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[Footkerchief]

I haven't thought much about the xml, since I wasn't aware of it being used by anybody and nobody ever mentioned it to me again aside from some dismissive remarks (and the other question above).  If it is useful to anybody I can try to keep it up to date and fill in some of the missing fields.  Was it being used by a legends viewer now?  I don't recall if it was being used or if it was just mentioned in the thread.

Mason11987's World Viewer.

[Mel_Vixen]

And i was thinking to write a app that compiles the Xml down to some kind of World-wiki like thing.

[NW_Kohaku]

How much automation do you forsee allowing players to set up with regards to their farms?  Will this be something similar to the new Military screen, where we can set cycles of an arbitrary length in years for planting and harvesting, as well as amounts of fertilizers to be used, and will we have some means of linking a water source to a farm, so that dwarves can have an automated watering system (such as the "sprinkler" system I suggested in my last post) that does not require player input?

That sounds reasonable enough, though I'm not sure how water is going to end up working.

In further automation, could we ever see something like a burrow that auto-designates any tree within it to be cut down, so that repeatedly designating the same areas that you have built as tree farms are no longer another seasonal player micromanagement task?

It's a reasonable suggestion -- we'll have to see how things like harvesting fruit are handled, once we have things that can grow like that.  It'll probably all fit under the same umbrella.  Overall, it might just be zone/burrow environment management options or something, although there are parallels with farming that complicate it a bit.  Removing the farm as a building might work best.  (I cut yours to four questions, since preparing the post has already taken hours, feel free to re-ask in moderation)

I suppose that this one would be the one I would want to re-ask most:
(With regards to setting up automated schedules for crop rotations, even if only for individual plots)
Will we also be able to have an inport/export to text file feature, similar to Worldgen data or Embark Profiles, so that when we set up a working system we enjoy, we can reuse those systems in future fortresses (or even share them with other players)? (Not that I wouldn't like to see more of this in general, such as with uniforms

I'd also like to follow up on the way that water works:
Will rain (or at least climate) play a larger role in the new farming/wild shrub system?  We will start needing water for our crops, but since rain is so infrequent currently in most climates (although I've certainly found one fort that seemed to be in permanent monsoon season), will we see a change in the way rain is handled to be able to more frequently naturally water crops to allow for rainfall farming of crops specialized for that climate?  Will there potentially be (psuedo-invisible) "light showers" that do not really show up on the fortress mode radar that can slightly water crops between serious rainstorms? 

It could be possible to have natural rainfall generally take care of all your watering needs if you happen to live in the right kind of climate for such a thing, especially since most of the seeds dwarven farmers will get for aboveground farming have to grow as wild crops, unless you buy seeds off of elves and humans, and this could be a potential way of really differentiating fortresses, based upon having a large enough crop library that every different biome you embark upon will give you a different set of crops that you can naturally grow (at least, aboveground), provided that the wild shrubs grow based upon what weather patterns (and soil types) are appropriate for them, and we have a broad enough library of new, differentiated crops.  This, in turn, brings up questions about, now that crops can actually be differentiated significantly, how many crops you'd start allowing?  Instead of having a dozen plants everywhere (and one for each of Good, Evil, and Savage), can we get tropical-jungle-on-silty-loam-specific fruits where it's possible for one fort to see an entirely different set of crops for its whole existence than another fort?  More specifically, as this is starting to get buried in the pages of Improved Farming, how do you react to http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=22015.msg1445642#msg1445642 and the subsequent few posts?

Finally, furthering the subject of having more different types of crops, I'm wondering about expanding the uses of crops, (such as the fungus that grows a small gem while it leeches minerals from the rock and helps develop the soil), but will we ever get to see things like elves being capable of growing plant monsters to unleash upon their foes from seeds in their farms?

[Footkerchief]

I suppose that this one would be the one I would want to re-ask most:
Will we also be able to have an inport/export to text file feature, similar to Worldgen data or Embark Profiles, so that when we set up a working system we enjoy, we can reuse those systems in future fortresses (or even share them with other players)?

What kind of "systems" are you talking about?  That could mean anything from production chains to militaries to physical systems like pump stacks.  None of those lend themselves to importing, since they'll generally conflict in hard-to-resolve ways with the existing systems in your fortress.

I'd also like to follow up on the way that water works, as I've
Will rain (or at least climate) play a larger role in the new farming/wild shrub system?  We will start needing water for our crops, but since rain is so infrequent currently in most climates (although I've certainly found one fort that seemed to be in permanent monsoon season), will we see a change in the way rain is handled to be able to more frequently naturally water crops to allow for rainfall farming of crops specialized for that climate?  Will there potentially be (psuedo-invisible) "light showers" that do not really show up on the fortress mode radar that can slightly water crops between serious rainstorms? 

It could be possible to have natural rainfall generally take care of all your watering needs if you happen to live in the right kind of climate for such a thing, especially since most of the seeds dwarven farmers will get for aboveground farming have to grow as wild crops, unless you buy seeds off of elves and humans, and this could be a potential way of really differentiating fortresses, based upon having a large enough crop library that every different biome you embark upon will give you a different set of crops that you can naturally grow (at least, aboveground), provided that the wild shrubs grow based upon what weather patterns (and soil types) are appropriate for them, and we have a broad enough library of new, differentiated crops.  (This, in turn, brings up questions about, now that crops can actually be differentiated significantly, how many crops you'd start allowing?)

Finally, furthering the subject of having more different types of crops, I'm wondering about expanding the uses of crops, (such as the fungus that grows a small gem while it leeches minerals from the rock and helps develop the soil), but will we ever get to see things like elves being capable of growing plant monsters to unleash upon their foes from seeds in their farms?

Just a reminder:

I read all of the posts in this thread, but if you want a reply to a specific point, then I guess that's what should be green.  I worked through more than half of the new questions this morning, and I just went with one of your actual question mark questions, but if you've got a few things you want me to focus on, you can highlight those.  It'll be difficult to get to everything.  I should be able to post my next giant reply tomorrow or the next day, depending on how everything else is going.

[G-Flex]

Oh, NW_Kohaku mentioned NPK/pH a while back, and asked whether or not fungus would get energy from a different source.

I know that was a while ago, but it might be worth mentioning that those things aren't a source of energy to begin with, just essential nutrients and such. Energy is another matter entirely.

[NW_Kohaku]

Just a reminder:

I read all of the posts in this thread, but if you want a reply to a specific point, then I guess that's what should be green.  I worked through more than half of the new questions this morning, and I just went with one of your actual question mark questions, but if you've got a few things you want me to focus on, you can highlight those.  It'll be difficult to get to everything.  I should be able to post my next giant reply tomorrow or the next day, depending on how everything else is going.

Mmm... I'll edit, then.  And for the other one, I cropped a little too much...

Oh, NW_Kohaku mentioned NPK/pH a while back, and asked whether or not fungus would get energy from a different source.

I know that was a while ago, but it might be worth mentioning that those things aren't a source of energy to begin with, just essential nutrients and such. Energy is another matter entirely.

I realize that, I've been going off of what I call "Biomass" in the Improved Farming thread, which is just various not-yet-decomposed carbohydrates and other decayable matter. 

[Mel_Vixen]

So lets see Daggerfall had 5000 villages and 750K   NPCs. Lets say we have 50 civs on a middle-sized map with a average of   100 villages. 50 * 100 = 5000. Ok that record is broken! Now with 5000   villages a 50 village-people makes 250000 - not so much . But we have still 50 Mayor citys with say 3000 people each we get another 150000 NPCs. So 400K NPCs!

The   villages currently have 100 people and support 150 people (the 50 from   the dev log was the addition people living in towns), so 5000 villages   and the accompanying towns would get you to your 750K goal.  The 5000   villages part might be iffy though, especially on a medium map, since a   medium map only has 16641 tiles, so you'd have farmed out almost a third   of the world.

Ah thanks for the answer! I would say we need the Extra large worlds for even more people  . You mentioned that the villages till the soil to get food. Will there be herding/fishing based civs too? In some places - as in the mountains - The soil is not good enough for longer periods of farming but work rather well for cattle, sheep, goats etc.

[Neonivek]

Well the landscape has never been a HUGE absorbing part of world generation except when a lot of rejection comes involved.

[Mephansteras]

Toady, how are you going to handle food production for the various entity sites? For example, will a farming civilization like humans produce more food and therefore have larger populations than a non-farming civ like Elves or Goblins?

Yeah, it'll be necessary to track the food stores and production numbers, but that isn't going to determine the populations entirely, since we're probably going to have different nutrition requirements and breeding rates for the immortal races and whatever else going on.  Some of that will be going in this time most likely, if we want to keep goblins competitive, since I don't expect them to be farming at all, and if they live on hunting and raiding, they'll probably need to eat less to maintain proper numbers, but we'll have to see how that turns out.  They'll have more layers to hunt in, but crops yield a lot of food.

Considering that the goblins snatch a lot of non-carnivorous folk, have you considered adding in slave-run farming villages for the goblins? Even if the goblins only gain from it through increased fodder for animals it might make an interesting element. Dwarven farmers down in the caverns, humans and elves farming on whatever soil borders the goblin's mountain range.

On a related note, it seems like all of the two-handed weapons are from the Dwarf/Elf/Goblin point of view. That two-handed sword could be wielded one-handed by even a smallish human. Same with Pikes, Great Axes, and Mauls. This seems a bit odd. Shouldn't the humans have some weapons that are two-handed for them?

Yeah, the two-handed values for things like the maul shouldn't be 67500.  I'm not sure why I set them that way.

I think something is bugged with this anyway. I modded in a new weapon with [TWO_HANDED:75000] [MINIMUM_SIZE:57500], and one of my dwarves is happily running around using it in one hand and a shield in the other. So either I've got a gigantic dwarf (he's not stated as gigantic in his description) or the item size restrictions aren't working right.

Will we get the villages be included into the xml output? How many historical persons are there per Village? Are there new Buildings (Barns, shrines, artificial ponds for fishing and fire-fighting)? Road-signs?

I'm still sorting out the adv mode maps, so I don't have any buildings yet.  Villages are sites for the xml, though I haven't added the additional population information.  I haven't thought much about the xml, since I wasn't aware of it being used by anybody and nobody ever mentioned it to me again aside from some dismissive remarks (and the other question above).  If it is useful to anybody I can try to keep it up to date and fill in some of the missing fields.  Was it being used by a legends viewer now?  I don't recall if it was being used or if it was just mentioned in the thread.

I've also been working a little bit with the XML, although right now it doesn't have all the info I'd like. I'd really like to be able to tell from the XML dump what happened to a given site. It'd be a lot easier to tell what happened throughout history if I could see all of the battles between the civs as well as every event that destroyed a site (like a megabeast attack or monster rampage). It's a little odd right now to see a civ wiped out in the entity list and not be able to easily see what happened to it.

But for the record I *really* like the XML dump and the potential it gives us to really get a good look at what happened during world gen.


New question:
  I know the current 'babysnatchers are always your enemy' thing is just a placeholder to keep fortress mode interesting until the diplomacy and war stuff gets properly implemented. When you do implement that, how is that going to change fortress mode? Is there going to be an option during world gen to stop when a controllable civ is at war? I know we'll be able to start wars ourselves, but will diplomatic events be happening in the background as we play, so we'll get notifications of peace treaties and new conflicts and whatnot during the course of the game? In that vein, if we start a war with the humans will that effect the entire Dwarven Civ or just our Fortress?

[monk12]

Well the landscape has never been a HUGE absorbing part of world generation except when a lot of rejection comes involved.

Which reminds me,

When do you foresee worldgen allowing the player a cursory inspection of history and surviving civs? I hate genning a world, accepting, offloading all those units, going to embark and finding out that the goblins didn't make it past year 7. It seems like the ability to see civilization sprawl and surviving races should be a couple lines after the list of the dead.

[Mel_Vixen]

IIRc Toady you described the Xml dump function -either in the devblog or the readme file - as "Incomplete" which could be a cause why it is not used that much.

[Mephansteras]

Well the landscape has never been a HUGE absorbing part of world generation except when a lot of rejection comes involved.

Which reminds me,

When do you foresee worldgen allowing the player a cursory inspection of history and surviving civs? I hate genning a world, accepting, offloading all those units, going to embark and finding out that the goblins didn't make it past year 7. It seems like the ability to see civilization sprawl and surviving races should be a couple lines after the list of the dead.

This info is actually in the files that get created if you hit 'p' after world-gen finishes. I've got a program in my sig that summarizes it all into a single log file for easy reading which tells you which civs survived and which fell. Here is a version which doesn't require you to have perl to use.

[jeffb]

With relation to 40d, you had said that various jobs were required to get a Baron: " 4 of the following: 25 crafting jobs, 25 metal-related jobs, 25 wood-related jobs, 10 gem jobs, 25 stone jobs, 25 food jobs. "  Also, some have mentioned constructed roads as being required to get a baron.  Are these requirements now obsolete?

The baron never needed a road, and yeah, the old craft diversity requirement is gone now.  Just trade and production now, with 20 dwarves.  Upgrades to count and duke should just require further trade and production.  The population requirement was kept at 20 in consideration of smaller fort people, and you can make it even smaller in the raws if you want.

So I have over 3 million created, 80k exported wealth, 200+ dwarves and zero nobles. Can you please add a periodic check or something, maybe it could also make sure doctors aren't completely ignoring to diagnoses patient that have been resting in hospital for years.

[Mel_Vixen]

Write a bugreport (or add to an existing) and include the safe. IIrc safes that are older the 31.12 games might be broken in this regard.

edit: And a dead civ does not spawn nobles.

[NW_Kohaku]

Yeah, it'll be necessary to track the food stores and production numbers, but that isn't going to determine the populations entirely, since we're probably going to have different nutrition requirements and breeding rates for the immortal races and whatever else going on.  Some of that will be going in this time most likely, if we want to keep goblins competitive, since I don't expect them to be farming at all, and if they live on hunting and raiding, they'll probably need to eat less to maintain proper numbers, but we'll have to see how that turns out.  They'll have more layers to hunt in, but crops yield a lot of food.

Considering that the goblins snatch a lot of non-carnivorous folk, have you considered adding in slave-run farming villages for the goblins? Even if the goblins only gain from it through increased fodder for animals it might make an interesting element. Dwarven farmers down in the caverns, humans and elves farming on whatever soil borders the goblin's mountain range.

As far as I have pictured it, though, when someone is a part of a civ, they become indoctrinated in their ways - elves raised in dwarven lands become badass immortals who hit legendary in multiple skills and use steel armor and weapons, and completely throw their inferior culture behind, while still enjoying all the perks of their race.

Likewise, there's no reason to segregate goblinized dwarves to be put in underground farms from elves and humans on aboveground farms - they have no former culture, and so have no cultural norms to adhere to.

Of course, if you want to have a large population concentrated in a single area, it's almost impossible to do so without farming or at least a seriously coordinated herding effort (like a cattle drive to keep from overgrazing).  If anything, I'd expect farmers in some kind of underground "muck farm" made of decomposing parts and mud where slaves cultivate a sort of very base, low-quality fungus version of animal fodder that is mass-produced to feed livestock for slaughter if you have a meat-heavy goblin civ menu.  Sounds appropriately goblin-y, no?