Print

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

[Mel_Vixen]

Well i think you forget that this "Band-aids" are part-aspect of a more sophisticated history generation.

If dwarves trades with elves the knowledge of a antivenom for a poison which the local Kobolds use it defenitly has a impact. For example it can have a effect on the outcome of a war between dwarfes and kobolds because the dwarfes have less causalitys.

Trading concepts can have storywise (worldgenwise) impacts on religions f.e. is the "Hell" a (part) adaption of the Keltogermanic underworld "Hel". Without this concept my little christian Fundis wouldnt treat me with going to hell if dont join theyr diabolic sect.

Speaking of Christs. The "christianisation" did change the roman empire, the kelts, the germans etc. but this didnt happen without bloodshed. Errr... back to df. As it is now 2 different civilastions have different Pantheons/ believe systems. Imagine what would happen if somehow the ideas of elves would leak into a dwarven society f.e because the elventraders did talk to much with your dorfs.

The exchange of ideas, concepts and technics was and is one of the engines behind a vital history. If you want development and not stagnation you need more interaction between civilisations.

What we also would need would be the that civilisations could fall apart into smaller civilations etc but thats something for another thread.

edit:

We'd need a lot more sophisticated history generation for this to even be worth talking about. I don't even know where to begin. Band-aids really wouldn't change anything. It's best left abstracted

Well pilsu how about you try to think of something where to begin and some arguments why "band-aids" change nothing as well as why they have to be left abstracted. It would be neat to have some discussion substance and not only some dusty platitudes.

[Random832]

... leeches are the god of medicine. They are not dangerous, they have no malaria or ross rvr fever. They were origionally used during poison and infection therapy, drawing "the bad blood out", the leeches would then be removed via salt, to prevent regurgitation of blood.

Actually, using salt would cause it to regurgitate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leech#Removal

[Tigershark13]

hmmm... alcohol was often used as anestic for removing limbs, but I dunnae think dwarves get drunk, so maybe a herb that has similar effects on them>

[Neonivek]

Don't worry about Pilsu... He agrees with us technically in quite a few areas.

He just is stuck in the "Twilight Zone" or rather... He is stuck on the fact that the game as it currently is is not going to be the game it will eventually be... AND he has the idea in his head that our suggestions are for IMMEDIATE change rather then something that could come into effect years from now. (Caps are for emphasis not yelling)

Why say this? Because I want to remind everyone that suggestions don't have to come into effect immediately so stop using "Current game" as arguements against suggestions entirely. The number of times I've heard Tunnelers turned down entirely because "Sieges are currently bad" is staggering. You can use them as arguements for why the suggestion can't come into the game immediately... but not entirely.

Anyhow to get myself back on track

There also needs to be methods in which an exchange of information does not take place... It could be done by requiring a civilisation to adopt the idea. So the advanced medical techniques could be in some sort of library within the civilisation somewhere and MAYBE a few great doctors use them... but the general populous hasn't accepted those ideas and thus arn't taught as the normal curriculum.

[Mel_Vixen]

There also needs to be methods in which an exchange of information does not take place... It could be done by requiring a civilisation to adopt the idea. So the advanced medical techniques could be in some sort of library within the civilisation somewhere and MAYBE a few great doctors use them... but the general populous hasn't accepted those ideas and thus arn't taught as the normal curriculum.

Thats a bit trickier. First of you have (as already suggested) part "common knowledge" and "special knowledge". The special knowledge gets linked to a special person/group/entity and not to a civilation. So far so easy.

Librarys are the more more tricky part. You need a function where this knowledge is stored, in terms of letting a civ know where exactly a scripture with additional knowledge/special knowledge can be gathered.

Luckely its not that hard because the knowledge, in a library, is ever linked to a object say a book, a engraving or a papyrus roll and not to a person or civ. This object has a placement describtion like any object (coordinates etc.) but in addition its linked to the libary.

A little change in the knownby table might best approach by just adding a source column.

Would be look like this:

Spoiler: Wall of text with much technical stuff ahead (click to show/hide)

Entity		Knowledge		Source
Dwarfciv2		Effect of salvia		Urist bladeleave
Urist bladeleave		Knowledge Lib. Iskendira		Library of iskendria
Urist bladeleave		Effect of salvia		The herbs of Health (scroll)
The herbs of Health (scroll)		Effect of salvia		Leif Sunberry
....		...		....

each fact would also get a timestamp/date.



To get who owns a scripture like the "The herbs of Health (scroll)" you have owner relationship between object and owner. The owner can naturally be a virtual entity like a library.

Document		Owner
The herbs of Health (scroll)		Library of Iskendria

Please ignore the green parts for a moment.

Ok lets make a example: You are the Apprentice of the local healer. He one day shows you salvia and tells you what effects it has. Upon asking he tells you that he got that info from a scroll. This scroll was, last time, in the library of Iskendira.

What happens internal? The code of the entity goes into the table and looks for its id in the entity collumn and for the Id of the fact in the knowledge column. If it did found a record where both match it looks into the source to get from where the stuff is known. Our scroll is now found.
To get where the scroll is stored it looks into the document/owner table for the document and presto your master can tell you where the scroll is stored.

Ok but what if you are just a wandering Hero who searches knowledge about medicin? What happens if you ask a normal retarded peasent for it? The peasant would just point you to the library.

How? As you can see by a record in the "knownby" table dialing with the library (the green one) itself. The library has a little list of knowledge areas (ranked?) which updates anytime something comes in or something gets destroyed/sorted out. This little list is refferenced by in the table as own fact.



The mainproblem (except for legendmode like "knowledge-base/spread dumbs") of such a system is that it can clutter very fast as functional it is. Especally if you have 200 facts which are know each by 20 persons etc.

To prevent this you create groups and sub-entitys. Say The King gets mildly injured on a hunt. At first only he and the healer and knows. 1 Fact 2 persons knowing it equalks 2 records.
The healer is now gossiping around to 10 people which would equal now 12 records. This ten people + the king and the healer can be collapsed now from 12 individuals to a group moving from 12 records back to 1.
If this group it is as gossipy as the Healer you have very fast the entire capitol know the little story of the kings injury. So you collapse this number of groups respective the entire population in the single "group" representing the city and so on.

If 3/4 of the Population knows this story you can collaps the Multiple city-entitys and groups into a single common knowledge hence a civilation token.

Another not less important way is forgetting with Garbage controll. Little storys like the Kings minor injury are relativly shortlived and can be forgotten over time. This can be done by "expiration dates".

Other stuff like knowledge on a scroll refferencing to another book, person etc. can be the last ring of a very long chain. Normaly you can forget parts of the chain backwards as long the object that have the Knowledge not still exist or the relationship is a knowable "fact" itself.
This applys for example to notes that are taken from somewhere and passed over 10 gens of papers. If this chain didnt branch in between you can delete all parts of the chain except the last 2 if the former documents turned to dust long ago.

edit: OOP makes that stuff much easyer but in terms of databases its easyser to eplain.

Theres more but this already turned to a wall of text.

Also Neonivek i dont yell at Pilsu either but i think this categoric "that doesnt work" isnt nowhere near constructiv and i feeld the urge to say that.

[Pilsu]

I don't really know how you're gonna mesh fluid history and exchange of ideas with the raws that are there specifically to be able to set a civ's ethics, religious spheres and tech level the way you want it

Yeah, realistic history could be sweet. It's more likely it'd take a dump on what I wanted to mod my game to be like and generally end up like civ names right now


It just seems like a pipe dream right now. At the very least legends mode would need to reflect written history, not act as a worldgen log. For instance, that guy that got mauled by a cougar wouldn't be mentioned anywhere since no one knew about it and the cougar is never named since no one could recognize it even if they saw it again. There would be no official "year 328." Or year 1 for that matter. Races would keep their own history and time. Records would be lost and oral history be forgotten. The gen would need to last long enough for the played chunk of history to no longer be able to track what happened before the generation began. Well justified abstracted prehistory. Now that's something you could tack the passing of knowledge onto without it feeling hollow

Of course, practically this would mean the dwarven civ's books get burned once and their entire history is lost in year 2 of the gen 


Dwarven civ being in year 937 while humans are at 322 and both calendar beginnings being tied to historical events would be nifty

[Mel_Vixen]

Oh well Legendmode isnt really a game mode. Its a "Behind the scenes" mode. It is made for the people which want to know all and everything. Its just a plain worldgen protocoll.

A dedicated History view form Civ x would be neat but isnt in the game yet. It can be achieved as sideeffect from a knowledge exchange system.

[Pilsu]

It's used for engravings too which is a problem

What I was trying to convey is that if we're to have information passing and effects stemming from that, we'd need actual history and a generator that can relatively intelligently formulate a history with preconceived notions. Such as dwarves discovering steel before the end so the player's raws remain accurate. Either that or raws lose their meaning and the history still feels fake

[Neonivek]

Exchange of information doesn't need such intricate history in the same way that ordinary Trade doesn't require intricate history.

It later though can be expanded upon to create the intricate history you are speaking about Pilsu.

So we should take the exchance of information as the first step towards creating a national history for civilisations. Rather then taking national history as a requirement for the exchange of information.

[Pilsu]

Matters not which one you build first but both are needed if it's a tint of realism and the resultant flavor you want

Simply making professions require talking to some incompetent schmuck in every single village before you can master it quickly becomes an inane fetch quest reminiscent of an MMO that has little to do with actual realism. If you make knowledge like antidotes depend on knowledge, you're effectively circumventing the raws

[Neonivek]

Simply making professions require talking to some incompetent schmuck in every single village before you can master it quickly becomes an inane fetch quest reminiscent of an MMO that has little to do with actual realism

Then invent your own proceedures using your Medicine skill. Perhaps it should have a chance to be lucked upon.

It isn't that each village increases your Surgery/Medicine skill it is that each village, book, and doctor adds a proceedure to your knowledge base.

You don't have to go to every village like you do currently. It is just one path you can take if you want a well rounded doctor.

"both are needed"

Ok then fine, lets add one... then the other... doesn't matter what order we do it in.

[Mel_Vixen]

The Raws are something like the stuff you choose on embark - you have it no matter what. This is basic stuff which you surely wont forget. So every dwarven civ knows aout steel etc. Thanks to the raws but apart from that a civ (entity, group, dwarf) could amd should be free to acsumulate additional knowledge.

The raws are like templates in a RPG "point buy system" only for a entire world. Like characters in a RPG develop a world can develop and by this its civs creatures etc. and you get also some random stuff which makes a world unique.

[Goblin Macelord]

Well, guys. I think that human civilization experience (our human civilization, I means) is unacceptable in DF. Let me explain why:
First of all, the most important part of DF medical service is surgery (nasty goblins, yarh!), I have asked my friend (he is surgeon, about history of military surgery) and he laughed his ass out, because normal military surgery appeared only in the beginning of XX century. Before Pirogovs nobody was using normal anesthesia and most popular help for wounded was amputation and so on.
But, dwarfs have something that we (humans) don`t have – they strong guys and also, have magic. So,    medical skills and medical help MUST use magic or, at least, half magical alchemy.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Actually, I talked to a surgeon just today, about how advanced ancient medicine was--starting with the Egyptians, the Greeks, and later on the Romans. India and China too, and then the Muslems and the Jews during the middle ages.

It's really a matter of the level of healthcare fluctuating up and down in Europe (and down some more, during the dark ages, and then starting back up, during the 1600s), as well as things like wealth and religion being factors.

Even civilization itself could be a factor, since neolithic cultures often had medical knowhow that an illiterate serf in the middle of Germany, during the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), just wouldn't have had access to.

Ofcourse, Pope Urban VIII, or the Qing emperor, would have fared considerably better.

If you're not convinced that advanced surgery-and medicine in general-was impossible until modern times, I really suggest you check out the links I've provided on the OP. That's what they're there for.

I recommend the book, in particular. It's a pretty good read, all things considered.

[Goblin Macelord]

Well yes, I wasn`t right and better say, not exactly well explained myself. I have read the tread, but didn`t tried links (I think it would be a good read, thanx). And, of course, DF crying for medical service, when you see your great metalsmith dying in pain and not even one maggot care (where painkilling “elven” roots, bloodstoping stones e.t.c.?)  IMHO, It must be more fantasy oriented.

EDIT: Well yes, I have read your suggestion about magic in medicine and you right, nothing is so boring as ‘I wave with my magic wand and you are healed!’, but semi magical would works properly. For example – noted ‘elven’  roots, they could be only imported from elves and so on.