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[Rowanas]

A: Complex and detailed
B: Realistic

If B is true, A must also be true. However, if A is true, that does not necessarily mean that B is true.

Welcome to logical fallacies 101.

[Kavalion]

Yeah, but Soadreqm wasn't saying that being A meant being B.  He said that Dwarf Fortress is A because it is B (being B means being A).  Likewise, Kelbin said complicatedly realistic, not that just being complicated made it realistic.  (Remember not to fight the straw man!)

I think it's fair to say that Dwarf Fortress is, at times, very complicated and detailed because the goal is to be more realistic than most games.  Otherwise, it would make a little more sense to have a simpler combat system and such.

[Schilcote]

I have an idea. We should make it so that you don't have to interact with other civs if you don't want to, but there are definite (but not too great) advantages to doing so.

How can we do this? Lemons. I doubt Plump Helmets have sufficient Vitamin C (or other vitamins for that matter) to prevent scurvy for the 150 years a dwarf lives. Sure, they can primarily eat helmets, but once in a while you have to get your C. Now, there's two ways to do this. The diplomatic option is to import lemons or their seeds. The xenophobic option is to create a livestock industry. The xenophobic option gives a trade-off; not having to rely on another civ who will most probably offer goods at an inflated price (If I remember right, one time OPEC (an oil conglomerate) decided to give the US's oil-filled veins a little pinch. Not to mention that a good amount of our oil comes from countries that quite frankly don't like us) at the cost of a bit of space and slightly more resources. 'Cos you know who's going to have all the lemon trees. Elves. Can't go to war with the Elves unless you got *Cat Liver Roast*s.

[Funk]

No backyard garden I know can support 20 people, no matter how good the gardener.

yes it can you just need to grow the right type of grass.

[Nikov]

*cough* http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=22015.msg1017313#msg1017313 *cough*

I think dwarves should be bad at agriculture. I do not think this makes their culture 'defective'. Sioux Indians never planted a field of corn, this did not make them defective. Likewise they never worked iron or built cities. It made them get a bad final score in Civilization, but it didn't make them defective. They got what they needed to live on the plains and were never pressured to move past that point until Europe arrived and cav-rushed them. Likewise, dwarves developed what they needed to live in the mountains. Remember, dwarves do not live in the caves. Those are kobolds, gremlins, batmen, giants and all sorts of beasties. Dwarves start on the surface of a mountain and dig into it. Go check a worldgen civilization site, the entryway is on the surface, not from the caverns. Your embark party arrives on the surface, not in a cavern. Lets all be on the same page here. Dwarves dig little mines, farm little gardens, hunt fish and gather. When they strike gold, what incentive is there to keep digging mud for their meals when a couple gem-encrusted goblets feed the whole community for a year? Word of good strikes gets around and migrants arrive, then merchants make brisk trade, and soon goblins are beating down the door trying to take what's yours. So you dig deeper and begin to fortify your holdings, and sooner or later your lust for gold results in breaching the caverns. And digging ever greedier, refusing to be content simply tilling the mud, you slowly draw closer to your doom.

Histories of Greed and Toil, folks. This isn't Cavern Community Commune.

[Kogan Loloklam]

I think dwarves should be bad at agriculture. I do not think this makes their culture 'defective'. Souix Indians never planted a field of corn, this did not make them defective. Likewise they never worked iron or built cities. It made them get a bad final score in Civilization, but it didn't make them defective.

Interesting that you speak of the Sioux Indians...
Are you also aware that these people are capable of working iron just fine, can build cities just fine, not only have planted corn but many other crops as well and GREW them in some of the worst soil conditions imaginable, and are capable of doing anything else given the same resources and knowledge? Of course not, because this...

They got what they needed to live on the plains and were never pressured to move past that point until Europe arrived and cav-rushed them.

proves that your knowledge of their history is flawed. Horses allowed the Lakota, or the ones traditionally viewed as "the Sioux" to be competitive with the other plains Indians, and the Lakota moved west from the Great Lakes to the Great Plains. Wanna guess where they got their food prior to the introduction of Horses and Smallpox? For information on that, research the Santee and the Yanktonai. The "Western Sioux", or Lakota as they prefer to be called, traded with their eastern kindred (IE the ones who didn't migrate in the 1700s) for corn.
Nice try though.

Likewise, dwarves developed what they needed to live in the mountains... When they strike gold, what incentive is there to keep digging mud for their meals when a couple gem-encrusted goblets feed the whole community for a year?

I draw different conclusions from this same information. The dwarves develop in mountain valleys, areas that are traditionally very fertile and mineral-rich places. They have extreme climates requiring much forethought and preparation. As the dwarves dig deeper, they find crops that are more suited to all-year growing and dump the native crops in exchange for those. They generally don't expand outward because they expand downward. They avoid conflict by taking land that isn't viewed as "useful" to the other races. This is exactly the pattern of civilizations that have strong farming traditions. Dwarves fit much more closely to Pueblo native americans than Plains native americans. No amount of forcing your views of what a dwarf is will change that. But just like humans, there are vast variations in dwarven cultures.

Histories of Greed and Toil, folks. This isn't Cavern Community Commune.

Silly me, I thought it was this:

Cupidity and Industry...
Sounds pretty Cavern Community Commune to me.

Bottom line, all these arguments to "hobble" dwarves because of your perceptions just don't have any basis in reality. They only have a basis in your perceptions on how things -should- go.

[Nikov]

Fine. Lakota. I went to Wiki and learned some great things about all this. Yes, its fascinating the people I mistakenly called Sioux were actually Lakota who otherwise did not work iron, did not build cities, and traded for grain. But no matter. I cede that they did plant corn, sure. That was a very simple and false claim. I should have said permanent agricultural settlements. Or urbanization rather than cities, since someone might confuse a village with a city if they had no sense of proportion.

But while we're playing the word game; cupidity does not mean roses and romance.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/cupidity

It means avarice and greed. Avarice and Industry, Greed and Toil. Hurp.

Now are you done forcing your false understanding of the English language on me in support of what you think dwarves are like?

[Schilcote]

Oh hell, not this again...

[Soadreqm]

There is no higher pursuit than language.

[Rotten]

This is dwarf fortress. The most realistic roguelike in the world, and your saying it doesn't need realistic?
It already has it! What other game has a combat system as complicatedly realistic as dwarf fortress as of this version?

I think you're mistaking complex and highly detailed for realism.

I don't think he is. The current combat/healthcare/tissue system really is ruthlessly realistic. You have all the body's materials sorted in layered body parts, and they can interact with each other when struck in combat. You can break individual bones and get individual teeth knocked out. You can get a rib dislodged and pushed to the lungs. There is even some basic genetic simulation running to track eye color in families and things like that. It is complex and highly detailed because it tries to simulate the real world as accurately as possible.

Having an interesting and detailed medical system is a lot different than dedicating 26 z levels of a 4X4 embark to farming (this is literally what the people in the farming thread were suggesting. "26 z-levels on 4X4 embark" "Sounds reasonable" "K" What about people who like smaller fortresses? Ever think about them?).
The simple fact is, I doubt that the majority of DF players give two hoots about Dwarven similarity to the Pueblo or the Lakota or Kobolds or whether worldgen fortresses prove that dwarves are farmers due to their proximity to the surface. I, and I wouldn't mind betting a fair chunk of the other fans, just want to play the damn game and have fun. Painfully micromanaging 60,000 farm tiles is NOT FUN. I want to set up my cistern system and forget about it (except to tap for water projects).

Histories of Greed and Toil, folks. This isn't Cavern Community Commune.

Silly me, I thought it was this:
-snip-
Cupidity and Industry...
Sounds pretty Cavern Community Commune to me.

All the different titles on the game screen are synonyms for Greed and Toil.

[Nikov]

The extent I ever wanted to see farming become was 6x6 tile plots supporting about fifty dwarves each with skilled planters. But yeah, I think dwarves should be bad at farming. Or if nothing else, it just doesn't suit their tastes. I would imagine most dwarves aspire for honor and veneration after their death, or at least to have been a part of the creation of great works. So to me, dwarves wouldn't be inclined to take up the plow when they can take up the pick or pike.

[Schilcote]

I advocate for the ability to do what you want. DF is a sandbox game, after all. You can farm, or you can trade. Trading requires stone, farming requires mud. If you embark on a place with no dirt or convenient water (there should be no such place now that we have caverns though), you can make mugs out of stone and sell them for food. Or, you can grow plump helmets. Or you can do both. Or you can raise and butcher livestock. Or you can just gather. Or you can mod in a race that doesn't need to eat.

It's the ability to do for the most part whatever you want that makes DF the incredible artifact of a game it is. You aren't advocating removing functionality, are you?

[Nikov]

No, I'm an advocate of the nigh-exploit level of farm productivity being corrected. Consider that between a still, a farmer's workshop, and a kitchen we are using as much floor space (3x9) as the amount of fertile soil currently required to feed an entire fortress. Three food workers, three planters, and nigh unending heaps of *dwarven syrup roasts* that you can sell for whatever your heart desires. I mean, I'm not for removing functionality. I'm for removing the I WIN button.

[Hyndis]

You can easily mod it yourself by increasing growing times. If the crop can be grown year round you can put a growing time of several years and it will still work just fine.

Adjust all of the underground crops to grow all year round and give them a growing time of around 1000-1500ish. Suddenly farming becomes a whole lot more difficult and you will need huge amounts of land to feed a large population.

[Schilcote]

No, I'm an advocate of the nigh-exploit level of farm productivity being corrected. Consider that between a still, a farmer's workshop, and a kitchen we are using as much floor space (3x9) as the amount of fertile soil currently required to feed an entire fortress. Three food workers, three planters, and nigh unending heaps of *dwarven syrup roasts* that you can sell for whatever your heart desires. I mean, I'm not for removing functionality. I'm for removing the I WIN button.

Spoiler: Nitpick: (click to show/hide)

Technically, it's not an "I win" because you can't really win at DF at all...

I understand what you're trying to say, and I do agree that it is a bit too easy. The question you have to ask in these cases is "would it contribute to the amount of fun the game gives?". Maybe. Probably. What I don't understand is how this and other simple premises devolves into flamewars about the definition of "dwarf".

It doesn't matter what the "official" (and nonexistent) definition of "dwarf" is. The idea of DF is that you can do just about whatever you want. You can flood the world with magma. You can be the first Nazi. You can even sit around in a forest and pretend you're a friggin Elf. You can trade, you can farm, you can let your dwarves starve. I don't see why we need to get into these massive, irrelevant arguments about what it means to be a dwarf or crap like that. From what you just said, I'd say we're talking about a simple, quantifiable balance issue. The solution? Make dwarves eat more often. Thread over.

Or make the crops take longer to grow. That works too.