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[Neonivek]

Yes I know about that Req, and I like it. People won't kill off their nobles without having consequences at least.

Given how useless nobles are currently, it'll probably end up being a choice between the lesser of two evils and so the nobles still burn.

Choice 1: Mass killing, loss of resources, loss of migrants, and possibly tantrum wave
Choice 2: Every few seasons a few citizens go to jail and perhaps one is killed (and that is the bad one!)
Outcome of both: A new Noble will come

Nobility doesn't have to ALL be useful... But if you want the King and thus ownership of all lands under its control you will HAVE to climb the ladder of nobility and deal with those useless barons, counts, and tax collectors.

Alternative: The most useful thing I guess Nobility can do without getting into individual diplomacy is allow you to control more and more land with the King releasing you from the limit. You want a village? Well you better attract that Baron! You want to keep that Dark Fortress you took down? Sorry that goes to the count! You want to own the kingdom? Get the king!

Another downside is if the Royal dies the other nobility outside your fortress could claim the lands you took. So your Evil Baron died, you know that village you founded? Well the King owns it now!

[Hectonkhyres]

1) Each additional noble provides your fortress with a little bit of political clout. Effects should include attracting a better class of immigrants (skilled craftsmen and warriors instead of peasants and soap makers) and better exchange rates with the caravans. Your home nation might send troops to help end a lengthy siege on a fortress bearing many important nobles.

2) Nobles should throw better parties than everybody else, though these might have limited guest lists. Really nice positive thoughts and better training in social skills.

3) Your nobles should occasionally get visitors from other lands and these might might bring information and gifts. The king might receive precious gems or metals as tribute and the dungeon master might receive a caged werewolf from abroad. You get the idea here.

4) Nobles might occasionally hire themselves an adventurer to suit their whims. They might bring back trophies to deck your walls (dragon's head anyone?) or mystical artifacts or fresh minions.

5) Lesser nobles should be more like valiant knights. They may have to lead their troops into battle in their brilliantly blinged-out armor. When there isn't a battle, they conduct duels (not necessarily to the death) and go on hunts for worthy game (possibly off map). This should be at least partially based on the noble's personality and type. I have trouble seeing the tax collector charging the goblin's demon... though that would indeed be hillarious.

[TettyNullus]

5) Lesser nobles should be more like valiant knights. They may have to lead their troops into battle in their brilliantly blinged-out armor. When there isn't a battle, they conduct duels (not necessarily to the death) and go on hunts for worthy game (possibly off map). This should be at least partially based on the noble's personality and type. I have trouble seeing the tax collector charging the goblin's demon... though that would indeed be hillarious.

I certainly can see a tax collector billing the demon instead and demanding payment instead of being attacked outright ( Course, assuming the military's that strong ), which's just awesome to think about 

[Hectonkhyres]

Huh. So our tax collectors will be like the ones you see in the newspaper comic Hagar the Horrible.
Pure. Unadulterated. Awesome.

[G-Flex]

A nobles' happiness shouldn't directly affect the happiness of the population. That's some weird hivemind stuff right there.

If a noble is unhappy, it should affect the other dwarves for actual honest-to-god reasons. For instance, he could make more mandates/demands, get angry with people, start fights, sentence people to punishments for petty things, etc.

That does nothing to fix the problem. The OP is looking for ways to make people want their nobles to survive and be happy, instead of seeing them as a problem to work around.

Did you not read the first part of my post? Nobles WILL be useful. Toady just hasn't implemented the parts of the game that makes them useful yet, and I don't really think some weird, hyper-abstract placeholder system should be put into play beforehand that doesn't even mesh well with the way thoughts currently work.

[Tiler]

What bugs me about nobles is that they don't accomplish much from a either a gameplay perspective or a simulation perspective.

Gameplay speaking, you're effectively handing players an antagonistic, unappeasable force. Nobles are never content; even if they have 300 adamantine statues, they WILL continue to demand more. Even in less extreme cases, a perpetually demanding and altogether useless character doesn't do crap for the player. In the best case, they do nothing. In the worst case, they kill the dwarves that do stuff.

I don't like the solution involving punishing people that try to do away with them. Punishing players is never a good thing, really. It just frustrates them, and makes the game not as fun.

On a simulatory perspective, if the nobles are going to make demands and mandates, they need to be based on something besides their whims. There is no logical reason for someone with 30 Rose Gold cups to demand 3 more every other month. Not only is it repetitive and either stupidly easy to accomplish or just outright impossible.

I'd say the solution needs to be that nobles provide benefits, that while not really critical for playing the game, would seriously help accomplish tasks in a much more streamlined fashion. Kind of like the old version's various houses. I'd even use them to allow fortress specialization. In your nobles menu, you'd get a list of nobility for your current fortress level, which would give you various demands, such as 'build x number of workshops', 'get x legendary warriors', or 'engrave % of the fortress'. Once you choose a noble to appease, they'd arrive in your fortress and confer new advantages, such as being able to train your men, order specialized equipment from the mountainhome, or whatever. The noble would occasionally confer tasks based upon your fortress, but would stop if you managed to get everything 'perfect' in their eyes. This would make nobles a goal to work towards, and the player would be rewarded for accomplishing the goals, instead of punished for failing them. The player would also take better care of the noble, both because they worked to get it, and because it gives advantages for it's presence.

[Neonivek]

This is kinda where Dwarf Fortress starts to differ from ordinary games. Just because they are important it doesn't mean they are better.

This is the Nobility... For the most part they were leeches who used your Tax dollars to fuel their own devices as well as protect you. (You payed the Noble because he provided you troops and land)

What did they do for you in the mean time? Not much.

Anyhow Tiler remember that people have an infinate amount of wants...

I don't think Nobility should suddenly turn into Bufferman just because you have to tickle their fancy especially since their "Punishments" are Lax so long as they are happy. In fact Dwarves ENJOY jail.

People have survived in Fortresses never doing a single thing for their nobility just fine. If anything the punishment for never fulfilling the Noble's needs is too lax. (And once Tantrum Cycles of doom are removed, Nobles may become ignorable)

On a side note Tiler: Many games punish the player for things that are rather out of their control... Time limits, randomly depleting health bar, and thieves.

In one Strategy game, you had to keep the public happy (and thus catch you killing terrorists on Camera while avoiding people seeing innocents killed on camera). It wasn't an amazing game though... but for reasons beyond that mechanic.

[Tiler]

Yes, people have an infinite amount of wants, but just because I like cups doesn't mean I want 300 of them. There are exceptions to that, but once you hit a point, the theory of diminishing returns kicks in, and that's just kind of that.

If you look in real life, nobility, once they were safely in the lap of luxury above the peasantry, were more than happy to engage in petty politics and living on whims than trying to squeeze blood from a stone.

Edit: And the opinion of 'reward players instead of punishing them' isn't something I came up with. This is the theory used by people like Sid Meir and the company Valve. While you can give them goals such as time limits to make sure they don't get bored, failing to meet the goals shouldn't result in the theoretical groin kick. It just frustrates people.

[Neonivek]

Yes, people have an infinite amount of wants, but just because I like cups doesn't mean I want 300 of them. There are exceptions to that, but once you hit a point, the theory of diminishing returns kicks in, and that's just kind of that.

If you look in real life, nobility, once they were safely in the lap of luxury above the peasantry, were more than happy to engage in petty politics and living on whims than trying to squeeze blood from a stone.

Nobility were very needy, but then again they did a lot more by themselves then they do in the game (but that is due to how the game is played).

The Noble doesn't want the cups for himself he probably just wants the fortress to be famos for their Rosegold Cups! ohh wouldn't that be wonderful?

Looking at many historical and half-mythological monuments Nobles did often ask for things that gone way past the scope of what they could really use and spent more then they had on useless enterprises. (Of course since EVERY noble in Dwarf Fortress seems to be like that... and Humble Nobility doesn't seem to exist... But then again we had discussions on that and how Nobility in Dwarf Fortress are continuously disconnected from reality)

[TettyNullus]

*snip* and Humble Nobility doesn't seem to exist... But then again we had discussions on that and how Nobility in Dwarf Fortress are continuously disconnected from reality)

Philsopher and Dungeon Master haven't made any demands, mandates or complaints. I'm pretty sure philsopher don't care about much but drinking and thinking, while Dungeon Master helps out with the forges and training dogs. And I haven't given in to nobles' mandates and demands at any time, haven't had any troubles after stealing the Hammerer's hammer  ( Yes, they need some -real- effect on the fortress, though... Seems too 'easy' to just ignore them or let them fall into a pit, and just feeble effect for all the trouble they gives )

[Neonivek]

The Philosopher and the Dungeon Master are in the Nobility screen, however I FAR from consider them actual nobility especially with little-no context.

Also let us not forget that "Guild Masters" also got into the nobility screen as well in the 2d version.

The Nobility screen is basically the VIP section

[LegacyCWAL]

I don't think Nobility should suddenly turn into Bufferman just because you have to tickle their fancy especially since their "Punishments" are Lax so long as they are happy. In fact Dwarves ENJOY jail.

People have survived in Fortresses never doing a single thing for their nobility just fine. If anything the punishment for never fulfilling the Noble's needs is too lax. (And once Tantrum Cycles of doom are removed, Nobles may become ignorable)

The problem is that if something provides a negative without any positive, people are going to get rid of it.  If nobles do you no good, and ignoring them punishes you, the player is going to give the noble a lava bath.  If you make the punishment for ignoring them even MORE harsh, all it's going to do is ensure that the player makes damn sure to have the lava plumbing up and running before the nobles arrive.

There's really only two ways to change the current state of nobles:
1) Make it good to leave them alive, or
2) Make it bad to kill them.

Or some combination of the two, of course.

So if you want to make nobles even more extreme versions of what they already are, that's fine.  Just know that making the nobles more extreme versions of what they are now will do nothing more than shorten their lifespan, with the pain, complexity, and swiftness of their deaths going up in proportion to how much more of a PitA they are.

[Tiler]

Well, the 'punishment is not fun' argument that I've got comes mainly from a story in the Civ4 journal, which is somewhat related to this whole nobility deal.

The problems they were running into were two things; players getting punished for not managing a complex formula of city happiness by having their cities revolt, and a new feature that they were playtesting called 'dark ages', which decreased productivity and stuff. In both cases, the players hated them.

So what they did instead is that they simplified the formula, and simply made angry citizens in cities do no work instead of throwing the city into revolt. And for 'Dark Ages', they just flipped the concept around and turned it into 'Golden Ages', which pretty much accomplished the same design goals without making players pissed off.

[Yaddy1]

Yes I know about that Req, and I like it. People won't kill off their nobles without having consequences at least.

Given how useless nobles are currently, it'll probably end up being a choice between the lesser of two evils and so the nobles still burn.

Choice 1: Mass killing, loss of resources, loss of migrants, and possibly tantrum wave
Choice 2: Every few seasons a few citizens go to jail and perhaps one is killed (and that is the bad one!)
Outcome of both: A new Noble will come

Nobility doesn't have to ALL be useful... But if you want the King and thus ownership of all lands under its control you will HAVE to climb the ladder of nobility and deal with those useless barons, counts, and tax collectors.

Alternative: The most useful thing I guess Nobility can do without getting into individual diplomacy is allow you to control more and more land with the King releasing you from the limit. You want a village? Well you better attract that Baron! You want to keep that Dark Fortress you took down? Sorry that goes to the count! You want to own the kingdom? Get the king!

Another downside is if the Royal dies the other nobility outside your fortress could claim the lands you took. So your Evil Baron died, you know that village you founded? Well the King owns it now!

I like your suggestion best. It makes the most sense.

[Techhead]

Am I the only one who thought of the Holocaust when I read "Final Solution" in the topic text?
Then again, killing every noble you can find isn't much different from what many players do now.