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[Vattic]

You could make save-scumming things like this impossible by having it tied to one of the seeds.

Spoiler: Ragnarok discussion (click to show/hide)

You can play around all the current features (except maybe ghosts) that interrupt your personal story but I can't see it being completely possible all the way up to 1.0 and beyond without modding.

While I agree that having Ragnarok end your game, unannounced, in the middle of a world you were enjoying wouldn't be enjoyable it doesn't have to be that way.  As I've said: the end of days themselves could be an interesting time to play in. Maybe I only like the idea because so many great stories are set in a universe with a predicted end.

One reason I would like to see it possible for the world to end is because it would make make room for worlds where it's possible to postpone it.

[NW_Kohaku]

You could make save-scumming things like this impossible by having it tied to one of the seeds.

Spoiler: Ragnarok discussion (click to show/hide)

You can play around all the current features (except maybe ghosts) that interrupt your personal story but I can't see it being completely possible all the way up to 1.0 and beyond without modding.

While I agree that having Ragnarok end your game, unannounced, in the middle of a world you were enjoying wouldn't be enjoyable it doesn't have to be that way.  As I've said: the end of days themselves could be an interesting time to play in. Maybe I only like the idea because so many great stories are set in a universe with a predicted end.

One reason I would like to see it possible for the world to end is because it would make make room for worlds where it's possible to postpone it.

Remember that one save called "Dwarf Heaven" in 40d where one embark had everything? And tons of people started using that one seed over and over rather than generate their own worlds?

If you tie it to the world seed, then you're going to create a demand for world seeds that have good technology discoveries. 

And modding is fine - people obviously do want to mod it, since I see Fallout mods, Pony mods, Touhou mods, etc. 

Plus, I think that Ragnarok would be greeted more warmly if it meant "700 legendary warrior dragons show up at your doorstep for you to fight" and you could "win" by defeating them somehow and keep the world relatively intact.  If it meant a pop-up appears and says your world go boom, and it deleted your save, I doubt it would.  I somehow expect Toady more likely to go for the former. 

But then, if you're told by the game that there's 10 years to prepare for the challenge of the dracopolypse and can "win" by defeating it, then it's not exactly an RNG type of event to compare to just having RNG technology handouts anymore, now is it?

[SirHoneyBadger]

NW_Kohaku: That's a good point you make about having a "Forest vs Trees" philosophy.

The simulation and management of both the Micro and the Macro should each have a place, and be balanced against one another.

I admit that I do find the obsessive little details that Dwarf Fortress allows me to indulge in to be utterly fascinating, but not everyone is going to feel that way; and no matter how many pieces a puzzle has, if it doesn't all add up to a clear picture, it quickly becomes a pointless exercise.

I still want the big picture to show through, especially when it comes to the idea of your Fortress being on a journey more through time than space.

No single moment or year should define the game. Like I mentioned briefly before, there shouldn't be any point where you feel like you've entered Edwardian England, or that "fantasy" is being traded for "steampunk", and it should also never feel like you're playing Civilization, where if you can just research pottery, or gunpowder, or build the Pyramids first, then you'll be on top for the rest of the game. 

I think that micro-detailing (a term I prefer for my modding philosophy)--if it's not allowed to itself become static, or to fall into a bottomless pit where you're designing your whole Fortress around the concept of making the ultimate teaspoon--is one way of illustrating how many tiny, gradual improvements can add up to major advances in society.

It's one way of maybe getting around the Great Person Theory.

However, there should exist ways for the player to act as a "Great Person" might be claimed to, and cause these incremental little pips to focus and avalanche into large, sweeping forces for change, and determine through playing the game, what the final image is, what story it illustrates. 

This gets slightly into the territory of questioning who or what the player is meant to represent, themself. Could we be the collective will and momentum of society, as it reaches these ongoing points of catalyst which lift these "great people" into focus?


I don't like any event that arbitrarily decides "rocks fall, everybody dies." There's enough stress in the real world about the world ending, that I want it kept far away from my entertainment--particularly one that's fundamentally about surviving and building, and already takes a lot of hard work, hard thinking, and commitment. Ragnarok? No thank you. 


Another point I'd like to try to make is that I feel the choices you're given in any given environment you randomly Strike the Earth on, at any given time, should always have such richness and depth to them that--no matter where you end up on the map--there's always potential for a fun experience, and an experience you have a lot of influence over, regardness of whether that particular map contains sand or magma or bauxite or diamonds or whatever  goodie it currently feels like you need to have to "beat the game".

I want players of dwarfs that are stuck on a desert island--instead of feeling cheated, instead of feeling like the player is stuck and that they just have to start over--to know that they've walked into what they can help to make a combination of the best parts of Swiss Family Robinson, Mysterious Island, and Lost; and they can safely start constructing a beachsand glass palace, and setting up a coconut-rum empire. 

As far as technological progress requiring you to assign a lot of dwarfs to do the same job until they figure out better methods of doing it: That already happens automatically, since the end result is going to be a lot of dwarfs with high levels of skill.

I don't think it illustrates intuitive leaps, and I think it would replace micro-detail (which places a greater burden on the modder than on the player) with increased
micromanagement, of precisely the "migrant wave job pool" variety the game is currently struggling with.

I'd like to see technological improvement be a process of gathering low level resources, using them to survive, make crude tools, and construct low level buildings, then using your new tools and buildings to create mid-level resources that work better and help you survive more easily, until you reach a point where you can start devoting more and more resources towards tasks that you don't absolutely need for daily survival, towards making increasingly refined tools, and more elaborate installations and complexes of related buildings, which you then use to build and refine various niceties of civilization you don't absolutely *need*, and continue following first just one or two, then several, paths of increased specialization and decreased necessity, until you've clearly reached a sophisticated state. 

There's a lot more to it, ofcourse, but I've put more thought into my mods than just adding stuff until the game throws up--ok, sure, I do have contingencies in place already, in case it does... 

[Vattic]

Remember that one save called "Dwarf Heaven" in 40d where one embark had everything? And tons of people started using that one seed over and over rather than generate their own worlds?

If you tie it to the world seed, then you're going to create a demand for world seeds that have good technology discoveries.

Have it randomly generate a seed at world-gen which the player has no control over and tie discoveries/mood results/anything similar to that. It'd be possible to make a utility to get around this admittedly.

[NW_Kohaku]

Have it randomly generate a seed at world-gen which the player has no control over and tie discoveries/mood results/anything similar to that. It'd be possible to make a utility to get around this admittedly.

There really isn't such a thing as a totally random seed - that's the whole point of a seed.  All the world is built "randomly", but you can repeat that "random" world-building by just inputting the same seed. 

Even if you do generate a new seed with a Rand() function, you can just upload the completed world or even the start of the embark and have people use that randomized seed all the same.

Ultimately, if you have to go to that much trouble to prevent players from having control over some part of the game, maybe it's better to just find a way to give them control over that part of the game? Just make it balanced and fair, rather than trying to make it random.

I'll echo SirHoneyBadger's sentiment on this:

Another point I'd like to try to make is that I feel the choices you're given in any given environment you randomly Strike the Earth on, at any given time, should always have such richness and depth to them that--no matter where you end up on the map--there's always potential for a fun experience, and an experience you have a lot of influence over, regardness of whether that particular map contains sand or magma or bauxite or diamonds or whatever  goodie it currently feels like you need to have to "beat the game".

I want players of dwarfs that are stuck on a desert island--instead of feeling cheated, instead of feeling like the player is stuck and that they just have to start over--to know that they've walked into what they can help to make a combination of the best parts of Swiss Family Robinson, Mysterious Island, and Lost; and they can safely start constructing a beachsand glass palace, and setting up a coconut-rum empire.

If you set up a game where you can randomly have everything, or randomly feel "cheated" out of having what you want, then you set up the save-scumming game. 

If you give players the option to have anything they want, but have to make a choice to take just two things, then you're talking about a game that has some fairness, and you completely eliminate the save-scumming for more/better stuff. 

If you make it so that you can have as much as you want, so long as you manage to achieve it yourself via enough work at it, (such as having 100 in every skill in The Elder Scrolls, for example,) then you can even further encourage players to just keep going with what hand they've been dealt rather than trying to go back and re-roll everything, and also to strive to improve constantly, especially if, like with a DF or Minecraft megaproject, you can just learn how to cram even more functionality into what you already have.

I think it's fine to have randomness before the player steps onto the stage, where you set up a random, unpredictable situation.  But the player needs to be able to play the hand that's been dealt to them without too much randomness interfering with the strategy they develop. 

It's like the difference between a RPG played with dice versus one of those trading card games - a trading card game has its randomness before the player can act (when drawing their hand), but the effects of those cards are often very predictable.  A dice-based RPG doesn't encourage much planning beyond an action or two ahead, however, as you can't really tell if your attack will miss or critical hit instantly behead one of the enemies.  One encourages strategic play, the other just encourages picking one optimized strategy and hoping you stay lucky. 

DF is great when it's simulating something over which you can manipulate and control, and gain more advantages as you learn more about the system, and how its little intricate parts all work together.  It's at its worst when it's just gaming the RNG like any other game.  (And I'm looking at you, utterly random combat system...  There's a reason I stick to magma/obsidian-casting enemies away.)

[Vattic]

So when it comes to innovation step by step improvements of existing technologies sounds feasible, and there are many areas where they fit (even if some would require a reworking of crafting and skills), but what kind of system could give rise to more novel inventions, what should exist even during world-gen, what kind of inventions would be suitable?

Spoiler: previous post to this one (click to show/hide)

Have it randomly generate a seed at world-gen which the player has no control over and tie discoveries/mood results/anything similar to that. It'd be possible to make a utility to get around this admittedly.

There really isn't such a thing as a totally random seed - that's the whole point of a seed.  All the world is built "randomly", but you can repeat that "random" world-building by just inputting the same seed. 

Even if you do generate a new seed with a Rand() function, you can just upload the completed world or even the start of the embark and have people use that randomized seed all the same.

Ultimately, if you have to go to that much trouble to prevent players from having control over some part of the game, maybe it's better to just find a way to give them control over that part of the game? Just make it balanced and fair, rather than trying to make it random.

I'll echo SirHoneyBadger's sentiment on this:

Another point I'd like to try to make is that I feel the choices you're given in any given environment you randomly Strike the Earth on, at any given time, should always have such richness and depth to them that--no matter where you end up on the map--there's always potential for a fun experience, and an experience you have a lot of influence over, regardness of whether that particular map contains sand or magma or bauxite or diamonds or whatever  goodie it currently feels like you need to have to "beat the game".

I want players of dwarfs that are stuck on a desert island--instead of feeling cheated, instead of feeling like the player is stuck and that they just have to start over--to know that they've walked into what they can help to make a combination of the best parts of Swiss Family Robinson, Mysterious Island, and Lost; and they can safely start constructing a beachsand glass palace, and setting up a coconut-rum empire.

If you set up a game where you can randomly have everything, or randomly feel "cheated" out of having what you want, then you set up the save-scumming game. 

If you give players the option to have anything they want, but have to make a choice to take just two things, then you're talking about a game that has some fairness, and you completely eliminate the save-scumming for more/better stuff. 

If you make it so that you can have as much as you want, so long as you manage to achieve it yourself via enough work at it, (such as having 100 in every skill in The Elder Scrolls, for example,) then you can even further encourage players to just keep going with what hand they've been dealt rather than trying to go back and re-roll everything, and also to strive to improve constantly, especially if, like with a DF or Minecraft megaproject, you can just learn how to cram even more functionality into what you already have.

I think it's fine to have randomness before the player steps onto the stage, where you set up a random, unpredictable situation.  But the player needs to be able to play the hand that's been dealt to them without too much randomness interfering with the strategy they develop. 

It's like the difference between a RPG played with dice versus one of those trading card games - a trading card game has its randomness before the player can act (when drawing their hand), but the effects of those cards are often very predictable.  A dice-based RPG doesn't encourage much planning beyond an action or two ahead, however, as you can't really tell if your attack will miss or critical hit instantly behead one of the enemies.  One encourages strategic play, the other just encourages picking one optimized strategy and hoping you stay lucky. 

DF is great when it's simulating something over which you can manipulate and control, and gain more advantages as you learn more about the system, and how its little intricate parts all work together.  It's at its worst when it's just gaming the RNG like any other game.  (And I'm looking at you, utterly random combat system...  There's a reason I stick to magma/obsidian-casting enemies away.)

I'm aware there isn't such thing as generating totally random numbers with your computer (unless you have one of these or possibly using the CPU temp sensor as a source of noise). I agree with you on the whole when it comes to this. Your points make good sense.

[NW_Kohaku]

As far as technological progress requiring you to assign a lot of dwarfs to do the same job until they figure out better methods of doing it: That already happens automatically, since the end result is going to be a lot of dwarfs with high levels of skill.

I don't think it illustrates intuitive leaps, and I think it would replace micro-detail (which places a greater burden on the modder than on the player) with increased
micromanagement, of precisely the "migrant wave job pool" variety the game is currently struggling with.

I'd like to see technological improvement be a process of gathering low level resources, using them to survive, make crude tools, and construct low level buildings, then using your new tools and buildings to create mid-level resources that work better and help you survive more easily, until you reach a point where you can start devoting more and more resources towards tasks that you don't absolutely need for daily survival, towards making increasingly refined tools, and more elaborate installations and complexes of related buildings, which you then use to build and refine various niceties of civilization you don't absolutely *need*, and continue following first just one or two, then several, paths of increased specialization and decreased necessity, until you've clearly reached a sophisticated state. 

Well...  I think it just needs to have a better way of representing the learning leaps and technology upgrades.

That is, rather than just having skill upgrades, it could somehow fine-tune exactly what it is they are getting better at, or how they have learned to add a trick to their workshops at a micro-level in a way that doesn't overly disturb the macro-level actions of the player.  (I actually kind of think letting modders have a fine-toothed brush over what a tech level upgrade does in a workshop might actually be a positive for most modders...)

(If we tie migrant job skill levels to civ-wide tech levels, then exporting tech bonuses would theoretically improve the migrants of that class you have that come back to you...)

I've actually really wanted to go back to refining the Class Warfare suggestion thread after getting involved in this... need to kick up the will to just finish writing it out rather than just chew through what I want to say in my head over and over.  I think that the way that management and organization of dwarves in that concept works out can combine with the "technology" improvements pretty well...

Part of the reason why I made the whole Class Warfare thread in the first place was to create a much greater internal set of stresses inside the fortress, itself, since currently, your fortress has no real stress beyond immediate satiation of physical needs and physical safety.  Class Warfare's whole purpose is to add social and psychological aspects to the game that actually justify a lot of the later-game improvements that can be done beyond merely surviving, and to create the threat of collapse from within by creating things like feuding families of dwarves or cloak-and-dagger politics for power and position within a fortress that make even a totally isolated and self-sustaining fortress capable of crumbling from internal pressures rather than worrying solely about external threats. 

(I started the whole thread when I realized none of the mods and suggestions relating to dwarves having nicer stuff would ever matter if they never wanted or needed anything more than just enough to not die or not go crazy from sadness.)

Hence, part of "winning the game" (or at least, advancing through it) means that you have a gradually ramping-up difficulty as you start actually needing certain things you didn't need before when you hit milestones in fortress development.  (Sort of like how the old 2d game started ramping up difficulty as you crossed the three barriers of the underground river, chasm, and magma river.)  Getting to different stages of fortress development is rewarded with more prestige as you get things like nobles and an economy with your dwarves wanting to buy goods from your fort, but that at the same time, the game is harder because now you have more demands to supply.

Hence, technology, at this point, would be seen as more along the lines of its own ends, existing to be explored just for its own sake, but we can produce some different ends, some different challenge to overcome, to which this technology improvement would be the means to overcome it.  That is, if you ever want to get to kingdom mode by attracting the king, you have to develop enameled metalworking or porcelain manufacturing or velvet-covered golden throne production.  When you get the king, you open up the option to start ordering the dwarven armies around on the world map in kingdom mode.

[Neonivek]

That's what Cacame was - a hero.  It was a fan-created heroic myth, exactly of the mold that you're saying this game is supposed to produce, and you're rejecting him because of the exact thing that makes him heroic - being distinct and different from others of his kind.

The response to that shouldn't be, "This proves Cacame was irrelevant, now let's make sure he never happens again," it should be, "How can we make this happen more often, and how can we make the story more intricate, more complex, and more compelling a narrative."

I originally assumed he was a threetoe character because that is the only way it is relevant as the game doesn't take much into account.

I am rejecting him on the basis that the game right now is simple and doesn't take the characters biology into account except in one on one battles and warfare. By all means to the game an intelligent sponge is equal psychologically to a dwarf.

That is the basis of my rejection. That is also why I said that we shouldn't lower the future game down to that level, BECAUSE the game can still improve and realise when something has limitations, abilities, and altered psychology that another race doesn't have.

OK, if we're talking about this game as a creator of narratives

No. I am talking about how the Dwarf Fortress world works. It is mythological, it is epic, but it is also pragmatic and realistic. It is a world where myths and legends exist and you can touch them but also where facts determine the results.

It has nothing to do with narrative. It certainly will effect how the narrative will evolve but ultimately it is just how the setting and world works in dwarf fortress.

[Reelya]

From what I read it seems like Cacame was completely bugged out, as a result of being an unexpected result of the RNG in the game - he couldn't be normally commanded around, but somehow he was completely indestructible and could punch dragons into a red mist without any weapons, armor or relevant skills. Legendary yes, but more as a result of a seriously bugged game than any "story". Cacame is often depicted with cool armor, but in reality he was a blithering idiot who couldn't pick anything up or dress himself.

Now that Toady's working on the army arc and conquest / change of rulers / rulers of different races, it's likely the next "Cacame" won't have the amazing indestrutibleness.

[Boea]

I never really thought it would be so fun to have all Ragnarok*-Situations to be completely destructive, it could be a good drive to the Age of Fairy Tales, or Twilight.

Besides, a Reckoning* [Rag. > Rec.]* would probably be a great way to split well founded populations.. but I guess that's another topic. Think of it, having a save-wide depression from [or war over] a Reckoning of the Pinnacle Nation? It probably fits into the cyclic setting, where things kind of go back to square one over and over, each time someone else is ahead because they weren't quaked, or they profited from the incident.

[Scoops Novel]

However! It wouldn't be SCIENCE! if we didn't try to harness, capture, or at least ride the lightning, Edison's funding of the Mad Scientist trope be damned (please provide a link). It should also be an option for those who have no alternative feel like putting their faith in the RNG, given Lightning Can Do Anything, if decidedly skewed to frying whatever you tried.

Well, actually, saying that "he paid Hollywood" was inaccurate... Edison didn't need to pay Hollywood off, he owned the patent for movies, and nearly monopolized the industry.  It was only because California didn't enforce Edison's patents that Hollywood was even invented as a safe-haven to let other movie producers create movies without paying stiff royalties to Edison. 

Edison simply used his temporary monopoly to help his marketing strategy - Edison literally owned the studio that made one version of Frankenstein where Frankenstein was equated to Tesla, for example, and all subsequent Frankenstein movies were overtly inspired by Tesla coils that spit lightning bolts.  Some were pretty blunt - Edison used his early movies to record things like electrocuting elephants to death using AC power to discredit AC power.  He also tried to make the term for "electrocution" called "Westinghousing" to discredit Westinghouse, the financial backer of AC who hired Tesla on.  You've also got things like the Superman villain "Tesla" who's an obvious mad scientist.


With that said, I still stand by the statement that you can't let "some people choose to live and die by the RNG" without killing it for 90% of the players who don't want their forts to crumble for no good reason.

Again, if you don't want your fort to crumble, and you don't need a technology/magic basically guaranteed to destroy your fort with time, why would you ever use it?

This is exactly what we had with the old cotton candy back in 2d DF - you had a % chance per year of unceremoniously losing the game after mining any cotton candy... and people hated it.  They thought it was a total cop-out to just end the game that way, and they basically responded by never using the cotton candy, and banning mining of cotton candy in the succession games (like Boatmurdered - you'll see the ban on it in the early posts) because it would ruin other people's games if they did. 

DF is a fun game because you're ultimately in control of what happens to your fort, and if you lose, it's fun because you've done something stupid, and you can come back after learning from your mistake.  The learning part is what makes it fun.  If shit happens to you, and you're powerless to stop it, it's just a bad game.  There's nothing to learn, there's no fun. Losing won't be fun anymore, and the game loses its defining feature.

Sure, you can avoid ever having magic... but then, why put it in there if there's no way for anyone to actually enjoy it?

If you're going to add something to the game, it has to be something people would actually be able to enjoy the game more for having it in there.  A purely random magic doesn't do that.

So long as there are many other ways of performing magic and there's always an alternative, i don't see why not. If magic is completely and utterly corralled down and reliable, then it's indistinguishable from science, and magic a can remain magic a while having the opportunity to go magic 8 and hope for the best. Magic is not reliable, magic is holding a blade without the hilt, and we need to have that remembered in the game. Inevitably, there are going to be situations where magic is your only shot. You should have control over that, but if you're relying solely on magic to get things done then you messed up in the first place. The example i gave could be affected, sure, it could be manipulated, or you can throw caution to the winds and hope that you're security protocols suffice bearing in mind that's it's probably suicide. In other words, the act itself was stupid, not the results, and you can learn from that.

[Neonivek]

If magic is completely and utterly corralled down and reliable, then it's indistinguishable from science, and magic a can remain magic a while having the opportunity to go magic 8 and hope for the best. Magic is not reliable, magic is holding a blade without the hilt, and we need to have that remembered in the game.

The true difference between magic and science is not its reliability but how well it is understood and how disconnected its effect is.

There is nothing wrong with reliable magic. Toady specifically didn't want "Industrial magic" or rather magic that takes the place of industry.

The overlap between magic and technology is not a problem because all science started off as exactly that "Magic". In fact few sciences that arn't aggrigates of other fields avoided being a philosophy first.

Inevitably, there are going to be situations where magic is your only shot. You should have control over that, but if you're relying solely on magic to get things done then you messed up in the first place

And this is especially what magic is not. Magic and science have something in common and that is that both require some amount of effort to learn and develop.

When magic lacks this consistancy and has as much of a chance to backfire as it does to succeed it stops making sense for the amount of effort settings tend to put into it.

Think of it this way. Lets say you were learning chemistry. Everyday you would mix two chemicals together to practice and you would also have to mix two chemicals together to see new chemical reactions. Now lets say if there was a 5% chance everytime there was a chemical reaction that you would blow up or you would lose all your money or something terrible would happen. NO ONE would ever be a Chemist because no one would ever develop chemistry and anyone who would, would blow up.

The limitations of magic is the limitations of Chemistry. Chemistry cannot help you across a broken bridge, and if it could you would have to know the formula, and if you knew the formula you would have to know the ingrediants, and if you had all that you would still have to pull it off, AND even then outside variables can still mess things up, AND EVEN THEN there may be other factors you didn't see such as the bridge actually being two rope ladders. It isn't a solution to everything.

---

Or rather... if you want to get out of a technological stasis

You also have to think of magical stasis and think of magic like another form of technology. Certainly one that is dramatically different and runs on different methods of study, development, and execution... but something that can be studied, understood, and applied. Except while technology is using iron to make spears, magic is about talking to spirits and making contracts so it rains a couple more times in the year.

[NW_Kohaku]

That's what Cacame was - a hero.  It was a fan-created heroic myth, exactly of the mold that you're saying this game is supposed to produce, and you're rejecting him because of the exact thing that makes him heroic - being distinct and different from others of his kind.

The response to that shouldn't be, "This proves Cacame was irrelevant, now let's make sure he never happens again," it should be, "How can we make this happen more often, and how can we make the story more intricate, more complex, and more compelling a narrative."

I originally assumed he was a threetoe character because that is the only way it is relevant as the game doesn't take much into account.

I am rejecting him on the basis that the game right now is simple and doesn't take the characters biology into account except in one on one battles and warfare. By all means to the game an intelligent sponge is equal psychologically to a dwarf.

That is the basis of my rejection. That is also why I said that we shouldn't lower the future game down to that level, BECAUSE the game can still improve and realise when something has limitations, abilities, and altered psychology that another race doesn't have.

OK, if we're talking about this game as a creator of narratives

No. I am talking about how the Dwarf Fortress world works. It is mythological, it is epic, but it is also pragmatic and realistic. It is a world where myths and legends exist and you can touch them but also where facts determine the results.

It has nothing to do with narrative. It certainly will effect how the narrative will evolve but ultimately it is just how the setting and world works in dwarf fortress.

Alright, sorry, but could you just try stopping and telling me what you are for, then?

I'm honestly not even sure what you're arguing for or against.

[Neonivek]

Ok, fine... but there is a HUGE backlog of superfluous information I have to get through first since a lot has been said in this thread.

It mostly has to do with balancing dwarf fortresses many aspects, while not going to far in any dirrection.

[Reelya]

I really do have to object that Cacame is 100% off-topic. There's just no way that this discussion assists in "Working through Medieval stasis"

Back on topic, what do people see the "starting point" of worldgen as? If you really want to model everything, you could have the very first mountainhome no more than a bunch of dwarves in a cave, hunting and foraging, with just a campfire to keep warm. Through foraging for food, they could gradually learn how to cultivate crops:

<Plant gathering> -> <seeds growing around middens> -> <gather re-grown plants> -> IDEA <plant crops>

Separately, hunting could lead to domestication:

<hunting wild animals> -> <control wild herds> -> <domesticate species>

Later, it would be nice if the farmers gradually learned to plow their fields, and eventually, it lead to using animals to plow fields & fertilize fields.