Logically, I would put CAN_SPEAK in before world gen then take it out for Embark. Anyone tried that?
Some comments on the 0.3 version to my favorite orc mod maker:
a) entity should be ENTITY:HORDE iso. ENTITY:HOARD no? Hoard would suit a dragon civ hehe.
Probably. I've never bothered to change it, since the game doesn't care.
c) why not add [CAN_HAVE_MILITARY_LEADER] ? just me maybe, but I always see orcs having their best fighter as their leader.. with the high priests / drunks are their quickly disposable advisors
They have military site leaders, but I didn't want the full civ's leader to ever show up, since that seems to make them stop sending attacks if they die
e) Noted your changes to ethics - I guess you saw a huge number of internal killings like me hehe. Not sure it is so orcish in my oppion though... but if it helps their pop, it might be cool enough
It definitely helps pop, and in my mind it means that they are cooperative with each other, and want to burn the rest of the world. It fits with my image of them as savage barbarians bent on tearing down everyone else.
f) [NAME:giant wolf spider:giant wolf spiders:giant wolf spider] - should be "wood"
That was a last-minute change (from Wood spiders to Wolf spiders), so I must have missed that.
g) 4:8 attack, DAMBLOCK: 4 and [WEBIMMUNE] sounds a bit like overkill to me, but interested in hearing how it works out
The 4-8 attack and DAMBLOCK is to help out the Orcish wrestlers (and make legendary dwarven wrestlers less effective). Weapon-wielding orcs don't use the damage, and 4 isn't that much compared to actual armor (no-quality iron chain, which is what they normally use, is the equivalent of DAMBLOCK:5. So it's kind of like they are wearing exceptional chain rather than normal chain. I've always found that no-quality iron doesn't stand up well to typical dwarven equipment, so I'm trying to artificially give them better stuff.
The [WEBIMMUNE] was to deal with issues where they showed up riding spiders and then were dismounted by the inevitable webbing, which made the idea of orcs on giant spiders much less threatening than it should be. Unless you've got pet spiders, or orcs get ambushed by GCS/GWS, it shouldn't affect anything else.
i) holy shit War Elephants are deadly
Well, beak dogs are wusses anyway. They needed something that they could really storm the castle walls with. I was considering adding in
perytons, but there are some issues with flying mounts.
My sequence with adding/removing [CAN_SPEAK] was
1) Remove CAN_SPEAK
2) Start DF, gen world, embark, quit DF
3) add CAN_SPEAK
The logic being that they would be at war with you from the world gen, but would be speaking by the time that they sieged you (and thus get names). Since they shouldn't be able to make peace during fortress mode, they should never stop. Be aware that if you abandon/reclaim, you will likely have to remove CAN_SPEAK during that time to prevent them from making peace between fortresses.