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[mutant mell]

I've been thinking about something like this for quite a while, and I think this would add a great deal to the game.

One way that civilization has advanced is having more and more advanced farming techniques, such that every person does not need to provide their own food.  From there, cities have gathered, and other professions have emerged, such as mason or carpenter.  Eventually, however, those techniques improved, and there was room for a higher-class, artist, and scientists.  Scientist used not exactly in the same term as we use it today, but the same idea.  People who were payed to do nothing  but think, essentially.

There should be a new job available, in the same way that Fortress Guard is an available job position: Scientist.  These people perform no labor, but require a specific workshop, based on what they are studying.  However, I propose that these scientists do not just work for a while in game, then poof out gunpowder miraculously.  Instead, they make small goals depending on what they are working on.  For instance, if you have a small supply of saltpeter, they may find that it is explosive, which may lead to saltpeter traps and the like.  they shouldn't stare at saltpeter for 5 years and pull guns out of thin air.  Small steps.

Maybe have a few different kinds of science workshops.  the first one available is aptly named "Scientists Workshop," and from there they could branch out into different fields of study, for instance, a Metallurgy Science Workshop, a Chemical Science Workshop, a Physics Workshop, etc.  The physics one could find out magnetism and stuff, making some interesting inventions (and traps   ).  Heck, there could even me a Magical Sciences Workshop, for working on discovering new spells and other magical feats.

EDIT: Once books are implemented, trading books full of inventions and scientific discoveries to spread your ideas around, and buying books full of other's technology would be interesting.  Maybe you could send off young dwarfs with caravans to study in the capital city, and come back with all sorts of useful information.

[ January 14, 2008: Message edited by: mutant mell ]

[Draco18s]

quote:Originally posted by Quift:
<STRONG>Technology is historically not a steady forward motion, but a series of scattered inventions found and lost during the ages. creating a consistent tenchological development would not only misrepresent history as is occured, but more importantly misrepresent why it occured.</STRONG>

Reminds me of the three games of Civ 4 I played (I think it was Civ 4).  I had appache helecopters blowing the crap out of Japanese Samurai circa 1700.

[Quift]

quote:Originally posted by Draco18s:
<STRONG>

Reminds me of the three games of Civ 4 I played (I think it was Civ 4).  I had appache helecopters blowing the crap out of Japanese Samurai circa 1700.</STRONG>

well, I think the japanese samurais felt a bit like that when the ironclads showed up in the 18tc centuary, but this kind of scenario is actually what I had in mind in writing the post and taking my stand.

a game this detailed should run on the underlying mechanics, and at the represented time (early to high medieval times) technological progress as we know it didnt occur to an extent worth modeling. and when itdid start to occur it was for very specific reasons (reasons not present outside europe, which actually makes the european experience the exeption. hence, should be treated as such.

[Red Jackard]

quote:Originally posted by Quift:
<STRONG>Technology is historically not a steady forward motion, but a series of scattered inventions found and lost during the ages. creating a consistent tenchological development would not only misrepresent history as is occured, but more importantly misrepresent why it occured.</STRONG>

Yeah.... think I like the idea of a 'living technology' tied to civs more than the original poster's idea.

[Fenrir]

quote:Originally posted by Red Jackard:
<STRONG>
Yeah.... think I like the idea of a 'living technology' tied to civs more than the original poster's idea.</STRONG>

So does the original poster.

[Draco18s]

quote:Originally posted by Quift:
<STRONG>Well, I think the japanese samurais felt a bit like that when the ironclads showed up in the 18tc centuary, but this kind of scenario is actually what I had in mind in writing the post and taking my stand.</STRONG>

Oh, probably true.  But my tech was seriously, 1960s in the 1400s to 1600s (game year) against Japanese Samurai from the 1700ish era.  I didn't pay enough attention in history class to really date them.

I decided the game wasn't worth playing when three games in a row I--at the last...7 to 10 turns went, "can I build a spaceship before the end of the game?" and did so with not a turn to spare.

Also, "Ghandi imposes slavery!" was a little much.

[Asehujiko]

I would like it if it was possible to set priorities so you don't go like "ok, i'm 500 years ahead when it comes to carpenting buti actualy wanted something that my masons can use as well"

With some limitations ofcourse so you can't min-max gauss guns in 1052.

[vitaoma]

Sorry for bringing this post back to life, but I think there's still much to discuss.
I don't like this kind of researching: having a scientist star at saltpeter for 10 years then pulling out guns. I mean, how can you research guns if you don't know what guns are yet? You might have an idea, but it should involve lots of randomness and lots of things to be created so scientists could discover stuff unintentionally. Also, you shouldn't be able to "Research atomic bomb" but maybe "Study atomic energy" would make more sense. This way you could discover how to make atomic power plants, as an example, but still don't know how to make the bomb.

Merchants could be able to bring new technologies, but not this way. You should be able to recruit people from the Mountainhomes that know how to make a task or invention. Then they start doing it and your dwarfs slowly start learning how to do it themselves. A few knowledges are common and they should come with the game: making stuff from wood, stone, bone, cloth and leather. Further knowledge would be created (or recruited from the Mountainhomes) so you know how to make bronze, then iron, then steel etc. You should be able to recruit elves and humans too. The other way, you could send your own people to teach things to other realms (note that this journey can be very dangerous and you might not have your dwarfs back). This would make diplomatic relations stronger. You could even send spies to other civilizations, including goblins, who would get there disguised as migrants and watch what they are doing. Again, this would be very dangerous. Spies should be trained very well for not giving the information about who they work for. If the spy was not correctly trained, the other civilization would know you had sent him and siege you.
It could happen this way:
"You have sent 3 spies to take a look at civilization X"
"Urist McDwarf was killed by a wolf during his journey"
"Urist Thespy starved to death during his journey"
"Urist Thechampion has arrived at civilization X and starts spying them."
"You have received a letter from Urist Thechampion from the Human Caravan. It explains how to make trains."
"Urist Thechampion was spotted at civilization x. He kept secret of our location and was killed."

[zchris13]

*hijacked by trains* I really like trains. We need trains. Trains trains trains.

[Foa]

This idea can't be implemented until much later, but here it is anyway:<P>For every workshop "reaction", there is a [TECH:<I>min year</I>:<I>max year</I>]. <I>Min year</I> and <I>max year</I> is the range of time in years when the technology to perform the reaction is dicovered/invented. In this way we could control when things become available, so we could add the [TECH:1085:1143] tag to the "Make Iron Musket" reaction and have dwarves invent firearms somewhere in the range of year 1085 to year 1143. Inventions appear on the Legends screen.

Why would you want a maximum year?

What if you are fucked over in the future and you can only make low tech materials, but can't make them because you are to nepotistic?

Oh, how about that the fact that technology can't be destroyed, when it is made, it idea can't be destroyed.
Hell we used super old tech to make new tech!

And tech levels are achieved by it's pursuit, not time.

[inaluct]

I like this idea, but I'd also like to see tech differences beyond the first thousand years or so. Maybe dwarves in the year 7000 could actually have something sci fi-ish. I'm not really sure if I want that, though, on second thought.

Having stone age dwarves living in the year 4 would be cool, though.

[Urist McDetective]

Nobody thinks of weapons until the necessity is there.

These are sociopathic alcoholic dwarves we're talking about! I'm guessing the only time they don't think about weapons is when they're thinking about booze or how to make weapons.

Linking and quoting myself. I'm interested to see if anyone feels it's related enough to talk about further.

Kaiu, being an engineer / smith is probably a better example for DF. 1,000 years after his death people are still learning new (previously unknown/misunderstood) concepts from his works & writings.

I'd like to see a hard cap on where things can go techwise, then have the game take a step back in 'levels' to take a step forwards. Truly legendary skilled dwarves being the exception, within game-logic.

[Craftling]

Maybe some inventions, but not too advanced. If the dwarves get too advanced it actually might kill the game. Philosopher's would be the ones to invent things and that would be what would bring in medicine, pumps, windmills, crossbows etc.

[praguepride]

I think this idea is fairly moot because in an abstract sense, DF has tech levels. Think about how you play the game as I break down my "typical" actions.

Stage 1: Initial start up: Food is mostly unprepared, most items are made out of base stone and wood, no crafts, only metal items that I've brought with me.

Stage 2: Gearing up: Food starts to be prepared (about 50/50 as my cooks crank out the meals), start getting crafts up and running, maybe the forges are ready if I hit magma early or get a wood burner up.

Stage 3: Basic Metal Production: Start cranking out the copper/iron/novelty metal items. Food is almost all prepared, wood is used more for charcoal then woodcrafts

Stage 4: Steel! Regular iron items are melted down to produce steel bars, big increase in weapons and armor as seiges start occuring.

Stage 5: Seige Weapons! Start production of ballista and catapult parts, start production of cages and mechanisms to start prepping the large scale traps.


So instead of creating arbitrary "hard lines" that ruin the whole random fun (and make DF like every toher crappy game out there) by saying "you can't build X until year YYYY" or "you can't build X until a dwarf hits a 5% chance) is completely switching tracks from the existing game mechanics. Instead make it like seige weapons where "advanced tecH" weapons require a lot of time and effort to build properly. You'll need metal parts, wooden parts, explosive parts (hey! A use for the alcehmey lab!). If you make a musket cost 1 bar of iron or steel, 1 log, 1 bar of iron, steel, or lead for the ammunition (25 shots per bar) + 1 bag of gunpowder (which is derived from material X and Y which needs to be mined) then you've already got a natural limitation, just like you do on seige weapons. Now a player gets to decide when guns come into play. Just like seige weapons and steel now. If they really want a gun right off the bat they can buy the parts and set up the shop at the startup screen, but that severely limits the amount of food and skills they can take. So you can create challenge scenarios with 7 dwarves and 1 gun trying to survive without having to muck about with the raws.

Finally, game start dates are randomized based on the percentage of megabeasts. You can tweak the design parameters to pretty much determine when you'll start, but a vanilla game will have a random start date. The beauty of the game is the randomization, it doesn't limit the possabilities. Having tech dates in the raw limits a players freedom and eliminates the randomness.

[Granite26]

1: Tech Levels are useful at defining different races/civs

2: Historically, tech levels did not change drastically in a person's lifetime, they were the result of thousands of tiny improvements making the big changes in tech suddenly feasible.  (AKA we had gunpowder forever, but it took a long time for the alchemy and metalurgy to get refined enough to make the weapons reliable for field use AND better than available crossbows)

That being the case:

A:  Scientists chugging away producing research points that are used to by upgrades is assinine, especially by DF standards.
B:  Major new technologies shouldn't even happen in the scale of a fort.  Trade secrets that come in may give you a new thing to try, but it should be so expensive as to be nigh-useless.  (Sure you can make guns, but it takes 6 units of steel to make a gun that explodes after 6 shots)
C:  Current level of tech should be the mean level.  Average forts (starting in 1050) should have a little bit less than this.  This could be targeted differently
D:  Most tech gains are efficiencies.  Anybody can make steel, only dwarves can make it efficiently enough to be useful.  (Efficiencies = Time, Inputs, Skill needed)

My two cents about one way that isn't YOU HAVE DISCOVERED BANGING TWO ROCKS TOGETHER