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[Paaaad]

I was curious about how much my fortress would be worth in real life, so I ran some numbers, assuming that each unit of smelted gold is composed of four 400-troy-ounce bars.

30☼/4=7.5☼
7.5/400=0.01875

Real life cost of gold: $1,187.10 @ 4:20 12/17/14

0.01875*100=1.875/1.875=1☼
1,187.10*100=118,710/1.875=$63,312

Yea... To put this into perspective, Planepacked would be worth 3,105,600☼*63,312=196,621,747,200 U.S. Dollars. Mansa Musa I of Mali (1280-1331), the richest man ever was worth around $400,000,000,000. Altogether, only nine people in the last 1,000 years could have afforded to make that purchase.

[Fniff]

Well, when it's the entire history of the world on one statue, and people have paid millions for tins of shit...

[evictedSaint]

To be fair, Planeplanked was an exploit, and could realistically be called "priceless". 

[Thisfox]

Art works are very much in the realm of priceless. I mean, the Mona Lisa is a similar type of situation, and Monets Waterlilies. They aren't measurable in units of money, other than "many". Yet other artworks aren't worth the materials they were made with, despite the fact that they might be more photographically or historically accurate. I figure Artifacts are the same, which is why I don't really pay much attention to the stated price of an Artifact. It's not like anyone is going to go to the Louvre and pay money for the original Mona Lisa, or if they did, that anyone would say yes. It just wouldn't happen, any more than an Artifact is for sale in you fort. With good reason.

More interesting to me is the price of non-artifact fortress items, especially expensive ones. What price is a +unicorn roast+? What price a -plump helmet biscuit- ? That tin cage which my bonecarver covered in bone decorations, how much is it worth in dollars or pounds, or grams of good Aussie gold? We could work out that Macdonalds scale of reference, the one where they work out whether a place is poor or rich depending on what a standard sized meal costs in standard workman hours....

[Slogo]

Well a fortress is more city or state than it is an individual person and something like Planedpacked is less a really nice object and more Rosetta stone or Mona Lisa that's an instant historical one of a kind.

I think the Mona Lisa is/was insured for some ungodly amount of money for example, but that's probably even an underestimate of its worth considering I doubt anyone reasonably expects the insurance to ever have to pay out given its security and care.

In terms of food you'd probably need to also convert one dwarven meal into the equivalent human meals. Dwarves eat like once a month max (probably less even) so you're talking about 1 dwarven meal being 75-100 human meals. Though all of that is going to fall apart for prepared meals which have ungodly value.

[evictedSaint]

Let's assume the cheapest food available to a dwarf.  Unspecified meat of some low-value animal; 2 urists.

That means to eat for a month, it cost a dwarf

2*63,312=$126,624

For a human, food for a month might cost

31*3*8=$744

[Loud Whispers]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Weapons: 9,905,195☼ x 63,312 = $627,117,705,840
Armour and Garb: 21,918,018☼ x 63,312 = $1,387,673,556,000
Furniture: 7,479,478☼ x 63,312 = $473,540,711,136
Other Objects: 61,917,417☼ x 63,312 = $3,920,115,505,000
Architecture: 16,598,278☼ x 63,312 = $1,050,870,177,000
Displayed: 14,921,493☼ x 63,312 = $944,709,564,816
Held/Worn: 22,763,472☼ x 63,312 = $1,441,200,939,000

Overall: $9,845,228,159,000 in the year 433.
That's excluding the cost of the livestock and the worth of the Dwarves themselves. This number would make Silentthunders as rich as a city like Belfast or Luton. If only Displayed, Architecture and Furniture are used for the worth of the Fort itself it's worth $2,469,120,453,000, it could pass as the capital of a small nation. I'm pleased, but need more wealth!

Let's assume the cheapest food available to a dwarf.  Unspecified meat of some low-value animal; 2 urists.
That means to eat for a month, it cost a dwarf
2*63,312=$126,624
For a human, food for a month might cost
31*3*8=$744

You are forgetting that Dwarves eat 8 times a year in game and the cheapest food is 1 urist.
8 x 63,612 / 365 = $1,387.66
The cheapest Dwarven diet would cost nearly $1.4k a day without alcohol factored in.

Perhaps a more accurate assessment of the gold standard would be to find the exchange rate of gold coins to strawberries and run it through the exchange rate of gold coins to urists and gold coins to strawberries irl.

*EDIT
I am looking at the coins themselves. Strawberries are not needed.

[Loud Whispers]

5 silver coins are 1☼ and 5 silver Britannias are £63.90. Right now that would mean $99.56 USD

The cheapest Dwarf diet for the year would be 8☼ for the whole year.
8☼ x 99.56 / 365 = $2.18 per day for food.
On a modest diet with meat or certain fresh produce then you're at $4.36 for food.
A no quality plump helmet roast diet would be 26☼ x 8 x 99.56 / 365 = $56.73 a day for food.
I've looked through my Fort's stocks and found a masterwork pig tallow roast (MAJESTIC BACON!) and each unit of food costs 135☼. This would mean that a Dwarf that consumes nothing but masterwork bacon all year long would rack up a bill of $294.58 every day.

Theoretically the most expensive Dwarven diet imaginable would consist of a Dwarf dining on the meat of the last dragon as prepared by the greatest cook known to all Dwarvenkind whilst downing it with sunshine all year long.
Sunshine is valued at 5☼ and Dwarves drink 12 times a year so it'd be a modest 5 x 12 x 99.56 / 365 = $16.37 a day.
Meat's base value is 2☼, x15 for being dragon meat makes it 30☼.
Lavish meal so 10 x 30 and masterfully prepared so x 12 on that and you get: 10 x 30 x 12 = 3600☼ per roast.
3600☼ x 8 x 99.56 / 365 = $7,855.69 per day to drive dragons to extinction by eating their roasted flesh day after day for a year.

Add the sunshine bill and the total is $7,872.06. This should be the highest cost possible to feed a single Dwarf without modding.
With the basic diet and accompanying mead (which raises the cost by $3.27 a year) you can afford to feed 1444 Dwarves for the entire year with that roast.
On the most basic diet possible substituting alcohol for water the cost to feed a Dwarf on the dragon roast diet would be enough to feed 3611 Dwarves for the entire year. At the end of the year Baron Dragonroast will have eaten and drunk $2,873,301.90 worth of edibles.

[Ramirez]

I did a bit of looking into it and a 400 troy ounce gold bar has a volume of 645cm^3, while bars in DF have a volume of 600cm^3. This means a set of bars that have a monetary value of 150 urists has a weight of 11.592 kilograms. Looking around it seems like gold has a price of about £25 per gram (at least in the UK anyway), so a set of bars would be worth £289800, giving a value of £1932 per urist by my reckoning.

Using this figure, a dwarf eating something worth 2 urists of food 8 times in a year would cost about £85 in food per day. Minimum living expenses of 20 urists a year for food and drink gives a value of £38.64K per year, although that number could go down to as low as £15.45K if they are willing to tolerate water. Living off sunshine would cost 40 urists a year, or about £200 a day which is actually about how much a couple of bottles of fine wine would set you back. The Millennium sapphire would be worth about 65000 urists (real value of $180 million), which actually compares pretty well to DF's sapphires as that would equate to a value multiplier from quality of 163 which is pretty much artifact level (artifacts have 120x multiplier but also come with a free artifact quality decoration of the same material). A basic metal tankard would have a value of about £38K, while a masterfully made one would be worth almost half a million. A basic smoothed 2x2 room with four items of furniture and a door would have architecture worth 80 urists, with basic furniture adding a further 50 urists, for a real-world value of £251K which is actually pretty accurate if we assume a fortress is an area with a high cost of living (in many areas of London £250K will struggle to buy you a tiny single room).

Interestingly using copper as a comparison gives some very different values. 10 urists of copper, a single bar, weighs 5.34 kilograms. Looking at the London Metal Exchange copper is worth about £4000 per tonnne, so £4 per kilo and therefore a DF bar would cost £21.36, for a conversion rate of £2.136 per urist. Somebody eating £21.36 of food and drink a day (10 urists) would therefore spend 3360 urists in a year, spread out over 12 drinks and 8 meals. If we assume a reasonable 3 value drink that still leaves 3324 urists on meals, or 415 urists per meal. The basic metal tankard mentioned above would have a value of about £42, rising up to a little over £500 for a masterfully made one. A basic DF chair would put you back £21.36, but a fancy designer chair would be worth about £256, which actually matches pretty well to real life. A little house of 4 2x2 rooms with some reasonable doors in a square made of stoneware bricks would have architecture of a value of 980 urists, with an additional 150 urists of doors (assuming they are 2x-3x value from quality and there are 6 of them), each room having a clear window worth 125 urists and each room being populated by 4 items of furniture worth a combined 100 urists per room; this totals a value of 2030 urists, or only £2136.

[Mohreb el Yasim]

it is funny to see people make all that counting to convert in-existing values int other in-existing values

[The Bard]

All the gold conversion sort of miss that the price of gold has been inflated by modern day idiots. Dorfs don't have BUY GOLD ads.