Another Look At Domestication

I noticed in the earlier thread about domesticating wild animals, that people seemed mostly against the idea, but what if we just toned it down to a more realistic set of animals?

The animal I personally would most like to be able to domesticate is reindeer. In fact, as soon as I read "reindeer herders" in the cultural descriptions I was all ready to make myself one as a character, and was a little sad to find that it wasn't possible.

What would make realistic reindeer herding tricky to implement in the game but also pretty interesting, in my opinion is that in real life they aren't ever entirely domesticated. It's my understanding that humans have been able to tame them enough to use them to haul sleds and milk them, but in most reindeer-herding cultures, the people follow the reindeer on their migrations rather than keeping them in a pen. Perhaps characters could build temporary enclosures at the summer pasture grounds, which would allow them to gather up the animals and approach them in order to "tame" them?

As far as a game dynamic, it seems like it would be most realistic to make herding a skill specific to certain cultures (the Northern Peoples come to mind) and not be fully guaranteed. As in, sometimes the animal lets you approach it to milk it and sometimes it doesn't, depending on your skill level. If this kind of system were ever to be created, I think it would be really fun to have sleds that can be pulled by the reindeer, allowing for a nomadic existence that follows herd migrations. One of the issues I could foresee with this kind of domestication (aside from it being probably a nightmare to code...) is that it would realistically require a fairly large number of people, or at least more than an individual, to make it work. Maybe save it for a future update when characters can found communities, and let one of the challenges be to lead a reindeer herder family?

The other idea I had which might be fun is falconry. It would have to be carefully balanced, as I would imagine that a falcon could give a huge advantage in hunting. My thoughts are that in order to get a falcon (or hawk or eagle for that matter) you'd have to first find a nest (which could be pretty rare) that has chicks in it, then climb up to the nest (climbing skill required, risk of injury), hope that the mother bird doesn't return while you're stealing the chick, and then actually train it. Training could be an extended process requiring you to feed the bird at certain intervals or else it either flies away or won't hunt or maybe attacks you (like leathercrafting, with various skill checks and time dependent). Perhaps this could be another culture-specific skill, or maybe one that all players are normally at 0 in and have to spend points at creation to have it?

I realize there are a lot of things ahead of this on the priority list, just thought it would be fun to add some ideas to the discussion.

Thoughts, anyone?

Well, I hope there will be a day when we get to coding taming animals. I think, instead of simply restricting it to certain species, we could just give each species some attributes like "stubborness" - and then compare that attribute against character's animal lore -skill. The higher your skill the more stubborn animal you could tame.

to catch wild or semi-tamed animals there is this lasso-like "suopunki", still actively used nowadays by northern people.

And also, why not, there should be different levels of tameness, something along:
- allow a human to approach, run away when touched
- allow a human to touch and to leash
- come next to a human when (s)he calls / whistles
- allow a human to milk / pack
- allow a human to ride
etc. etc.


IRL I'm in the process of training my first young horse ever. Today we were riding for about ten minutes, back and forth in the yard where the horse feels herself safe and easy. It is a long process, even tough she's not a wild horse =) Still, I think, that for a skilled person it is possible to tame a wild animal, in matter of couple of years. And as said in the previous thread about this topic, it is easier if you catch very young animals. (ie, the younger the animal, the lower its stubborness attribute should be?)

I like how this sounds. I wonder if there would also be a way to correlate level of tameness with the amount of food/care required i.e. the wilder animals will forage for their own food, but if you want to keep a reindeer and milk it, you'd have to feed it. Which brings me to another idea for basic agriculture that would go along with having to feed domestic animals--making hay. Maybe certain types of areas (heath/the open areas around settlements) would be amenable to cutting for hay, and it would take a set amount of time for the grass to regenerate after being cut? That way people who wanted to benefit from drinking milk all winter would have to plan ahead and make hay during the summer to feed the animal over the colder months.

Another idea would be to just tie the amount of milk production to the amount of feed, for example if you give your cow/reindeer/sheep grains, it will produce plenty of milk for you, somewhat less with only hay, even less if it's foraging on its own, and none at all if it's starving during the winter.

Likewise, domesticated carnivores like dogs or hawks would require a certain amount of meat or else they would stop hunting/fighting for you or, in the case of bears maybe even try to eat you...

IMHO, if domestication to be introduced at all, it should be possible ONLY with very young animals. I've heard stories about domesticated wolfs and birds of prey, but even in those unlikely stories the bond was formed at very tender age of the animal. Having said that, there are different kinds of domestication - rabbits for example wouldnt need all that much (imho), just keep them in good conditions and feed them right.

Yup, I'm just thinking about possible future game mechanics.

Insteading of getting a message "that animal is too wild to be tamed" you should just fail in your attempt and end up being torn apart by the bear you tried to tame. But if the bear was very young, its "stubborness"-attribute would still be relatively low, and a character with high skill might succeed in taming.

But isnt there more to it? From what I remember saying goes "A wolf will always be a wolf, no matter how much you'll feed him". What I mean is domesticated animals that have been around humans for generations, or at least have been born in captivity have their wild side somewhat dimmed and learn to depend on humans for their food and well being. Genuine wild ones however will stay that way for the rest of their lives, so IMHO, for carnivores -stubbornness tag would be something that could never be truly removed by taming, Effectively leading to a chance that cute bear cub might tear your up and eat for dinner later on. Just look at all those cases around the world when folks smuggle predators in their homes - more often than not it ends in bloodbath.

Hmm...perhaps in addition to stubbornness you could add an unpredictability element that would cause them to have a chance of turning on their handlers or becoming "undomesticated" and basically reverting back to their wild behavior (to run or attack) every time you interact with them. If this happened you'd still have a chance of getting the animal back under control, it could be dependent on your taming skill.

Reindeer, for example, would have a pretty small chance of going wild, but handling them would still come with a risk of being kicked or having them run off with your stuff loaded on them, just as people wanting to use eagles for hunting would run some risk of being bitten or clawed or having the bird fly away rather than returning with its kill. Then species like lynxes and bears could have the highest probabilities of doing this. So go ahead and tame the bear but every time you interact with it there's an x chance of it deciding you look like prey... This could also possibly be linked to your taming skill to simulate the fact that inept handlers are probably more likely to give the wrong cues.