Bay 12 Games Forum

No worries about the "fail".  This is noob fortress after all.  Someone had to fail sometime...

Besides, I've always wanted a crack at aquifer piercing.  My first thought was to do the underpass you planned and complete the moat outside.  Now I've something less megaproject-ish to do. 

OP: Very good idea!  This can be used together with the previous thread on economics. 

Instead of juggling micro-economics, you can abstract it into macro-economics (sort of) using this system.  Which makes processing power take so much less. 

Each guild has their own job stack, divided into each type of job.  All the "make platinum goblets" go into one stack, "tin goblets" go into another, "steel armour" into yet another. 

The rest follows your idea, except:
The guild calculates the payout for each job individually and posts an "average" payout at the top of the stack.  The dwarves only check those when determining how much the job pays. 

And that the guilds don't do the buying/selling of goods.  The dwarves do it themselves, the guild just sets the prices and tracks stuff.  Much like how a stock brokerage works in the stock market. 

As for the hauling problem, use an average.  Make hauling have it's own "guild" and have it pay workers depending on the time taken to complete the job.  Track how much workers were paid per job and use a time average.  The workers use that "average" payout to calculate utility. 
 - I know it can be cheated by simply taking longer to do the job.  But dwarves aren't smart enough to do that.  (or maybe they can be, and make it a fine-able offence XD)

Workers should only check with the guild they are attached to for jobs, and only change guilds if they fail to earn enough money. 

Player interaction comes in where the player can subsidize certain actions (ie. flat increase to payout of certain jobs, limited by job quantity or money limit) or request X amount of goods.  Simply assume the government can print money and get away with it.  Inflation will balance itself out. 

Hmm... Had an idea, instead of having a partially backed currency that goes like this:

Your idea - Coins that are worth little in material can be exchanged for their value in gold / precious metals.  The fort doesn't have enough to pay for all the coins...

How about this:

The coins ARE made of the precious metals like gold and platinum.  They're just worth more than the gold they're made out of. 

And the value of the coin is determined by what it can buy in the market.  Some function of production power, raw material stock and finished goods stocks. 

Oh no, I wasn't talking about... wait... I'm writing to two people... >.>

I was referring to Granite's suggestion about your fort floating your own currency.  Simply establish a trading office where they can come get their gold (and not have enough) and you have a partially backed currency. 

What the dwarves do with that however...

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Your masons going on strike unless they get a wage increase since they feel they would earn more money by hauling on the other hand is a great feature!

Let me clarify:

1) Minor construction projects are going on all the time.  Reinforcing walls, expanding rooms, etc. They pay about twice that of hauling. 

2) I order 50 000 blocks to be made.  100 of these are specialty materials, like iron or adamantine. 

3) Then, I designate a 50 000 block construction for a giant dam or tower or whatever. 

The point is that, if you program in expectation, the dwarves can think this way:
1) I'm suddenly paying more for blocks.  And there's an order in for so many blocks it'll take a decade to finish it. 
Therefore, I'm about to start a giant construction project. 

When I designate the project and want to attract more masons (because a 50 year construction time is pointless), I up the government wage on construction to 3x hauling. 
Not enough people. 
I up it again to 4x. 

Then the dwarves go, "hey look, if I do the work now, I'll just be paid less since the price of masonry work is going up.  "
And then they refuse to do it.  It's like how deflation causes people to slow spending and how inflation accelerates spending. 

I simply meant that dwarves look up how much they want to do something. 

And that dwarves have individual wants that are more developed than they are now. 

That's it.  Putting in things like "I can't be confident in the fortress issued currency" and the idea that gold coins are valueless if you can't buy food with them simply makes it too complex. 

The wiki has the list for most of them. 
http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Advanced_World_Generation

Glacier is missing from there, but I found that setting temperature to -100 then drainage to extreme values (0 or 100, I can't remember) gives you glaciers.  Provided it's not below sea level that is. 

Hmm... looks like I'll get my turn sooner than I expected.  Perhaps I might not have to deal with economy. 

Go ahead and start, Axil. 

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Oh no no, don't take it the wrong way.  Build the self-destruct lever if you can. 

Just take care that some random kobold or insane person can't get to the lever to pull it.  Would really suck if the fort collapsed because of that.  Perhaps have 4 or 5 levers each lower a bridge that accesses the next lever in sequence to pull the final one. 

Sort of like a...
"Sure you want to pull this lever?"
"Really sure you want to pull this lever?"
"Lever of DOOM"