So the other day when I was playing I thought of some ideas: Caves-There could be cave entrances on the game map. A naturalist (or adventurous aristocrat) could explore them where they could enter it for a time and emerge with an ancient artifact, information on a cave dwelling or ancient temple, getting eaten by a monster, ore, seeing something that shouldn't be seen and going mad, or unleash a swarm of slumbering horrors to the surface (which would kill the naturalist in the process). Biome Corruption-The higher the disturbance level of a biome, the more "weird" things should get. Maybe after 400 points weird saplings start to pop up and grow into eyeball trees and whispering shrubs. At 500 portals open every so often releasing otherworldly things onto the map and the night sky turns a weird purple color at night (how it is during the meteor shower event). At 600 points weaker willed people start going insane and statues depicting unspeakable horrors made of black stone begin to appear. You get the idea. On the note of disturbance I think there should be ways to raise or quell disturbance temporarily other than building things and eldritch events happening. Disturbing things (such as harvesting fish eggs, studying grimoires, having a scientist tinker with ancient artifacts, and cultists should obviously raise disturbance. Meanwhile you could get a Vicar to perform a special religious ceremony which, depending on his/her skills, could either lower the disturbance level, cause him to go mad, or at worst have a horror burst from his chest. Another way to lower disturbance could be through an event where you can bribe cultist colonists to quiet down their activities some. This would lead to a bandit's peace situation where they will come every so often to bully you, demanding resources (or a sacrifice) in exchange for lowering disturbance and not unleashing horrors on you. This of course would attract our plague masked friends at the ministry and if they discover you've been negotiating with cultists then the Empire will get word and cut ties with you (-100 relation hit).
Eeeh. I don't like this too much. Disturbance is an "involuntary" challenge metric akin to wealth in Gnomoria (albeit better!) Things that do weird and wonderful things should use a more voluntary metric, so that the eyeball trees constitute a kind of risk-reward metric. Implementing change of allegiance things in the future might be neat. It would be an excuse to bring back fishpeople traders (none of the major empires like you anymore).
Or how the wealth amount in Dwarf Fortress increases the size of invasions. I see what you mean though. Also speaking of eyeball trees, where are the larva fields Gaslamp Games?
