I have a suggestion, but whether it is "bloat" or "impossible" depends mostly on how vastly different the AI is between them.
I'm sure someone has suggested something similar - merging dwarf fortress and adventure mode so that they both use effectively the same rules. If not, consider this a second suggestion, and a prerequisite for my real suggestion.
The idea is that, it would be awesome if the town obeyed the same rules as a fortress, and had a number of stock jobs queued up and set to repeat (like those from the manager screen), so that the human merchants, guards, and peasants would be able to have a self-sustaining economy, as well as giving everyone something to do, and making a lot more interesting people in town.
Basically, when a human plays dwarf fortress, it isn't all that hard to get a fortress to the point where it is self sustaining. I wonder if that same sort of tasks could be applied to NPCs in human towns in adventure mode (if some additions to the town, like a well, or trade depot were added). Then human civilizations basically played out like an idling fortress (like when you're in fortress mode, but letting the dwarves handle repeating tasks and basically sitting back and watching), except that the adventurer can run around mucking things up.
Humans should have to find stores of food to eat (rather than spontaneously creating them at the inn), or else they begin to starve, hunt vermin, and have bad thoughts. It even seems within reason to assign some repeating jobs (like those handled at the manager-screen) such as "hunt an animal" or "harvest plants" or something... causing the peasants around town to gather food, and level up in useful skills. The adventurer could even find a use for the corpses of animals, since the town butcher would have a repeating job task to carve up an animal for food that can't be fulfilled until either a hunter or the PC brings in a suitable body. Then, when the adventurer buys meat from the store, it will be replaced, in time, rather than the current situation where the meat-merchant ends up with a room full of goblin armor (or a room full of meat, since there is no reason for the PC to eat yet, and the NPC can all summon food).
Some peasent could have the repeating task of hauling refuse to the randomly placed "trash pile" located at the edge of town. This would clean up all the bones and shells that litter the place after a few days.
I suppose it is a double-edged sword, but assuming human towns all had a well, and a few farm plots, it shouldn't be all that difficult to make them self-sustaining at a certain level. At least as self-sustaining as they are currently.
It would even be cool if townspeople had a certain "rent" and needed to work some useful job (even if it is just cleaning the refuse of others) in order to keep their own house. Most would probably take on guard duty. Poor people could live in the inn.
Cooler features, like attacks on the city, a blacksmith shop who processes metal into weapons, shopkeepers who actively "haul" items into their store, and merchants visiting the town from other towns, would probably require a lot more work to integrate... but some of those things might come alone automatically once they were effectively the same engine running behind the scenes.
The ultimate thing I would like to see from all of this would be townspeople who have money, and use it for something - but even the fortress economy seems to need some work, so this would have to be a fair bit down the road. How awesome would it be if the human adventurer got to town, and commissioned a statue of himself be made by the mason - giving him a good chunk of money, which then gets used to purchase stone (and some is pocketed for food and rent). The obvious problem is that the mason would starve if the rest of town wasn't buying stone crap all the time... but someone needs a well to drink from, or a new stone door, or a throne or a table... whatever. The weapon and armor merchants will have money coming out of their ears before long.
This example is maybe more doable: a town starts out with a meat merchant with a full inventory and no coins (he spent it all on meat). He has three active tasks that are always on, and always repeating. One, is to buy more meat (from any merchant with meat, but probably the butcher unless the PC trades meat to another merchant) with any coins he has. The second is to perform his merchanting task (both for the PC, and for townspeople who need to eat), thus, generating coins. The third is to eat and drink when thirsty and hungery. Assuming the town has an aquifer and a well (it has one, but never the other) his thirst is easily satisfied, and he owns all of the meat in town, so if he's ever hungry he can bust open a barrel of meat and dig in. He's all set, except that his meat-supplies will vanish unless there are about 20 other NPCs in town with similar task-queues out there hunting animals, selling them to butchers, or buying non-meat items from him when the adventurer wanders in and is too lazy to go to the appropriate shop.
Now, the adventurer comes to town and buys some meat. He trades some weapons for it that he got from some dead goblins. Then, the weapon-merchant gets a job to buy weapons (since there are now weapons in town that are not owned by him). He does so on his own, giving the meat-merchant money in exchange, who then takes that money to the butcher, to buy more meat. At that point, both of those merchant put their wares on their shelves (since they now own items that are not in the proper space) generating a hauling job to their goods piles. The butcher, however, now has money, and can satisfy his task to buy corpses, assuming the hunters have some non-rotted butcherable corpses ready for him. Once he buys those, he can start his task to butcher available corpses, at which point, everyone is back where they started.
It would be complicated, so I'm not really expecting a "that is already in the works", but it would be cool as hell.
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Topic: Self sustaining human economy? (Read 1228 times)