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Dwarf Fortress => DF Suggestions => Topic started by: madjoe5 on November 17, 2010, 11:51:11 pm

Title: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: madjoe5 on November 17, 2010, 11:51:11 pm
     Here are some ideas and things that I would like to see come from the Caravan Arc. Most of this is my interpretations of how to do the things Toady has already said are the aim of this arc. I address this to the makers of the game primarily, but I'd also like community input. I think that the community has a lot to say, both in agreement and disagreement, about the Caravan Arc. I've split this up into 5 sections and a very broad summary at the bottom. If you don't want to read it all, don't feel free to skip around, skim or only read the parts that interest you.

Global vs National vs Local Economy:

     A main aim of this series of additions is to implement some sort of global economy based on supply and demand. To make this work well, its apparent that things like item/material are to be tracked at both a global and local level. Every city, village or whatever should have a more or less objective sense of supply and demand; which ultimatly pools together to form the nations needs. Even if its only a rudimentary system of checking biome and stone layer info, a local site should have the most definate supply/demand, which would all go to changing a civilization's s/d (I'll abreviate for supply/demand). From that, civilization s/d should again pool into a global economy; as it did from local to nat'l. This 3 leveled system, in my opinion, best allows for a realistic application in game that varies appropriately on the situation. Generally speaking, trade caravans would probably take their nation's s/d into account almost exclusivly when purchasing goods; and slightly the other s/d's (for maybe they're going to sell your stonecrafts right away to some elves who don't mine, for example). When selling, they probably will take into account their knowledge of your s/d and trade agreement from last year (if these will still exist as they are now). As for Adventuring in towns/cities, shop owners should strictly take the local s/d; more or less disregarding what other civilizations and far away towns will pay. Shops also should prefer receiving money (see currency below) far more than the "xsmall racoon leather mittensx" and such that can easily dumped on shopkeeps in return for valuable armor. As for leading caravans as an Adventurer, the global economy is where its at. Actually, it should be about using all three to your advantage. See a human villiage touching a desert? Go there and grab some of the cheap glass crafts that they should be cranking out, only to sell them to that dwarf civ in a far north mountain range as expensive luxieries. Generally speaking, geting it right, in my opion, is working with a system like this, and playing around until it fits just right. Also, keep in mind that this shouldn't necesarily be a solid, concrete "Ok this is this and that is that..." mentality when introducing it, but it should be understood for best reception.

Making Trading in Dwarf Mode More Interesting:

     Right now I see 2 distinct areas that one should address in this topic. Firstly, Races. As of now, there isn't much difference between races in trading caravans. Outside of the elf-wood thing, players probably only look at the differences being that humans give a little of everything, dwarves give armor that fits, and elves occasionally have an elephant or something. I suggest fleshing it out a little more. I see humans being more imperial and buisness-y; they bring lots of finished goods and generally expect money (again, see currency) rather than your masterpiece rock earings. I'd argue that this fits well with the mercantile theories in Europe that began to take root around our historical cut-off of 1400s ([history] albiet, it really was more recognized a couple hundred years later, but you can't deny its practice in much of the African colonization in 1300s [/history]). Simply, 1- humans want more money (gold, silver, copper coins) than everybody else and 2- Exports are more important than imports. On the contrary, I see dwarves as the opposite. They are more practical than theoretical; akin to their habits of hoarding, collecting tons of the same object over and over, fascination with crafts and tools. They take a more "hands-on" approach to trading; if they see it and think it looks cool or is useful, they want it. Generally, they are willing to give the useless (at least in their eyes) coins they've been minting for that cool, masterpiece copper pick thats engraved with pictures of cheese. Finally, I'm onto the elves. It's kinda hard to pinpoint where they are regarding economic theory; since they attack you (with wooden weapons) if you try to sell them the same kind of stuff, but at the same time willingly sell Cougars and Giant Eagles into a life of violence and servitude. I'd say they are the middle ground in regards to goods vs capital, just with that generous pinch of spice that is elven morality.

     The other half of Fort Mode trading is the local supply and demand of your fort. I think that changing how players assess what a fort needs would drastically reinvigorate trading and add dynamics to your own s/d. The best way to do this is to simply give everything a practical use. Everything? Yes, everything. The idea is to keep the player not only dependant on traders for raw materials, but finished ones as well. What I mean is that not being specialized (ie you're producing a little bit of everything rather than tons of a few different things) will keep your fort running, you won't be making much money in exports. On the otherhand, specializing in something with low demand and an already high supply won't make you very much money either, but now you've got tons of cheap stuff and not any of the other necesities. Currently, it feels like your fort is the only one that actually makes things; while everybody else just stockpiles metal/cloth/wood/etc and gives it to you, so you can make those things. It probably seems hard and trivial at first, but really would impact how players interact with traders. I'd say start with making new clothes a requirement rather than a luxury. Severe injury from the cold and dibilitatingly unhappy thoughts should force players to either buy clothes or allocate a considerable amount of their workforce to clothesmaking. Crafts? There's not a lot to do here as of now, but perhaps make wearing earings/crowns/bracelets/rings/etc much more commonplace, and almost a necesity amoung the dwarven aristocrats. Toys should be especially sought after by children, and again, I'd imagine a kid with no toys to be a pretty unhappy kid. Maybe goblets should be required to drink from a barrel? (however that might be going a little too far) Instruments will probably get lots of use when art and music gets implemented more deeply. Hey, maybe even add a building where the player can manually store masterpieces/high value goods/artifacts that can shoot up the value of rooms or even serve as a museam-meeting place. Hell, it doesn't really matter what way you go with this, I just want to make the point that players only buy stuff they use or are needed. As of now, anybody whose been in a fort for more than a few years pretty much only requests metal bars and tanned leather. I'd like to say that this paragraph is definatly going to be the hardest to implement well without radically changing much of Fort Mode as we know it. This should be more of a long term goal that you can address at your liking. Just know that I think this kind of stuff will ultimatly add endless amounts of immersion factor and dynamic gameplay. This generally isn't Caravan Arc stuff, but it's definatly related I think.

Currency:

     A big part of trading and economy throughout history was the concept of currency. Although bartering was fine and dandy, generally, the sooner real-life civilizations adopted a common currency, the more powerful and rich they became. There is coiniage in Dwarf Fortress, nevertheless, it's essentially a neglected aspect in the game. Coins of all kinds of origins and materials clutter up Adventurer's inventory and cause hauling nightmares in bustling fortresses. I realize that this is a stacking/pathfinding issue at heart, I see a way around it. What if your fort's stockpile of gold/silver/copper coins wasn't owned by dwarves, but rather a communal treasury (managed by the treasurer)? This communal treasury (or c/t, I like abbreviations) could hold all of the coins that your fort owns and has minted. I see it as a well secured, chest-filled, coin stockpile-using, kobold-tempting room of importance. When traders come, you haul some of your treasure up to make purchases, and/or haul your profits back into it when they leave. To keep things simple, I think that coins should all be equal at this point in development, meaning that all gold coins (regardless of place or date of minting) are the same value; ditto for silver and copper. Although not eliminating the current barter system, this will add a whole new dynamic to trading. It probably will make getting everything you want a lot harder, which is good. It makes us players think about trading.

Consider this:
"Hmm, I'm relying on my leather imports from the humans, but their liason seems to mostly want coins from us, but I don't have any..." *Dwarves Arrive* "Oh, okay, they seem to want to buy stuff, lets see, what can I sell them?" *uses money to buy leather* "Now I'll makes armor for my army, and maybe I can sell the extras..." -Newly Enthrawled Player

My point is that currency really shouldn't be optional for trade dependant forts, rather something to watch over and maintain or suffer the consequences of FUN. But what about ownership and individual dwarves? Simple, make them use the "credit-card system" that's used in current, coinless forts. I believe it's pretty damn good, and many players opt to use it rather than mint coins. Although it doesn't seem 100% realistic, it does play into the more communal culture of dwarves versus humans (or hell, why not just pretend they're carrying around coins in their pocket for now?). The other affect that comes from this system would be a sharp increase in the value (perhaps not ingame material value, but definatly the subjective value of the player) of gold and silver. Whether it's good or bad is up to you, but I thinks its pretty damn realistic (just look at Alaskan and Californian as well as the New World Gold Rushes). Personally, I'd like to see this more than any of my other suggestions, mostly because flooding caravans with useless goblin mittens and shoes and the ever-so-easy to make rock craft is the only efficient way to get a steady stream of raw materials.

As for Adventuring traders, what's a better gauge of your progress? Treasury, of course. Set out to be the richest human/dwarf/elf/whatever in all the world. Oh yeah, and what things always target trading caravans? Goblins and Theives. But what are they trying to gain from that? Fighter skill? No. Being able to take all the goods you're transporting? No, they can't carry all that crap. They want your copper, silver and gold!


Fort Significance:

     With all this new s/d stuff, it would seem plausible that as an expedition goes out, it's obvious that the world's economy will change. Maybe give us some simple story/lore based options based around the s/d. It'd be pretty cool to play as the 7 dwarves who were sent to a remote desert to found a glass-making colony. Since there is high demand for new glass goods, the dwarves send you out into incredibly rough landscape to make what they can't, only promising a supply line (maybe in the form of extra points when making an embark profile? Idk, just an idea) and a guarenteed market for our bigest export. Then continue on, cranking out craploads of glass products, until the shady humans come with a seemingly benign offer for your goods, causing struggle between dwarf and human. Oh, and bonus points if glassmakers, or whatever pertanant labouror, come much more often than normal. This is more of a abstract idea that I had once. Unlike the others that are more "here's what I think will work best...", this is more of a "wouldn't this be cool?". Hey even being able to see the status of the s/d before embarking would be great, since we could voluntarily do this kind of thing.


Misc./Conclusion:

     Generally, this has been just about my entire idea of the perfect DF economy system. Uhmm, oh yea, I should also point out a few things to avoid. While I said humans should tend to give better deals when you import from them, and dwarves the opposite, you should avoid simple linear/percentage based stuff. It's all too common in mainstream RPGs to have uniteresting trading. What is usually the case is something has a base value (let's just say something is 100 gold) and all the prices are simple percentages of this. Shopkeepers would probably sell it at 110 gold (110%), but when you sell it to them, you only get 70 gold (70%). Its this kind of pricing that you should avoid, at least keep it out of long term goals. What else did I want to say... Ah, pleeeeease don't forget skill tokens/skills. Having an appraiser with the right social skills should make all the difference in getting a good deal. For the Dwarf Mode trading stuff, its just a matter of making self-sufficiency very difficult and adding direct or indirect penalty for flooding markets. I don't know if it would work, but perhaps a purse/coin pouch could lessen the coin-hauling problem. I guess it'd be like a regular bag, but only for coins, and stores them like seeds. I don't know how it currently works, but when traders bring armor/weapons and other important things, they're almost always either no quality or something a little better, but covered in price-raising engravings and adornments. While cool once in a while, I feel that users would be more likely to buy quality-dependent items like armor if they reliably came in better quality. Players, especially veterans who tend to micromanage more often, don't want to buy low quality armor now, since they can just make near perfect (and vastly superior) ones by training a dwarf for a few months or with a lucky mood. I think it would be absurd to say that a player's fortress is the only one to make anything better than "well-crafted". Masterwork Steel armor weapons should be fairly available, really freaking expensive, but available. One last thing: "small" armor really shouldn't be a trade commodity. I suggest just making any worn goods with that "small" qualifyer should be more or less worthless, even when made of giant cave spider silk. Everyone's basically at war with the goblins, so it's not like the humans are going to make a profit by selling it back to the goblins.


Summary (also a tl;dr):
-Local supply and demand should affect local prices as well as a collective National supply and demand. National supply/demand affects prices between two sites; and also collects to a global suply/demand etc
-Make players more dependant on traders, by making more things necessary.
-Make races more diverse in regards to trading
-Minted coins should be the blood of economy by taking a more and more important role in trading/wealth.
-The communal fort as a whole should own coins, not individual dwarves; thus becoming a valuable trade comodity
-The credit card-like system of individual money stays as the only method of personal wealth tracking
-The economics of the world should be viewable before embark; as to influence site descision in favor of demanded raw materials
-Generally, trading without putting much thought or strategy should only let you just get by. To get wealthy, players must think and plan ahead


     I know this is a ton of stuff I just said, and I probably sound pretty arrogant right now (since I'm all like "Here's my idea, you must use it...," even though its not intentional). I realize that this is your game with your vision, but I kinda just wanted my whole two cents on economy. Real world economy, particularly the history of, is something I find really interesting and I really have read a ton about it, so I'm not just pulling this out my rear end. Although it may seem demanding, I am in no way trying to make you do something, just giving lots of input as a fan of this game.

     Oh, and I'd like to hear from the DF community as well. Like I said, please critique, suggest, compliment, oppose, tweak, reword, whatever; I love hearing what people think about my ideas. Feel free to post your own spheals on the economy. I feel that if we all get this discussion centered in one place, the more likely ideas can be shared, improved and even implemented.


Wow that was long... I feel like I just wrote a treatise on the economic structure of fantasy worlds. If only Dwarf Fortress was a college course...
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: AngleWyrm on November 18, 2010, 02:54:25 am
Minted coin and credit should not take a bigger role in the caravan arc; the primary purpose of the caravan is to trade goods from the fort for goods from the community. There's really no point in amassing some statistic that reads 'you now have a bajillion dwarfbucks in the bank.' The actual economy is the business of barter and trade of goods.

To improve the economy, dwarves need to consume more stuff, and probably produce less stuff. The caravan should also bring more valuable stuff to make it so the player must pick and choose instead of just cleaning out the caravan every season.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Rowanas on November 18, 2010, 06:28:13 am
I disagree with your notions of the races. By their nature, most races will tend to need certain things and have certain other things, but what you spoke of sounds like hardcoded race types. Blergh.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Pilsu on November 18, 2010, 07:32:19 am
Traders could simply be satisfied with less if you pay with coin. No risk of not being able to sell it after all. Naturally, valuable metals actually need to be valuable for coins to be worth anything. Bars would need to be ten times as valuable as they are now. Alternatively, the ludicrous price modifiers of quality goods would need to be reined in and replaced with fractions.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: madjoe5 on November 18, 2010, 04:48:08 pm
Quote from: AngleWyrm on November 18, 2010, 02:54:25 am
There's really no point in amassing some statistic that reads 'you now have a bajillion dwarfbucks in the bank.' The actual economy is the business of barter and trade of goods.

My point is that barter and trade of goods is certainly a large factor, but a realistic inter-civilization simulator cannot possibly value currency so low. And the whole amassing coins thing shouldn't be like that. Imagine it more like a glorified metalcrafting goods made of gold/silver that there will always be a market for. It can buy anything (making it infinitely useful) but doesn't do anything (making it practically worthless at the same time). Also, for Adventure Mode: how will you have any idea how good you are doing? If everything is bartering like you say, then the ultimate goal of being a trader would be to mass-stockpile goods; almost all of which would have no use to you. Where's the fun in that?

Quote from: Rowanas on November 18, 2010, 06:28:13 am
I disagree with your notions of the races. By their nature, most races will tend to need certain things and have certain other things, but what you spoke of sounds like hardcoded race types. Blergh.

Yes, the s/d should have strong priority over their monetary desires. But I don't think it would be too hard to base on tags. Perhaps a [DESIRE_WEALTH:xx] and [DESIRE_GOODS:xx] tags. The xx's would just be numbers that affect personal pricing slightly. The relationship could be just like the current caste probability thing (ie using the numbers' relative to each other).


Quote from: Pilsu on November 18, 2010, 07:32:19 am
Traders could simply be satisfied with less if you pay with coin. No risk of not being able to sell it after all. Naturally, valuable metals actually need to be valuable for coins to be worth anything. Bars would need to be ten times as valuable as they are now. Alternatively, the ludicrous price modifiers of quality goods would need to be reined in and replaced with fractions.

True, a general price overhaul and balancing is in place. Gold and silver should be much more valuable. A 1 Kilogram gold bar is roughly 43,000 USD... and it can fit in the palm of your hand. This might entail some balancing in DF, since a single gold vein would make a Fort billions. I say jack gold's price up, but either make it much rarer or something like 8 pieces of ore equal one bar. But thats Toady's call, either way works.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Andeerz on November 18, 2010, 04:53:40 pm
My biggest and only qualm so far is the way you suggest handling currency.  Currency, I think, should be treated as a commodity like any other, governed by the same supply and demand as anything else.  By virtue of its value, ease of carrying, and virtually universal acceptance in most matters of trade, it should be used.  How this would be modeled: I have an idea in the other thread.  But it would be rather difficult to do...

Basically, the way you have it now, I feel it doesn't really represent what commodity moneys are useful for.  A money is useful and only useful if it is virtually universally desirable by the people you want to trade it to. 

Think about it this example:  Say someone is a fish monger and wants a nice mahogany dresser for his bedroom.  If all he has is fish to trade and the carpenter or vendor of the dresser has no use for fish, then he's SOL, since they won't accept it.  He could just wait until the carpenter wants fish, but he can't just save up fish: they'll rot.  He could just trade the fish to someone else for something the carpenter/vendor wants, and then trade for the dresser.  But that takes time and complicates things with a middle-man.  Everyone wants gold coins.  They're shiny, easy to carry, valuable, pretty, and last pretty much forever, unlike other commodities.  That's what makes coins awesome.     

EDIT:  I think you realize the above idea anyway... but I just think that you CAN have coinage behave as a commodity like any other and it not screw up, provided the material they are made out of is indeed rare.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Rowanas on November 18, 2010, 04:55:09 pm
When your dwarves are finding gold, that should be a tiny piece of gold, like the gems you find. As it is, gold is actually being mined out in near dwarf-sized pieces and as such, the value is actually quite reasonable. It's nowhere near the value of Terran gold, because it is much more readily available.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: harborpirate on November 18, 2010, 06:08:43 pm
I've not minted coins in the game, does a gold block create an unreasonable number of them? I've always assumed that gold ore was quite impure and even a huge block you'd use to build a wall would not contain very much gold once it was purified to the point that you could use it to make coins.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: JohnieRWilkins on November 18, 2010, 06:42:01 pm
Yea the biggest issue is the distinction between a metal price based currency and a fiat currency. Which one is cooler for df? I think that the latter would kick much more ass. The latter would set foundation for an economist arc. Dealing with inflation, banking and applying economic principals would be so cool. DF would be so complete with an economic simulation. The Economist would be so happy, they'd probably make an article about the game.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Andeerz on November 18, 2010, 07:02:25 pm
It would be cool if both types of currency could arise through procedurally generated phenomena...
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: JohnieRWilkins on November 18, 2010, 09:09:28 pm
Quote from: Andeerz on November 18, 2010, 07:02:25 pm
It would be cool if both types of currency could arise through procedurally generated phenomena...
Or if they could just be decided by race. Humans, being ingenious entrepreneurs would use the fiat currency. Dwarves, with their incredible abundance of metal, would use a metal-backed one.

Then maybe even a player could go into legends mode and compare the economic strengths, (GDP) translated into all generated currencies, of all of the factions in existence to that point of worldgen/play. Maybe a bloat would enable the display of the strength of each individual currency, as well as the price of goods in relation to money and in relation to other goods, maybe even generate a confidence based on how stable the currency's price has been. Traders would prefer trading in a highly stable currency, making that currency become the golden standard of trade. Generating untold amounts of wealth for the owner of the currency.

Damn, this game needs The Economist Arc. Although I don't know how much the fan base would appreciate real trading.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: AngleWyrm on November 18, 2010, 09:39:20 pm
I would. I'de very much like to see a game that attempts fiat currency and commodity currency, and the exchange rates that develop between the two systems.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: JohnieRWilkins on November 18, 2010, 10:21:36 pm
Well I've asked Toady to clarify on his plans with the economy here. http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1731275#msg1731275

No point in discussing the global economy if we don't know what he's planning at all.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Rowanas on November 19, 2010, 01:48:23 pm
I argued for a simulated economy ages ago, but others are not so keen. It's nice to know that there's someone else out there interested in Dwarf Fortress commodity price manipulation.

One day I dream of making a Dwarf Fortress stock exchange fortress, whereby I buy and sell goods in such quantities that I make vast profits from their sale and never actually need any dwarf in the fortress to do anything but trade with the ever-flowing river of merchant caravans.

Then, when the full military arc (including external sites and empire building) is done, I'll turn my stock exchange fortress into the financier of all the world's conflicts, deciding who wins and loses by the toss of a coin (both literal and metaphorical). Such money will I make from my warlike endeavours that I will eventually rule the entire world. At this point, my stock exchange fortress will dissolve, being entirely unnecessary, and throwing the world back into the chaos whence it sprang.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: de5me7 on November 19, 2010, 06:18:10 pm
for an economy to be functional we need the concepts of supply and demand to be nailed down really well. As mentioned in this thread ; http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=69644.0 (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=69644.0) currently, for the player supply isnt an issue with raw metals, and most mined raw materials. Since as yet, human civs, dont par say actually produce anything (do they actually grow their own crops yet, i know they now have fields). there are in herant problems with the supply.

As for demand, civs and sites need to decide what they actually want. The best way to do this is to localise the supply and demand for some resources. Take glass for example. As a player you dont need it, so your demand in your fort could be zero. If you can produce it with out imports, theres no real reason for you not to produce loads of other stuff, and theres no real reason for other civs to need crap loads of glass stuff, other than the game creating magic demand numbers at different sites.


i would suggest the following: give groups of people / civs / characters desires. They already sort have this in their likes section of their description (you can see this by looking at one of ur dorfs in fort mode). Atm you only look at this when making rooms for nobles. THis could be made alot more significant. Of a characters likes, some could be group based, and some could be civ based. This would create demand. Another way of creating demand is for activities. the obvious are war, eating and drinking, and construction. Currently most player forts are self sufficient in these. Ai sites might not be. But more speciailist activities could be created via group mandates. Currenntly, regligious sects, guilds, political factions arent really implimented, when they are they could request certain very speficic supplies, so certain types of booze, or lots of cedar wood for a temple etc. Such mandates would force the player to have to trade for stuff he/she couldnt produce localy.

many goods in the game have the same fundamental properties and value in all except monetary terms. So cat leather makes just as good armour as elephant leather etc. If elephant leather was better players would trade with factions from different climates for it. If candles, and oil were intorduced for lighting (i htink they should) then perhaps whale fat would be more desirable than dog fat as it would burn longer, so you would trade with coastal settlements (also this would mean whaling industry, which would mean whale hunting fleets in adventure mode :)). If some plants only grew in certain climates, and a religious group wanted wine or insense from that specific plant, then you would have to trade for it. BY making goods that alreadyy exist in localisation valuble supply differences will emerge.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Dante on November 22, 2010, 07:33:07 pm
Quote
Perhaps a [DESIRE_WEALTH:xx] and [DESIRE_GOODS:xx] tags.
This seems like a good first step. Along with civilisations valueing things more if they can actually use them. (Note it's not as simple as 'goblin goods = worthless', because it's possible to trade with goblins, and dwarf-sized things should be equally worthless to humans ...except when they can trade them on to elves, and this completely changes when you have many different sizes modded and different sized castes within a race etc etc)
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Waparius on November 22, 2010, 08:19:00 pm
The game really needs to automate trading a lot more.

One way of doing it would be to make it so that trade deals actually set what your trader is going to buy and sell next year. Make some kind of auto-program that measures the fort's desire for certain items and the caravan's desire for certain items, and have the trader auto-trade for those goods.

Then you can go and trade normally as well to see if you want something specific if you want, but otherwise you just go and negotiate another trade treaty and leave it at that.


Trade Treaties should also work differently. If they let you set your own offers to the merchants in the same way as you do requests, while also showing what the merchants actually want, it would make things run much more smoothly.

And there's also a use for coins in this system - if there aren't enough goods on offer and the fortress really wants items xyz, you should have the option to pay for it with coins instead of goods, as should the caravan.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Roflcopter5000 on November 23, 2010, 12:44:44 am
I think coinage as a commodity will start to become desirable for the same reasons it has historically... High value, low logistical over-head. Also, I can only imagine that the changes to the trade system will increase the amount of trade activity your fort experiences, which all the sudden gives you impetus to truly get interested in trading... And when you start moving massive amounts of goods around, storage space and weight start to be considerations. Hence, a natural push towards the use of coinage.
The eventual return of the dwarven economy will more or less force the return of currency as well. I like the idea of an abstracted currency backed by a physical stockpile for intra-fortress commerce very much. So much so that I didn't realize someone had already posted it, and made a thread about it ^_^. But, I would like to point out that you would have to factor in a few things for this system to work:
One, deciding if the player can use the currency (IE the administration could borrow from the dwarves), and b) if a dwarf no longer exists, what happens to those credits? And also, the physical coins that back them?

The racial differences thing seems a little silly for a few reasons. First off, dwarves are the industrial powerhouse of every generated fantasy world. They have the best stuff, the most raw materials, and the least reliance on outside trade. When the time comes to trade with other races, dwarves are going to be the race that takes an imperial attitude, if anyone would. In this fantasy world(s), along with most others, dwarven greed has always been an important component of what it means to be a dwarf. Therefore it makes absolute sense that dwarves would be the center of the economy. Also, dwarves move the heaviest goods around. Everything they make is metal or stone. They would definitely value the concept of currency highly. The value of currency in this fantasy world, as I see it, must be determined by the value of its associated metal. Nothing else makes any sense for the time period, really. Plus, I think coins should melt to form the exact amount of metal used to make them, unlike other things. It just makes sense.

Trade with other races -should- be focused more around the acquisition of random trinkets or trade goods then useful industrial goods. As the world currently stands, those races are basically lesser. Which I don't see changing any time before magic rolls around, to be honest. Humans have numbers, but no steel, and elves are a bunch of tree hugging-hippies. Even if you added in silly rare items that different organizations requested, those caravans wouldn't become any more interesting to trade with. Just more of a chore. I would say that human caravans would be a great source of food, and elves can sell you (awkwardly) wood and animals. You'd probably want to save your coins for when the dwarves roll through, so you can buy the stuff that matters (to dwarves).
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Zrk2 on November 23, 2010, 03:12:08 pm
Very true.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Rowanas on November 23, 2010, 03:31:54 pm
I'd like to point out that elves bringing you 400,000 pieces of rope reed cloth is essentially exactly the same thing as our forts shipping a bajillion microcline mugs. For just one year, try to match the vast array brought by the traders and you'll see why the elves only bring rope reed cloth.

Hypocrites.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: paladin_of_light on December 02, 2010, 07:36:36 pm
Quote from: Rowanas on November 23, 2010, 03:31:54 pm
I'd like to point out that elves bringing you 400,000 pieces of rope reed cloth is essentially exactly the same thing as our forts shipping a bajillion microcline mugs. For just one year, try to match the vast array brought by the traders and you'll see why the elves only bring rope reed cloth.

Hypocrites.


The odd thing is not that the elves attempt to sell you 400,000 pieces of rope reed cloth. The odd thing is that the traders will purchase a bajillion microcline mugs. Without affecting what mugs are worth to the merchants. After I buy all the cloth I need from the elves, the rest of the cloth becomes worthless to me, but mugs never become worthless to the elves.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Andeerz on December 02, 2010, 08:59:08 pm
I think it all should boil down to Dwarf (or elf or human or gobbo) psychology, and what determines someone's subjective idea of value.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Rowanas on December 03, 2010, 03:43:55 am
Quote from: paladin_of_light on December 02, 2010, 07:36:36 pm
Quote from: Rowanas on November 23, 2010, 03:31:54 pm
I'd like to point out that elves bringing you 400,000 pieces of rope reed cloth is essentially exactly the same thing as our forts shipping a bajillion microcline mugs. For just one year, try to match the vast array brought by the traders and you'll see why the elves only bring rope reed cloth.

Hypocrites.


The odd thing is not that the elves attempt to sell you 400,000 pieces of rope reed cloth. The odd thing is that the traders will purchase a bajillion microcline mugs. Without affecting what mugs are worth to the merchants. After I buy all the cloth I need from the elves, the rest of the cloth becomes worthless to me, but mugs never become worthless to the elves.

Indeed. Hence why a proper (if simplistic) supply/demand simulation needs to be in. The other ways of controlling the economy 1) don't work as well. 2)Aren't as much fun and don't allow as much room for awesome gameplay.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: TolyK on December 03, 2010, 12:32:42 pm
Quote from: Rowanas on December 03, 2010, 03:43:55 am
Quote from: paladin_of_light on December 02, 2010, 07:36:36 pm
Quote from: Rowanas on November 23, 2010, 03:31:54 pm
I'd like to point out that elves bringing you 400,000 pieces of rope reed cloth is essentially exactly the same thing as our forts shipping a bajillion microcline mugs. For just one year, try to match the vast array brought by the traders and you'll see why the elves only bring rope reed cloth.

Hypocrites.


The odd thing is not that the elves attempt to sell you 400,000 pieces of rope reed cloth. The odd thing is that the traders will purchase a bajillion microcline mugs. Without affecting what mugs are worth to the merchants. After I buy all the cloth I need from the elves, the rest of the cloth becomes worthless to me, but mugs never become worthless to the elves.

Indeed. Hence why a proper (if simplistic) supply/demand simulation needs to be in. The other ways of controlling the economy 1) don't work as well. 2)Aren't as much fun and don't allow as much room for awesome gameplay.
This++
A "simple" supply-demand takes quite a bit of code, ask my dad who is writing an economic simulation program (and I'm a programmer too)
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Rowanas on December 03, 2010, 01:14:44 pm
Quote from: TolyK on December 03, 2010, 12:32:42 pm
Quote from: Rowanas on December 03, 2010, 03:43:55 am
Quote from: paladin_of_light on December 02, 2010, 07:36:36 pm
Quote from: Rowanas on November 23, 2010, 03:31:54 pm
I'd like to point out that elves bringing you 400,000 pieces of rope reed cloth is essentially exactly the same thing as our forts shipping a bajillion microcline mugs. For just one year, try to match the vast array brought by the traders and you'll see why the elves only bring rope reed cloth.

Hypocrites.


The odd thing is not that the elves attempt to sell you 400,000 pieces of rope reed cloth. The odd thing is that the traders will purchase a bajillion microcline mugs. Without affecting what mugs are worth to the merchants. After I buy all the cloth I need from the elves, the rest of the cloth becomes worthless to me, but mugs never become worthless to the elves.

Indeed. Hence why a proper (if simplistic) supply/demand simulation needs to be in. The other ways of controlling the economy 1) don't work as well. 2)Aren't as much fun and don't allow as much room for awesome gameplay.
This++
A "simple" supply-demand takes quite a bit of code, ask my dad who is writing an economic simulation program (and I'm a programmer too)

I believe you, for I am something of a dabbling economist. If it were as simple as everyone makes out, we would have computers do all stock market trading, rather than people.

Still, for a game of DF's epic  and in-depth nature, it would be a crime to leave out what I perceive to be an essential part of making trading interesting.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: TolyK on December 03, 2010, 01:43:10 pm
well yeah exactly what I meant. although you technically *could* add in a simple system... I can already hear complains about it being unrealistic.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: thijser on December 03, 2010, 02:14:28 pm
Quote from: Rowanas on December 03, 2010, 01:14:44 pm
Quote from: TolyK on December 03, 2010, 12:32:42 pm
Quote from: Rowanas on December 03, 2010, 03:43:55 am
Quote from: paladin_of_light on December 02, 2010, 07:36:36 pm
Quote from: Rowanas on November 23, 2010, 03:31:54 pm
I'd like to point out that elves bringing you 400,000 pieces of rope reed cloth is essentially exactly the same thing as our forts shipping a bajillion microcline mugs. For just one year, try to match the vast array brought by the traders and you'll see why the elves only bring rope reed cloth.

Hypocrites.


The odd thing is not that the elves attempt to sell you 400,000 pieces of rope reed cloth. The odd thing is that the traders will purchase a bajillion microcline mugs. Without affecting what mugs are worth to the merchants. After I buy all the cloth I need from the elves, the rest of the cloth becomes worthless to me, but mugs never become worthless to the elves.

Indeed. Hence why a proper (if simplistic) supply/demand simulation needs to be in. The other ways of controlling the economy 1) don't work as well. 2)Aren't as much fun and don't allow as much room for awesome gameplay.
This++
A "simple" supply-demand takes quite a bit of code, ask my dad who is writing an economic simulation program (and I'm a programmer too)

I believe you, for I am something of a dabbling economist. If it were as simple as everyone makes out, we would have computers do all stock market trading, rather than people.

Still, for a game of DF's epic  and in-depth nature, it would be a crime to leave out what I perceive to be an essential part of making trading interesting.
Actually the main reason we don't use computers for stock trading is basically because we can't completely predict what the supply/demand is going to be. If you know how much people want a certain item and how much people are putting it on the market you can get reasonably close to it's actual price.  Because the whole world is known to df it shouldn't be hard to model at all. 
The main problem is what is and what isn't on offer to a certain fortress/city/trade unit.
I think we should use make a travel map which is used to determine how much certain stocks count. So that a city on the other side of the world doesn't overly effect trade here. A good system would be to give each square a danger rating (which changes each time a trader is killed nearby). This is then used for a kind of pathfinder and that then counts the danger it had to pass and uses this to determine the price of a certain item(the more danger it had to pass the less that amount of supply/demand counts).
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: TolyK on December 03, 2010, 03:18:00 pm
Quote from: thijser on December 03, 2010, 02:14:28 pm
Spoiler: lots of quotes (click to show/hide)
Actually the main reason we don't use computers for stock trading is basically because we can't completely predict what the supply/demand is going to be. If you know how much people want a certain item and how much people are putting it on the market you can get reasonably close to it's actual price.  Because the whole world is known to df it shouldn't be hard to model at all. 
The main problem is what is and what isn't on offer to a certain fortress/city/trade unit.
I think we should use make a travel map which is used to determine how much certain stocks count. So that a city on the other side of the world doesn't overly effect trade here. A good system would be to give each square a danger rating (which changes each time a trader is killed nearby). This is then used for a kind of pathfinder and that then counts the danger it had to pass and uses this to determine the price of a certain item(the more danger it had to pass the less that amount of supply/demand counts).
that is true. however, cpu drain if it occurs too often, so 1 time a month or something. however DF can know too much about the world. only what the trader knows should be in calculation. a bunch of relatively "simple" calculations could be used to calculate relative and absolute values of things, materials, etc.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: GreatWyrmGold on January 26, 2011, 09:47:48 pm
Simplest model of s/d:

Every site and civ keeps track of what it has, how much it wants stuff, and how fast it uses/breaks/loses stuff. Go from there.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Demicus on January 27, 2011, 05:26:38 pm
In my opinion, the way to make a supply and demand simulation is to work backwards in a way. Keeping in mind that the end result of it should be a numerical value the game can use to compare against other objects in trade, let's look into the components of supply and demand. What determines the Supply? That's more or less easy. It's a combination of stockpile, ability to be obtained, risk of obtaining, and probably a couple other factors I'm forgetting. So a quick bit of psuedo-code:
Code: [Select]
(Number_of_items*ease_of_obtain)/Risk_of_obtain
Not perfect, but a good jumping point I think.
Next is Demand, which is, honestly, a hell of the lot harder to do. A rough look at the components of Demand: Need (for jobs, survival, etc), luxury (how much the nobles want it/shiny), cultural demand(religion, social desires, fashion), and I think that might be a couple other points that generate demand. And each of those could potentially be broken down further, though I'll skip that for now, let someone else do some hard work. Most of those points though have to do with psychology. So an accurate idea of supply and demand requires getting into the dwarves heads and figuring out what they really want and need.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: GreatWyrmGold on January 28, 2011, 09:14:06 pm
Quote from: Demicus on January 27, 2011, 05:26:38 pm
So an accurate idea of supply and demand requires getting into the dwarves heads and figuring out what they really want and need.

Decadent alcohol, waterfalls, and legendary dining rooms. Not much else they want if they get that.

I see your point, though.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on January 29, 2011, 12:20:52 am
OK, sorry, I only skimmed the main body of this thread and read the original post, but I've seen enough of these economics threads to recognize some common practices...

One of the problems with "supply and demand" is that it's generally a more complex function than just "how much of a given material is there in the world?"  While I could go into elasticity of demand, a more important one is "substitute goods". 

Let's say I have just skinned a crundle or something.  I now have the only crundle leather in the world!  So... how is it different from the 8,000 other types of leather in the game?  Well, it's red and scaly and stinky and kinda itchy... oh...  Maybe it shouldn't be worth fantastic amounts of money?

Let's say it's dragon leather, and you have killed the only dragon the world has ever seen, thanks to the way that megabeasts were set up.  Dragons are rare, powerful, and a status symbol of power, and it was the only one that would ever exist.  A dragon leather tabbard might just be worth something at that point, yes?

Let's do something even more complex: Iron.  Let's say we have a world where iron is relatively scarce.  You can't find any in the land itself, and buy it all up as soon as you can find any on a caravan.  Now, you're buying up all the iron in the world, and it's all somehow dissapearing!  But you keep selling all this steel stuff to the merchants, and the world is flooded with steel.  Who wants steel?  It's common, while iron is rare! Iron should obviously be more expensive than steel in this situation, right?

You have to model much more complex systems than just "supply and demand" to make iron only valuable when steel isn't in enough demand.


About currency:

The thing about why currency was so important in establishing serious international trade was that currency allowed very dissimilar things to have a single, simple measurement of value for a point of comparison. 

If goats and bags of turnips are of different values on different times of the year, then how many goats or turnips do I need to bring to market to get a new plow blade?  If I started working in the city as an apprentice, how many turnips per hour would I be paid?  Can I put my turnips in the bank, and be able to collect them later without having to worry about spoilage or insects eating them?

Currently, we have a common currency that measures everything perfectly as a point of comparison - the dwarfbuck, which is an invisible, perfect currency where everyone can agree on its arbitrarily-dictated value, it never has inflation, weighs nothing, cannot be stolen or counterfeited, and is accepted everywhere.  You can even tell at a glance what your entire fortress is worth in dwarfbucks.

The problem is not that we aren't using enough currency, the problem is that we're trying to ram an imperfect currency into a niche already occupied by a perfect currency.  The entire purpose that currency serves is already solved by the use of the dwarfbuck value system.  You need to create a good reason why we shouldn't use the perfect currency, first.


Fort Significance is a fairly good idea, although I think Toady already has something in that vein in mind.

As for "everything must have a use", well, I have an old thread I've been meaning to get back to eventually on that in Class Warfare (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61620.0).  It's about making dwarves demand luxuries as your fortress becomes more wealthy, among other things.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: TolyK on January 29, 2011, 02:07:33 am
hey kohaku nice to see you!
I definitely agree with the problems on supply and demand. however there's also personal choice.

for example, say a noble likes mugs (which I hope will actually be drunk out of... but that's another story) and buys out some of the trade mugs. Mugs are more scarce in the fort, but not necessarily in the world. So people in the individual economy would buy from the outside world 'cause it's cheaper.
However, these mugs won't ever cost more than barrels, 'cause then you can buy one of those and it holds even more booze.

huh.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on January 29, 2011, 02:34:31 am
Well, perhaps I should have illuminated it more thoroughly, but here's the problem:

Making some sort of value multiplier based upon being the only crundle leather mitten on the entire planet so that it's 10 times more valuable than its omnipresent dwarfbuck value counter declares it to be may be stupid, but it's really easy to program.  The formula is as simple as making a basic algebra equation with only one independent variable, the rarity of the item.

If you start having to work with substitutes, it gets really complex.  How much more than iron should steel really cost?  How much more are you willing to pay to have steel than bronze or bronze than iron?  The way that Supply and Demand works out things like this is to functionally have a bidding war, where you find out what price jump people are willing to accept to get the better item, but how are you really going to put in a formula for figuring out how much more a random NPC will value dragon leather than crundle leather, or steel versus bronze?  Especially if we start comparing modded-in items.

Even if we are talking about using substitutables, so that all things that can be used for the same thing are going to be roughly the same price, what about rating the value of stone versus wood versus coal?  Wood is generally more useful than stone, so should wood always be more valuable than stone, excepting specific ore stones?  What about the value of coal?  What about if you mod in some kind of "coal flower" plant that you can grow quickly and easily, and replaces wood or coal for charcoal use? 

How do you compare the value of alcohol to weapons?  Humans don't need alcohol, but they need weapons if they are under constant attack by marauding forces.  Dwarves need alcohol, but maybe they just use traps, and don't really need weapons.  This is based solely upon the coditions of an arbitrarily set up, raw-changeable status, though.  How do you get a computer to poll an NPC about which material is more immediately useful, and hence worth paying a premium on, a steel axe or a trained riding horse?

After all this, we have to consider item quality and worse, percieved item quality because of a brand name.  This means stuff like designer blue jeans being marked up 1000% just because of the name on the label.  One of those little things about us Americans is that we like to stick to our stereotypes of foreigners.  We want French wines and German beers because we associate those things with those countries, but if you offer us French beer, we look at you like you just grew a new head.  "Who would want a French beer?  They don't drink beer in France, they drink wine!"  German beers and French wines get marked up just because they came from those countries, and so people just assume it's better.

Yes, this leads to something like "dwarven beer and metal items should sell better, while dwarven wine and clothing should sell less well," but again, you're going to need to make this based upon the circumstances that are modded in and out of the game, as well.  What if there's a race with even better metalurgy skills than dwarves modded in?

This is ultimately the problem I have with supply and demand modeling schemes - it sounds great on paper, but falls flat on its face in execution because the actual workings don't take into account how things actually become valued.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Demicus on January 29, 2011, 05:15:45 am
Well Supply and Demand is basically how a given economy works. A gross oversimplification, but a decent starting model, as it give a person a place to work from. Most of the problems you listed kohaku could be lumped under one of those two, though for a realistic economy system, they, and all the other component factors, would have to be extrapolated out. One advantage of basing your model on supply and demand in programmng, as it means you could have a very simple end calculation: item.econ_value = civ.Demand(item)/civ.Supply(item)

Substitutables factor into the Supply, as it effectively allows more of the object, though the impact of them would not be the same impact as having more of the given item, due to different properties. Most of the functional properties for materials are already in the game, so just need an algorithm to compare the values and determine which is better for general purposes. Some other factors of that might need to be considered to fully flesh it out

Perceived item quality doesn't seem that difficult in Dwarf Fortress. During world gen or in the raws, determine some categories and/or items that a given civilization is considered to be better at. And then assign a value and that is the number of quality levels more(or less) the item effectively has when determining item quality, which, in line with my earlier statement, would be a part of the Demand portion of the equation. To get more complex and/or accurate than that would require more detailed psychology of all the given people in the game world.

As for comparing the values and determining what to pay a premium on, could be simple to determine. One way would be to have each entity have it's own value variable for each item. This value would be determined by the entity's own Supply and Demand. This value would consider what the entity needs, what it wants, how much it has, how easily it can get more of it, about how much it's trading partners will be willing to part with, and what ever else would go into determining the base value of pig tail socks (or whatever) as a whole. Then of course that value would get modified by things like item quality for a given instance of the item.


And now a quote which may or may not be relevant:
"Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it." -Publilius Syrus
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on January 29, 2011, 11:22:25 am
There's something about substitutes, though...

Stone and wood can be substitutes for one another - you can make tables, chairs, most crafts out of both materials.

Wood can make beds and fuel and barrels, though, while stone can't.

Stone can make mechanisms, and wood can't.

Now then, in the example of iron and steel, iron should never be worth more than steel, because steel can do anything iron can do, but better.  But how do you deal with the value of wood and stone as substitutes for one another?  To us players, wood is always more valuable than stone just because we always have stone to spare from mining, but that shouldn't be the case for every civilization.  What makes one more valuable than the other when you have to trade for both is what you are actually going to use it for, and that means what you are going to be building in the future with it.  Now you have to make a formula for figuring out what the future mechanism-using plans of a given site will be to figure out how valuable the ability to make mechanisms will be to the traders' hometown versus their need to create additional beds, which is a function of how much population growth they expect. 

You punch in a formula where demand is just a variable, but demand itself is more than just "how many of these items does my town/city/nation already have?"  This isn't talking about the elasticity of the supply or demand, either, and it's not always a neat, smooth line or parabolic curve, for that matter, especially in groups with very low populations like the DF world's.

Yes, the value is whatever the market will bear, but the thing is, supply and demand is not something we humans follow in making our civilization, supply and demand is a way of explaining how we already behaved, which more-or-less fits our behavior patterns.  Our actions created it, but now we're talking about making it create the actions and thinking patterns of simulated shoppers.

To end on another quote, "When the map and the land disagree, you can usually assume the land is right."  There are no points awarded for making a broken system that perfectly replicates some simplified form of supply and demand.

That's not to say it's impossible, but that economics is a much more complex subject than most people give it credit for, and as such, it takes a much subtler and more complex system of competing forces to actually model it correctly.  Supply and Demand is basically just the first few weeks of your basic ECON 101 course, at that, and we're talking about modeling both macroeconomics and microeconomics with just that one model.  Maybe demanding Keynesian Economics might be a bit much for a supposedly medieval-era society, but it is, again, meant to model something that always existed, even if we didn't have the philosophical understanding of why it happened.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Demicus on January 29, 2011, 09:30:55 pm
Well I'm not an economics major, I'm taking classes for Game Design, so the only model of real world economy I know is the general Supply and Demand. With that, maybe you can suggest an economic model that could be used in Dwarf Fortress that is also somewhat efficient with computer resources?
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Andeerz on February 01, 2011, 04:11:58 pm
Quote from: NW_Kohaku on January 29, 2011, 11:22:25 am
Yes, the value is whatever the market will bear, but the thing is, supply and demand is not something we humans follow in making our civilization, supply and demand is a way of explaining how we already behaved, which more-or-less fits our behavior patterns.  Our actions created it, but now we're talking about making it create the actions and thinking patterns of simulated shoppers.

:3  Well put.

I believe the best way to go about this is to take the reverse route as much as possible, i.e. model the behaviors of the individuals and from this have the phenomena of supply and demand emerge.  Allow me to emphasize as much as possible, since I think it will be impossible to model each and every individual entity's behavior in a given DF world and their contribution to everything... so some sort of larger scale approximation of how larger social units/groups/whatever behave and influence the perception of value on the individual scale of dwarves in your fort would inevitably be needed.  I'll get to that...

In this thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=69644.msg1721432#msg1721432) me and some others have been discussing sort of how to go about this.  There are some ideas I really want to get back to and offer some concrete idea of how to model it, as in how it would look like and be in game.

One thing I would like to suggest is making value more than simply how many arbitrary dorfbux something is worth as a trade good.  I think "value" should be a bit more nuanced than that.  Instead of value referring to the explicit numerical value of an object in arbitrary units, I suggest value be looked more at as the value of making a particular decision, as in the decision of trading X amount of cows for Y amount of *microcline mugs*, or the decision of attending a party Urist McLazyass is putting on vs. doing a mandated construction job.  You could still have "value" in the sense talked about before in this, with the going price of something in a particular currency (like dorfbux or gold coins or whatever) being the average amount of dorfbux/coins/whatever most average Urists would agree to part with for it in any situation***.  So, it would be the average "value" of the trade decision more than simply the price of the object in question itself.

I hope I make sense.

***this could be something either calculated behind the scenes and reported to the player directly, or could be determined by someone in game (an economist dwarf anyone?) who would report their findings to you (which could be inaccurate or accurate!)  ...just brain farting here...***

So, how to model this idea of value... in the thread I linked earlier, I suggested looking at all facets of what would influence value.  I had some categories of value I threw out there to get the ball rolling.  This idea could really use some more discussion and development.  The categories I threw out were:

Sentimental
Utility/situational
Quality
Cultural/societal
???... other motivating factors ...???

A somewhat poorly thought out example of how this might play out that represents sort of what I am trying to get at:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The above example hopefully isn't too complicated... and it does have a whole assload of interdependencies that I am not sure are feasible to account for with current computing power... but they might be.  And I am not formally educated in matters of psychology, so I might be positing a very incorrect model of decision making.  I dunno. 

Anyway...

The way I'd see it, there would be some arbitrary behind-the-scenes "value" unit for the underlying math that governs the decision making process modeled... but yeah.  Ideally, I'd like to see a value system that takes things into account like peer pressure (cultural and social norms included), urgency and utility, fear of punishment, immediate pleasure, and stuff, and from this have value procedurally emerge.  And this value system would not only work for trade matters on the individual level but could be co-opted for all value judgements (maybe not pathfinding, though).  Check out the thread I linked and the spoilered example for more info.

Ideally, this would be modeled for everyone individually.  For the fort, maaaaybe this is feasible.  For things outside the fort, not so much.  Larger social entities (villages, cities, armies, whatever) could be treated as individuals in these cases and I think it would still work.  The same underlying factors would still apply, but would be sort of averaged out in the process, reflecting the general psychology and motivations of the social entity.  I'm going to think this through some more and come up with a concrete system hopefully.   

Government could stem from this, but that is probably beyond the scope of the present discussion, though it has a huge bearing on economics and the like.  I will get into that later.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: FallingWhale on February 01, 2011, 07:20:27 pm
Wouldn't it be simple to just have our current item costs and a demand scale.

In high demand situations a higher quality item gets an even larger modifier.
In very low demand situations a master work is only a little better (maybe twice) than the standard.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Andeerz on February 01, 2011, 07:42:45 pm
But what would determine the demand?  How would it be represented?
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Demicus on February 02, 2011, 12:51:47 am
Quote from: FallingWhale on February 01, 2011, 07:20:27 pm
Wouldn't it be simple to just have our current item costs and a demand scale.

In high demand situations a higher quality item gets an even larger modifier.
In very low demand situations a master work is only a little better (maybe twice) than the standard.
Like andeerz said, but also what about supply? What about those people that want to economically ruin the human/elven merchants by flooding the market with cheap trinkets? What if someone wanted to drive up the price of gold by sending their army out (Once we get the ability to send armies out that is) to destroy any gold mines they can? Being able to manipulate the market via the supply side is important too. Especial if you churn out a bazillon microcline mugs, the mug market is going to feel the impact in a realistic economy
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 02, 2011, 01:11:54 am
Actually, I think even that's somewhat shallow supply-side, as well.

Commodities investors know the best way to drive up prices of a commodity is to just buy up everything on the market, stuff it deep down in a warehouse, and refuse to sell any of it until the price goes up. 

Why should every merchant on the planet know the exact quantity of the world's supply of lapis lazuli or elk horn?
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Demicus on February 02, 2011, 01:54:13 am
They shouldn't, but the game doesn't have a good idea what goods are for trading and what is being stuffed in a crate to raise prices. Maybe an option should be added to stockpiles, that mark all goods in them as trade goods instead of fortress goods. Or maybe a by item designation like dumping and melting. Which ever would work better.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 02, 2011, 02:33:45 am
Why not just subtract whatever is in the fortress from the world's supply?  If you can corner enough of the world's market to really be able to control the distribution, you could start charging monopoly-type prices.  Your fortress could become the DeBeers of your fantasy world.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: therahedwig on February 02, 2011, 09:29:36 am
Hm...

Let's try this differently.

A town has people who need mugs. Therefore, there's a high demand for mugs in the town. If the town cannot produce these mugs, it will have to take these from trade.
So in the world-market, the town becomes an entity that demands a lot of mugs. Therefore, traders will pay a lot for mugs, so they can sell it for a high price to this town(that is desperatly in need of mugs).

Simple, but let's now include the other arguements.

What items will be desired, and what items won't?
Entity town could be subdevided into seperate classes.
Low class(Food, clothes and wood is all they need)
Middle class(Food, wood, furniture, clothes)
Upper class (Food, wood, furniture, clothes and yewelry)
Nobles (Food, wood, furniture, clothes, high-end luxury items)
If entity town can not produce enough to keep up with these needs, they'll look into trade for it. Other entities that can produce these things will try to satify this demand. If a village produces mugs, they'll try to produce even more mugs because mugs sell for a lot to the traders.

But who will buy the cave-ogre mittens?
Nobles and Upper class.
If a noble or member of the high class has a preference for cave ogre leather, the entity town will mark those as important demand goods.

We could apply this system to fortress mode as well, the lower-class dwarf's needs are to be satisfied by the player, the noble just mandates stuff to be bought. Ofcourse, we can be a bit more detailed in fortress mode and give a player the exact demands of his dwarves in a seperate screen. The more a player buys of a certain product the more traders will ask for it each season and of course the player requests specific items. Combined this sets up the fortress 'entity' 's demand, to which other entities will react.

Ofcourse, a large part of this relies on entity-intelligence. A town needs to realise it wants to build a city-wall before it starts demanding blocks.
It needs to first start having people turn into a middle-class or upper-class before such demands start showing up. And there need to be limiters on local supplies. Japan has very few natural resources, which forces them to trade a lot. China in comparison can make everything themselves, which means that they mostly export stuff and import very little.

As a final note, I think it's important that traders will only know the demands of entities they have visited and are only able to convey this information to entities they visit, they should also only receive updates the moment they revisit an entity again. This means that a caravan will have a list of information availeble to them to what each town they visited supplies and demands.

Maybe it's over-simplified, maybe I'm missing the point, but I think world-economy should make use of the existing pop entities and abstract a lot.

Also, I just realise, what will a caravan do with all it's money? Because in this it's more the super-hauler of the world.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 02, 2011, 01:11:32 pm
OK, this is starting to look a little like my previous class-based needs suggestion (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61620.0).  But anyway, I think you're really bringing up the right points, because you're asking what makes people actually demand things.

If you have towns start actually demanding things based upon some sort of abstracted uses they have for it, you can start working out how the demand should actually work, instead of just assuming that demand is based upon always wanting something.  This does raise the next question, though, which is, "How many stone mugs does one town go through in a year?"  Currently, we have no really good answer to this - although dwarves from 40d will tend to buy mugs whenever they have free time and money if they love mugs, and will happily toss them on the floor of their room or some random spot on the fort's floor instead of putting them away.  I guess their mugs never breaking or being used never stops them from collecting more.  Still, you need to answer the "how many mugs per person who is in the class range to buy a mug go through in a year?"  Theoretically, there should be a rate of breakage or some such.

This only sets up the baseline of demand, though.  You see, demand is not about, "how many mugs are they willing to buy?" it's about, "how much are they willing to pay?"  And there are two major points to answering this question, but they both relate to one major aspect of supply and demand, "elasticity of demand".  The first of which is how much they really need it or are desperate for it.  If we're talking about having the stone to build a wall around your city before the next wave of attacks comes, they probably need it.  If we're talking about a lute or something, they probably can wait for the prices to come down a little. 

The more major complication on elasticity of demand is "substitutables".  In real life, beef is the most heavily demanded and pricey meat.  Pork is a substitute for beef - it's cheaper, but people want beef more, so they are willing to pay more for beef.  Cereal is an even cheaper substiute than either of them. 

Let's say there's an outbreak of mad cow disease or something, and beef supply goes down, prices go up.  When prices for beef are a certain point above pork, then people will say "screw it, I don't like beef that much more than pork", and just buy pork, instead.  Unless supply of pork goes up to compensate (slaughter more pigs), then the price of pork may also go up (and the lower demand will cause beef prices to come back down a little), causing the price difference between pork and beef to come back closer together, and people will start migrating back towards beef.

Let's say the economy tanks, plenty of people need to cut back on their spending, and as such, they can't afford the "luxury" of beef.  Beef demand goes down.  Pork demand, as a cheaper substitute, goes up.  If prices of pork go high enough, and people are desperate enough for a cheaper food, maybe they'll just go buy cereal, instead.

This is why, after the big recession, there was only one Fortune 500 company to actually turn a bigger profit than before - Campbell's Soup.  Soup is cheap.  It's a cheaper substitute than many other forms of food (Hell, you pretty much have to go for Ramen-level food to get cheaper), so its sales only really take off when people can't afford more luxurious foods.

Now then, here's where this can intersect with DF - not only are there plenty of substitues for dog leather or quarry bush leaf roasts, but if we are just talking about mugs and mugs alone, then there's still room for substitutes.  Which would you rather have to go drinking with your friends - a microcline mug that was baby's first craft project, or a masterwork obsidian mug with an image of a dwarf chopping a forgotten beast in half with an axe in green glass on it and menaces with spikes of iron?  One's cheap, but the other is a kickass drinking mug. 

How much more are you willing to pay for a kickass mug?


Now then, the thing is, Supply is actually really simple, especially in a world without economies of scale to make it more interesting.  Demand's the hard part.  Supply is just a measure of how fast the world will produce that given type of good.  Demand is the passing fads and trends and desires of the entire world's population. 

To find where supply and demand intersect, you just need to start a "bidding war" for the goods.  You need to find what everyone is willing to pay for a given good, and then how many are on the market at that piont in time.  If you have 5 mugs of a certain type, then the person who is willing to pay the fifth-highest price is the one who sets the price of those goods.  Nobody else below the fifth-highest bidder is willing to pay the price, but that's OK, you only need to sell 5. 

Now, this means you can really perform some neat tricks by creating some illusions of quality, like with the image in green glass - there's only ONE of those, so the guy willing to pay the most outrageous prices just to have the most kickass mug in town will be the only one to get one.  The guys willing to settle for more microcline mugs will be marketed the bulk-made cheap crap.


There is also the potential here for a dependency on a certain kind of good.  Someone may want to make a contract with you if you produce a large quantity of a certain kind of good to supply certain amounts of that good every year.  For example, the cities are dependant upon the villages to supply them with food, and their continued existence is based upon the expectation that food will be traded to them from the villages every year. 

If you flood the market with cheap microcline mugs, maybe all the other mug craftsmen decide that it's not worth their time to compete with you on price, anymore, and local woodcrafters might decide to just start making bolts or something, instead.  You get contracts to supply the local economies with pretty much all their mug demands.  It would still be cheap, but since you're driving your competition into other markets, you would still be able to at least offload your goods somewhere.  (You could also suddenly inject a shock to the system by not renewing your contract for one year, driving prices up on remaining mugs for the next year, but that would re-introduce competition trying to take up the slack.)
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: AngleWyrm on February 02, 2011, 01:51:55 pm
Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 02, 2011, 01:11:32 pm
If you have towns start actually demanding things based upon some sort of abstracted uses they have for it, you can start working out how the demand should actually work, instead of just assuming that demand is based upon always wanting something.  This does raise the next question, though, which is, "How many stone mugs does one town go through in a year?"

This is where a definition of demand has to take place. One way to approach defining the demand for the various products is to weight them in relation to each other, across a full set of possible products. Start by saying there is a demand for one of everything annually per dwarf.

Then customize this demand pattern per product. Maybe one mug per dwarf per year is a reasonable amount of demand, but one quiver per dwarf per year is excessive and should be adjusted down. So for quivers it becomes one quiver per fifty dwarves per year, as a town-level demand for a product.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: therahedwig on February 02, 2011, 02:14:51 pm
So argueably, classes should have a set price-range that determines what they will buy, based on a budget(probly what the town produces in excess anyway) and a little bit of randomisation.(Some people will buy pork even if beef is cheap)

There's also brand awareness to think about. However, what would be easier to track? Whether a mug was made by Urist Mclegendary or whether the mug came from the fort of Urist Mclegendary? Plus, how would this awareness spread? Like the adventure reputation system? Make one fantastic mug for the local elven lord, and suddenly Roperiddled is Mug-central to the elves?

Finally, there's interest, debt and other things that make baby jesus cry. It's probly not too interesting to have a bank on a short term, but I think it would be important if we would want a bit more realistic entity-heads, politics and nations and how this ties to the army-arc.(To start a war you need money)

EDIT: I just realised I can't figure out what the OP was trying to say, partially because of big walls of text and partially because of weird sentence-structure.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 02, 2011, 02:55:14 pm
Real-life Medieval society didn't really have much in terms of moneylending and debt and interest to worry about, thanks to the church's ban upon "usury" (moneylending), where only the Jewish could be bankers.  (Which didn't help them in terms of being viewed with hostility and suspiscion when they were making more money as bankers because they were allowed to do that "sinful" action.)

Of course, that's a religious bar upon economics, which I certainly wouldn't expect, say, goblins to live by.

As for brand names, as I said earlier, in America, there is a preference for certain stereotypes of other nations - French wines and German beers are epected to be of superior quality, while French beers and German wines are viewed with suspiscion.  Dwarves might be pigeonholed into making stone and metalcrafts, because that's "what dwarves are good at", while your prepared meals and quarry bush leaves are viewed with suspiscion.  I mean, a farming dwarf is as strange as a wine-drinking German!
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: GreatWyrmGold on February 02, 2011, 03:31:03 pm
All of this stuff is complex; therefore, let's start small.

Each type of item has a certain number that are needed per person every year, maybe 1000 for meals and 0.02 for swords. If a nation can't produce that many whatevers, the price goes up for them and the nation won't export them; if they make a lot more than they need of a certain item (or have tons in stock from your last caravan), then the price will go down and they'll start exporting more.
Different entities can have varying additional value modifiers-for instance, elves pay twice as much for metal goods because they can't make their own, and dwarves will only pay one-half as much for stone goods because they have tons (literally) of stone to use just from making their homes, and goblins would pay extra for weapons and armor (assuming you can trade with them), but will not pay as much for instruments.

Nice and simple...compared to your ideas, at least. (Although they still should be implemented, eventually.)
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 02, 2011, 03:39:00 pm
Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on February 02, 2011, 03:31:03 pm
All of this stuff is complex; therefore, let's start small.

Why? It's Dwarf Fortress.

Quote
Each type of item has a certain number that are needed per person every year, maybe 1000 for meals and 0.02 for swords. If a nation can't produce that many whatevers, the price goes up for them and the nation won't export them; if they make a lot more than they need of a certain item (or have tons in stock from your last caravan), then the price will go down and they'll start exporting more.

If they aren't producing anything, then maybe they should start doing so.  That's part of the supply curve, after all, the ability to have a stonecrafter say "mugs are already flooding the market, I should go into making toys, instead".  Unless they have no metal whatsoever, or something, then they should just start producing it.  That doesn't mean any human in his right mind wouldn't be trading for dwarven steel, though.

Quote
Nice and simple...compared to your ideas, at least. (Although they still should be implemented, eventually.)

Toady isn't really one to do things in baby steps, in case you haven't noticed.  He tends to write out giant chunks of code in anticipation of where he is going in the future, including building things that have no real purpose until some other aspects of the game actually do make it in.  Alchemist's workshops were kept around for a long time even though there was no alchemy, only soap.  Toys have been around, even though there are no ways to play with them, and nobody really even likes or wants them.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: therahedwig on February 02, 2011, 03:58:22 pm
Ah, but wine-drinking frenchmen and beer drinking germans is also upheld by the countries themselves.

For example, all most French families drink low-quality wine at each meal, with high-quality wines being too expensive or for export.
Furthermore, said high quality wines are also under heavy restrictions, like how they're not allowed to add extra sugar and certain conservatives. This creates a certain elitistic quality about the wine. This doesn't always mean that it's better though, right now Chilli is considered the country with the best wines.

Similarly, German beers are made from aquifer water and again, they don't add extra sugar to it. This means that the water is of top-quality and also that you don't have to super-cool it before drinking it. Furthermore, because most european beers in general are supplied with aquifer water, it means that they never get very big. Many a brand only has one main still. This decreases the supply of the product, giving yet again a 'elitistic quality' to it.

On an even other note, I've lived in the Netherlands all my life, but I'm pretty certain I've actually never eaten Dutch beef. This is because the Dutch beef is much more valuable as export product(Plus, we are known as a frugal people, that's what a winter without food can do to you). Instead, we get African beef.

It's probly one of those cyclic things when you think about it.


Actually, I just googled across a book (http://books.google.nl/books?id=1piMMqjAf1MC&pg=PA90&lpg=PA90&dq=loan+interest+in+medieval+politics&source=bl&ots=01zPo-C2lH&sig=fk60eHsMRf0wm_nlB9X_L17IxV0&hl=nl&ei=IsNJTc7wEoTpOd7x_dEP&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false) that mentions that the church was quite lenient on the whole usery thing.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Andeerz on February 02, 2011, 04:15:53 pm
Hmmm... I like where this is all going.

With regard to supply... I wonder how this stuff should be represented.  I can see what should affect supply and how it should affect price and all that.  Ultimately demand should create the incentive for someone to meet that demand.  Demand is among the biggest factors that affects supply.  That and availability of raw materials and resources like time, labor, and educational capital.  But how would dwarves (or whoever) peddling their wares or making stuff be aware of that demand?  Also, how would know that something is relatively rare/requires a lot of specialized labor and therefore merit a higher price? This is where the ABSTRACT KNOWLEDGE bloat should come into play.

Ok, so, for a person who makes chainmaille; how would that person get into making that stuff in the first place?  Yeah, the player can force the person to do it.  That's a form of demand.  Or, in an AI controlled situation, perhaps a noble is all like "hey, I need maille.  Could you start making some?"  (How would the noble know about maille and that he would need it?).  How would the question be presented to the potential maillecrafterdwarfperson?  What would factor into a decision to undertake such a specialized craft?  The decision-making idea I posted earlier could set up a framework for this...  But how would the crafter know or get a good estimate (or bad if they are bad at that sort of thing) of what to demand in exchange for his services? 

And how would organizations come about that would exploit demand, like guilds (which are basically cartels!!!) that would try to monopolize educational capital (to teach craftspeople), resources, and the laborers themselves?  Churches, and enterprising entrepreneurs as well...  I think I got into this idea a bit in the class warfare or return of the guildmasters thread or something.

Also... NW_Kohaku, moneylending and debt and interest were things that were worried about in medieval times.  That, and money changing!  And this was no simply the domain of nobles and powerful people and merchants.  Though peasants probably didn't have much in the way of currency relative to others, debt, interest, and lending could still take place for them too. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_banking).  I think I went into this in another thread.  I may refer to it later as this discussion progresses.  Also, the church certainly had a say, but think about how hypocritical they've always been, and reassess your statement.  XD Just pokin' fun there...

Also also, as for your comment on brand names!!!  I can support that for medieval times!!!  In several publications I've read on the matter with regard to armour, weapons, and other wares, there were sort of "brand names" back in the day.  For example, the best plate armour and wrought iron/steel was pretty much always accepted throughout the medieval times to come from Germany and Northern Italy (I forget the names of the exact locations!!!).  This was because of a few things:
1. The iron ore available in those areas had the right metallurgical composition (largely beyond the control of people at the time!!!) to yield good quality steely wrought iron that was hardenable

2.  A handful of guilds held a virtual monopoly on the raw resource, as well as the knowledge of how to optimally treat that iron ore to yield good steel, as well as the skills of making well made armour (they had control over the educational capital).  These guilds tended to keep these people in the area, and those that went elsewhere were well known and highly sought after by governments at the time, and tended to keep affiliated with their guild.

These guilds and individual craftspeople as well as the name of the urban centers/geographic areas where the good iron, guilds, and craftspeople were from became the "brand names".  There are numerous accounts of monarchs demanding iron from a particular location in germany (Innsbruk I think?), and also demand for armorers of a famous guild to come stay in their country and work for them and teach people.  Also, the term "brand name"... I wonder if it has to do with swords, as "brand" means sword in some language I forget... it might have to do with exactly this!!!  Ok, I am rambling now and I need to get back to work...



 
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 02, 2011, 04:19:27 pm
I'm sure that when it matters, DF players are going to want to have the ability to ensure that their obsidian mugs with green glass decorations and spikes of steel will not be stolen by the local nobles who won't even pay for the goods they take.  It would probably be a situation more like the French low-quality wines for the people who actually live there, and the high-quality wines for export. 

Still, yes, that's the sort of thing we would probably want to spring for - our fortress is known for superlative steel weaponry and excellent weaponsmiths.

As for church usery, yes, they did have ways around it, especially the further forward through the Middle Ages and into the Rennaisance they got, and the economic benefits were just too good to pass up for some silly reason like that they, the church itself, had banned it.  The Knights Templar made their money through banking, and they were the military arm of the church.  (Using an elaborate set of metaphors to avoid actually call it lending.)  They were eventually declared heretics largely because the French king, who controlled the Pope at the time, owed them so much money his nation would be bankrupt if he didn't somehow cancel the debt (by killing the creditor).


Oh boy, Andeerz posted something ninjaing me.  It's long enough that I'll just post this, anyway, and respond to Andeerz separately.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: NW_Kohaku on February 02, 2011, 04:43:35 pm
Well, Go-Go-Gadget-Google: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_name#History

Brand names derived (as I suspected) from the act of branding (burning), especially cattle to mark ownership.  (An overwhelming number of Medieval legal cases were settling disputes over who owned what cows or what piece of property, and hedgerows marking territory and brands for cattle could make ownership more provable.)

Most craftsmen themselves would generate their own trademarks or brands on their goods.  A pewter dishware maker would stamp some logo and his initials on his work to say who had made those goods.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Demicus on February 02, 2011, 09:45:29 pm
On the note of Brand Names, I think it should be proceedural, so interesting things happen, like a civilization of humans that are reknown for making excellent wines, or a small fortress of dwarves that are the fashion central of the world because of their brand name over clothing. Sure it should be influenced by raws, since a world where dwarrves are laughed at for making metal or stone items would be weird.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: GreatWyrmGold on February 25, 2011, 05:17:58 pm
Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 02, 2011, 03:39:00 pm
Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on February 02, 2011, 03:31:03 pm
All of this stuff is complex; therefore, let's start small.

Why? It's Dwarf Fortress.
A.) Real life is complicated; every nuance would take a LONG time to code. The arc is underway; I'd be content with a half-solution now.
B.) (more important) It should be easily grasped by players. Toady can't make it perfect, but he can make it comprehensible. Same with, say, metalsmelting.

Quote from: Demicus on February 02, 2011, 09:45:29 pm
On the note of Brand Names, I think it should be proceedural, so interesting things happen, like a civilization of humans that are reknown for making excellent wines, or a small fortress of dwarves that are the fashion central of the world because of their brand name over clothing. Sure it should be influenced by raws, since a world where dwarrves are laughed at for making metal or stone items would be weird.
Agreed. Procureal generation of any brand names goes without saying.
"This sword is genuine Sheep of Malice steel from Randomfort, forged by the legendary smiths of Magmaslayer!"
"I prefer the handling of Greenstone smiths, personally."
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Urist McUselessNoble on July 19, 2013, 10:53:15 pm
Quote from: NW_Kohaku on February 02, 2011, 01:11:32 pm
The more major complication on elasticity of demand is "substitutables".  In real life, beef is the most heavily demanded and pricey meat.  Pork is a substitute for beef - it's cheaper, but people want beef more, so they are willing to pay more for beef.  Cereal is an even cheaper substiute than either of them.
I think there are ways to deal with this without making our computers cry.

Dwarf Fortress has, essentially, four classes of goods:
Spoiler: Raw materials and intermediate goods (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Civilian goods (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Military goods (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Luxuries (click to show/hide)
Stuff that does not break and is not consumed (capital goods, if you will) is marked with an asterisk. A double asterisk denotes goods which have both consumption and capital uses (e.g. rocks can be both a building material and a raw material, chains can be both furniture and input into traction benches).

Just from skimming the list, we can already arrive at two rules:
Spoiler: Pricing Principle 1: Stock-flow consistency (click to show/hide)
Spoiler: Pricing Principle 2: Demand drivers (click to show/hide)

In the real world most prices adjust only slowly, for a variety of reasons. Quality can be treated simply as nested subsets:

Spoiler: Pricing Principle 3: Price stickiness (click to show/hide)

This model provides a computationally simple algorithm which is able to produce quite complex behavior. Depending on supplier behavior, it can generate Lotka-Volterra-style cycles, you can see higher-quality items crowding out lower-quality items as the manufacturing base becomes more skilled, etc.

That should about cover it for the demand side and the pricing mechanism. Next in line is the supply side, a market structure and a bit of wrap up of some loose ends in defining the precise demand functions.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: GreatWyrmGold on July 21, 2013, 08:28:07 am
Neat. I'd like to point out that nearly everything you listed as unbreakable should break, and probably will at some point in the future.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Urist McUselessNoble on July 21, 2013, 11:53:53 am
And if and when that occurs, we can repurpose the capital goods classification to cover desired buffer stocks. If the bucket in your well is liable to rust away, you will want to have a stockpile with a couple of buckets for replacement. Different name, but identical mechanics. We already have to deal with demand for stuff like ropes which is both a furniture and reaction item, so demand must be the sum of the stock-demand and the flow-demand, even if one of them will at present be zero for some goods.

Actually, a "desired buffer stock" demand might be added to all the flow goods from the ground up without loss of generality or any great increase in computational overhead.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Moon Label on July 21, 2013, 04:05:02 pm
I have a few thoughts about the currency idea.  In the process of typing this, I've actually convinced myself against coins as a trade good.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Firstly, in line with both rampant inflation, counterfeiting, and illegal printing, there should be incentives and demands on the amount of currency that your fortress mints.  Perhaps the liason or mayor/duke/king could even issue a minimum or maximum minting quota, as the situation demands, as you are just a fortress of a civilization and not an independent city-state (assuming friendly relations, of course).

Secondly, what if you exceed the minting quota or melt down to many coins which you imported?  Should your civ declare war upon your fortress, rather than minting coins with the civ's name and imagery, do you mint coins with your fortresses' name and imagery with their own demand and supply?

Third, what are the demands of the treasurer?  Should the mayor/duke/king demand a tresurer, and then the treasurer demand X amount of coins be minted?
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Urist McUselessNoble on July 21, 2013, 05:02:15 pm
First, prices should not fluctuate that wildly. Second, money is not a commodity, and should not be treated as one.

Money is an expression of power.

Money is what happens when the government, a merchant's association, a banker, or some other suitably powerful institution writes down "this is worth 5 Urists" on some reasonably difficult to duplicate medium (silver was the popular choice historically).

The implication of this for the Dwarf Fortress trade mechanic is that your fortress should be able to mint whatever amounts of currency it (i.e. you) may desire, in whatever denominations are desired. However, your fortress' currency will only carry a markup above scrap value (a) inside your own fortress, where the Fortress Guard can visit extreme discomfort on those who disagree. (b) For people you export goods to, in rough proportion to your gross exports. And (c) for people who have to pay you tribute denominated in your currency (essentially those entities politically "downstream" of your own: Your barons if you are a county, everyone in your civ if you're the Mountainhome.

For added realism, the king should have a separate currency not under direct player control so you don't suddenly own the whole civ just because you are promoted to Mountainhome status. The king may allow any fortress (or just a few favored ones) the privilege of striking a certain number of coins of such-and-such denomination. (Perhaps gifts to the king would be paid for by such license.)

Your own fortress currency would be accepted at face value by all "downstream" entities (such as your hill dwarves), but only accepted at face value by "upstream" entities in proportion to your annual gross exports to your own civ, and only at ever steepening discounts when you go over their desired reserve levels. Within your civ, the king's currency would be universally accepted at face value. Foreign civs would accept the king's currency at face value in proportion to the gross annual exports to their civ, and at ever steepening discounts thereafter. Foreign civs would accept your currency at the value at which they accept your king's currency up to a reserve limit proportional to your annual exports to that civ, and at ever steepening discounts thereafter.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: PatriotSaint on July 21, 2013, 08:03:37 pm
I thought you can refuse a Barony, making you basically independent, other than the gracious yearly caravans from the Mountainhome?

(not that I've gotten to that point yet, but that's what I've heard)
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Waparius on July 21, 2013, 08:48:58 pm
Quote from: PatriotSaint on July 21, 2013, 08:03:37 pm
I thought you can refuse a Barony, making you basically independent, other than the gracious yearly caravans from the Mountainhome?

(not that I've gotten to that point yet, but that's what I've heard)

IIRC in some talk or other it was mentioned that that could provoke a war with the Mountainhome. It needn't affect your own trades with downstream entities, and trades with those outside of your own civ (including, eg, equal-and-higher-ranking forts within your parent civilisation) wouldn't be all that affected either; you'd just have to conquer or build up more places of lower economic rank than your own fortress.

And of course it likely wouldn't affect the value of the mountainhome coins you've already obtained via purchase or whatever, at least beyond the merchants maybe adding some kind of traitors' tax. It should be possible to stock up other civ's coins as well, for similar benefits, and throw in money-changers for migrants, travellers, mercenaries and the like.

Though weren't merchants more likely to just trade in commodities anyhow rather than carry around huge sacks of (stealable) gold everywhere?
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Urist McUselessNoble on July 22, 2013, 12:38:55 pm
Quote from: Waparius on July 21, 2013, 08:48:58 pm
Though weren't merchants more likely to just trade in commodities anyhow rather than carry around huge sacks of (stealable) gold everywhere?
Yes and no, and depending on which era and trade bloc you are talking about.

In the early Renaissance (which is roughly the Dwarf Fortress tech level), merchants would generally "draw bills" when dealing at a wholesale level. A bill of exchange was essentially a note saying "Urist McMerchant is obligated to pay Bomrek McMerchant 2000 Dorfbucks for services rendered." The bill is said to have been "drawn upon" Urist McMerchant, and "accepted" by Bomrek McMerchant.

Bomrek McMerchant would then go to his suppliers in turn, and sign over the bill to them, by adding a note to the bill, saying "Bomrek McMerchant hereby transfers this note to Elfy McTreehugger, in payment for services rendered." And so the note would go round and round until either one of the recipients called it in for currency, or (more commonly) it found its way to someone who wanted to do business with Urist McMerchant (or owed him money). Once back in Urist McMerchant's hands, the bill would be canceled.

The trick here is that if Elfy McTreehugger called in the bill and Bomrek McMerchant defaulted on his debt, Elfy McTreehugger could go after Urist McMerchant - because Urist owed Bomrek money, and Bomrek owed Elfy money. This meant that a bill of exchange which had a whole daisy-chain of endorsers (people who had previously been the final creditor but signed it over) was a very secure (and therefore highly liquid) instrument.

(If you are right now imagining creative ways to make pyramid scams with such bills, then you get a cookie.)

Now, if you are in the foreign trade, it may be impractical for your suppliers to collect from you. However, you could draw a bill upon your bank instead: Deposit money at the bank, and then use the receipt as a bill of exchange. Then your bill would be not against your faith and credit alone, but against your bank's and your own both. And if your bank does business both in your home port and in the foreign port in which you trade, then (assuming it is a creditable bank), a bill drawn upon it will be as good as cash to anybody in the foreign port who owes the bank money. And even if your bank only does business in your own home port, its bills will still be very nearly as good as cash to those who do regular business in your home port - for they will have plenty of occasion to visit your home port and cash it in.

And that's how wholesalers would avoid holding huge cash positions (which, at the discount rates of the time, was very expensive, even aside from the risk of theft).

Retailers would generally allow their (creditable) customers to run up a tab, and only require occasional settlement, which could be in kind, in cash or by netting out some complicated daisy chain of obligations. Recall that before the great urbanization wave of the early industrial era, most merchants knew most of their customers, and their customers were largely unable to skip town on their tab (except for drifters and known delinquents, who were consequently denied credit).

"In God we trust, all others pay cash" is very much a modern (as in post industrial revolution) maxim. In earlier times, cash settlement was the exception rather than the norm.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Moon Label on July 22, 2013, 09:27:39 pm
Quote from: Urist McUselessNoble on July 21, 2013, 05:02:15 pm
The implication of this for the Dwarf Fortress trade mechanic is that your fortress should be able to mint whatever amounts of currency it (i.e. you) may desire, in whatever denominations are desired. However, your fortress' currency will only carry a markup above scrap value (a) inside your own fortress, where the Fortress Guard can visit extreme discomfort on those who disagree. (b) For people you export goods to, in rough proportion to your gross exports. And (c) for people who have to pay you tribute denominated in your currency (essentially those entities politically "downstream" of your own: Your barons if you are a county, everyone in your civ if you're the Mountainhome.
...
Your own fortress currency would be accepted at face value by all "downstream" entities (such as your hill dwarves), but only accepted at face value by "upstream" entities in proportion to your annual gross exports to your own civ, and only at ever steepening discounts when you go over their desired reserve levels.
...
Foreign civs would accept your currency at the value at which they accept your king's currency up to a reserve limit proportional to your annual exports to that civ, and at ever steepening discounts thereafter.
I don't see the gameplay advantage of minting your own fortress currency. I do agree that you should be able to mint your own local fortress currency for purposes of immersion, play experience, and a more portable post-mortem/post-retirement fotress legacy.

Quote from: Urist McUselessNoble on July 21, 2013, 05:02:15 pm
For added realism, the king should have a separate currency not under direct player control so you don't suddenly own the whole civ just because you are promoted to Mountainhome status. The king may allow any fortress (or just a few favored ones) the privilege of striking a certain number of coins of such-and-such denomination. (Perhaps gifts to the king would be paid for by such license.)
...
Within your civ, the king's currency would be universally accepted at face value. Foreign civs would accept the king's currency at face value in proportion to the gross annual exports to their civ, and at ever steepening discounts thereafter.
I tried getting at that by the minting quota.  The player needs a reasonable way to obtain or make civ currency, but not so much as to remove control from the parent civ.  What if, when you offer goods to your civ's caravan, their next caravan returns with a certain fraction of the offering's value in civ currency?, or permits currency production up to that fraction?
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Urist McUselessNoble on July 23, 2013, 03:56:45 pm
Quote from: Moon Label on July 22, 2013, 09:27:39 pm
I don't see the gameplay advantage of minting your own fortress currency. I do agree that you should be able to mint your own local fortress currency for purposes of immersion, play experience, and a more portable post-mortem/post-retirement fotress legacy.
The way I put it, it is a flexible way to extract tribute from entities downstream of you in the chain of command. Your tributaries will accept your currency at face value, enabling you to accrue seigniorage from them in amounts only limited by their actual surplus production.

Quote from: Urist McUselessNoble on July 21, 2013, 05:02:15 pm
I tried getting at that by the minting quota. The player needs a reasonable way to obtain or make civ currency, but not so much as to remove control from the parent civ.  What if, when you offer goods to your civ's caravan, their next caravan returns with a certain fraction of the offering's value in civ currency?, or permits currency production up to that fraction?
Yes, a minting quota for the King's currency will do this for you.

There is just no reason for the king's currency to be the only currency in the land. That would be a complete anachronism for the feudal system we see elsewhere in DF.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: darknessofthenight on July 23, 2013, 05:12:49 pm
personally, i would be interested in backing currency in nontraditional ways. for example after your fortress acquired a reputation for being trustworthy you might be able to trade away a set of 500 iron coins backed by a masterwork gold chair, while still keeping the chair for use.
Title: Re: Caravan Arc Suggestions: My idea of economy in Dwarf Fortress
Post by: Urist McUselessNoble on July 23, 2013, 05:30:38 pm
In the final analysis, all currency is backed by organized violence. Nothing more and nothing less.

Posting collateral does not change this fact: The creditor will still require organized violence to make the delinquent debtor actually part with the collateral in question.