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[Dvergar]

Here is a related suggestion, though not the same, very detailed, albiet old (2008) 
Also:http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=62971.msg1449188#msg1449188

It has always bothered me how little the Mountain Home has influenced your Fort.  The text on the embarkation screen makes it seem as if your dwarves are very similar to what we hummies might call Settlers going to found a Colony.  Maybe dwarves are very different from us, but normally the mountain home or Mother Country is looking to establish a profit from the colony.

Colonialism throughout the hummie times has had varying faces.  The colonialism we see in DF is like the colonialism in Antiquity.  The colonies were self-governing and soverign.  Later on, empires arose that taxed their colonies.  After a several hundred year hiatus involving almost no growth in globalization, greater global naval empires arose to make great profits off of previously isolated lands.  But even though Imperialistic theory hadn't been thought up by hummies until the early Modern era, why shouldn't greedy dwarves assume exploitative relationships with their colonies far eariler? 

Basically, in game terms, if enabeled outside "Powers that be" will request or demand that certain items be crafted or extracted, and will impose trading restictions with other races/ other dwarven caravans.  Unfortuantely these mandates may become non-aligned with your own goals and you may wish to win your independance.  Maybe you can do this through armed conflict, through economic warfare, or through bribery.  In return however, the Mountain Home will provide high quality manufactured items and more importantly highly skilled immigrants made to order.  This may even include a standing army, equiped and fed via supply lines running from the Mountain Home.  This is a stretch right here, but maybe dwarves can go to the mountainhome to attend "University" where they are trained by Legendary craftsmen.

Like I said though, much of this is a stretch and wouldn't really work.  Truly I would just like to see some kind of relationship between the colony and Mother Country.

[thijser]

you might want to look here it's quite recent
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=62971.msg1449188#msg1449188

[Dvergar]

Thank you for pointing that out, I would never had been able to find that using the search tool.

Still, the idea at your link is a bit narrow in my opinion.  I interpreted that suggestion as being a kind of mission or objective system, which doesn't really fit the sandbox-style play of DF, again just imo.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, I commented on the other thread that was just linked, saying, essentially how I didn't like the notion that interactions with the Mountainhome be reduced to what basically boils down to "mandates" from an off-map source.

Still, I do think there's a better way to do this, (from the Future of the Fortress thread):

Actually, this gets me thinking about how the whole Army Arc 2 will play out - when we are doing things like building sprawl around ourselves, laying down roads, conquering foreign cities, pushing around armies on the map and stuff, I wonder how this will be handled...

All these things happen off-screen, after all.  Worldgen events also tend to take place "by the year" rather than by the day, the way that fortress events occur. 

Our eventual goal is to have the player's role be the embodiment of positions of power within the fortress, performing actions in their official capacity, to the point that in an ideal world each command you give would be linked to some noble, official or commander.

When I try to picture it, I think of a few of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games (8, I believe, was one that did this), where you would normally be in control of just your selected historical character, but every few months, there would be a "Council Meeting" where the actions of all the other officers would be determined by the ruler/governor, and you could assign tasks like conscripting or training soldiers or sending them to war to generals, while more beurocratic officials were given jobs improving the farms or the economics of the region.  If you were not a ruler, but an officer yourself, you could try to make suggestions that could curry you favor that could translate to promotions, and would wind up with you being assigned a task that would similarly give you favor if you managed to complete it by the time of the next council.

I wonder if something like this would be in DF?  Will we have something like a "New Year's Council Meeting" where we can see a review of the previous year's events, including the outside world's happenings in reports from agents that report to the mayor or baron or king (expedition leaders will probably be too low-level to have spies in the field) before we then dispatch captains or ministers or liasons or other agents to enact our bidding (if we are high-rank enough)? Will the dwarves whose actions we are presumably deciding have a system for gaining favor and rising through the ranks, so that advancement from baron on up becomes a matter of some sort of political wrangling?  I imagine people will be slower to have their Baron get an Unfortunate Accident when "we are the Baron", and getting the Baron to climb the ranks would give them greater power and authority over the world map.  It would also give some of these nobles something to do - meeting with agents and compilating data for the next year's council so that it is more detailed and informative in the same way that we have bookkeepers now, whether it is the baron himself or some agent like a spymaster if you have risen enough to afford one.

Like that, it would be like we suddenly get to sit in the war room, controlling the outside world in broad strokes before going back to the micromanagement of your power base.  (Potentially including training up dwarves you can later promote to agents that can be sent into the world map to see your will done.)  The contrast appeals to me.

[CapnMikey]

I've thought about this as well.  I think there should be a distinction between the mature, Mountainhome forts, and the blue-water forts the player is creating.  The most important difference being mature forts would have mined out all their valuable ore and gem deposits, suggesting they have only abundant (stone) and renewable (plant, animal) materials to play with.

It never made sense to me that your roasts, clothing, and piles of rock crafts - even masterwork - would be worth anything to a mature fort, where likely everyone is a legendary crafter/cook/clothing maker because there's nothing else to do!  Your metals and gems on the other hand, they'd be crazy about.

Actually, I could see them paying even more for raw materials than finished goods, because they'd be eager to dust off their old skills, and recapture the simple pleasures of smelting ores, working with metals, and cutting gems.  Such things are the heart of what it means to be Dwarf, and they would have a shortage of those materials.  I guess I imagine them as being sorta fat and wealthy, doing such things as luxury recreation rather than out of need.

[Dvergar]

Actually, I could see them paying even more for raw materials than finished goods, because they'd be eager to dust off their old skills, and recapture the simple pleasures of smelting ores, working with metals, and cutting gems.  Such things are the heart of what it means to be Dwarf, and they would have a shortage of those materials.  I guess I imagine them as being sorta fat and wealthy, doing such things as luxury recreation rather than out of need.

This right here I believe is taking the Tolkienesque dwarf stereotype a bit too far.  A mature fortress would have little demand for manufactured goods but a large demand for raw material, which you hit on.  But ultimately the mature fortress is looking to make a profit, buying cheap raw materials and selling overpriced manufactured goods on a monopolized market.

While I don't think the fort should be overly-dependant on any Mountain Home/Fort relationship that may be included in the future, you can also look at the Mountain Home as a tool for newbies, reducing the learing curve dramatically. 

[CapnMikey]

Hahaha, good point.  Those opportunistic bastards! :p  And good call, I've been thinking a lot about Tolkien dwarves.  My current feeling is almost that dwarves shouldn't be growing crops or working with textiles at all, even though I find those elements of the game fun.

I was also thinking that other races would be interested in your finished goods, and perhaps there'd be a market for exotic, dwarf-speciality foods, but not surface foods that anyone can procure.  This is probably veering off-topic, though.

As for the Mountain Home being a newbie tool, that makes sense!  How I would like that to work is, by using a largely "outsourced" workforce, you could get a lot more done, but you would have less "ownership" of your fort.  While it's harder to train up your own guys, everything you do would be yours.  Simply paying salaries doesn't cut it, IMO, that's too... I dunno, superficial.  The player would still feel like they're in charge, rather than feeling like a tool of a larger empire.  The mandates are certainly better, especially if you sometimes had to redirect your fort from what you want to do to fill them.

That could be a bit of an annoyance, but I think that should be the goal.  If your highly skilled workforce is largely external, the price should the oppressing feeling of being under someone else's thumb.

[Dvergar]

...like a tool of a larger empire...

I think this is exactly waht should be able to happen if a player is not careful.  Hell, further along the with the army arc each fort will probably end up becoming pawns in a giant game of "Sid Meier's Civilization/Colonization" and thus conquered and manipulated unendingly until they can acquire the wealth/military might to remain independant.