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Author Topic: Map Rework, Beliefs, racism and castes  (Read 485 times)

Bottle

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Map Rework, Beliefs, racism and castes
« on: July 21, 2023, 01:59:00 pm »

Hey all,

I was going to post to FotF but understand these are more suggestions. I'd love to hear peoples thoughts.

MAP REWORK
I'd love new features to be added during world generation, particularly:
1. I was curious if we could get more control during map generation? Preferably, after the world is created, you could have the option of manually placing the starting location of civilisations. Maybe you could place evil/good zones too, maybe placing megabeasts could be an option.

2. At the point were you place the civilisations, maybe you could have the option of editing some of the civilisation information, for example you could increase the VALUE:MARTIAL_PROWESS of the dwarf civilisation you placed in the chokehold of a valley defending some modded hobbits (with goblins on the otherside of the mountain range).

3. Maybe a brush tool to edit the physical features of the map (pre civ placement)?

I'd love the ability to somewhat direct the narrative of world history/recreate an imagining of middle earth or Forgotten Realms etc

BELIEFS
Currently beliefs belong to civilisations with some variation in their members.
4. I feel like this is a little static. Could each group (government/religion/guild etc) also have variations derived from the civilisation too? Creature's beliefs would then be some kind of weighted average of the beliefs of all the groups they belong to? The modifications of the belief deviations could be themed to the religion/guild too.
Squads could have beliefs based from the average of all the creatures in the squad too (all groups could also be a little dynamic and change as their membership changes).

5. I'd love a list on all the interactions/consequences of Beliefs and Personality (i know some are on the wiki , e.g. social interactions but i understand theres more). I feel like more could be added and id love them to be more impactful.


RACISM
6. Are their plans to allow civilisations to become xenophobic/xenophilic? A general dislike to an intelligent creature type, or maybe a random creature. Maybe a discovered like/dislike after a war during world generation.
Ideally the target could be either a Civ or a creature type (i know these are very different)
After being terrorised by Giant peach-faced lovebirds I want my dwarves to dislike them as much as i do, lol. This could be a type of belief?

7. A new type of member of a civilisation which is a lower class and/or slave. Im not totally sure how this would work but it seems weird when a site gets taken over by a goblin civ, the goblins treat the new dwarves that joined their civilisation as equals (although its cool that a dwarf can rise in rank and rule that civ)

CASTES
8. Regarding CASTES, would it be possible to add this to a creatures "DNA"?
So that the modded "snow elf" and "forest elf" cant have a "rock elf" baby,
but a "rock elf" and a "rock elf" will have a "rock elf" baby (or maybe there could be an independent moddable chance of the pop ratio is used from the CASTES (you'd need this for ant like creatures and, if desired, adding a small chance of "mutation" for other creatures)). Maybe this is possible to mod in already, Putnam i imagine might know? but im not sure.


Happy to hear other peoples thoughts =)

And let me know if anyone knows how to solve the CASTE issue.
« Last Edit: July 21, 2023, 02:26:53 pm by Bottle »
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Eric Blank

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Re: Map Rework, Beliefs, racism and castes
« Reply #1 on: July 21, 2023, 05:26:41 pm »

A lot of this was phrased like questions, so I figured I'd answer those questions to the best of my ability too.

More interactive worldgen maps and civs sounds cool, I would definitely like that. But man, is that going to be a long way off. We had a little map editing power built into the pre-steam version, like to set elevations, rain and drainage, savagery and even good/evil ranges IIRC. I never messed with it because I didn't like that it totally overwrote the random generation of all of those features, and the Perfect World utility does it so much easier with an actual HTML GUI and the ability to modify a map generated from randomly drawn heat maps. We might get that back at some point, and if we do, then we might get some new features. I imagine it got cut because it required extra GUI work.

The Perfect World utility hasn't been updated in years, but was still mostly-functional for the last pre-steam release version. Maybe someone will work on updating it/making a new one?

Personal beliefs come from religions and persuasive books written in world gen right now, as well as a bit of random variable manipulation on creature creation, so it isn't totally static. But local governments dont vary right now, it just depends on the personalities and beliefs of local leaders. It would be cool if they did have one or two values that differ from the civ, added by the founding members of the site government
Community members will have to work on writing up wiki documentation.

Racism isn't something the Adams brothers wanted to simulate too much. We're not going to see genocides but little disagreements and distrusts may be. Cultural biases towards members of foreign nations, depending on the relationships and histories between the nations, regardless of species of the individuals is something that's actually likely to get implemented. There's already religious purges and wars in worldgen history, too.

Slavery and classism might get further developed, but again, the Adams brothers dont really want to simulate all the horrors that real-world people visit upon each other. Things like poverty and homelessness and slavery in the abstract/statistical sense wouldnt be too graphic, and would lead to narratives like popular/slave revolts. We already have rulers "passing oppressive laws" to suppress rumors of their immortality. But I wouldn't get your hopes up on seeing during-play police/army brutality and slaves being beaten/tortured. Entire slave classes/social castes/races with heritability to children also isn't something we're likely to ever get. Indentured servitude or prison labor for criminals/debtors/prisoners of war are possible, and currently prisoners of war are the only prisoners you can encounter in adventure mode. But currently civs can allow slavery ethically, human civs do, but its not implemented in any way. Goblins kidnap children and see slavery as a "personal matter" but don't actually enslave anyone either, ignoring the part where the entire civ are kinda slaves to the demon lord/master. But even they could get murdered (which goblins do a lot of), and someone else (not necessarily their murderer) ends up being the new master.

The caste issue isnt solvable right now, no. Its been suggested to solve it in the past, by having almost all the kids be one of the parents' castes, and a much smaller than pop-ratio chance of one of the other castes being born instead.
« Last Edit: July 21, 2023, 05:30:07 pm by Eric Blank »
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I make Spellcrafts!
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Bottle

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Re: Map Rework, Beliefs, racism and castes
« Reply #2 on: July 21, 2023, 06:55:00 pm »

Perfect world still works! I use the one from the 0.47 newb pack.

It's great, I've used it to create a lot of worlds. However, I believe the world you design is pre erosion (not the biggest deal). And you have no direct control on civ placement, rivers, minerals, good/evil regions, a few other things. It's pretty limited (but much more control then only parameters). Very annoyingly the new post generation map inspection is a lot worse than pre steam release too and you have to save the world to inspect it, QQ). But generally I'm a huge fan of perfect world (I think it's my frustration of these limitations that inspired me to ask for these things).

I initially thought the map rework meant a world generation rework. But Putnam corrected me and I imagine you're right and this may be a long way off. They will be looking into world generation for the myth and magic rework, so we can hope!

Racism was a poor choice of word.
I guess I'm imagining the relationship between the elves and dwarfs in middle earth. The distrust that the drow have of outsiders in d&d. Orcs from most fantasy settings and their treatment of outsiders / any creature they perceive as weaker.

Thanks for your thoughts and info on the slavery/ classism. I wouldn't want anything brutal here either. More depth and mechanics would be awesome though.
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Eric Blank

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Re: Map Rework, Beliefs, racism and castes
« Reply #3 on: July 21, 2023, 07:04:38 pm »

Good to know it PW still works. And yeah, the things it can't do are things the game doesn't support yet, and it is true that its output is pre-erosion and pre-river/lake placement, because those come after height, rainfall and drainage generation, and require the game to actually process them and decide where to place river starts.

Some simple worldgen control capabilities might show up with the map rework anyway, you never know.
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I make Spellcrafts!
I have no idea where anything is. I have no idea what anything does. This is not merely a madhouse designed by a madman, but a madhouse designed by many madmen, each with an intense hatred for the previous madman's unique flavour of madness.