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[Kogut]

As everybody know history is stopped after worldgen. This results in problems like

• Historical figures, especially king/queen dead from old age on entrance to your fort (age limit excessed due to stopped history and time left in fort/adv mode)
• Raising entropy of world, visible in adventure mode

Spoiler: Entropy? Entropy in DF? What is this? (click to show/hide)

I'm imagining that, at present, cities claim a certain region of land for "this is my site" early on.  External fields are new sites, added as needed.  Hence the preplanned look of that city; it has to be, because land is claimed in advance.

Once sites can expand over time, I'm sure cities will do better there.

That said, it's almost unimaginable to me that cities would not be generated during worldgen, but would instead be retroactively created later.  That's asking for trouble, because it means a city you've visited as an adventurer will likely develop in a different way over time (once that's implemented) than one you have never visited.

Remember that it's ideal that people will create a world and then play LOTS AND LOTS in that one world, without needing to gen a new one.

Unfortunately, the game is simply not very well equipped for playing in the same world over and over again right now.  In adventurer mode right now, pretty much the only activity is to kill everything in the world.  Yeah, sure, you, as an adventurer will get more things, but the basic problem with the rest of the world is still the same.

Something I said in another thread:

As it stands right now, as I remember it, one of Toady's games as an adventurer involved him running away from an alligator to go visit the king of a castle, and get a quest, and when he came back from the quest, the king had been eaten by the alligator, so he recruited all the guards he could from the castle, and went looking for a new castle to get his quests from, because there would never be another king in that castle again.  Once something dies, the function it fulfilled is gone forever.  The game is built on a massive amount of entropic decay.  Societies cannot function, they can only collapse.

...That is really dark.
I am so glad that that's not what the real world is like.

In the real world, behavior like that in DF's AI would never have led to civilization in the first place.  It has its ups and downs, but real-life cultures have always generally striven to build and advance.  DF cultures do not.  They cannot advance, there is no "upward pressure" to innovate or build, and so the "downward pressures" of destruction are completely unopposed, leading to inevitable global extinction.

Killing every living thing (besides vermin) in the entire region is not something epic in this game, it's just hastening the inevitable, completely unopposed entropic decay of a DF world.

In trying to set up a small world for a game I'm playing in right now, I had to cut back the amount of years spent in history to 120 years, just so that dwarves would survive worldgen.  They keep starving by year 27, but for a select few.  Those starve at year 200.

When you haven't visited a town as an adventurer yet, everything is cellophane-wrapped and pristine, but it only is a matter of time after you visit before everything collapses, because the random alligator you walked past will eat the king the next time you come by, and nobody will crown a new king, nobody will build anything or replace anything that gets broken, but everything can break. 

That, in a nutshell, is the overarching problem with the simulated fantasy world right now - nothing can be built, but everything can be destroyed. 

Unopposed entropic decay.

Is it planned by Toady to remove this "one run of history" simplification? (I failed to find sth in DF talk etc)

[Jeoshua]

I'm sure I don't understand what you're talking about.

Toady is working on making history less wonky and more sophisticated, he just hasn't added everything in yet.  We're playing an incomplete partial release of the game, here.

[Dutchling]

In the latest DFtalk he talks about it. I could copy some of it but you'd better just read / hear it yourself

[metime00]

it's the 5th release in the caravan arc devlog I think.

The release that goes, "Make worldgen activities happen in regular play" is the release that will move all worldgen activities into normal time. So rulers will die and be replaced while you run your fort etc.

It's also the release that I am the most excited for, and it's just in the devlog.

[Untelligent]

You mean history continuing to run after worldgen ends, as you are playing?

Yeah, that's been planned for a long time. It's just that none of that's been implemented yet. It is planned soon, though. Well, parts of it.

The release that goes, "Make worldgen activities happen in regular play" is the release that will move all worldgen activities into normal time. So rulers will die and be replaced while you run your fort etc.

It doesn't say "all" worldgen stuff. It'll be a good start, though, I'm sure.

[Reelyanoob]

It'd be nice if we could hack the civilizations now, e.g. just crown some guard as king. He might survive the aligators better.

[Jeoshua]

Noob, that ain't a bad idea really.

You could make the King have to be upgraded from a General... that would ensure he had seen battle, therefore would be more hearty.

[Reelyanoob]

You know, I would not be at all surprised if, after a specific update, kingless civs would all suddenly appoint new kings etc

Just like how invalids popped back to life recently with the hospital fixes.

EDIT: I also think things like kings being eaten alive is going to drop a lot with the current city improvements. Better guard placement and the like.

[Cruxador]

You mean history continuing to run after worldgen ends, as you are playing?

Yeah, that's been planned for a long time. It's just that none of that's been implemented yet. It is planned soon, though. Well, parts of it.

The release that goes, "Make worldgen activities happen in regular play" is the release that will move all worldgen activities into normal time. So rulers will die and be replaced while you run your fort etc.

It doesn't say "all" worldgen stuff. It'll be a good start, though, I'm sure.

Of note, the army arc stuff won't come until the army arc.

[alcohol_dependent]

Noob, that ain't a bad idea really.

You could make the King have to be upgraded from a General... that would ensure he had seen battle, therefore would be more hearty.

Kings are born, not promoted.  It would make sense for a king to receive some combat training, but really, the chances of the paragon of civilization being killed by an alligator are slim. Never heard of anything like it. There'd have to be some serious reason for a king to put himself into a dangerous situation such as that. His court wouldn't let him.

Even if he were somehow put into a situation like traveling through a jungle or swamp, a royal guard would be with him. Any belligerent animal would be dealt with promptly. Those guards would be putting their life down to ensure things go smoothly.

If he died and had no heirs, I feel the monarchy would just be deposed to another family if the civilization was so disposed to monarchy.

[Reelyanoob]

If the king dies, someone takes over. That's real life. If there's no heir, they don't "Depose the monarchy", someone else claims the crown. When has this ever not happened?

And the general is the #1 candidate (assuming no heir, or a weak heir), also real life and historical. Read up on the Roman Empire. People proclaiming themselves a King, Emperor or whatever is very common historically. There had to be a "First King" in any line.

Also your "kings are not promoted" idea totally contradicts the medieval "Holy Roman Empire" in Germany, where kings were elected.

As if the general doesn't class as a "family": His sons become the new line. He is the guy with all the soldiers, remember. So what "noble" family will tell him otherwise? Read the bio on Julius Ceasar Quote:"Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire.". Certainly not born a king, but he became absolute ruler of the Empire, spawning a dynasty, purely from his position as a general.

Not all kings are born kings. William the Conquerer became a king.

WTH do you mean "if" the civ was disposed to monarchy? All of history is full of this very event we're discussing.

When kings die, someone else becomes the ruler.

Whether you call that King or President or whatever. So we are still disposed to having one absolute ruler today.

[alcohol_dependent]

If the king dies, someone takes over. That's real life.

And the general is the #1 candidate (assuming no heir, or a weak heir), also real life and historical. Read up on the Roman Empire.

Not all kings are born kings. William the Conquerer became a king.

WTH do you mean "if" the civ was disposed to monarchy? All of history is full of this very event we're discussing.

When kings die, someone else becomes the ruler.

Whether you call that King or President or whatever. So we are still disposed to having one absolute ruler today.

What if the dwarves invented the Republic?

Presidents are not monarchs by any stretch, nor are they at all absolute rulers. Speak for yourself there, I'm not disposed to having one absolute ruler.

I could see generals becoming kings. I wouldn't call it a promotion. I think ascension is a more befitting term.

Actually if a king got killed by an alligator, all signs point to civil war.

[Reelyanoob]

What if the dwarves invented the Republic?

Dwarves have kingdom in the game, and we're discussing whether a General can rise to rule a Kingdom in Dwarf Fortress.

Also, as shown by the example of Julius Ceasar, the Republic fell to a new hereditary monarchy (specifically, run by a General, no less)

Totally irrelevant.

Presidents are not monarchs by any stretch, nor are they at all absolute rulers. Speak for yourself there, I'm not disposed to having one absolute ruler.

Personal disposition is not relevant to disposition of societies as a whole. Its a structural thing, not personal preference. And plenty of presidents have wielded almost absolute power. e.g. President of Disctatorships, Stalin, Hitler. Title may vary, and exact limits of power as well, but there is a continuum from Monarchs to Presidents in history.

Remember, documents like the Magna Carte were created to limit powers of a monarchy, and consider the weakness of the french monarchy in the time of Joan of Arc. We wouldn't say that they were not monarchies because of limited power of the executive, so this cannot be used as a delimiting factor. Many presidents have wielded more power than some of these historical monarchs, not less.

I could see generals becoming kings. I wouldn't call it a promotion. I think ascension is a more befitting term.

You were the one who said "promotion" not me or Jeoshua. Why are you disputing you're own contribution to the discussion?

I said "Appointed". Ascension would do as well, but it's a bit vague, like you rise on your own. Whether or not you would call it a promotion is irrelevant because nobody else used the term. Remember I was quoting you, the only time I used the term.

Actually if a king got killed by an alligator, all signs point to civil war.

And who is good at war? Generals. They are the "guy with the guns".

[Jeoshua]

I'd like to point something out about this game.

Dwarves have Kings

Elves have Queens.

Humans have Warlords.

So not every race has the sophistication of a monarch instituted by divine right.

[Devling]

I'd like to point something out about this game.

Dwarves have Kings

Elves have Queens.

Humans have Warlords.

So not every race has the sophistication of a monarch instituted by divine right.

Nail, meet hammer of actual game mechanics.