher
  • likes flesh balls for their calming roundness
    • View Profile
Re: Sacred/Not-For-Meat Animals
« Reply #1 on: November 15, 2022, 02:21:39 pm »

Ooo, nice.

Variation on this idea: Would they still be . . . able to be bought in cages?
Bought, yes, as the horror of the beauteous creature being caged would be counterbalanced by the glory of setting it free. What wouldn't be tolerable would be allowing the merchants to leaved with the creature still caged & in their possession--you'd either have to purchase it, or seize it outright, and in either case setting it free to live on your site. Which might not be feasible: It might be a grazer that eats up all of your scare pasture-land so that your other animals must starve, or perhaps you can't guarantee its safety from goblins or Evil weather or whatnot. Unfortunately, once a Tame animal is yours, it's trapped on your site for the rest of its life--AFAIK, there's no way for it to leave the map. (Unless you manage to knock it unconscious over a Cage Trap & ship it back to the Mountainhome, I guess.)

Also to be considered: Possibly being able to shear/butcher a sacred animal that died of natural causes/attack by predators. (You'd still probably only be able to use the meat & products for special ceremonial purposes, though.) Conversely, the question of being able to shear a dead creature, but not a live one.
Another possibility: Having the creature be considered sacred not by an entire civilization, but only by members of the civ that also venerate a specific deity.

Supplemental Suggestion: Give Animal Trainers a way to "un-domesticate" Tame animals, causing them to revert to a semi-wild state. Besides the above scenario of essentially shooing sacred animals off the map, it would be a useful way of making ordinarily docile animals more territorial, so that they'll be more aggressive, and in general put up more of a fight, when other creatures wander onto the map. If I've already got more than enough llamas to supply my food & cloth industries, I should be able to train the extras to at least scare off the occasional flock of keas.
Logged
Dwarf Fortress -- kind of like Minecraft, but for people who hate themselves.

Tachytaenius

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Sacred/Not-For-Meat Animals
« Reply #2 on: November 16, 2022, 11:41:55 am »

Well, if it is implemented, I just hope we will be able to have control over it for custom civs
Logged
"Even if they are natural laws, I cannot allow it!"

A_Curious_Cat

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Sacred/Not-For-Meat Animals
« Reply #3 on: November 16, 2022, 01:12:35 pm »

WWUD if he saw another dwarf eating meat from a sacred animal?
Logged
Really hoping somebody puts this in their signature.

Tachytaenius

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Sacred/Not-For-Meat Animals
« Reply #4 on: November 16, 2022, 03:18:28 pm »

WWUD if he saw another dwarf eating meat from a sacred animal?
Justice system report, or, if it's not that sacred, heavy bad thought.
Logged
"Even if they are natural laws, I cannot allow it!"

A_Curious_Cat

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Sacred/Not-For-Meat Animals
« Reply #5 on: November 17, 2022, 01:14:43 pm »

WWUD if he saw another dwarf eating meat from a sacred animal?
Justice system report, or, if it's not that sacred, heavy bad thought.
What if it’s only “that sacred” to some dwarves (including Urist), but not to the people who decide what’s legal and not legal?
Logged
Really hoping somebody puts this in their signature.

voliol

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
    • Website
Re: Sacred/Not-For-Meat Animals
« Reply #6 on: November 17, 2022, 02:12:00 pm »

+1, though I wonder if it should be tied into the religions rather than the civilizations. As far as I know that's where most diet-related mandates come from... except perhaps the dog/cat eating taboo? Hmm, all in all religious law vs state/entity law is something which could really be developed.

If you have it religion-side you could have monster-cults with sacred animals related to the object of worship. The dragon cult which won't let you eat lizards, or the giant-fire-breathing-bunny-titan cult which keeps rabbits fed by the best of garden greens, etc.

Azerty

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Sacred/Not-For-Meat Animals
« Reply #7 on: November 23, 2022, 06:23:48 pm »

Good idea: it will give more flesh to civilizations.

Motives would be religions (some animals would be holy and consecrated to a given deity and consequently unable to be butchered; OTOH other might be too umpure to be used), culture (a given civilization isn't used to heat some animals because they aren't present in their main biome) or natural conditions (for exemple, some animals might have suffered, in the past, from diseases able to be transmitted to their eaters, creating a taboo against their consumption).
Logged
"Just tell me about the bits with the forest-defending part, the sociopath part is pretty normal dwarf behavior."

Orange-of-Cthulhu

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Sacred/Not-For-Meat Animals
« Reply #8 on: November 30, 2022, 12:28:11 pm »

Great idea!

Maybe add a very depressing thought of "Saw a sacred animal die" or "Saw a dead sacred animal" for dwarves? So that you kinda have to take care of them.

That way you've set it up so that the fort can be infested with large numbers of sacred animals, and the player has to be creative to deal with them with limited options.

Also, sacred animals should be buried in a proper coffin.
Logged