Dev Diary: Dwarfs

DWARFS

So, here we are, finally settling the grudge that has been in all our Dwarf players’ Drammaz Kron.​

The Dwarfs are finally getting some unique mechanics in Geheimnisnacht, shared between Norse and common garden-variety Dwarfs, so let’s begin with the first and foremost of these, Grudges.


Dwarfs will now automatically issue Grudges against those who have wronged them. All members of a Dwarf’s Clan ( i.e. Dynasty ) will join him in the Grudge. In the odd case that a Dwarf’s honour is attacked by a member of their own dynasty, the offended Dwarf will break off from the main Clan, start their own cadet dynasty, and issue a Grudge against their offender.

Grudges cannot be issued against Greenskins, Skaven or Chaos Dwarfs, since the Dwarfs have, for all intents and purposes, a permanent race-wide Grudge against them. ( You might notice Elves aren’t on the list. There’s something reserved for Dwarf vs. Elf conflicts later in the future, but that will have to wait for now… )

The causes for a Grudge to be issued are, for now: winning a war against a Dwarf, killing a Dwarf, being discovered in a plot against a Dwarf and divorcing from a Dwarf without paying a divorce tithe to your ex-spouse.

Now, an example, here Count Jourdain of Mirke has been discovered plotting to kill Lord Thorbal of Kazad Urkbavak, as such, Thorbal and the entire Clan Khrumnir declare a Grudge against him:



The Grudges your clan holds can be checked in the “Open Book of Grudges” decision.



Whenever your character issues a Grudge, he will get a cumulative “Unsettled Grudges” negative modifier, up to five times. It will lower the opinion of nearby Dwarf rulers and add a piety penalty ( up to -4 piety at 5 Unsettled Grudges ). you might notice that piety has been changed to “Honour” for Dwarfs, but more on that later…



Now, Lord Thorbal has two options, he can try to negotiate for a proper compensation to settle his Grudge, you might ask for a tier-adequate quantity of gold, or, If the offender is a Dwarf and has more than 1 title, you might ask for one of them…







…but when diplomacy fails, you can always resort to hitting that kruti wazzock until he drops every last of their worthless umgi coins.



Grudge Wars can be declared against those whom you have a Grudge against, or against any Greenskins, Skaven or Chaos Dwarfs whose realm borders with yours.

Winning a Grudge War against a grudged character will let you choose a compensation on victory, as shown here, you might take all their gold, imprison their whole family or just kill them.



Winning a Grudge War against one of the permanently grudged races will instead kill the target of the CB, grant a considerable Piety bonus and take any territorial claims you had against them.

Now, you might be asking yourself, Why is Piety now called “Honor” for Dwarfs, and why is it so important?
Well, besides the fact that personal honor is as sacred to the Dwarfs as godly piety ( or even more! ) positive piety is what’s stopping you from suffering the great dishonor as a Dwarf…




Whenever you reach any number of negative Honor as a Dwarf you will be presented with two unavoidable options, take the Slayer Vow, forsake any holds, titles, spouse and other possessions and seek honourable death in battle or live on as the worst thing to any Dwarf ever, an Unbaraki; an oathbreaker.

Becoming an oathbreaker is similar to being excommunicated in vanilla, and carries similar penalties; an extreme negative opinion penalty with all characters, and a CB to freely depose you. The AI vassals will also instantly form “Depose Ruler” factions against you. All your direct descendants ( i.e. Your direct children ) will be considered Unbaraki as well.

Now, onto the meatier option, Slayerdom.



Slayers are unplayable, and will wander through Dwarf and ( Non-chaotic ) Human lands from county to county, prioritizing lands that are infested by Greenskin or Beastmen infestations ( later on development, they will also hunt beasts represented as negative province modifiers ).





Now, if a Slayer reaches a province that is neighboring a Greenskin, Skaven, Beastmen or Chaos ( be it Human or Chaos Dwarf land ), they will instantly hop into it and challenge it’s ruler to a duel.



Whenever a Slayer wins one of these duels, they advance in their Slayer rank. There are 5 ( In order: Troll, Giant, Dragon and Daemon Slayers ), each increasing the duel attack stat but lowering the defense stat considerably.



As a general rule, Slayers have a very high attack stat but abysmal defense and lower hitpoints than the average Dwarf. So this here is a particularly successful Slayer ( and also, his target was a filthy, weakling Grobi ), most tend to find their doom rather quick.
And that is all for Slayers.

Now in addition to those two major features, the Dwarfs get a couple of minor ones, they might now use a decision to muster a defensive Throng, similar to the one available to defensive pagans in vanilla at the cost of 100 piety, and providing sturdier troops ( Heavy Infantry, mostly ). This should help in defending against the Greenskin onslaught.



And they might also choose a patron god, with a choice of some of the Ancestor Gods, with all events related to patron deities as in vanilla.



Now, that is all for the Dwarfs. So, sharpen those axes and open that Dammaz Kron, because there are Grudges to be settled, Urks to kill, Grobi to massacre and Thaggoraki to exterminate!

(Please note that these features are still WIP, being tested and tweaked, so you might notice some grammar mistakes or general inconsistencies ).

 

Fucking yes. I really missed the slayers. Will add to even more immersion

 

Awesome

 

Sounds great!

 

See, told you we had something nice in store.
Dawi! <3

 

Sounds like a fantastic addition to the mod. The Slayer mechanics sound fun, and Grudge Wars will spice things up nicely. Looking forward to whatever mechanic will represent Dwarf vs. Elf conflicts.

 

Will the Slayer/Oathbreaker option be forced on a Dwarf the moment they hit negative piety, or is there any kind of grace period? Because one often sees either courtiers or new rulers that haven't been able to build up much piety yet fall into the negatives very easily - and this could get particularly bad considering the unfulfilled grudges penalty

Also, what happens to female dwarves with negative piety?

 

There's a delay of around 5 days, but for engine reasons ( ie. to avoid the stagger a 1-day event triggering constantly would cause ). the intention is for the event to be instantaneous. The situation with new rulers being insta-forced to choose on inheriting is being looked into though, it's shown up once or twice in our tests.

Also, an additional note, only rulers get the "Unfulfilled Grudges" penalty. Courtiers don't.

As for female Dwarfs, they get the same choice. We discussed it more or less thoroughly in the Dev chat and found no definite evidence that female Slayers do not exist ( unless you take Warhammer Online as a credible source, which we don't other than for minor character history details ). Our testing showed a female Slayer out of 50 active males or so, so they won't be very frequent.

 

A potential solution would be add a modifier to the event, something like making it only trigger after ruling for a year or if they have below -100 piety or something, which would certainly resolve it so that it can't be triggered immediately after succession. Would the various modifiers that define how long a character must rule to get a nickname work when it comes to triggering events?

In any case, the dwarf mechanics look pretty solid.

 

Every time I check in on this mod, it just gets better and better. Keep up the good work!

 

Yay! The Dawi are getting some love. The Slayers are awesome. Is there anything planned for the Slayer Kings?

 

Yeah, the main idea right now is giving a small piety boost on acquiring a title if the character was previously landless.

Nothing that's in yet. A few ideas are planned, but much like the Dwarf vs. Elf conflicts they will be added later on.

 

Awwwwww Yiiiiiisssss

This sounds so good! Great work ^^

 

It seems a bit weird that the wronged party will split off into their own clan, surely the one doing the killing or murdering should split off and be shunned by the rest of the clan?

Besides that, it looks superb.

 

Are these general improvements (Throngs, Slayers, ooh, we can tunnel now!) also going to available to the Norse Dwarfs?

 

tunneling is old news, and was ncluded since forever and a half.
And yes, the Norscadwarfs are included in Slayers. Most of the Daemon Slayers I saw hailed from there.
They also got a very very minor change to their clothes to make them distinguishable from regular dwarfs.

 

At long last! Praise the Ancestors!

As other people have said, you might want to look into that negative honor/piety though. I've seen multiple courtier dwarfs in the line of succession with negative piety and prestige in old playthroughs. I think the negative prestige is due to the beardling trait, not sure on the piety.

I am particularly looking forward to grudge wars. The number of times I've caught random border princes plotting against me for no reason... now, a chance for vengeance!

 

Encouraging the Dwarfs to settle their grudges quickly seems to go against the lore a bit; grudges typically last for centuries without resolution.

 

This is cool. A dwarven playthrough has been on my list for quite some time.

It's probably one of those Gameplay > Lore thingies. I mean the percentage of people who actually are able to play for centuries is relativly low. I bet that most people are happy if they are able to reach 200 years without heavy slowdowns or crashes.

 

Just letting you have a grudge would make it kinda unintuitive. With negative effects, you at least have a reason to TRY to find a way to end them.