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[Sapidus3]

So I recently built a fortress on an island away from all civilizations. Its been built up to a grand splendor, large population, and great wealth. And its grown increasingly boring now that I have fresh pumping through the whole thing and everyone isn't dying of dehydration and I have killed off the last of the magma men.

I was thinking about the 2D version of DF. One of the nice things about it was that you could start off in a peacefull area, establish a fortress, and once you were ready for more could then dig deeper. You could essentially increase, or open up new, challenges as you play.

I don't like making the game arbitrarily more difficult by not using some resource for no reason or not bringing things with me. I also don't like building a sinister glacial fortress just to make the game harder. Granted such a thing can be alot of fun. But I figure if a Dwarven Civ is going to send out an expedition and they have two locations. One in a fertile peaceful valley, and the other in a barren chasm filled with undead carp, they would likely select the first location.

What I would like to see is the ability to start your fortress off easy, and then allow in greater challenges. Granted the game does this in some ways already like triggering sieges and other creatures based on wealth and size. Other aspects about managing your infrastructure also simply become more difficult with scale. However the current system is not reliable and feels like it leaves room for improvement. In the old DF when you struck the chasm the game would suddenly shift.

Now I don't know what exactly the answer's are. Because the game is more dynamic you no longer have those set map features. Perhaps the Army Arc will help alleviate that problem. I do however have some suggestions. Some of them involve simply adding more things for the game to throw at us. Others sort of give back some of the control of the difficulty to the player. (I WOULD not want a siege button or a demon button or something like that. I hate the disaster button in SimCity).

-Tribute. (I've seen this mentioned/alluded to in the dev log). The dwarven liason brings you mandates. He/she tells you that your civ wants 10 iron weapons at the next caravan, they take them away. If you fail to meet the mandates repeatedly, soldiers will be dispatched to forcefully grasp control of your fortress.

-Challenges. Similar to tribute. Perhaps a nearby human village has lost its food stores. You could commit to offering them aid. A caravan would then come to your fort. If you gave it the food you said you would you improve your relationship with that civ. Perhaps a dwarven philosopher has complained at the lack of dwarven knowledge. You accept the task of building a library worth at least 50k. (I know we can't build libraries). Maybe completing it brings you more migrants. These challenges would be completely optional, and sometimes may offer no reward at all, other than maybe some mention in adventure mode of the task. However, they would allow the player to voluntarily increase the difficulty without arbitrarily saying, I am going to set all my food on fire and try to keep everyone alive.

-Natural Disasters. Earthquakes, flash floods (I would love that), tornadoes, lightning.  Could also include droughts which could cause famines if you weren't prepared. I'm not sure if I would want the game scaling the appearance of these based on your fortress advancement or not.

-Demon worship. Perhaps as your fortress grows you may get a small number of dwarfs that worship some long sealed away being of horrible power. Maybe they want to perform a ritual to free it (and maybe bring its attention on your fortress accidentally). I do like the idea of cults having a "party" in which they grab a random non cult dwarf to use as a sacrifice.

-Crime. Not a new idea, but crime other than breaking mandates (theft, shurking of duties, murder) would help add more new challenges as your fortress grows.

-Blasphemy. You could build statues that blasphemy the gods of other civs. They could give your dwarfs good thoughts, but would attract violent attention from the targeted civs. Also, hopefully once the army arc is done we will be able to send envoys to taunt the elves.

-Decreasingly appreciated rooms. What should stand as a good dinning hall for a small fortress should be a pathetic for a huge fortress. As your fortress grows, what is expected from your dwarfs should increase. Maybe your dwarfs are willing to put up not having proper rooms when there are just a handful of them and they are struggling to eat, but once your fortress is worth over a million maybe they are going to start wondering how come they are sleeping on the floor when everything is covered in gold.

-Bandits. Just because we are not at war doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to be attacked. The humans civ may really like your fortress. But maybe there is a group of human bandits, and every now and then they attack. They would sort of work like the baby snatchers. Only not race specific (could even be dwarfs) and they wouldn't go after babies (unless they are elves, then they might want a snack). They would also likely be fairly violent. bandits could also be a nice thing to fill in the time between. 7 Dwarfs and then sieges.

These are all the ideas I have on this matter. I know some of these have been discussed, and some may naturally come along as the army arc is worked on. However, I felt it important to mention the user controlled aspect of the older versions difficulty, which while still exists somewhat, can be improved on.

I also, most importantly, want to hear other peoples thoughts.

[Jamuk]

Unless the code has been restructured to make hardcoded events more difficult to put in place, some of these suggestions (like bandits) could be implemented in a few days, and would make gameplay much more exciting in the short run.  Later on when the game is more fleshed out these placeholders could be removed.  However, in a sense this would be moving away from the eventual goal of DF to have everything a part of the simulation, and I would understand if Toady was hesitant about it.

[Sapidus3]

Well, ultimately they could be integrated into the simulation. For example I imagine bandits would exist. They would also be attracted to fortress with some wealth, but not enough military force to fight back real well.

To incorporate everything into the simulation you would want to change the model used to scale these events. As a place holder you can abstract that sieges happen to you more often when you have more wealth. But later it would likely be that as you have more wealth it makes your fortress more tempting to your enemies, and that balanced with other things wold determin if an army was sent your way.

Certain things however, you woudn't want to scale at all to fit in. Natural disasters for example, would ignore your fortress wealth and population. If you had a flash flood would be determined only by the weather patterns (Man I still love the idea of needing to dig drainage ditches to carry away unexpected flood water from the rain).

[Cthulhu]

I love the idea of cults, and natural disasters, but I can see tornadoes becoming an FPS nightmare, with all the items being hurled around.

maybe they are going to start wondering how come they are sleeping on the floor when everything is covered in gold.

If I had a dollar for every dwarf whose feelings I didn't care about, I'd have seven dollars, with more coming in the fall.

[Othob Rithol]

OT Cthulhu you really need to add that $7 one liner to your sig...classic.

[codezero]

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/merit
only one r in merit
heh.. j/k

I just thought of a solution that might already be in the works. Suppose with this  caravan arc being implemented and every item gets tracked, you could hopefully set the population to be higher than the world can physically support. Then there would be invasions, starvation, more meaningful trade (who wants a rock toy for their starving children?). Not just food though, even resources like metal might be fought over.

[Impaler[WrG]]

I particularly like the idea of having the 'Parent' Fortress expecting goods to be sent to them.  Your running a colony thats intended to do two things for the parent Fort, relive population pressure (hens the immigrants) and provide raw materials and food.

[Idiom]

Blasphemy! Build a statue of the goblin's gods and designate them to be pissed on.
I like the idea.

[Zombie]

I would like the idea of magma men and fire imps just being... you know... made of magma.

If you're parked in an embark site with a magma vent, you should have to constantly fend off magma men and fire imps and fire snakes. The horde should not end. There should be no "last" magma man or "last" fire imp. More should just crop up to burn your trees.

[MaxVance]

I particularly like the idea of having the 'Parent' Fortress expecting goods to be sent to them.  Your running a colony thats intended to do two things for the parent Fort, relive population pressure (hens the immigrants) and provide raw materials and food.

Likewise, this would make getting the king at your fortress significantly more awesome.

[Sapidus3]

Similarly, when you get the king, suddenly it could be YOUR fortress receiving goods from other fortresses. Maybe you would also then be in charge of outfitting teams to go set up other fortresses, and dwarfs may leave your fortress for greener pastures if there is over crowding.

I agree about the magma men respawning. The magma vent becomes less exciting once they are gone. I love the fireballs shot out by the imps. I think they are a great example of how well these graphics can work and also can have humorous effects.

I also wonder if occasional magma vents could "blurp." It wouldn't be an eruption but it could be a sort of natural disaster that could spice things up. To work around the whole, magma doesn't have pressure thing, magma could just be spawned ontop of any lava that does not have anything on top of it. It would then flow outward.

[Jamuk]

I think toady just needs to implement more random events like in the 2D version.  The old features like always present HFS when you dig too deep aren't present anymore.  There need to be enough features to challenge people later in the game, not just at the beginning.

[Zombie]

To that end, I direct you here: http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=21813.60

It started out as a rather interesting argument, but seems to have progressed into an even more interesting discussion about how to improve and keep DF interesting after you've established a good fortress.

[LumenPlacidum]

I like the tribute to the nation idea.  I think it would be silly to ask an outpost to be profitable in the beginning, so I think tying this idea to the nobility is a good thing.

Basically, normal dwarves get punished when nobles don't receive what they mandate.  Nobles get punished when they fail to make the fortress produce what the king mandates.

The difficulty of the task should depend on the level of noble you have.  Perhaps a baron means that you need to send off a single pair of outfitted soldiers.  If you have a count, then maybe it's 4 outfitted soldiers.  If you have a duke, then maybe you're sending off champion-level warriors every year to serve the king.

As you increase your noble level, you'd also receive more and more skilled immigrants, as they are being sent by lesser lords.  The king, of course, would not have to supply anything to anyone, but would receive all these soldiers and experts.  This seems like an excellent way to fuel the army arc's actions once you gain control over the armies of your country on account of being the mountainhome.

Edit: Oh, and the soldiers you send would come back, eventually, if they complete their term of service alive.

[Sapidus3]

As you increase your noble level, you'd also receive more and more skilled immigrants, as they are being sent by lesser lords.

That alone could make nobles worth it. Initially your fortress may just receive unskilled immigrants that are down on their luck and moving to your fortress for hope of a better start. Later the dwarfs would start being more competent. Imagine receiving a legendary craftsdwarf for the purpose of decorating your Kings throne with bone.

Edit: Oh, and the soldiers you send would come back, eventually, if they complete their term of service alive.

You would want some sort of report. A list of the noble dwarfs that died while in service of their people. Maybe their bodies could even be sent back. Your surviving dwarfs may bring back scars and injuries, or perhaps, a portion of the riches that they helped liberate.