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[Rawl]

Okay, here goes, lets brainstorm ideas that could up the difficulty:

  Large and long lasted forts are some of the "easiest" to maintain, plenty of well trained soldiers and traps to repel invaders of any sort. So how about traps that degrade overtime, kinda like a "SURPISE!! I don't work anymore but decided not to tell you until the dragon got in."
  Maybe even have your fort go through an internal civil war, do to religions in the fort or peasant vs noble, Perhaps even letting the Player decide which side to join. This could spell doom if your in the middle of a huge siege.
  Perhaps having something in the init. files that you could crank up likeliness of aggressions between you and the other civs (I know by the end of the Army Arc we'll probably be able to piss the other civs off but hey, Brainstormin time)
  If you don't have the king at your fort maybe he could do things like DEMAND tribute and if you don't pay he'll send some "collectors" to get his tribute which could turn your fort against it's own civ.
   Other civs actually moving in to settle on your map. Not necessarily Hostile, but they just wanted a knew place to live. This could turn into a competition for map recourses.
   More types of HFS. Maybe building your fort in a Elven retreat wasn't a good idea, after killing the elves and chopping down the trees the trees decide to get even: when new ones mature they turn into Treents (or however this game refers to them) and begin attacking the dwarves. Similar things could happen on other types of maps. Living in a mountainous area? Digging up a lot of the Mountain? HELLO GOLEMS!!
  Okay guys thats all I got for now lets hear some of yours.

[Jamuk]

Actually Rawl, I think you have the right idea there.  The beginning of the game is perfect in that initial difficulty is determined by where you start.  However, in late game we need things like you suggested that happen later on in the game that cause the situation to change and force you to adapt.  Most of the old features that caused difficulty later in the game, like river raids and always present hfs aren't there anymore, until new features are added to replace them, it won't be as difficult.

[sphr]

personally, I don't see DF so much as a "game" than a "toy".  A game is goal focused.... A toy, well, it's up to each person to set its own goals and play towards that end.  DF is complex enough and offers so much possibilities that it can satisfy this role.

E.g.? read up on all the strange interesting building projects people post, or the many succession games where extra rules involved are not program-enforced but rather human-enforced (I still rem something like a stranded-on-a-deserted-island scenario where trading is forbidden? and last Christmas there was this santa's workshop game where the fort aim to accumulate a number of toys and don't export any. Building projects can aim from great dams to tower/pyramid/giant statue. Some smaller ones like designing new "noble-erasing" contraptions, or new fortress defence ideas.  etc etc etc)

Compared with this, all the production/invasion/dwarf management are but "side troubles".  the existence of them just add some spice.

Also, it's because of the "toy" nature that DF is so replayable.  People restart after fortress failed.  But they could also restart to try out a different map which may create a very different play experience (lack of trees/water/animal. Zombie elephants/carp/giant eagles....)  And this "toy" nature could be the truth behind the phrase "losing is fun".

As such, I don't see how "winning" being chilled out happening to me.  What is more important is keeping the meatbag "component" between the seat and the keyboard from being chilled out(in ideas)

[Zombie]

I love those ideas. I also agree that we have a solid beginning. We need, however, more internal and external possibilities that really are superfluous in the beginning, but become more important later on.

Like Sapidus was saying, when you're up to 43 dwarves and 20 of them have beds... Why on The Continent of Drunken Leaping don't we see dwarves simply refusing to work? Dwarven protests? After the economy starts, I know we have coins... But what are they for? What about more nobles? Shops? Right now as it's an alpha, we have a great chance to brainstorm about what the economy really should consist of and what consequences a player could suffer for not complying.

I really hate to see my dwarves get beaten or carted off to luxury prison (really, prison's like a vacation) just because some brain-damaged Urist McButtplug doesn't realize we don't have rose gold, let alone normal gold to MAKE rose gold with, anywhere to forge him a damn throne out of it. Right now, you realize, that is the economy.

After the economy starts, dwarves should want to get paid for their work... Which means you'll need to mint coin. They could buy trinkets with coin and whatnot and, of course, food and drink. No coin? No sustenance! Unhappy dwarves result. They then decide to simply steal from the stores. Now my Captain of the Guard is VERY happy as she finally gets to detain TRUE wrongdoers and not just the poor sap my braindead nobles decide to point at.

In the beginning, every dwarf may be content with a barracks to sleep in... But after 20 or 30, it'd start to get cramped. Why wouldn't they want individual rooms? With a cabinet and a coffer to store their things? Whatever happened to rent? Right now it just seems to calculate how "good" a room is for your nobles to fight over who gets the masterwork chests and cabinets. Having higher rent and having a tax or rent collecting noble (treasurer!) to collect and evict those that default would lead to players needing to decide how to better structure their quarters. Low rent wouldn't be "make and then obsolete" anymore. Poorer dwarves would need it.

Haulers and craftdwarves should be paid for their time from the fortress coffers. If we ever can shut off noble migrants and just pretend we're starting our own brand new dwarven civilization, this might be the mayor or regent's coffers. Value should be separated into material value and quality value. Within a fortress a dwarf might be able to buy a high overall value item for just a little over the material value, but traders need to pay full price. This would be so your legendary cooks don't overcharge for their masterwork prepared foodstuffs.

If you have a brook and "widen" it to a river (IE destroy the brook tiles via channel) then you should be able to see boat traders. Maybe vikings (or applicable boat-riding loot-and-pillage raiders) could ravage your settlement. We could have trip-levers or somesuch to retract bridges to allow the boat traders in or whatnot.

Migrant animals! My maps are being hunted bare which highly impacts late game. I also think magma creatures should "flow" into the map the same exact way magma does... From the bottom of a vent. They shouldn't run out ever. Tapping and exploiting a magma vent is far too easy, even with temperature on. There should always be a constant threat of incursions by at LEAST lower tier magma creatures (imps and magma men) every once in a while. Migrant monsters too! I have sieges off and, even though I'm really not too much into the military aspect of DF as I just like carving out a nice place to live... I think goblins (thieves and child snatchers and lower tier attackers) should just pop in once in a while. They should pop in with no intent whatsoever... If you're adequately hidden they just meander on their way. If you aren't, you find yourself dealing with a little annoyance. If they escape, expect a siege (if you have them on) or two.

I also like the idea of nature-based monsters. Although not originating from the map, just arriving to investigate the cries of the wild. Lower-tier at first, of course. Gaia Pups, Golem Minora, and Neophyte Treents oh my! If you let them escape, you should expect a nature-based siege (again, if you have them on) from the Gaia Wolves, Golem Majora, and Grown Treents! Maybe an elder will show up to smack you around.

As you can see, all of these are fairly intuitive additions and, in the case of the roving monsters and animals, they are easily scalable to how bad you want it... If you don't want the bad sieges, turn them off. Related to my "Migrant Toggle" thread, perhaps we can see a few more toggles... Like so:

Migrants - on/off
Self-explanatory. Likely would fix popcap problems and allow popcap to actually define overall population maximum, not migrant maximum.

Noble migrants - on/off
If they don't come, you assign them. Independent from migrant toggle.

Caravans - on/off
Self-explanatory

Raiders - on/off
Don't want goblin raids (not sieges!)? Turn them off!

Sieges - light/medium/heavy
More differentiated siege toggle allows to set the upper level of siege difficulty.

Economy - simple/normal/complex
Differentiated toggle allowing players to choose their economy settings. Simple would function much like now, except with stores simply handing out food and things. No purchase, largely communistic. Normal incorporates coin and a flat rate for all products bought in fortress. Complex incorporates material value, requiring differentiated products to be made.

Lifespan - short/normal/long/inf
Obviously a toggle to modify how long critters live before they die. Short could be something like .5 multiplier, normal would be 1, obviously, and long would be 1.5... Inf would be, obviously, aging yet immortal (unless eaten by that dragon, stabbed by a goblin, burnt to death by a fire imp... Ahh, you get the idea) dwarves.

This is only the beginning of the plethora of enhancement ideas I have had brewing for DF. Although posting them has largely gotten them ignored... Oh well. ;P

[Rawl]

Got one that people have talked about: Changing your regions alignment. You know the whole you act evil or decorate things with the bodies of the merchants then the area tuns sinister and such, well how about taking that a step further.
Cutting down a lot of trees in a forest could reduce it to a shrub land, tearing down a mountain might effect rain, like wise building an enormous dwarven stone mountain might make the one side get more rain than the other. Building a dam and flooding might cause the map to turn into a swamp. Etc, etc, etc.
These things in turn would change the wildlife you get. And possibly interest other things to move in as well. Incredibly high towers? Hello Giant Eagles and Harpies! Make a swamp and wave hello to the Slugmen.
Overall though I would enjoy seeing more event-type actions aside from the siege/trader stuff, more like the stories I hear about the old DF where there were Necromancers/wizards and Chasm Civs and the like.

[Sapidus3]

personally, I don't see DF so much as a "game" than a "toy".  A game is goal focused.... A toy, well, it's up to each person to set its own goals and play towards that end.  DF is complex enough and offers so much possibilities that it can satisfy this role.

DF isn't the first game like this and it won't be the last. There is a term called software toy that I think I have seen applied to games like DF. Toys can have goals, or at the very least suggested goals. DF also has a "loss condition" of everything dying. That aspect is thoroughly game.

I like Rawl's suggestion. Once of the current dev goals seem to be to allow the player to have more impact on the world as a whole and it seems like that could definitely play into it. Create a dam and suddenly you have turned that grassland biom into a swamp biom. Not sure if the engine would really be able to deal with redirected rivers like that but... Similarly if we dump a lot of garbage into the river, maybe the human village down stream will start getting angry.

One thing that I am curious about is what kind of init options Toady plans to leave us in the future. For example, once siege armies are generated from the world map, will the option to turn off sieges remain? Just wondering if anyone has seen anything about this.

I think Zombie's idea of having nobles make rational mandates that are possible to fulfill might be asking a bit much. If they were smart enough to do that, how would they have become royalty in the first place .   

Having things "just passing through" you map could definitely be interesting. If you are located between two cities, perhaps travelers and merchants going between the two would pass through. In your mayoral screen you could choose whether you fort "welcomes visitors." If you did these passing travelers may stop for a meal and rest in a warm bed. Perhaps they would then attend a grand dwarven party and when they leave take word of your hospitality with them. While it wouldn't necessarly make things harder (though you would have a larger drain on your food) this could definitely keep things interesting. Of course maybe its a pack of wolves passing through, or a handful of goblins who's tower has been destroyed and they are on their way to a site for a new home.

Some of those things would require a more fully realized world. But something like wandering animals I imagine could be done fairly easily. Of course the animals that start off on your map should be able to wander off. I do think you should be able to over hunt though. The game shouldn't just keep throwing you animals. I imagine at some point we will be able to send hunting parties off of the map.

[Langdon]

From what I see, a lot of the "too easy" factors in the 3d version come from bugs/unimplemented features, not from game design. If you look at some of the differences between the 2d and 3d versions:

- chasm civs : the 2d version chasm produced almost infinite enemies, including trolls that bash down doors, and gremlins that pull levers. The only way to permanently stop them was to flood the chasm with magma (and even then you get big waves of attackers clawing their way out of the burning chasm). Throwing trash or piping water into the chasm increased the frequency and size of the attacks. In most forts I had two sets of fortifications, one facing outward to protect against goblins, a second set inwards to protect against the chasm creatures.

On the other hand, in the 3d version, once you clean out the current occupants, there are no more chasm creatures.

- magma creatures: similarly, in the 2d version the magma river periodically spawned imps or other fire creatures, which would put your smiths in danger if your forges were not properly protected (fortifications in your magma tunnels, etc).

In the 3d version, you clean out the pipe once, and that is that - your forges are safe from that point on.

- river creatures: these also respawned infinitely, and also sometimes popped out of any wells you built (no matter how far from the river).

- wildlife: Boatmurdered had attacking hordes of elephants, as the wildlife kept respawning (in large numbers, not the handful of creatures in the current 3d version). Zombies/skeletons in undead areas were also on infinite respawn.

- river flooding: the underground river would periodically flood every spring, which claimed the lives of numerous dwarves (especially those who would fall asleep on the bridges). Imagine how difficult it would be if your river canyon in the 3d version would fill to 7/7 water one or two z-levels up when spring came around.

- farming and irrigation: you had to muddy your farms every spring, as the plots dried out every winter. Also, no crops grew during winter (and no above-ground crops), so you had to make sure your fall harvest filled your stockpile enough to make it to spring. Starting out, you would lose lots of forts to mistakes in setting up your irrigation system, or to simple starvation because you were unable to get your irrigation up and running before winter hit. "Winter has come" was a very real warning, especially during that first winter.

Every spring you had to remember to pull the irrigation levers (getting all dwarves and pets out of the farm room first, of course) and I seem to remember crop yields not as high as the 3d version, which meant you had to build quite a large farm area to feed 100+ dwarves.

In the 3d version? set up your plots once, assign a couple of farmers, and the plants keep popping out forever. Now all I have to remember is to make enough barrels and assign enough food stockpiles to keep from wasting food, but farms are mostly self-sustaining.

- military skills: I don't remember having ultra-legendary dwarves back then - my memory may be faulty, but I believe my champions died to having their throats torn out by batmen with depressing regularity. I seem to recall training via sparring was very slow (years to train up, and more sparring accidents than now, due to less effective shields). I was more reliant on traps back then, due to the fact that my military wasn't that effective. Marksdwarves were always deadly, of course.

Now you have single champions taking out entire sieges, and recruits reaching Champion in less than two game years. Note that Boatmurdered never had any notable military heroes, unlike Nist Akath.

For lot of these features, I believe Toady will reimplement or re-adjust them in later versions. (respawning chasm and magma creatures, wildlife)

 Tweaking farming, for example, to increase the crop failure for novice farmers and reducing crop yields will go a long way to increasing the difficulty level (and in fact you can do some of this now by editing the raws) and return the dangers of starvation and overpopulation.

[Sergius]

All dwarves are ecstatic from the slightest good thought. Sieges are dealt with by 3 wrestlers. And a novice stonecrafter can produce enough to buy everything the caravans have to offer. This game is no NetHack.

That's a paragraph.

I wouldn't mind having to start again once in a while other than from the always fatal FPS invasion.

That's a paragraph too.

Torak I don't see why you're pointing to the paragraph link, judging by the =/= (which I don't fucking understand btw) you aren't a stickler for proper english constructions, so I figure you aren't being pedantic about my use of the word paragraph to describe the 2nd part of my post.

Another paragraph...

If you are being a pedant, which you obviously are you fucking contradictory cunt, you obviously didn't even read the shit you just linked to. A quote from said page:

Not sure if that's a paragraph. The double dot thingy throws me off a bit.

You'd also be better off quoting Websters or Oxford too if you're inclined toward proper english.

Yup, paragraph again.

If it's some other triviality you're referring to I suggest you get out more and see how people actually talk to each other. We don't fucking spew non-partisan essay links at each other.

Oh boy, more of them pesky paragraphs...

I won't comment on your writing style or the constructiveness of your posts, but at least nobody can seriously claim that you don't know how to write paragraphs.

And honestly... INDENTATION? WTF... That's what the style sheet is about. What's next? Margin widths? Proper line spacing?

[Footkerchief]

^^^ What is wrong with you, just drop it.  You're arguing about a poorly defined language construct.

[Sergius]

^^^ What is wrong with you, just drop it.  You're arguing about a poorly defined language construct.

You accidentally put some arrow sign thingies on your paragraph.

[Rawl]

I don't know if Toady made any nods in this sort of direction (haven't read the dev list in a while), but here goes:

So once the Army Arc is completed, it is supposed to handle over land armies, where they siege, and death tolls right? What about the survivors of these battles for other civs?
It could be interesting if these civs would seek sanctuary at your fort. Would you let them? Integrate them if you allow them to? Possibly even trying to set up a New Town over your site if they were freindly humans? You know forming a defense pack; they take the brunt of the attack force in case you get sieged, but they would demand weapons and armor and possibly a place for their non-military to fall back to. It would be nice to see things going about their own business on the map, making their own shops and farms and houses and such. If that seems to taxing on the system however, just have them set up in a near by area and have (more or less) the option to contact and possibly trade together. They could act as reserves for your army, scouts to help you find an enemy hideaway and such.

[Sapidus3]

Lets not return to the paragraph discussion.

I wonder if now that you can  have a city with a mixed population, a goblin city with a human mayor for example, if it will possible that your king finally arrives, you discover that he is an elf. Think of all the humorous situations that could result.

Speaking of nobles there probably needs to be more of a punishment if nobles are killed. People get around the difficulty of fufilling mandates by just killing their nobles. It should reflect poorly on your fort if your baron dies on non-natural causes. Similarly if the king is thrown into the lava, that should cause a stir amongst dwarf society. Maybe even cause a succession war.

In regards to Langdon's comments. That would all definitely go along way towards making the game harder. However, not all sites have lava or chasms anymore so they shouldn't be relied on to increase difficulty. I'm 75% sure I have seen it mentioned somewhere that you will eventually need to re-irrigate. Though I do not know how top soil is going to be handled.

I had completely forgotten about all the deaths due to river flooding. I always lost my fisherdwarves that way.  I loved that . However, once again that's (the river) a specific map feature and is not guaranteed to be around. Not saying the ideas aren't good. I definitely think adding more to these already cool map features is worthwhile, but I think its a good idea to also work on map independent ideas.

The farming comment and river flooding remind that DF use to be a much more seasonal game. I know weather varies from region to region, but in 90% of my games the weather is static enough that I don't notice any difference from season to season. It could just be a coincidence, or a quirk of the worlds I generated, but if its not just me, the seasons need to be tweaked. Its been awhile since I had that thrill of getting dug in for the winter.

But what other seasonal things could be added? What about dwarven holidays? Maybe they have one a year. A big party that they throw at the end of winter traditionally. Migratory behavior can also be seasonal. For example, if your fortress is warm in the winter, maybe birds and other creatures come to your fortress from wherever they normally live to hang out during the winter. I think some seasonal based variance would keep players from zoning out. I know sometimes I end up in a state like highway hypnosis, but only with DF.

In regards to Rawl's comment, I imagine having them build a town at your site would be problematic. However, they might come to your site, and ask for help to set up a town nearby as you suggested. Of course if you decide to kill them all you would need to make sure none of them escaped to tell the rest of the world.

I had an idea regarding crafting. A way possibly to make production harder without just nerfing it. First add in another level of quality. A poor quality. I recognize that regular quality is often treated as poor quality, but it IS actually supposed to be just regular quality. This would mean when you start training a new crafts dwarf you will end up with alot of worthless garbage before they become very skilled. Poor quality items would probably have one tenth the price of regular quality items. The second thing that could be done is to add more items to the crafters workshop. Some examples could be: intricate rock pocket statue,  rock tools, rock art. These craft items would require a much higher skill to produce well, and would take longer to make as well. These would however have a higher value. The value of the standard crafts could then be decreased a bit.

[Mikademus]

§1 I'm really quite astonished how constructive this thread turned after seemingly be doomed to flame death.

§2 There are many very fine suggestions here

§3 Toady seems to watch this thread so good suggestions in line with his plans will most likely be noted down.

§4 I agree with the suggestion that enabling/disabling aspects is excellent and a good way of adjusting difficulty level.

§5 This is a paragraph

[penguinofhonor]

Speaking of nobles there probably needs to be more of a punishment if nobles are killed. People get around the difficulty of fufilling mandates by just killing their nobles. It should reflect poorly on your fort if your baron dies on non-natural causes. Similarly if the king is thrown into the lava, that should cause a stir amongst dwarf society. Maybe even cause a succession war.

I want a succession war. I want to have my fort split into two factions as part of an empire-wide schism over which of the two possible successors is the new king. I want to have to choose a side and command them to win the battle and fight for control of the fortress against the other guys.

This would be an awesome challenge. Maybe if your side loses, then your fort gets turned into an NPC fortress that you have no control over anymore. And then each side would form a new dwarven civ, and they'd be at war initially. Then maybe some goblins or something could try to take advantage of the fact that the new civs are half as strong as the old ones and try to take over one of the new dwarven countries.

I think that would be an awesome way to make the game a bit harder.

[Zombie]

See, I'd love the idea that, eventually, we could have a bunch of variables in the inits that we could turn on/off... Right now we have a good amount, but later on we could easily have over 20 or 30 variables that directly affect what can impact your fort.

I don't think it's very important if we don't like an idea. Personally, I don't like the idea that eventually we can dig "too deep," but I DO realize that occasionally I'd like my guards and war dogs to be useful for something BESIDES a siege. Raiding parties?

However, all of our likes and dislikes could easily be handled by a concise list of toggles that control what each of us experience in our fortress.

Really, I love what this thread has become. We're pumping out wonderful ideas like mad and, honestly, I think all of them deserve to be at least considered. We should also keep in mind, however, that through the use of toggles we can turn what we don't like off and what we do like on.

I think we should see player-modifiable variable in the init (or possibly a separate config file that details what each does) that allow us to tweak things like farm yield, maximum siege severity, if we have sieges at all... Migrants, caravans, etcetera, etcetera.

This way we have an easily modifiable difficulty-impacting set of variables that, in some cases, could even help people with less power to squeeze that extra fps boost out of DF.

Cults, I think, are just a logical evolution of the religion system. We have dwarves coming into our fortresses with differing beliefs... Surely a few of them might be more zealous than others... Maybe developing rivalries with conflicting zealots?

Fish should keep swimming downstream. Animals should migrate in and out of the map. Yes, it should be possible to overfish and overhunt... But there really should be no finite amount of creatures (except for those currently on the map) to slaughter. I'm not saying if you run out the game throws more at you, no. I'm just saying that periodically there should be some migrating animal herds or fish swimming down (or up) stream for the season.

We have seasons, and each should have its own migratory pattern of creatures. Right now if you over hunt then that's pretty much game over for your hunters. The idea is that hunters have a persistant use, but late-game they shouldn't be able to sustain a fortress by themselves. Mainly because migrant animal groups should meander in every once in a while and have their sights set on an opposite edge of map. The same should go with fish, although fish could simply migrate constantly. If you overfish, then you have to wait until more fish pass through to get more. If you overhunt, then you have to wait until more prey passes through and hope to Armok that the prey isn't really a bunch of wolves intending to have Dwarf Steaks for dinner.

I like the idea that you might actually have to struggle to survive until your farmers get used to working that loam farm you built. I also think that, unless the farm is OUTSIDE, that it should require watering. Seeing as outside at least gets rain and runoff... Inside, however, gets nothing except cave moisture and what you give it.