An idea about the coins value as a credit: Suppose all of the materials in an embark is counted by the Mountainhome as a negative credit based on the absolute value of said items, (say 5 credits of debt = 1 embark point). The purpose of the economy, and of taxing, is to first pay back the Mountainhome for the expense of the expedition, then to create a positive balance with the Mountainhome by selling them minted coins. The bookkeeper would still be keeping track of the accrued wealth of each dwarf, but the coins would be shuffled off with each year's merchants.
If shares in the total Fortress wealth were shared with guilds based on the total hours of work done by all the dwarves in the fortress that month, and therefore passed along to the dwarves of each guild, such that they could then use those shares as the currency for room, board and luxury items present in the fortress. Dwarves with unspent shares could then use them to place orders with the Merchants coming from the Mountainhomes, and thereby aquire stuff that is on their personality's "likes" list.
The entire purpose of an economy is to create a system built to allocate limited resources. This is why rarity increases the value of something up so high, while something available to all is also usually very very cheap. Goods will therefore cost the time required to produce it, plus the cost of its materials. However, depending on how rare the available time to produce these goods is, will make the item more or less rare, and therefore multiply its value using straight supply and demand values. If the supply of alcohol or food decreases below the demand for it from the local population, that is the threshold where the price to acquire each new drink and meal will increase.
However, the goal of the economy should be a system that
maximizes overall dwarven happiness. This should be much more easily catered to, since the moods of all the dwarves is easily monitored. The "happiness index" of a fortress, would then measure how robust its economy is, which would guide the decisions for guilds who would also be monitoring it's member's happiness levels and pop mandates when a guildmember's happiness went below a certain threshold. The reason for the economy, therefore, would be to help the Overseer create a more successful fortress.
A thought about the thresholds: they should be raised each time the fortress increments up one civilization level: Outpost-->Village-->Town-->City-->Mountainhome. The "poverty standard" (ie, the point at which negative thoughts begin occuring due to not having enough), should increase in value for each increment. This would simulate the very real modern equivalent of first, second and third world expectations, where the poverty in one culture is the palace in another. Also, Well established guilds in a Mountainhome may become lucrative enough to gamble on founding new outposts of their own, which creates a cycle of value from the other side, as merchants arriving to the Mountainhome could be bringing tributes from those outposts who are themselves paying off their debts and sending coins and goods back to the guilds that sent them, to be sold at an inflated price in the Mountainhome, according to the current market. Sounds like some wonderful end-game fun eh?
This text:
http://www.econ.canterbury.ac.nz/personal_pages/bob_reed/econ3003/book/area1c2.htm might be of use, if you like.
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Topic: Anyone else remember that economy thing? Yeah ... (DFHacking gone wrong) (Read 14209 times)