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[Savok]

although we a really doing a more atlantis-like creation here currently. "At the beginning of time, it was a massive city wherein arts thrived."

[Pilsu]

That's assuming the world was in fact just created instead of the prehistory being abstracted. For gods to give birth to dwarves with preset tech level would be peculiar indeed. Either way, for civilizations to form, farming has to be present. And in fact, as you see in the game, it is. They are not hunter gatherers lacking the knowledge of seeds turning into plants

I don't really see how you could argue that a man born in this day and age has intimate knowledge on the finer points of food production when people are completely shielded from it, buying their food from supermarkets. And how I somehow would be more knowledgeable of something I have little to no exposure to in the daily life than a 14th century person whose life directly depends on a small community that farms it's own food

[Footkerchief]

That's assuming the world was in fact just created instead of the prehistory being abstracted. For gods to give birth to dwarves with preset tech level would be peculiar indeed. Either way, for civilizations to form, farming has to be present. And in fact, as you see in the game, it is. They are not hunter gatherers lacking the knowledge of seeds turning into plants

I'm not going to argue the interpretation, but I always saw worldgen as more of a "creatures spring into existence at year zero" thing.  Either way, I consider the abstraction/disregarding of technological development a shortcoming of the game -- I'm okay with racial proclivities toward certain technologies, but there should be a progression.

I don't really see how you could argue that a man born in this day and age has intimate knowledge on the finer points of food production when people are completely shielded from it, buying their food from supermarkets. And how I somehow would be more knowledgeable of something I have little to no exposure to in the daily life than a 14th century person whose life directly depends on a small community that farms it's own food

I didn't argue anything like that (I was comparing a first-world human to a neolithic hunter-gatherer, not to a 14th century peasant).  I'm arguing that the game should model that kind of exposure, and account for it, and allow for circumstances (feral dwarves or whatever) where that exposure doesn't take place.  It could be as simple as giving each skill an additional "knowledge" component, which could be applied to entire civs to simulate a baseline level of exposure to fundamental concepts.

[Pilsu]

Well, the game has 14th century tech. Arguing that the average peasant has the knowledge of a neolithic hunter really doesn't work all things considered

[bjlong]

Um, just to point something out:

Farmers who have done farming their whole lives have had horrendous crop failure due to things like droughts, pests, temperature changes, floods... in short, farming is all well and good when everything is absolutely perfect. It's when things go wrong, even slightly, that the Farming skill should give you benefits in crop yield.

For example, a plot of land so big can produce 100 Plump Helmets. Hooray!
Then there's a pest. A farmer tends to the field. The plump helmet output is now (WARNING: Example equation that I like) 100-10*R*exp(-k*s) where R is a random integer from 1 to 9, s is the skill in farming, and k is some constant to make it all look nice.

Perhaps you could have countermeasures that would work with a quadratic relation to skill, but be less effective the more you use them. In short, the "random" crop yield should be modeled more explicitly.

...wait. This is farming crap. Doesn't belong in this discussion. ... oh well, posting anyway.

And Footkercheif is right: the exposure to knowledge should be explicitly modeled. Perhaps a dwarf would have two "levels" for a skill--the level he was exposed to and the level he is currently at. Jobs could limit you to some function of the level of skill you were exposed to, until that exposure reaches master.

[Granite26]

If you disallow some labors to the untrained, but not others, that's a huge slap in the face of the people whose professions have just been labeled as anyone can do it jobs.

1:  Just because it's rude, doesn't mean it isn't true
2:  Anyone can do it doesn't mean that anyone can do it well, or that practice and skill doesn't make the results better
3:  Just because it upsets someone, doesn't mean it doesn't need to be said, especially in a game that is supposed to explicitly model reality.  Changing the models doesn't change the facts.  I'm talking to YOU sociology.

Similarly, I assume that gem cutting is just removing the areas with decent gems

You should read into what gem cutting and facets really are.  There's a lot of skill involved in working out the best angles to cut the stones on in order to waste as little as possible and still get bright shiny stones.  There's also a lot of skill involved in cutting them.

And Footkercheif is right: the exposure to knowledge should be explicitly modeled.

Have I mentioned that adding in skill points to the entities (civs) is possible way to handle (some of) this?

[Footkerchief]

Well, the game has 14th century tech. Arguing that the average peasant has the knowledge of a neolithic hunter really doesn't work all things considered

14th century is a cutoff, not a baseline.  The game already contains lots of "primitive" civs, e.g. kobolds, which are at a ~10,000 BC tech level.

[Granite26]

Well, the game has 14th century tech. Arguing that the average peasant has the knowledge of a neolithic hunter really doesn't work all things considered

14th century is a cutoff, not a baseline.  The game already contains lots of "primitive" civs, e.g. kobolds, which are at a ~10,000 BC tech level.

which was also true of the 14th century in the real world.

[Pilsu]

Kobolds can't farm

I think it should be obvious I wasn't talking about the rats when I stated that anyone can plant seeds to some degree. You're just splitting hairs now

[Footkerchief]

Kobolds can't farm

I think it should be obvious I wasn't talking about the rats when I stated that anyone can plant seeds to some degree. You're just splitting hairs now

Who's splitting hairs?  I never even mentioned kobolds in the context of farming.  The closest thing I mentioned was the potential for "feral dwarves."  I only brought up kobolds to illustrate that the game does not have a uniformly 14th century tech level.

[Pilsu]

You're an official expedition though, not savages

I wouldn't mind finding hermit cabins in the wilderness with meat drying outside but not entirely sure why it matters whether they know how to farm. It is a solid background option for an adventurer, son of a hermit but what's the practical use of this knowledge system?


Sure you might want realism for realism's sake but handing technology to the RNG is bound to cause trouble

[Savok]

"Realism for realism's sake" and "handing stuff to the RNG" is what MAKES a large amount of the fun in the game.

You're an official expedition though, not savages

Under vanilla settings, that's right.

Plans exist to allow modding to fix that.

And, in a sort of contradictory way, modding is "vanilla" with DF.

[Footkerchief]

You're an official expedition though, not savages

"Official expedition" covers a lot of technological ground.  Even primitive civilizations need to expand, and advanced civilizations often colonize surrounding areas long before they reach any kind of technological plateau.  For example, the Romans were known to occasionally send out little expeditions despite not yet having invented the moldboard plow, the horse collar, or three-field crop rotation.

I wouldn't mind finding hermit cabins in the wilderness with meat drying outside but not entirely sure why it matters whether they know how to farm. It is a solid background option for an adventurer, son of a hermit but what's the practical use of this knowledge system?

Sure you might want realism for realism's sake but handing technology to the RNG is bound to cause trouble

The practical use would mainly be providing the player with new types of challenges and opportunities for accomplishment.  Playing a primitive hunter-gatherer dwarven civilization would be cool -- people set up these kinds of challenges for themselves already, but this would allow it to become part of the game itself rather than the metagame, and provide a more meaningful rationale for the challenge, deepen the player's immersion, etc.  In such a scenario, maybe you could buy books on farming from another civ's caravans and raise the tech level of your entire civ, which would be pretty cool if you ask me.

Ideally civs would develop technology in a Guns, Germs & Steel-esque manner so that, in a given world, the player could choose from a bunch of dwarven civs with dramatically different levels of technology.  We already have some hints of this (albeit resource-linked) with stuff like some human civs using iron while others use bronze.  I'm by no means saying that players should be forced to play Dwarf Tipi.

[Savok]

And you can't go from caveman to spaceman in a single generation.

[Qmarx]

Similarly, I assume that gem cutting is just removing the areas with decent gems

You should read into what gem cutting and facets really are.  There's a lot of skill involved in working out the best angles to cut the stones on in order to waste as little as possible and still get bright shiny stones.  There's also a lot of skill involved in cutting them.

I actually am well acquainted with the subject.  My point was that INSIDE DWARF FORTRESS what's "really" happening when you perform a gem-cutting operation is the dwarf walks over, pulls out a chisel and hammer, and gets out a couple of chunks of rock which have nice bits in.

This is the logical consequence of "cut gems" having no quality modifier.

Now, once you apply the gems to a floodgate or something like that, a jeweler is actually going to take a look at these now-handleable pieces of rock with gem in, and decide what to do with them.  This is when the actual faceting and setting takes place.  A dabbling jeweler will just, I dunno, glue on little of the gemstone randomly, or decide to tumble an opal, or do some other stupid thing like wire-wrapping a fifth of a carat of faceted agate.  The decoration will still end up making whatever it's attached to look a little better, but it'll be a waste of a perfectly good gem. 

A legendary jeweler, on the other hand, could do a hearts and arrows cut by hand, and put the diamond in exactly the perfect spot to bring out its natural brilliance and blah blah blah I don't actually like diamonds that much.

Point is, as the game currently treats them, the "gem cutting job" doesn't correspond with how gem cutting actually works, so "gem setting" has to pick up the slack.  If "gem cutting" actually resulted in gems with quality levels, I wouldn't be making this argument.