Currently, metals are the only part of the economy you can't change without raiding a heavily fortified village with distortion, guards, and possibly demesnes and defenders.

Why is this? Sure, raiding should have a pretty good increase there, but there should probably be some way for pacifists to affect this key part of the economy, since a couple of days ago a few Seren were enemied just for buying out comms from other villages, making it -impossible- for them to do anything to help the mineral shortages that sometimes (and currently) occur.

Dwarves need to stop being greedy so people can beg them for those ore things they're carrying around, with the same effect as leading rockeaters to the gem dudes/whatever else.

(Or a really good reason needs to exist why metals should be different.)

People who are pacifists don't need metal because they don't need to make armor or weapons. Because they're pacifists.

It's not necessarily that they can't do it for themselves, it's that it can't be done at all, by pacifists who want to help other people out, or people who can't tank 10 guards and get past Alger/Eiru/whoever else pops up if they even get close to one dwarf in Angkrag. So that's not really a good reason, no. (Besides, metals are needed for other things too.) Like sigils, books, I think greatrobes, and I imagine some jewellery.)

I need silver for books.

Ankrag isn't a dwarf mine.

Angkrag is a dwarf mine...there are undead dwarves down there, you know. In the mines. Even if there are Viscanti on the surface.

The dwarves are the only race who knows how to mine properly. Therefore, the viscanti have to turn them into undead to get proper mine workers. Serenewilde can't infuence undead. So it is the fault of the dwarves being greedy after all. My apologies.

Dwarves are almost always greedy in fantasy games and books. Ours should be different! Or at least some of them.

Yeah, I was mostly kidding about pacifists not needing metals. I'd imagine there's very, very few 100% dyed-in-the-wool pacifists around anyway.

I kind of like that there are actually commodities in the game that can be controlled. He (or she) who controls the miners, controls the metal. It's like, strategic and stuff.

It'd be marginally interesting to have trade routes between the cities/communes, I think. Like, let's say Celest has all the miners in their mine, and nobody can take them. Now what? They've got a comm shop full of steel and the only way they can profit from this situation is either, their people make stuff and sell stuff to other cities/communes, or they put the comms in shops directly. But maybe Celest will sell comms directly to the others, at exorbitant rates, and it'll automatically be "shipped" into their coffers, and the requisite gold will move. Give the Trade Ministry something to do.

Just rambling.

As far as I know, we only enemied one Seren (for Magnagora at least. Not sure about Glom.). And the reason why she/he was enemied was because he/she bought out the comm (wood I think? a rare comm anyhow) from whatever it was to ZERO, which jacked up the prices and we weren't too fond of that. We actually gave her/him a break and unenemied her/him, but we later felt it was necessary to keep the punk enemied.

As for actually contributing to this thread, I agree that there should be more comm quests like the furrikin in Acknor/Estelbar where you can change the productivity of comms in a village. Maybe give dwarves some kind of drugged ale and lure them to a different village, or do something similar with the hemp/silk farmers, etc.

Uh, there are quests that do that all those things....

The one is an honours quest that involves killing the other dude's dwarf king/queen though.

And it only works once. Plus you need to raid Angkrag to get the dwarves out anyway. All it'd take is to make the dwarves brave or something, so you could beg the ores off 'em.

I haven't even seen the dwarven smelters un-undead in so long... well, it makes me sad.
The dynamics to "kill miners with weapons to get steel to get weapons to kill more miners" works but I'm really quite tired of it. I can raid Angkrag for like 2 dwarves at a time, then while no one is around, 3 tankier Magnagorans come and wipe all 30 from Rockholm, regardless of whether or not we have the king crowned, a demesne up, guards in place, etc. It is just a continuous cycle that happens to be harder on whoever doesn't own Angkrag.