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[Amalgam]

This thread focuses on the 'who' and 'why' in forts, and I think it pertains to a lot of the stuff Toady is doing right now. I'm just throwing things out here.

I apologize for the wall of text :<

When you embark somewhere it's stated that your dwarves are founding an outpost, but it's never stated why. In fact, outposts in DF seem to serve very little purpose in advancing the goals of the founding civ since the outpost simply hoards all it's wealth. I'm certainly not an expert on medieval government and economics (far from it, I find it difficult to conceive a non-capitalistic society...), but wouldn't an outpost typically divert whatever riches it acquires to the founding civ? My best model of medieval economics is that the monarchy is something like an employer and the peasants are the employees, except the peasants are paid in accommodations rather than currency. A monarchy founding an outpost would be similar to a franchise opening up a new shop somewhere, or that's how I've come to understand it.

What am I getting at? Well, the role of dwarven outposts is ambiguous. I think it would be neat if forts had a more concrete place in the world. I'm not against anything other than your typical colony though - I think it would be great if you could choose what kind of settlement you're founding. What is the "mission?" What is the founding group's agenda? You should be able to define these things, even if you're just choosing from a group of presets, it could add a lot. For example, you might not want to start an outpost, maybe you want to start your own independent entity! There could be political reasons for this, if you're a military entity you should be fighting someone, which will become all the more relevant when you can send armies out across the map. You could have a number of reasons for the military example alone, and these could even be randomly generated. You might be rebelling against your origin civilization or promoting the spread of a religion, or you could even be a lawless group of rogues with no other goal than to terrorize neighboring settlements and accumulate wealth! Whatever you choose, the game should reflect the role you choose. It's unlikely your home civ would send a liason to a rogue encampment, and they might not necessarily know of it's existence in the first place. If you don't want to have any political ties and merely want to provide for your dwarves, you could start your own civ! I don't know about you, but I think that sounds exciting.

And what about an actual hermit fort? Once dwarves are less stupid and managing a single dwarf to take care of itself becomes more feasible it could be possible to do that if you chose to do so. In such a case you would be unlikely to attract attention for quite a while, kobolds in particular might be attracted to the place initially and it probably wouldn't be until after you've accumulated some wealth that someone with an agenda might take in interest an your hoard. Adventurers and rogues from around the world could pay you a visit and attempt to plunder your riches, and after that entire entities could start sending armies to show up on your doorstep. Just imagine that.

What's really neat is that it's not entirely inconceivable that these kinds of scenarios could be made moddable - you could create your own settlement types and define how various political interactions work. I don't have the vision to conceive how such a thing might work, but if it was hypothetically added to the game the sky would be the limit. If you wanted to start a succession fort where you're managing a group of pirates, you could literally do just that. You wouldn't have to murder the liaison or pretend that the elves aren't sending caravans, the interactions would be just the same as you could reasonably expect for a group of rogues. No traders, no diplomats, the things you would be primarily concerned with are bounties, looters and other rogue-ish types. Assuming, of course, that such things are moddable. Or you could even draw the ire of other criminal groups.

So what do you think? In particular I want to know if you think such a thing could be made moddable, or if it might be more feasible as a set of hardcoded scenarios, or if it's just pie-in-the-sky. It's probably pie-in-the-sky, but I'd like opinions anyway

[Randall Octagonapus]

These are some pretty good Ideas and Im pretty sure that this is one of Toady's goals
Also it would be pretty awsome if bounty hunters came to your fortress to try and kidnap or kill your dwarves

[sproingie]

Considering how your fort inevitably becomes the Mountainhome when the King arrives, it seems to tell the same story every time, one of political turmoil where the Monarch can no longer safely reside in his old home.  The fact that he sometimes even comes disguised as a peasant makes this scenario all the more likely.

What'd be interesting is if your king was treated as a usurper and you received an ultimatum to give him up.  Yay civil war.

[Geb]

I assume the current gameplay could be kept as an example of a dwarf nation deciding to expand without really needing to. Extra ways to play on top of that can only be a good thing.

One thing I would like to see, which I think is fairly realistic for the time period, would be setting up a fortified trading town - a place intended to exploit the wider region around it by attracting other settlers to set up home off map. In that type of game you could have much lower barrier to having the economy enabled, and having lots of small traders, one man caravans, turning up to buy stuff and be taxed mercilessly as they do so.

[Amalgam]

Considering how your fort inevitably becomes the Mountainhome when the King arrives, it seems to tell the same story every time, one of political turmoil where the Monarch can no longer safely reside in his old home.  The fact that he sometimes even comes disguised as a peasant makes this scenario all the more likely.

What'd be interesting is if your king was treated as a usurper and you received an ultimatum to give him up.  Yay civil war.

I assume the current gameplay could be kept as an example of a dwarf nation deciding to expand without really needing to. Extra ways to play on top of that can only be a good thing.

One thing I would like to see, which I think is fairly realistic for the time period, would be setting up a fortified trading town - a place intended to exploit the wider region around it by attracting other settlers to set up home off map. In that type of game you could have much lower barrier to having the economy enabled, and having lots of small traders, one man caravans, turning up to buy stuff and be taxed mercilessly as they do so.

Yeah, it seems like the dwarves are trying to make an entirely new capital, like the dwarves are moving for some reason. It would explain why the king comes eventually. I'm all for keeping the current gameplay, though the interactions should stay consistent with whatever the default scenario is. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there should be a certain canon to the state of affairs for your dwarves. It doesn't have to be too specific, it could be abstracted so the players can provide their own explanations and backstory, but something that defines your dwarves' place would be nice.

I'm still intrigued by how this kind of functionality could be made moddable though. Once you break different entities down by different aspects like ethics, race, leadership, and religion it might be possible. Currently, the entity files define behavior for the entire race, but it could afford more variety. That kind of consistency is kind of boring. The entity files could be expanded so that you can have different kinds of sub-entities with their own ethics and perks separate from the main entity with some kind of frequency token to define how common it is for that race. With something like this you could define things like camps of elves that are against cannibalism, dwarven necromancers, goblin refugees and all that fun stuff. This stuff would almost certainly not be the norm for the parent race, which is where that frequency token comes in. Another way you could go about it is define multiple ethics values for an entity with different frequencies so you can have individual ethics and have different individuals with ethics matching a sub-entity type start their own little camp. So you could define something like this:

[ETHIC:RAISE_DEAD:UNTHINKABLE:99]
[ETHIC:RAISE_DEAD:ACCEPTABLE:1]

...And you would have a very small minority of necromancers in whatever entity you define that in. I think it might be good to start moving away from defining absolute values for an entire race, I'm just not sure how to go about it, I only have a vague idea of how it might work.

[SSBR]

re: Amalgam.

I'm not sure how this differs significantly from the way things work already. Entities have likes, dislikes, strength, gender, physical attributes, etc.. Are you only suggesting variable and configurable probability distribution plus group clumping based on certain attributes (so that you may end up being attacked by a gang of elven necromancers, for example?)

I don't know. I wrote up a fairly technical description of how that would work, but it's fairly OT for this thread, and also fairly large. In the end it is fairly similar to how stuff works, just more complicated.

[Footkerchief]

The idea in the OP is basically this dev item:

# Core76, EMBARK SCENARIOS, (Future): Embarking in dwarf mode is one of the more sterile, gameish parts of the... game, and it can afford to be spruced up. Though a full take-your-wagons-from-here-to-there style embark is probably beyond the scope of version 1, at least giving the backstory for the journey and adding various game effects and alterations to starting conditions based on it would help with immersion.

Currently, the entity files define behavior for the entire race, but it could afford more variety. That kind of consistency is kind of boring. The entity files could be expanded so that you can have different kinds of sub-entities with their own ethics and perks separate from the main entity with some kind of frequency token to define how common it is for that race. With something like this you could define things like camps of elves that are against cannibalism, dwarven necromancers, goblin refugees and all that fun stuff. This stuff would almost certainly not be the norm for the parent race, which is where that frequency token comes in. Another way you could go about it is define multiple ethics values for an entity with different frequencies so you can have individual ethics and have different individuals with ethics matching a sub-entity type start their own little camp.

"Entity" is usually used to refer to a civilization, but in fact, in the current version it's already a generic term for any group of civilized creatures.  Your starting seven are members of their own entity in addition to the civilization entity.  I think religions are also entities.  One of the goals on dev_next is making your adventuring group into an entity.  The next version also has instanced entity ethics, which allows a group's ethics to change over time and so forth.  In practice, almost all aspects of culture are still drawn solely from the civ entity, but a lot of the groundwork for changing that has already gone in.

Here are some other relevant dev items:

# AFFILIATION ARC: You should be able to rise to the top of an entity (civilization, town, etc.) in adventure mode. While the full set of responsibilities that would entail will have to wait, it should at least be possible to attain this status for the first version. You should be able to do things for individuals. This could earn you favors from sleeping in their home and food gifts all the way to a marriage offer. There can be smaller entities like bandits and cults which could offer more unsavory tasks for similar privileges (steal, kill, kidnap, etc.). Can earn right to sleep in the large hall in town if you've become affiliated with them, but vagrancy needs to be punished and the camping must be harsher before this is meaningful. Related to Core64, Core65, Core71, Req586, Req587, Bloat163, PowerGoal12, PowerGoal19, PowerGoal27, PowerGoal37, PowerGoal41, PowerGoal42, PowerGoal44, PowerGoal48 and PowerGoal54.

# Core71, BANDITS AND CULTS, (Future): It's important to have groups acting on their own or generally causing trouble without necessarily belonging to an entirely different civilization. Bandits and cults are good choices to start. Bandits could harass or make demands of an early fortress, cults could spring up in a later one, and the adventurer could end up a member or an adversary.

# PowerGoal107, ZOMBIE JUICE, (Future): The cultists go to the crossroads at night and collect dried blood from the outlaws that had been lynched. They cook it over a candle until they get addictive zombie juice, which eventually turns them into undead fiends. Once exposed, a cultist must drink the juice regularly or risk death.

[Amalgam]

re: Amalgam.

I'm not sure how this differs significantly from the way things work already. Entities have likes, dislikes, strength, gender, physical attributes, etc.. Are you only suggesting variable and configurable probability distribution plus group clumping based on certain attributes (so that you may end up being attacked by a gang of elven necromancers, for example?)

I don't know. I wrote up a fairly technical description of how that would work, but it's fairly OT for this thread, and also fairly large. In the end it is fairly similar to how stuff works, just more complicated.

Basically, what I'm saying is that your forts should have reasons for existing so they can interact with the world in a convincing way, when someone founds a new site they have a mission in mind, and we need to know what that mission is. There should be more varieties of sites with different stated goals. Outposts, religious sites, isolationist camps and outlaw hideouts would be nice to see, and it would be a nice bonus if the player could choose to found something other than an outpost. Though to be fair DF's worlds are fairly simplistic and don't have a whole lot of detailed interaction at the moment so that wouldn't arise anyway. Also, races are far too homogeneous, all members of the same race think alike. Elves never torture for fun, dwarves never commit cannibalism... It's reasonable to expect a few oddballs, people who don't follow the rules of society. This kind of stuff should show up so elves aren't always good and goblins aren't always chaotic evil. I think it would help mix things up a bit, maybe.

@Footkerchief: Yeah! That kind of stuff. People start succession forts with crazy premises all the time, why not have the world react to the premise? The end result would be more immersive, I think.

[silhouette]

Intresting...
Could aslo build on the normal of just expanding the empire aswell.
The king orders that you sned him tribute every year or so with the caravan. to a certain amount of worth.
If one does not send the amount or sends less than the amount wanted, the relationship with the king will decrease. More so if one doesnt send the amount at all, and just decrease a bit- a lot depending on what you send as tribute.
If one sends more than the asked for amount, the relationship with the king will increase, and once high enough and with other things achieved the king may immigrate to your fort.
If it decreases enough your parent civilisation will start considering you an enemy, and will loose access to certain things.
Things like caravans, migrants, etc. the more serrious thing would be war, where they start seiging you and what not for becomming a rouge nation.
The more disliked your fort is by the parent fort the less caravan goods or migrants you get.
The more liked your fort is by the parent fort the more likely it is to have more caravan with higher quality goods and more migrants.

Now this could be effected by world generation, the current ruler, whether being a king/queen, monarch or a mayor, warcheif of the parent civ. each would have their own values.
E.g. a king/queen would request a lot more tribute than a mayor would.

Now this would also have to include the other dwarven civilisations aswell if there are any on your world.
Now caravans may be sent from their mountain homes aswell to trade, aswell as all the normal parent civilisations.
You could do everything mentioned before by giving them tribute,
and even after a while, if you are well liked by the current leader of that civ, be offered to become part of their civilisation (basically swapping civs.)
You would recieve migrants (this is considering that you split off from your former civ) only from this civilisation.
this civ will  send more caravans considereing that you are now part of their civ.
Yada yada... basically everything that your own civ does.

Your own civ may consider this treason, and the value of this depending on the current ruler.
E.g. a warcheif would freaking want your dwarfs heads on spears, while a mayor may not really give a crap or only be slightly annoyed.
prehaps in some odd way they may actually like it if you diverged from them (urist mcking: oh thank ARMOK theyre gone! they were so annoying!)
Another thing could be rather than just offering you to become part of their civ is to just offer you an alliance.

Now this could also be sort of implimented with the future alliances with other nations, making it difficult or easy to form alliences with other races, once again depending on the current ruler.
Hell, you may even be able to form an allience with the goblins and stop them from ambushing or snatching your children.

[darkflagrance]

A corollary to joining/allying with an entity is spawning new entities.

In the future, goblins will occur in limited numbers. For the sake of neverending waves of enemies, one might conceivably design a fort that purposely spawns discontented citizens who go off and found their own fortresses, then wage war on you, their home civ, ostensibly for ethics, diplomatic, and economic reasons, but ultimately as the result of the player's machinations for the sake of endless warfare.