after a long hiatus, I've finally come back to Dwarf Fortress. Now I've been looking at something I've never done before; edit the game to my own ideas. With the help of the wiki many simple things are pretty easy so far.
But one of the things I've been thinking about is the ability to enslave captured enemies, pretty much in the same way you can train captured animals to be pets. I guess it's pretty evil and maybe not very dwarflike, but I think it'd be pretty interesting. Anyway; if the Romans could do it, my dwarves should have no problems with it!
What I'm not sure about, is how to do it. Is it simple a matter of adding the [PET] tag to the creature so it can be trained? If so, how does this affect the creature's behavior? Since we're talking about [INTELLIGENT] creatures here (goblins, humans, elves, even other dwarves), will they be able to perform jobs and learn skills like they would otherwise, or will they act like normal pets? And how does being a 'tamed pet' affect creatures' ability to be assigned clothes/armour/weapons?
It's be pretty sweet if you could use slaves in your army. Or maybe just use slaves for menial no-skill jobs like hauling and cleaning. Or anything, really. Like I said, if the Romans used slaves for almost anything, my Dwarves won't object either.
If the slaves act like normal pets, it becomes less interesting... and probably even a little creepy... After training an intelligent creature would suddenly have the mind of a dog. I guess in that case it'd be more of a flavour thing. Though I suppose adding the [trAINABLE] tag would give at least the illusion of having a slave army and would get at least
some use out of them, assuming it'll work.