Talk:Variable positions

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Hi! nice work so far!

A few points:

• I really wonder where the differences between human and goblins are coming from. Do you have any idea? I almost know for sure that the difference in MARKET-positions is because of humans have the CITY- type in DEFAULT_SITE_TYPE. But the others, I dont know. perhaps because of their values or ethics?
• There is a lot of vague language in this article ('Some religious entities(...)', which ones?), but also to much certainty, at places :-) . I would suggest to make it more tight. ChatGPT or another text AI can be of good use there, to remove any ambiguity
• The number of -1 is very strange to me, because this is an invalid value when writing raws for entities. Do you have any idea what the circumstances are for these positions? I see for example with the priests. Can it be that PRIEST is REPLACED_BY HIGH_PRIEST and also by highest priest? In that case, number -1 means: "currently replaced". It should not have a current holder. For example, can you check a site with a mayor, does the expedition leader has -1? in that case, its caused by replacement.
• Landholders are a strange bunch, I'm curious if you find out anything about those!

Joostheger (talk) 12:22, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

Thank you.

• Not sure. The thing is even if the goblins do overtake another site, no market officials will be created. So it is more likely an ethics or values thing. The same for the reduced number of different officials.
• Well no. And the thing about "Some religious entities" in that case is, that some religious entities do not have any positions (eg. due to no variable position being created during world gen for these religious entities), but all of these entities (with no positions) will probably not create an abbot (CUSTOM_LAW_MAKER), but priest and so on (if the world-gen could/would be restarted). But without checking all religious entities without positions in detail, it might be that in some cases an religious entity (which could create an abbot) does not have a position at the end of world gen. So while there is from one perspective some ambiguity, from another perspective it is very precise.
• The number -1 means that it is unlimited, meaning for that position an unlimited amount of assignments can be created.
• No there is no replacement between the priest. Look at the responsibilities for priest and the others. Also the highest priest is capped at one (ie. like the pope), while their is an unlimited number of high priests possible (like cardinals or bishops).
• So far all entries in the variable position were empty. So it seems that neither humans nor goblins are landholders. And I still need a little bit more familiarity with Lua, for a few more complicated scripts (which also correctly query the different abstract building types).

In general some info is still missing. And also I am in a few cases not sure yet, what exactly is the case, so some ambiguity might also stem from that. Only at the last step I will try to remove (unneccessary) ambiguity.

ps. At some point the commented out text passages should be removed (deleted), but if I would try to do it, it will be detected as possibly harmful and not be allowed.91.49.240.46 13:15, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

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• Ok ill help you remove the commented lines, but you really should create an account :-)
• The number unlimited is written in the raws as AS_NEEDED. is that correct? If you, i'll suggest to replace the -1 with AS_NEEDED, to make that consistent with other positions and understandability
• I dont think you'll find any other landholders by the way. I think it isnt in variable positions to have that. Landholders arent also neccesary to let the game run and simulate an interesint world, while these variable positions are.

Joostheger (talk) 14:52, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

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• Well I might eventually create an account, iff no email address (etc.) needs to be provided.
• The translation of data into understandable form is not a priority, but -1 will be changed eventually (or a note added).

ps. I will probably not edit anything in the next few hours on the article, so now or maybe tommorrow might be a good idea to remove the lines currently commented out.91.49.240.46 15:21, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

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Most of the "easy" work has been done. Next steps would be (not necessarily in the stated order): 1. replacing/removing the technical flags. 2. further research on what the concret requirements for the creation of different official and market official positions on site level is. 3. Figureing out the reason why goblins so far only create variable positions on site level, when the leader was a custom bandit leader (ie. at least in case of the forced admin it should be possible). 4. Figureing out why the goblins only create a subset of all possible variable official positions (both on site and civ level). 5. Researching why the goblins do not create custom market officials. 6. Figureing out why in some cases the dwarves use the generic forced admin and not the forced admin from the dwarven raws. 7. Removing any ambiguity (if possible) from the page and improve understandability. For that I suggest that with pointing to the unclear part a discussion entry is made, so that I am made aware of it and can then clear it up. 8. Improve formatting and table presentation: ie. possibly move some info to other tables to reduce table width (of the existing table). Or use smaller fonts (scaling) for some table entries. etc. 9. Figureing out (and testing) which other values in the tags [variable_positions] (and variable_site_positions) are valid. I do not think that it is only [variable_positions:all]. (This won't be done by me). 10. Add section(s) for modifing the game data, so that in an existing world a few more variable positions are created (and filled with historical figures). So that the variable positions then function as if the variable positions had already been created (and filled) during world gen.

I am probably missing a few things. But that is all for now, from my part. Further edits (by me) to the variable positions page will not be done before next week.91.49.240.46 17:32, 13 February 2026 (UTC)