Print

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

[DWeird]

Hi, long time lurker, first time poster, here with a suggestion.

Basically, I read a little bit on the various improvements planned for squads and their control, and one little bit in particular caught my fancy - the part where the squad is separated out from the individual dwarves it consists of. Which is cool not only because it allows more control and whatever, but it also (maybe?) allows the squad itself to become an entity that can have a total kill list, maybe even compete with other squads on that count?, and become an historical entity, depicted on engravings and etcetera.

Anyway, my actual suggestion is implementing something similar - groups of various sorts - into the non-military section of the fortress's populace. Such groups should not be created upon the player's wishes, as squads would probably be, but rather when the dwarves themselves get to it. These groups would have different objectives (ammassing wealth or objects of a particular type, growing in numbers, killing things that look at you funny, creating objects of exceptional quality, and so on), different ways of member growth (recruitment along skills, dwarven psychology, being born into it, performing a special action, or non at all) and different ways of getting triggered.

For instance, several dwarves who like helping others could form a charity, bug the rich for money (imaginary credit, whatever) and hand it out to the poor. The Nist Akath Fairsabres clan would be an actual clan in the game, with a reputation and possibly belongings of its own. Cults or religions could start when an a special item/creature/place is found/created, or when believer manages to pull off a minor miracle. And, of course, guilds could be reintroduced (rather than a representative trekking over here, the first legendary something may have a chance of starting his own...).

And, of course, these groups should be able to have relations between each other - friendships or, more interestingly, grudges - both of the fisticuff and rivalry variety (A dwarf could possibly belong to different groups, with an unhappy thought when the groups he belongs to are at odds with each other).


Methinks this would make the late game a lot more interesting, changing the social structure of dwarves from legendary crafters - military - hoards of useless peasants to something more complex, and more story-worthy.

Ideas questions comments?

[vitaoma]

This is a very nice suggestion and I agree that the player has a lot of control in dwarfs. These groups could be religious too, but it's not necessary.
There should be some groups that think they're the best and deserve the best food/rooms/stuff and they should work less, there should be hippy groups that get heavily disappointed if they are forced to eat meat or if you cut a lot of trees or hunt a lot. When nobles come, some groups should be upset with them and their requirements. These groups will grow and start a revolution and your civilization should be able to descend to anarchy somehow, maybe if you're a very bad leader.

How could you control those groups?

You must give them what they require or, if that's too much or you don't want to, you might kill them or you must find a way to make another group that goes against their ideology stronger so they can convince more dwarfs and so by.

- Hippy group doesn't want you to cut trees or have meat for meals
You should make a carnivorous group stronger by giving them the best stuff you have and make them satisfied. The other dwarfs will see how happy they are and join their group. Now you have to make more dwarfs satisfied, if you don't, they're probably going back to the hippy group.

- A group doesn't like nobles but you don't want them to destroy your whole fortress to show they're right.
Have even better stuff for the nobles, have a stronger Royal Guard and Fortress Guard and maybe even a separate space for the nobles. This way dwarfs will see how powerful they are and the revolution will not happen (or will take a while, at least).

Note also that a group that hates nobles will try to refuse to join the Guards so you have to show them how powerful nobles are before they actually start grouping.

Maybe some other group wants to have armor rack in all their rooms. If you don't give them what they want they might refuse to work in another jobs before they get what they want, or even refuse to eat or drink. If other dwarves see those dwarves in such a miserable situation they will have bad thoughts and so on.

These all concerning dwarven politics and society is a part that should be much more covered in the game, in my opinion.

[DWeird]

Well, I was thinking more along the lines of blood feuds between clans, if anything. Or things like... A mayor belongs to a Mason's Guild that's in rivalry with the Carpenter's, so he bans the production of all wooden items, and then the carpenters beat him to death with logs.

I wouldn't really want groups to cluster around issues like veganism or being-a-noble by design - that way, you'd have to be babysitting and trying to appease as many as you can, which can be very irritating if there's too much of it. Real world politics are a bitch, little fun in replicating those in-game. On the other hand fantasy politics almost invariably involve asskicking awesome.

What I want is groups arising from certain interactions between dwarves - having a common trade, friendships, similar likes/dislikes, psychology, biological relations, or some combination of these. The group would have certain attributes (pious, cowardly, greedy...) that would initially be based on the founders' psychology, but they could change if certain conditions were met. The behaviour of the dwarves that belong to the group would then be influenced by these attributes, as well as the goals the group has. Goals being defined by the needs of the group - if, for instance, a clan is close to extinction, all available dwarves will feel extra urge to proliferate.

[Kashyyk]

so you mean something similar to the mafia/gangster families? with alliances and blood fueds and whateverothercraptheydecidedtodo.

[Enzo]

Well, I was thinking more along the lines of blood feuds between clans, if anything. Or things like... A mayor belongs to a Mason's Guild...

Like...The Free Masons?  Something about a dwarven illuminati appeals to me on a number of levels.

[Aspgren]

so you mean something similar to the mafia/gangster families? with alliances and blood fueds and whateverothercraptheydecidedtodo.

This actually seems fun. I have about 5 families in my (ridiculously fertile) fort with +10 members. A blood feud between two of them, an alliance between two others and such would be pretty cool. Repeat offenders that my guards have to throw in jail over and over ...

... of course while the current justice system is in place it would be pretty futile to allow these things. The hammerer would hammer every family involved into the ground and my fort would lose 25% of the population.

[Fieari]

Not if the Hammerer could be influenced by a clan's might...

[Impaler[WrG]]

Their is a Clan suggestion under the Eternal Suggestions down at #113

Dwarfs can belong to clans which dynamically appear, grow and interact with each other. Clans membership affect relations between individuals and visa-versa. Clans could gain 'rank' and the leader of the highest ranked clan could become the ruling noble.

Links to my post http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=24844.0

Perchance you feel like bumping this suggestion up in the rankings?

[Duke 2.0]

"See, how she leans her beard upon her hand!
O that I were a glove upon that hand,
that I might touch that beard!"

[DWeird]

My bad for not searching thoroughly enough, sorry!

However, I have to say that I don't care about clans in particular - it's just that they seem to be the most "dwarfish" group imaginable, as well as having an easily delineated member set (initial family members + family members of the intial family members + so on), starting condition (family reaches a pre-set number of members) and plenty of opportunities for conflict with other groups.

I don't want there to be clans specifically - I want there to be a generic group framework that would allow the non-pre-scripted (the way the arrivals of nobles are, for instance) appearance of the groups. Clans, guilds, cults, or the Initiative for the Preservation of Cats should arise during a player's gameplay.

The reason I'm suggesting this now is because I saw that Toady is planning to work on something similar-ish - squads for military dwarves. I don't know squat about programming, but perhaps the mechanics are similar enough so that he could implement something similar for the civilian population, too.

If anyone else wants to suggest that there be a different type of group from the one's I suggested (have at it!), that'd be more than cool - my only interest is that the groups are added in in a way that's fun gameplay and good for storytelling.

Edit: Also, Eternal suggestion #113 is now Eternal suggestion #93.

[Walliard]

"See, how she leans her beard upon her hand!
O that I were a xX*cat leather mitten*Xx upon that hand,
that I might touch that beard!"

Fixed.

[Fossaman]

"See, how she leans her beard upon her hand!
O that I were a glove upon that hand,
that I might touch that beard!"

This made me laugh out loud for a good thirty seconds, as soon as I got the reference. I commend you.

As to the suggestion: I would love to see this. Work guilds, social groups, clans, societies of merit (dwarves who achieve a specific thing become members. So stuff like artifact making, legendary status, number of kills...), political groups...all sorts of potential here. I think that the clans are probably the most basic level of this idea, and would be the most interesting to plot a story-fortress with.

But what about actual gameplay? This starts to creep a little closer to simulating a world without player direction. Should negative group interactions be a consequence of unhappy, unsatisfied, or bored dwarves? Or would they take place in a fortress where everyone is employed and happy? It would make it tough to run a fortress if useful dwarves were being murdered for belonging to the wrong family.

[Impaler[WrG]]

I don't know squat about programming, but perhaps the mechanics are similar enough so that he could implement something similar for the civilian population, too.

In most programming languages (including C++ which DF is written in) theirs a feature called 'Inheritance' which basically allows you to write the code for all the common stuff once and then 'Inherit' that code into any number of more specialized areas while only writing what is unique to each 'derived' object, the process can be nested and it is not un-common for everything in the game to derive from one root object.

In this case I can easily see a "Group" object being coded, it would have the features held in common amongst all the groups, namely a list of Dwarfs, searching methods for those dwarfs, data about group-2-group relations and other utility functions that will be usable for all groups.  The specialized groups like Clans, Cults and Military units (and for that matter the whole forts population which we rarely think of as a group) would contain the rules on who is a member and the purpose the group serves.

[Sowelu]

But what about actual gameplay? This starts to creep a little closer to simulating a world without player direction. Should negative group interactions be a consequence of unhappy, unsatisfied, or bored dwarves? Or would they take place in a fortress where everyone is employed and happy? It would make it tough to run a fortress if useful dwarves were being murdered for belonging to the wrong family.

I think it would be nice to involve the player more heavily in justice, and make it a desirable thing to jail people in some circumstances.  It should be a player decision how to handle these problems, whether to let the powerful families run the place, or to crack down hard with the fortress guard.

In most programming languages (including C++ which DF is written in) theirs a feature called 'Inheritance' which basically allows you to write the code for all the common stuff once and then 'Inherit' that code into any number of more specialized areas while only writing what is unique to each 'derived' object, the process can be nested and it is not un-common for everything in the game to derive from one root object.

This is a case where the amount of specific logic vastly, vastly outweighs the generalized stuff.  Even if you could derive all this stuff from one class, well, it wouldn't speed up the process any.  Honestly that's like saying "You want to write a book?  You can use Word, instead of writing it in Notepad"--the hard part is still the actual writing...

[Guy Montag]

I'm slightly uncomfortable with the idea that my dwarves are forming maligant cliches and gangs and cults and good ol' boy networks in my medieval communist fortress.

So long as they don't start civil wars, start asking for shit or demand any special treatment, I'm cool with the idea as a sort of extra neat thing. Already my soldiers are intimately involved with each other and they must have crazy orgies because all the females are constantly spurting out babies and everyone in the individual squads are BBF. I don't like that.

If insane square-engraving, cheese-eating carp-worshipping river death cults form in my fortress I should reserve the option of having them all executed.

The great purges would be needed to preserve my utopian worker's paradise.