If you got to choose 1 thing to add in, and it would would perfectly the way you wanted it, what would it be?
I usually say time travel for this, because it'd be more or less impossible, but if it were perfect, then that would mean the computers are awesome. I have trouble thinking in terms of favorites in general though. There are lots of things to do and they all work with each other.
Toady what are your views on lineage in terms of Great (or perhaps terrible) family lines? In as so far as having great people give birth to great people and vise versa
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I understand the "Money" and "Genetic" aspect but usually in myth and legend there is actual power in being the son or daughter of someone who is also great.
Yeah, there's definitely a place for that. The demigod thing, the descendents of a more mighty ancient people, magic running in bloodlines, fate smiling on a family tree, a tie with the land being ruled, etc. There are a lot of angles. There will probably be people that don't want that sort of separation between people, and I imagine restricting or removing it would be the same as removing a type of magic from the world.
Will this castles serve also a strategical important during worldgen in the next release? Like blocking an important pass over a mountain-range for an invading army?
Not in the next release. The move to a weekly world gen for army considerations is a prelude to doing more tracking of positions and so on, but it doesn't march them around or think about terrain beyond static bonuses. There might be armies moving around during play before world gen gifts them with properly placed fortifications. Then we'd need to get them thinking more about how they want to place things.
Are castles just a human-only thing right now? Will other races be getting interesting places soon?
I'm not sure exactly when the other races will get their stuffs. The obstacle for the elves is making giant trees and the obstacle for dwarves is making it generate a dwarf fortress. We'll just have to start it some time, but it might coincide with the fortress starting scenario stuff about entity pops associated to your fort since that will further specify how dwarf sprawl is going to relate to its surroundings.
Will the unwinnable quests to kill friendly demon civ-leaders be no-more with this release?
Yeah. You can also take quests from the demon should you locate it.
When will you begin to implement more seige engines, or perhaps a mini mode such as the arena where the player is in command of the defenders or attackers and has catapults, seige towers battering rams etc at there disposal?, will it also be possible to implement a feature where destroyed towers or sections of walls would cause a cave in?
I imagine once the armies are moving around and you yourself are tasked to or otherwise want to overcome a castle's defenses, you'll start getting your prizes. There's also the boat angle which I doubt will be the cause of vehicles (or moving siege engines) but could be. Then there are the dwarf siege improvements, which requires pretty much the same preconditions as the adventure mode sieges. So imagine as we are working through the Nov/Dec site resource/caravan/army stuff, we might not get to siege engines, but we'll be ready for it. Any disconnected wall section would collapse, but having siege engines breaking pieces of walls might making improving the cave-in code a higher priority.
This somehow brings to mind the idea of player-moddable sites and structures
Is this even a consideration at the moment?
I'm not sure what I need for the vanilla game yet, so it would be difficult to tie myself to a raw format for moddable structures at this early point. There's quite a bit of random variation, so it's the same trouble as rawifying the random beasts.
How much time it takes for a civ to build one of these castles? If they are not instantly built, can the process be interrupted? Are they built with materials available to the civilizations? Is wood one of these materials?Can they become ruins?
Right now it is an instant process, which means it takes one year at most. We wanted to do wooden fortifications, but if you have to do one quickly, then the big stone ones are more fun. On the other hand, humans don't currently have stone as civ materials, so it's all very strange. The upcoming site resource stuff should change all of this. Castles are subject to the new site code, which doesn't respect the old ruination stuff yet, but we'll get to it.
Why do the towers use ramps instead of stairs?
(And speaking of it, all the other adventurer mode buildings.)
I think of the X stairs as more rickety spiral staircases, but aside from the tower, the only one I can think of is the new labyrinth, which uses stairs. I also didn't like the thought of a battle being fought up a tower with the defenders always being directly above in a row, especially if arrows work down through multiple stair tiles.
Will bandits attack in fortress mode? There will be multiracial bands?
They don't attack in fortress mode at this point. In part because they don't yet make new groups and in part because they don't attack yet sites, just travelers. There are multiracial bands. In general you'll have goblins, or humans, or humans and goblins, but if humans take over elf/dwarf sites in world gen then you can get those as well.
I notice the dev page hasn't been updated to reflect the upcoming changes of the next release. Isn't that what "Done, Next Release" is for?
It may simply be that the additions since then weren't complete enough to mark as resolved on the dev page.
Yeah, it has been rough there. Even the bandit mention at the top of villians is probably only fit for a "partial" once the release is up, since the leaders don't really feel like villains specifically, but it is technically done. I can mark off "Reputation with entity (see below) allowing for easier followers", and I think there's another partial in the reputation section now. "Clean up the wrestling interface" just happened.