Future of the Fortress
The current project is the Army Arc (and quite a bit of the Life Cycle Arc by necessity). Features listed for a given release are tentative. There might be bug fix releases between any of the releases listed below.
Color Key: Done - Partial/delayed - Current - Future
Release 1: Here is the current idea. There will also be five or six additional small items.
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Stage 1: Dynamic names for eras to reflect what's going on in the world.
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Stage 2: Specify further how civilizations claim territory so that their settlements don't interlace so much -- this also sets the stage for conflict.
(Territory viewer: Year 1,
Year 10,
Year 20,
Year 30,
Year 40,
Year 50,
Year 100,
Year 500,
Year 1050)
(More territory viewer: Standard Map 1,
Standard Map 2,
Small Map (territory),
Small Map (biomes))
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Stage 3: Expand the unit types used by citizens in world generation beyond "peasant" and "guard", specifically with an eye on both allowing more adventuring companions once the game starts and creating heroic legends in world generation. Might also place peasants into more specific profession groups, but doing much with that is premature (Caravan/Life Cycles Arc) and would just be for flavor.
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Stage 4: Have roads spring up between sites and within sites, perhaps organizing the building placement better -- I don't want to write army/war AI without roads in any case.
(Preliminary pictures: Medium Map 1,
Medium Map 2,
Medium Map 3,
Long Map,
Standard Map)
(Preliminary pictures 2: Small Map)
(Pictures: Standard Map 1,
Standard Map 2,
Medium Map 1,
Medium Map 2,
Small Map)
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Stage 5: Set up the historical framework for wars/battles as nested historical events.
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Stage 6: Handle world gen wars and very basic diplomacy based on territory/ruler personality/religion. That should take care of Req221.
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Stage 7: Handle some specific army storage issues.
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Stage 8: Let (semi)megabeasts join in the fun. This should build their legends (and the legends of those that kill the ones that die) prior to play.
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Stage 9: Handle refugees.
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Stage 10: Handle Core47 (cleaning excess historical figures) settings, as wars will lead to even more figures/events than we have now.
Release 2: Wars between civilizations, life cycle actions like birth/old age deaths and ruler succession throughout the world will occur during regular play involving fleshed-out units rather than simple historical figures. Battles can occur while an adventurer is present, even if the adventurer can't explicitly take sides. This will finish off Core45 and Core46.
Release 3: Armies that are generated during sieges in dwarf mode will be replaced by actual armies from the relevant civilizations. Core26.
After this, the goal is to let you raise armies in dwarf mode and use them on the world map (Core27), though there might be several military structure/interface upgrades that are required before this can be done properly, and the extended site ideas (in whatever form they end up in) of Core28 and Core29 might come up if standard player fortresses can't field large enough armies. We'll have to see how the specifics take shape after the current batch of planned releases. In any case, once Core27 is complete, you'll definitely be able to have a tangible effect on the world around you, and we seem to be moving toward that now a little more clearly than we were in the past.
