Bay 12 Games Forum
Dwarf Fortress => DF Suggestions => Topic started by: wilsonns on September 26, 2009, 03:49:57 pm
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my suggestion this time, is to our dwarves start big entrerprises, like have more than one shop, and buy more shops in different towns, and create new brands, like "Dwarv'os, your Dwarven morning cereal!", and so, they can own the workshop where they produce his products(the player choose what workshop will be buyable), and them, some of our dwarves can turn into tycoons, with really big quantities of money in account!
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I'd actually like to see something like that in adventure mode, where you could play a merchant.
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It would be cool in both modes!(but in Adventure mode wold be cooler)
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They sort of already do that in my fortress, my mayor bought a shop, the first I built, this made him richer, so when I built more shops he could afford them.
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I'm not sure if that fits into the era in which the game takes place.
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I'm not sure if that fits into the era in which the game takes place.
It really doesn't since it contains legal requirements that don't make sense to even exist.
However I think it does in some ways, Which is, in essence, a buisness that has expanded beyond a single locale or the OTHER term for a company.
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I'm not sure if that fits into the era in which the game takes place.
It really doesn't since it contains legal requirements that don't make sense to even exist.
I'm not sure I buy that. Guilds have been around for forever, whether or not they were legally defined, and in ancient Rome, a "collegium" (http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Collegium.html) was a legally recognized entity that could look an awful lot like a modern corporation (or a nonprofit, or a book club -- it was a broad term).
e: actually, upon re-reading, I'm not sure what part you and Ghoulz were objecting to.
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It is really hard to explain it mostly because I barely understand it.
A Company isn't a Guild and it isn't just a buisness. It is a type of Corperation while a guild is an association and at most a buisness.
A Company is a legal person seperate from the owner with the ability to buy and sell goods/services/land, to seek and be sought restitution, and in stuff... The owner is not responsible for what the company does.
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my suggestion this time, is to our dwarves start big entrerprises, like have more than one shop, and buy more shops in different towns, and create new brands, like "Dwarv'os, your Dwarven morning cereal!", and so, they can own the workshop where they produce his products(the player choose what workshop will be buyable), and them, some of our dwarves can turn into tycoons, with really big quantities of money in account!
- Have more than one shop: Expanding beyond a certain limit would necessitate the original dwarf to delegate the responsibility to another dwarf, who would be perfectly capable of starting his own shop, since the tools of the trade are relatively cheap.
- Buy more shops in different towns: In medieval times, different towns had different coinage, different laws, different customs, different language, different families, different nobles, different measures, etc. Lack of a nationalized trade structure would severely cripple this.
- create new brands: They did care about their brand, but brands would be tied to a region (eg. Parmesan cheese) or a family/particular shop (eg. gobelins became the standard name for wall tapestry). Branding didn't happen because of the lack of mass media, the slower pace of the economy, and a social structure centred around family ties and regional affiliations.
-they can own the workshop where they produce his products: That could happen, though to be able to sell them as his products, he would still need to be involved in the production process, even if only in the design or the finishing touches. Even so, actual quality should go further, for dwarves at least.
- tycoons, with really big quantities of money in account!: Banking was rather undeveloped in 1400 AD, and I presume Toady prefers to stick with the period where they carry bags of gold around, guarded by men-at-arms, for dramatic reasons.
So in general, I think accumulating big fortunes should happen by having the title and the rights of territory (nobility), trading (merchants) or actually producing stuff (master artisans). Actually owning shops they don't use themselves should be avoided to avoid making it into a positive feedback game of monopoly, with one dwarf owning the world. This will be balanced in-game through guild actions, communication difficulties (the guy running your shop in another town will effectively run it for himself, and that's not profitable for you) and loyalties to the local groups and families rather than contracts and property rights.
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Buy more shops in different towns: In medieval times, different towns had different coinage, different laws, different customs, different language, different families, different nobles, different measures, etc. Lack of a nationalized trade structure would severely cripple this.
Civilizations in Dwarf Fortress have a standardized currency system, language and code of laws that is shared throughout the civilization.
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Buy more shops in different towns: In medieval times, different towns had different coinage, different laws, different customs, different language, different families, different nobles, different measures, etc. Lack of a nationalized trade structure would severely cripple this.
Civilizations in Dwarf Fortress have a standardized currency system, language and code of laws that is shared throughout the civilization.
That's a placeholder. Even if colonization from a central point remains the norm, the lack of contact will make diverging customs inevitable. Coins are different for all fortresses already. There are different nobles everywhere. Different group memberships, although they don't have an impact yet, etc.
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Buy more shops in different towns: In medieval times, different towns had different coinage, different laws, different customs, different language, different families, different nobles, different measures, etc. Lack of a nationalized trade structure would severely cripple this.
Civilizations in Dwarf Fortress have a standardized currency system, language and code of laws that is shared throughout the civilization.
That's a placeholder. Even if colonization from a central point remains the norm, the lack of contact will make diverging customs inevitable. Coins are different for all fortresses already. There are different nobles everywhere. Different group memberships, although they don't have an impact yet, etc.
The Medici are about in period (mid 1400's) and they basically started all this.
Plus, remember that currency differences don't much matter when your currency is a store of value.
Finally, the modern idea of the corporation was developed in direct response to the need to extract profit from newly opened areas (Portugal's asian stuff, Everyone else's new world stuff). This makes an excellent model for how a new dwarffort works... (High front end investment that no one person is rich enough to make).
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The Medici and the banking improvements are indeed happening in the century after 1400 AD. I suspect that's one of the reasons it's 1400 and not 1500. If metal coin is the store of value, then obviously there aren't much papers around that have value as financial instrument..
I'd rather say that it was a lot like the German eastward colonization. Lots of peasants migrating, attracted by free land and low taxes. Corporations were necessary to fund ships, because you can't do anything with half a ship. Peasants can still go where they want by foot, and see where they end up.
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Could be... could be... especially for the migrants. OTOH, I think the initial 7 show up with a little too much stuff to be peasants (and who has that much money and is still going to strike off with six guys to dig a new cave?)
Edit : Atrocious grammar
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+1 on this, I'd like to see guilds form up and start exerting influence.
The legal personhood of a corporation is a relatively new invention, less than 150 years old. In fact, the notion of limited liability isn't much older than that. Before then, they simply offered a means of spreading the risk of joint ventures.
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The legal personhood of a corporation is a relatively new invention, less than 150 years old.
Do you happen to have a cite for this? I was unable to find a good free source on the history of corporate law.
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+1 on this, I'd like to see guilds form up and start exerting influence.
The legal personhood of a corporation is a relatively new invention, less than 150 years old. In fact, the notion of limited liability isn't much older than that. Before then, they simply offered a means of spreading the risk of joint ventures.
The real issue is that the topic creator used a word without realising the implications of what a company is. (Which is understandable.)
Frankly judging by the responses he meant buisness chains.
If you mean something other then a buisness chain or powerful guilds then I'd like this topic to define their terms.
In fact, please define Company please.
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4 people
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The alleged oldest commercial corporation in the world, the Stora Kopparberg mining community in Falun, Sweden, obtained a charter from King Magnus Eriksson in 1347.
wikipedia is a wonderful thing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation)
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The alleged oldest commercial corporation in the world, the Stora Kopparberg mining community in Falun, Sweden, obtained a charter from King Magnus Eriksson in 1347.
wikipedia is a wonderful thing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation)
Yeah, but it's not cited. I found like a zillion different claims for the oldest company, most of them obviously ignoring the ancient world.
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Could be... could be... especially for the migrants. OTOH, I think the initial 7 show up with a little too much stuff to be peasants (and who has that much money and is still going to strike off with six guys to dig a new cave?)
Edit : Atrocious grammar
Uncultivated land owners, i.e. nobility. (and religious orders, which were rife with nobles anyway). It didn't happen as a commercial venture, because there always was some lord who had the rights on the land, as opposed to land overseas. Additionally, that costs a lot of money, the town might never grow if it happens to be in a bad site, and the profits take generations to reach attractive levels. A noble family is more secure in its rights to the land, and can invest in the patrimony. Dwarves, with their longer lifespans, might look a bit differently at that though.
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The legal personhood of a corporation is a relatively new invention, less than 150 years old.
Do you happen to have a cite for this? I was unable to find a good free source on the history of corporate law.
Sure, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, an 1886 SCOTUS case. Before then the "fictional person" of a corporation was an accounting entity, that's the case that actually granted 'em rights.
The Dutch East India Company (well before it actually had a name) is probably the first company traded on a stock exchange. The UK's Limited Liability Act of 1855 made shareholders no longer directly liable to their creditors.
Not that any of it has to do with dwarves or guilds or companies in the game...
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I meant a cite for the claim that there were no previous notions of the legal personhood of corporations.
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The alleged oldest commercial corporation in the world, the Stora Kopparberg mining community in Falun, Sweden, obtained a charter from King Magnus Eriksson in 1347.
wikipedia is a wonderful thing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation)
Yeah, but it's not cited. I found like a zillion different claims for the oldest company, most of them obviously ignoring the ancient world.
The problem is that hardly any records exist for that time period so any "cited reference" is going to be for a modern book commenting on few remaining documents that might not even be accurate. The search to reliably prove early corporations via citation would be impossible I fear.
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Society was much more personal than it is today. People took oaths, instead of signing contracts, and were expected to keep them due to social pressure. Most people wouldn't be able or willing to move even to another town, because that would put them out of reach of their familial and social networks. Merchants in the late middle ages relied on offices of their city, kind of an embassy/consulate but less official, in other cities for support in case of trouble, or even just for logistics (lodging etc.). That was necessary: if a merchant from Danzig would depart in Bruges without paying for his goods, it wouldn't be unthinkable to demand restitution from the next merchant from Danzig; they were from the same city after all.
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What I think here is that we're relying on real life logic to dictate actions in a fantasy world.
Real Life Medieval:
The costs and challenges involved in moving this grain between two or more villages and setting up offices in all of these villages is exhorbiant. It would be far easier to just sell my grain here. Furthermore, the social challenges involved would be immense.
Dwarf Fortress:
A group of Dwarves who live in an underwater glass castle spend their time fighting zombie whales and making necklaces from the bones of werewolves. Fuck distance or language, think of the oppourtunities.
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Sure, that should be possible. It will be all the more fun, however, if that happens in a consistent world, and not one that has been fudged from the beginning. We'll be better off by modeling the game rules to reality for the sake of consistency and verisimilitude, and modify a few variables afterward to give the player some slack, rather than to ignore physics from the get-go.
In any case, the starting set-up is a few mountainhomes in the middle of a vast empty wilderness. There's plenty of opportunity there. I don't see it as problematic that there are areas that are hard or impossible to reach for regular settlers, anyway: that's what adventurers are for.
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Society was much more personal than it is today. People took oaths, instead of signing contracts, and were expected to keep them due to social pressure. Most people wouldn't be able or willing to move even to another town, because that would put them out of reach of their familial and social networks. Merchants in the late middle ages relied on offices of their city, kind of an embassy/consulate but less official, in other cities for support in case of trouble, or even just for logistics (lodging etc.). That was necessary: if a merchant from Danzig would depart in Bruges without paying for his goods, it wouldn't be unthinkable to demand restitution from the next merchant from Danzig; they were from the same city after all.
How do you keep social pressure in a sandbox game, though?
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Society was much more personal than it is today. People took oaths, instead of signing contracts, and were expected to keep them due to social pressure. Most people wouldn't be able or willing to move even to another town, because that would put them out of reach of their familial and social networks. Merchants in the late middle ages relied on offices of their city, kind of an embassy/consulate but less official, in other cities for support in case of trouble, or even just for logistics (lodging etc.). That was necessary: if a merchant from Danzig would depart in Bruges without paying for his goods, it wouldn't be unthinkable to demand restitution from the next merchant from Danzig; they were from the same city after all.
How do you keep social pressure in a sandbox game, though?
Grudges, group memberships, status in a group, status vs. a group (eg. civ enemies), (un)happy thoughts, etc... to keep close to the things that already have a placeholder in the game.
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I'm thinking less DF mode and more Adventure mode which has a vested interest in letting players pick up and wander 3 countries over...
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I'm thinking less DF mode and more Adventure mode which has a vested interest in letting players pick up and wander 3 countries over...
Strangers are traditionally distrusted. If you check what most adventurers do, it's for good reason ;)
Apart from that, adventurers should be able to get away with some of that. Getting out of the town where everyone loathes you is a very good reason to start adventuring.
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Hmm...
Doesn't the Islamic world already has somekind of a bank in the 11th century already?
A man from India could store his gold to a local merchant guild reprensative, and can get his gold back in Cordoba, if he brought the letter (sorry for the bad English. Night here.)
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Hmm...
Doesn't the Islamic world already has somekind of a bank in the 11th century already?
A man from India could store his gold to a local merchant guild reprensative, and can get his gold back in Cordoba, if he brought the letter
Source?
Strangers are traditionally distrusted. If you check what most adventurers do, it's for good reason ;)
That's kinda where I was going... but if you can't do any business in a town because no one knows you, that impedes some of the fun...
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Hmm...
Doesn't the Islamic world already has somekind of a bank in the 11th century already?
A man from India could store his gold to a local merchant guild reprensative, and can get his gold back in Cordoba, if he brought the letter
Source?
It's the Hawala system. It's an informal system that depends on trust and the common base of Islamic law. In game terms, people with the same religion will be trusted more easily. Traveling to an area with a different dominant religion ought to be noticeable. Group memberships are often linked to a religion too (eg. religious orders), and that will boost sympathy even more.
Strangers are traditionally distrusted. If you check what most adventurers do, it's for good reason ;)
That's kinda where I was going... but if you can't do any business in a town because no one knows you, that impedes some of the fun...
It should be harder, you should get worse prices, but sufficiently exotic trade goods will always attract buyers. If an adventurer tries to sell eggs and apples, he'll likely will be ignored in favour of the familiar sellers, a few curious old hags notwithstanding.
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What I think here is that we're relying on real life logic to dictate actions in a fantasy world
There is only so far I will relax logic for a fantasy world.
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What I think here is that we're relying on real life logic to dictate actions in a fantasy world
There is only so far I will relax logic for a fantasy world.
Well, I'm just saying that, while looking at actions in our past to give us an idea as to what people of roughly the time period we're looking at would act, people in the 14-15 hundreds, while they may have had legends of this happening, didn't actually live in a world with inhuman, sentinent creatures to communicate and interact with, there were no pits filled with horrible demons and magical metals, people who can hit someone with a stick so hard they explode, etc.
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It isn't healthy to use that as a everything excuse Tibbles.
Especially since I can accept demons while accepting social systems not supported by the setting creates a magical plot hole.