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[NW_Kohaku]

Well, the "pillage the ghost town" thing is probably not part of the planned final state of the game.  When we're making suggestions, we should assume that bugs will eventually get fixed.

[Jeoshua]

Toady really needs to make fallen cities lose their items and ESPECIALLY their pets.  As it is the non-eating pets just chill in the old abandoned forts and cities forever.

With so many pets around, it really makes you wonder how the inhabitants found the NERVE to starve in the first place.  All those pets and nobody decided to cook a doggie burger?

Edited the first post.

[Vattic]

With the new cities being as large as they are it seems appropriate to mention a suggestion I made back in 2009. With the other animal suggestions in this topic it seems an appropriate place to post this.

I think it would be nice if we could specify that certain creatures appear around certain entities or sites. In real life we have many animals that can be found in large numbers within cities or around human activity. Some that come to mind include pigeons, rats, cockroaches, seagulls, foxes, hedgehogs and many others.

I know we can almost do this already by specifying certain creatures turn up in the same biomes that certain civs favour but this is unreliable. I propose some new tags to deal with this.

[BIOME_SITE:site type]
with the options: CITY, TREE_CITY, DARK_FORTRESS, CAVE, CAVE_DETAILED, RUIN
e.g. [BIOME_SITE:CITY]
Would allow creatures to appear in certain types of site regardless of which entity occupies the site.

[BIOME_ENTITY:entity name]
with the options (in vanilla DF): MOUNTAIN, FOREST, PLAINS, EVIL, SKULKING.
e.g. [BIOME_ENTITY:PLAINS]
Would allow creature to appear in sites occupied by certain entities regardless of site type.

I want this added so that I can have feral dogs and pigs found around specific civs.

Imagine the weird things you might find under the cities or in goblin towers.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, I don't think it's so much a matter of those animals going where humans live as it is a matter of them simply being omnivorous scavengers capable of surviving in human-dominated environments.  A leopard, for example, will have no gazelle to hunt if the gazelle can't chew on grass because all the fields are fenced in and growing lettuce, or all the fields are paved over in asphalt. 

Hence, they don't "appear" so much as "are the only things left" - of course, not having any predators and having a readily available food source will cause a rat population to explode.  (Which is why there are cats...)

I would rather say that, instead of there being some pest that is specific to goblins, and one that is specific to dwarves, there are "civilization adaptable" creatures.

The only one of those creatures I can think of that actually directly benefit (as opposed to simply manage to scavenge off the edges, and enjoying a paucity of predators) from human habitation is the cockroach.  They are susceptible to the cold, like many insects, and will die off in the Winter without human homes that not only keep out the snow, but also are heated, and hence ensure plenty of cockroach eggs survive Winter's freeze so long as they are within a house. 

I should also point out that almost all of those creatures you mentioned are vermin (only the fox isn't), and vermin are pretty much omnipresent in DF, anyway.

(It's always annoyed me, though, that only cats are vermin hunters, and vermin hunters hunt ALL vermin - you should have to use something else, like frogs or bats as insect-control creatures.  Speaking of foxes, they are capable of being vermin hunters, and they are tamable, if exotic, creatures, even in real life.)

[Vattic]

Another suggestion: Packs of dogs roaming the streets if there is a dog population.

You raise a fair point. I suppose it could draw from the native creatures, selecting those with [CIV_ADAPT] or similar, and making them appear in local cities. Some pests wouldn't do so well with goblins as they don't store food. Some pests might have difficulty living in underground cities. Rats, stowing away, would appear across many trading civs. Perhaps being more specific like I suggested would make sense especially considering the more fantastical creatures. One thing I didn't consider is being able to specify where in a city you might find certain creatures for things like sewer rats.

You also get escaped animals going feral which might be interesting to simulate.

I suppose what I'm looking for is more interesting cities than just humans and their domestic animals. Here in the UK I see plenty of animals that thrive in the cities and it makes things more lively.

What you've said about vermin and their hunters is also a fair point. I want to have trained birds of prey to deal with pigeons.

[Kogut]

The only one of those creatures I can think of that actually directly benefit (as opposed to simply manage to scavenge off the edges, and enjoying a paucity of predators) from human habitation is the cockroach.

Also all "useful" animals: dogs, cats etc. And farm animals - evolution success (mass reproduction) is fully achieved.

[Icee77]

Wouldn't it be awesome for your adventurer just traveling in the city, when a message pops up:
SIEGE!! CLOSE THE GATES!!!
And then bam! Industry hits. Instead of workshops like Clothiers or Kitchen, Furnaces and Metalsmithing start popping up. Walls start being brought down and built with better material. Soldiers start patrolling the streets. It wouldn't be uncommon for Recruiters to roam streets and ambushes from enemy saboteurs would be common.

[NW_Kohaku]

What you've said about vermin and their hunters is also a fair point. I want to have trained birds of prey to deal with pigeons.

I can't help you there, but you can buy bat houses to try to cut down on insect populations.  After doing some research on it for the Improved Farming thread, I wound up putting up one near my own house to maybe cut down on the absurd number of stinkbugs around here.

Speaking of which, in the Improved Farming thread, I put in two sections specifically on modeling food webs and trophic levels as an extension of invasive pests that eat your crops - Pests, Wildlife, and Invasive Species, and Food Webs. 

The sort of system I was talking about there would basically work from the ground up - taking the information on what plants are growing in the area, deciding on which insects or other primary consumers would be supported by that population of plants, then letting those populations of creatures be consumed by the next trophic level up of consumers, and so on, so that lions only move in when there's a supply of enough gazelles and wildebeest to support a pride.

[Vattic]

I can't help you there, but you can buy bat houses to try to cut down on insect populations.  After doing some research on it for the Improved Farming thread, I wound up putting up one near my own house to maybe cut down on the absurd number of stinkbugs around here.

I meant in game. They already do this in the UK and in Dubai at least.

[NW_Kohaku]

I meant in game. They already do this in the UK and in Dubai at least.

Well, in-game, all we can do is make suggestions, or else just apply the same vermin-hunting tag the cats have on other creatures in mods. 

I'd think it extremely cool to have a "hiveable" set of bats for caves, or else keeping some sort of aviary for hawks and falcons and owls.  The hawks and falcons and owls thing wouldn't even take too much coding to make proper.  Probably have a use for the animal caretaker skill, finally, too.

[chewie]

Another Input: What about Walls and fortification?
I would totally love to see some Vauban-ish walls around the city's borders:

Spoiler: Vauban (big pics) (click to show/hide)

Sébastien Le Prestre, Seigneur de Vauban and later Marquis de Vauban (15 May 1633 – 30 March 1707), commonly referred to as Vauban, was a Marshal of France and the foremost military engineer of his age, famed for his skill in both designing fortifications and breaking through them. He also advised Louis XIV on how to consolidate France's borders, to make them more defensible. Vauban made a radical suggestion of giving up some land that was indefensible to allow for a stronger, less porous border with France's neighbours.

Trying to enter those cities with your Adventure mod party should be a great amount of fun. Especially when they're hostile to you

______________

About the city plans: In my opinion the big squares on the inner side of the buildings should be smaller, because they are typical for industrialization (>1850) city design which isn't the age DF plays in. If you look at Bern, the capitol of switzerland that still has it's historical centre, you see that those squares don't exist there. I suggest making more squares (typically triangular!) between the narrow lanes outside the buildings.

Although Today tried to make the cities organic by varying the sizes of the single houses, they could still be rounder and more chaotic, but with a central building or square with big roads leading away from it. That would also help the adventurer. When he gets on that bigger lane he will know where the center of the city is. More or less.

[Vattic]

One thing I'd like to see is bridges with buildings along the sides. Some could be completely built up on either side.

Some real life examples:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14508972/pictures/builtOnBridges/800px-London-bridge-1682.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14508972/pictures/builtOnBridges/London_Bridge_%281616%29_by_Claes_Van_Visscher.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14508972/pictures/builtOnBridges/BaalsBridgeLimerickbyBartlett.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14508972/pictures/builtOnBridges/Kreuznach_Brueckenhaeuser_1900.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14508972/pictures/builtOnBridges/londonbridge.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14508972/pictures/builtOnBridges/Taking-Down-the-Houses-of-london-bridge.jpg
From the town I grew up in:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14508972/pictures/builtOnBridges/Pulteney_Bridge_wide_view_from_east.JPG
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14508972/pictures/builtOnBridges/Pulteney_Bridge_shops.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14508972/pictures/builtOnBridges/Pulteney_Bridge%2C_Bath%2C_rear_view.jpg

[Jeoshua]

Possibly the constuction style could vary from civ to civ, or be dependant upon war.  War would mean fast, planned out construction.  High walls, straight streets, defense and organization.  A smaller farm town that has never known the threat of war would be more organic, no walls.

[NW_Kohaku]

Another Input: What about Walls and fortification?
I would totally love to see some Vauban-ish walls around the city's borders:

Spoiler: Vauban (big pics) (click to show/hide)

Sébastien Le Prestre, Seigneur de Vauban and later Marquis de Vauban (15 May 1633 – 30 March 1707), commonly referred to as Vauban, was a Marshal of France and the foremost military engineer of his age, famed for his skill in both designing fortifications and breaking through them. He also advised Louis XIV on how to consolidate France's borders, to make them more defensible. Vauban made a radical suggestion of giving up some land that was indefensible to allow for a stronger, less porous border with France's neighbours.

Trying to enter those cities with your Adventure mod party should be a great amount of fun. Especially when they're hostile to you

Those are "Star Forts", which were built during the 17th centuries and later (we even have a few over in the United States, back to the Revolutionary War).  They were made to take advantage of, and to protect against the heavy artillery of the time. 

In Medieval castle construction, the idea was to build a tall wall that was difficult to climb, and also that was imposing and gave the peasants a clear idea of who had the power in the region. 

In the Age of Exploration, when cannons would tear those walls down in a couple of shots, the fortifications were changed to be lower to the ground, and much, much thicker, using packed earth faced with bricks and dotted with cannon ports which were arrayed in angled walls to give the cannons overlapping fields of fire.  This meant defender cannons had a brick wall overhead and to the sides to protect them from fire, their ammunition was stored in bunkers where their gunpowder would not prematurely detonate, and any infantry attacker trying to swarm a single bulwark would be gunned down by the adjacent bulwarks. 

These defenses were built much further out from cities than old city walls of the Roman and Medieval eras were - they had to place their guns out far enough that enemy artillery couldn't shell the city without being in range of the fort's guns. 

Long story short, the defenses of a star fort are simply built around a type of warfare that doesn't exist in DF. Yes, they're cool, but they don't work without long-range artillery-based combat that can punch holes in normal castle walls.