Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Warlord255]

This is an experiment I am conducting using Rysith's Orcs.



The image above is from a Large world, custom parameters, run for 600 years.

The large red area of influence is an Orcish civilization, The Doom of Quests. It contains countless ruins and has conquered 9 civilizations. Its expansion was stopped, presumably, by a stiff war-stalemate against the civilizations in its way.

I got it this large by increasing the max pop to 2,000,000 and reducing the max civs created to 1, as well as amplifying the biome and site capacity.

Current experiment is setting the max pop to 10,000,000, increasing the biome capacity further and bringing the max-pop-occupancy back down to 120, from 250, in an effort to improve their desire to expand.

The goal is to find conditions which allow such a civilization to effectively conquer the entire world, leaving only the hardiest civs as survivors.

[Warlord255]

Second world generated; only change made was to reduce their max site population. Oddly, the Orcs halted their expansion much earlier and got nowhere near as far, though close to the end of generation they overtook some goblin fortresses, but they lost other fortresses near their expansion frontiers. This may indicate that a larger max-site-pop allows the towns to be stronger footholds for invasion.

Following this theory, the next iteration has the town sizes for humans, elves and goblins reduced considerably, as well as having the [SLOW_LEARNER] tag added as it has been to Dwarves. This would put the Orcs at a considerable advantage, as well as Kobolds, though they can barely expand. Likewise, Orcs get their town size boosted to 240, and site support for tree cities and detailed caves. Results to follow.

[JoshuaFH]

frickin' sweet map.

I find this experiment very interesting, continue!.

If you find the right mixture, you could probably guarantee the most badass sieges DF has ever known. Which i would like to see.

[chaoticag]

Modify them so that their adult age is five!

[Warlord255]

Modify them so that their adult age is five!

Well, it's already this:

Code: [Select]

[CHILD:3][BABY:1][LITTERSIZE:6:10]
So it should work fine, unless this is not counted during worldgen.

Oddly, my next iteration is having trouble getting them to expand violently; it might be the whims of the RNG, or territorial proximity problems. Continuing to try until I can get a large enough empire size.

If the net population of the species has any effect on their army size at their expansion frontiers, then tweaking conditions to allow them to get a bigger starting group before they go to war might be in order. Inversely, allowing them to kill a few nascent civs in the first century might get them the experienced fighters they need to get the war-engine rolling.

Time now for a DRASTIC alteration; removing humans and elves.

[JoshuaFH]

have you tried letting the world gen last longer than a couple hundred years?

[Warlord255]

have you tried letting the world gen last longer than a couple hundred years?

All my sample sizes after the first have been 1050 year gens.

However, these are also the ones where they have had pathetic results, sometimes never even expanding past their first fortress.

Removing elves and humans did little of use; now trying going back to the start and generating a new world under the exact same parameters as the first attempt, to see if the results were a fluke or are reproducable under those conditions. If necessary, may try using the initial seeds and altering facets from there.

Huh. Well, they're already doing much more healthily ~17 fortresses in the first 200 years. No opposition yet, however.

Hmm. Yep, that didn't work. They stopped expanding around ~20 forts, many of which turned gray. Did they stop breeding or what?

[JoshuaFH]

perhaps because of your very high littersize, they hit the pop cap very early due to exponential growth.

[Warlord255]

perhaps because of your very high littersize, they hit the pop cap very early due to exponential growth.

With a population of two million?... Not only highly unlikely, but wouldn't that mean they would be trying to expand to house their burgeoning population?

Unless the criteria for expansion are something different, or even hard-coded. Has anyone ever found or been informed by Toady about the specifics of expansion?

[Rysith]

The large site pop was to give them significant numbers of orcs, both to wage war with and defend themselves, since they are always at war with everyone and don't have demons to hold their initial civ. I also was hoping that that would make them send more than 80 to siege you, but it doesn't seem to. I suspect that expansion criteria might be hard-coded, otherwise we'd see much more expansion on large maps (look at the civs in the north, for example: Why haven't they expanded more?).

The other possibility is that worldgen gives massive bonuses to established cities (which would make sense: when was the last time that one of your mature fortresses fell to a siege?), and the orcs stop attacking because their leaders decide that they can't win. Either that, or they keep attacking and keep losing, which would explain the lack of other expansion

However, civ expansion doesn't seem to be scaled to world size. Try on a medium or small map and see what happens.

[Warlord255]

The large site pop was to give them significant numbers of orcs, both to wage war with and defend themselves, since they are always at war with everyone and don't have demons to hold their initial civ. I also was hoping that that would make them send more than 80 to siege you, but it doesn't seem to. I suspect that expansion criteria might be hard-coded, otherwise we'd see much more expansion on large maps (look at the civs in the north, for example: Why haven't they expanded more?).

The other possibility is that worldgen gives massive bonuses to established cities (which would make sense: when was the last time that one of your mature fortresses fell to a siege?), and the orcs stop attacking because their leaders decide that they can't win. Either that, or they keep attacking and keep losing, which would explain the lack of other expansion

However, civ expansion doesn't seem to be scaled to world size. Try on a medium or small map and see what happens.

I don't think that the expansion size is hardcoded entirely; With a max pop of 10000 split between 4 or 5 iterations of the same entity-civ-species (elves, humans, etc.) and 120 maximum citizens per site, it makes sense for them to cap out at a certain number of cities; note also that while some of the civs are very small, others are larger, taking up more of the allotted racial population.

However, the number of cities could very well be hardcoded, despite my noble efforts to push it to the curb; likewise, it might be a simple matter of them running out of "resources" to fund the war.

Does adding the [RUIN] tag as an acceptable site do anything?

[Warlord255]

Well, here's another theory struck down; it occurred to me that they might be being stopped by inhospitable biomes, such as Good or Savage ones. However, after close fortress-mode inspection of some expansion-stillborn fortresses, it was discovered that there was ample non-good/non-savage space avaliable, and at least one fortress had been erected in a Calm area.

[Warlord255]

Allright; growing tired of constant worldgen tweaking and hungry for some playtesting of other added elements, the final verdict of the project is as such;

While having a higher max pop for a race can allow it to expand very widely, it rarely will due to the merciless whims of the RNG.

[Orange Drink]

imagine giving EVERY civ a 2 million population cap.

that would be crazy.

[Warlord255]

imagine giving EVERY civ a 2 million population cap.

that would be crazy.

If the expansion protocol could be reliably replicated, it WOULD be worth trying to have every civ expand mercilessly in a constant world war.

Perhaps in the next version, with the army overhauls...