Lots of ideas!
I've got 100-200 hours of Magma on my back now. I believe I'm burned behind the ears. Yes I hate elves, cats and babies. Also I hate dwarves. Silencio!
My suggestions are as following:
- Add another hostile CIV that survives world generation on par with Goblins but that arrives in smaller, more elite groups with better abilities aimed towards penetrating traps, loot that cannot be aquired other than killing or capturing them.
Hmm, some sort of trapavoid, elite force? Maybe accompanied by some sort of super-powerful material? Dig deeper, my friend!
There are also a lot of mods that do this. I've heard good things about Fortress Defense mod, if you want to have a look.
- Elves should not trade wood with you. Why would they give wood to the woodchopping woodburning dwarves?
Maybe they're hoping that if they provide it, we won't need to kill the trees?
Elves didn't used to trade wood (nobody did, actually). Without wood, there was very little reason to try to remain on peaceful terms with the elves. I think a return of elven diplomat functionality would do well for this, and I expect it to return, because it was fun. The elves would institute woodcutting limits on you, and if you refused or failed, they'd go to war with you. Not that they're necessarily so hot at war, but they stop trading you wood when they're at war.
- Elven wood equipment should be tiered, have the grunts use the current stuff, but add a wood type that equals to iron and one to a something between steel and candy that their leaders carry and use.
Between steel and candy?!? So you have dug deeper!
I wouldn't be surprised to see Toady implement some stronger wood in the future. It's a feature of a lot of mods, and everybody agrees that elves are a bit of a pushover. Do you really think it needs to be
that powerful though?
- Add in trade requests for elves and human caravans if your fort is of a certain size or have offered a certain amount of wealth.
I think this is a good idea, and wouldn't require too much fiddling. The only reason not to is to maintain significant differences between the caravans.
- Redo the training weapons. Right now they are just skipper or abused for woodcutting. They should make your guys train better or have another unique, purposeful quality.
The original idea with training weapons is they had less chance of leading to sparring injuries. But it doesn't look like dwarves ever suffer sparring injuries anymore. I think they're just on hiatus, not gone. I once saw my best speardwarf strike down his second who had picked up the spear I had designed especially to my best's tastes... Maybe it was just coincidence.
- Ballistas and catapults. Make them check for targets within their range at the same 1 z level and above and under. Make a calcuation as to whether or not the shot got aimed, if it did at least make it shoot or angle in a somewhat useful direction.
That's a good start. I doubt that Toady considers siege engines to be finished. They strike me as placeholders more than anything. Siege in surface-to-air, I don't think so, but certainly, catapult targeting could use some work.
- Add "rental" or captured craftsmen. A human one that allows you to build a exotic weapon forge. A elf that allows you to build bows and arrows. A goblin that allows you to build a torture pit which you then can assign dwarves to. Over time watching the torture of another sentient creature gives them the "doesn't care about anything" hardening.
That's actually a really interesting idea, at least for the extra workshops. One thing is that according to the raws, dwarves are supposed to have very low tolerance for slavery or torture. They're not completely evil, you know.
You can kind of already built a torture pit. The polite thing to call it is an "arena." Just nod and pretend that the "combatants" (prisoners) have a reasonable chance of winning.
Thank you for reading, happy Dorfing. I hope Toady will take the time to read this and at least consider one or more of the proposals.
[/quote]