If there's so much stuff, it can practically be free. The problem is that not every fort (especially an NPC one) does have everything it needs. The current game is also notorious for food supply and trade wealth being too easy to obtain.
The former reality (overproduction) is basically contradictory with the latter (every site not having everything it needs). We presently produce so much wealth in relation to actual demand that everything becomes essentially valueless, including the labour of the dwarves themselves. For instance my own fortress Plainiron presently has over 1000 fishes stockpiled and about 4 fishermen between them produce about 600-800 fishes per year, the reality is of course that these four people are producing enough food to actually feed a large chunk of population of my whole civilization, the Citadel of Liberty. There are other sites in my civilization however that have fishermen and thus must also be producing 600-800 fishes per year, if we are talking about a consistant world where the player's site is not somehow magical.
What I intend to do of course is simply to stockpile 1000s of fishes until the random demand generator of one of the civilizations I trade with generates a specific demand for fishes. Then I will sell the whole lot off. The problem here is that if there are sites that cannot produce their own fish, they still have a very limited demand, so the caravan would realistically only buy about say 200 fishes because it cannot sell on any more fishes than that. However since anachronistically the caravan trades based upon pure value as opposed to the actual economic situation as regards supply+demand, the caravan presently acts as a demand sink since it's own demands are infinite UNLIKE the demands of your own fortress.
The deadly part (to any functional economy) is that the situation cannot be solved by simply adjusting the value of fish. Since the effective cost of fishes is 0 when you consider the universal oversupply of everything else you are producing as well, it does not matter if the value of each fish sinks to some tiny fraction of a dwarfbuck, it will always be profitable to sell fish despite the fact that the caravan can do absolutely nothing with them. It is not enough to simply adjust the values according to supply+demand, supply and demand must be taken into account SEPERATELY of value so as to see to it that the caravan will not buy (or accept as gifts) items that it knows it cannot ever sell or consume itself regardless of how good a deal it is getting.
The fundermental economy reality of the game (and reality) is that any items value is ultimately reducable to a binary, prior to anything else being decided either something is demanded (either by you or somebody you are trading with) or it is worthless. At this point things get to why I said that working hard and producing more is not always rational, if my four fisherment produce 600-800 fishes a year and between what caravan is able to buy combined with your own consumption the demand is 300-400 fishes, there is neither reason for the fortress to want to get the fisherdwarves to work harder, nor to introduce new techniques to increase fishing productivity. The rational thing to do is simply for the fisherdwarves to work 50% less so they only produce the total amount that is demanded.
Unemployment is a result of not enough work for the population's skill set being available. This is in turn a result of not enough resources or infrastructure. You can't gain wealth by dividing the available work between more people. That's illogical. Wealth distribution, maybe, but not overall wealth.
Being employed is not the same thing as doing work. Idle dwarves are very much employed, it is just that their employer (the site government) has failed to find them work to do at the moment, which they will do if it is found.
Unemployment has nothing to do with there not being enough work, unemployment is due to the government not immediately hiring everybody first and *then* finding them work to do (or not). Since this is what presently exists, there is no unemployment in the dwarf society, merely employed dwarves waiting for their employer to give them actual work to do.
It's essentially the minimizing of idlers that most players already do. (We can add job priority here by who needs the money, in order to avoid a small issue with finding work.) The benefit is that it actually adds logic to so-called 'anachronistic' features, resulting in a more living, breathing world.
Yes, however with a proper world economy the caravan demand-sink will not exist, so the inherant rationality of minimising idlers would actually go away. Thus we are into the buisness of actual make-work, the player is arbiterily creating demand in order than there be full employment, so that all dwarves get paid and are happy; or as I put it, digging holes and filling them in.
Interestingly this is basically why we ended up with workhouses, if people operate according to the principle that
"those who do not work should not eat" the end result is that to stop people from starving the government ends up rounding the unemployed people up and 'making work' for them to do.
What do you mean when you say the world makes perfect sense? What features besides the current economy make sense in your opinion? And if it turns out that you consider most of the world features to be anachronistic, would that not make the current economy the actual anachronism?
There is a heirachy to these things. If an element of a bigger picture does not presently fit into the bigger picture then it is that element that is an anachronism, not the picture itself.
It's an interesting comparison, but I think it's an oversimplification. Economics isn't the sole motive for hero and villain.
Economics does not care whether the hero is motivated by it. The hero depends upon the dystopian elements of the world for sustainance, just as the villain does. To be truly a hero however the hero needs to work to make the world less dystopian, thus making his own life and that of other future heroes less sustainable. The villain on the other hand by making the world more dystopian looks after the collective interests of both the villain and hero alike. In a way the whole theme is covered in the Majesty 2 intial campaign video (I have covered how Ardania is a hero-friendly dystopia before.
Majesty campaign starting videoKind Leonard is the last of a long line of heroic Ardanian kings, each of whom has faced great villains and defeated them. Having put an end to the Majesty's essential dystopia, the previous kings have left King Leonard economically unable to be a hero, since that role's value has now in the essentially binary sense been set to 0. Thus in order for his desired hero role to have any value he conjures up a powerful demon so he can defeat it. He fails to do this but as a result the world slides back into the heroic dystopia that provides the basis for Majesty 2.
The funny thing here is that in a way we are not correct to say that the villain is an evil hero but rather that the hero is a good villain. In the end economic desperation 'forces' the hero to become a villain by summoning up a demon or become valueless.
It can be managed in better ways than that. Really, most of the work should be agriculture, keeping a fort fed without modern tech. We've also got an entertainment industry coming.
Yes very much so. However if the devs were able to do that successfully (balance production and demand) there would still be no unemployement and if unemployment did somehow arise then the solution would still be digging holes and filling them in to fix it.
Not just bandits, but those comatose refugees in empty tents. Because, logically, the site shouldn't have the capacity to support them. NPC homes are packed like sardine tins and contain enough food to last maybe a few days.
(Let me know if I missed anything that you thought required a response.)
Every labourer produces surplus value. This means (this becomes quite apparant to a player as the game progresses) that the greater the population the greater the total wealth of everybody. That means that it is in the interests of every settlement to accept the maximum number of migrants that it's present surplus value is able to presently accomadate provided said immigrants are then able to work to produce surplus value themselves.
Surplus value means the total amount of value that the dwarf produces on top of the amount of value the dwarf presently consumes. At the moment given the high levels of production, the low level of consumption and the general lack of item decay the surplus value of a single dwarf is vast. Surplus value is the economic motor of progress essentially, without it all you have is an eternal stagnation or decline. To think about it like this, the fortress 'spends' the total surplus value to upgrade itself either privately by doling it out to individual dwarves (upgrading rooms) or collectively (upgrading dining halls).
To initially accomadate immigrants there must be spend an initial expendature of surplus value before the immigrants manage to do enough work to add to the surplus value of the fortress. Once that happens the total amount of surplus value in the fortress is greater and the fortress hence can therefore accomadate even more immigrants producing even greater surplus value (and so on). If surplus value is mostly expended privately (upgrading personal rooms say), since the number of people goes up as surplus value does no increase in wealth per capita is generated by immigration, except possibly for the migrants if their new home is richer than their old one. However if the surplus is invested collectively (upgrading dining rooms say) then the more the total surplus value there is, the greater wealth there is per capita, since the benefit of collective expenditure of surplus value is enjoyed by many people at once.
Since in DF society expends the majority of it's surplus value collectively (armies are a collective expenditure of surplus value by the way), then dwarves would presently look upon a refugee camp in much the same way that they look upon a vein of gold or gems. They would probably all be competing with eachother for the right to have said refugees migrate into their sites (war might even break out over it).
I don't need a crystal ball to see a set of stairs and conclude that the go up or down from where I'm standing.
I don't know what the state of the game will be in 20 years, I do know what toady has said in Future of the fortress, dev talks and put on the dev page which allow me to guesstimate where it could be.
Neither are the devs experts in the future.
The gambling/games/price-setting/rent/etc. part of the tavern release was made problematic by the lack of economy, and we might wait on that until the value of things is more natural and coins are floating around again (or whatever ends up happening). The myth generator goes in with the artifact release (there might be one release there or we might find a good split point).
They have not quite decided what exactly they are going to do.
As I've said I'm no economy expert and I don't pretend to be I don't see this as a perfect economy because I don't see any economy and that is because not only is the current global trade system a farce but within fort mode everyone act like an ant doing whats best for the colony without selfish thoughts getting in the way which is something I find to be unrealistic from "sapient" beings like dwarf or humans and this intern lowers the integrity of the simulation imho.
The Idea that DF will remain with this "Perfect" system is something I just don't see as true, I don't think DF is about making a "perfect system" but a fantasy world where the player can partake in all the usual fantasy world roles.
The dwarves live like ants so why would they not think and behave somewhat like ants?
I am not saying that dwarves should be selfless creatures but is there a problem with sentient creatures selflessly doing what is best for the colony like ants do? Is altruism somehow subhuman in your view?
There *is* an economy in the game at the moment. There is supply (too much of it) and demand (too little of it), surplus value (a lot of it) which is invested in upgrading the fortress. The dwarves behave optimally for creatures that live like ants, that is they behave like ants. However as you correctly point out, dwarves are not supposed to be ants and nor do they all have 100 altruism value, hence certain dwarves should disrupt the functioning of the fortress and we should be given a number of tools to deal with them, basically various forms of carrot+stick.
However the language that is consistantly used in these threads and by the devs seems to reduce the definition of an economy to the use of coins.
And I think that many of these role's are dependent on an Imperfect social/economic structure to be fully realized, I see the current "perfect economy" as a place holder for simulated imperfection.
And it they want to make a flawed economic system that works, they should start with the present perfect economic system and then 'break it' in various ways, while coming up with various mechanics for us to stitch it all back up again to varying degrees of success.
What about the fact the there was a functional adv mode conversation system that they replaced? the emotion and personality rewrite? you could say these are expansions to existing mechanic and I say that the return of the economy is an expansion of the existing economy mechanic which I feel is flawed in its "Perfection", is it they strictly necessary? no but I feel that it will make the simulation better by its inclusion.
They instituted a whole antlike economic model and then they made a whole economic model that 'properly uses coins' to arbiterily replace the first economic model. All of it was of course totally as I said, a redundant replacement rather than an expansion; this shown by how all they had to do to get things as they are at the moment was simply to switch off the arbiterily added in 'economy' that was a redundant replacement mechanic functioning solely to get the dwarves 'properly using coins'. If you are right then they fully intend to make the same mistake all over again and expend even more development time in vain; fortunately I have no reason to think they have not worked out themselves basically what I am telling you.
Basically they would then have taken 3X the time they could have taken in order to add a functional economy into the game. They spent the time to make the initial functional economy, then they spent the time to make a dysfunctional economy and then they spent the time needed to make a third economy which would then work. Of course that third replacement economy might not work either so we are onto 4X or 5X.
I don't think that the current economy was ever intended nor do I think it fits toady's goal.
Why does it exist then? Initially it was intended to be the initial state to be then replaced by a whole new economic system when the fortress advanced enough for 'some reason'.
And as I've said I think the goal is to create a society that enable plays to experience the standard fantasy tropes, if this mean intentionally adding "Imperfections" to its economic or social structures then so be it.
as for those who don't want poverty stricken peasants, he could add a raw tag or init option that turns off the economy leaving the "utopia" untouched, I just don't think it will be the default setting.
That is the core problem. For the sake of those tropes Toady One wants creatures that behave like actual medieval people rather than ant people but actual medieval people never lived in warrens under the ground like ants. Toady One quickly realises he must add in an 'initial' economic model because the medieval people economy model he is using would never initially work. He thinks that, well when things advance enough in the fortress then they will naturally slip into a functional medieval state, since the problem is 'clearly' lack of development.
Instead of mining the medieval past in a George R.R Martin sense the team could instead of made an analysis of what they had actually created and how it could be developed further. Doing so would have saved all that wasted time and produced something more interesting than simply a middle ages clone society. The following of points set would do.
1. Presently our fantasy dwarves are behaving more like ants than medieval people.
2. Since fantasy dwarves live underground in a manner that resembles ants this actually makes sense.
3. How do fantasy dwarves differ from ants?
4. Based upon how fantasy dwarves are not like ants how would their society not be like an ant hill.
5. Develop an unique social and economic order from the Status Quo that takes into account both 4.
What I've inferred from Toady's comments in future of the fortress, dev talks and the development page goals, is it a perfect system? no but until toady himself posts an answer in this thread its reasonable to me.
It is objectively a perfect system for the present sites that exist. The global economy would not presently function that is true but the internal fortress economy is perfect and it's logics should be extended to the former.
I don't know DF's code but he might need to complete strip out the current ownership system to make it possible for an individual to own pieces of a site and then build, renovate or change these pieces without owning the whole site, as I understand it this is handled by site government so to do it yourself could need a rewrite which is something I support.
Why would have to any such overhaul? He can create mansions as sites with the player as a position-holder in the site or he can have mansions as part of an existing site but assigned to the player much like rooms already are. Not only are no major overhauls needed, but these options avoid the kind of anachronism created by having truly privately owned mansions in the present social order (it would actually be anachronistic in real medieval times as well, since truly private land ownership did not exist anywhere until 17th Century England).
To a follower who wants death and glory yes it is unreasonable but where getting bards and travailing musical bands next release and the ability to "Hire" guards in the merchant ark and they might have different motivations in which case it would not be unreasonable for them and what about the "Caring for live stock" part? that could be indefinite yet its listed alongside guarding sites instead of alongside the unreasonable request point which listed guarding a random wilderness location.
Being able to issue orders to stay at a site for general purposes (defense, caring for livestock, etc.)
It says site not mansion.
Why? because I said I'm not an expert and then went on to say what I remembered from the history channel?
What I remember is that most peasants didn't have actual money and lived in a barter based society where goods and labor where traded for goods and labor, because the peasant didn't have actual money they paid tax's to the local lord in goods and labor. its entirely possible that its got nothing to do with medieval economy as I also vaguely remember something about serfdom in England but as I said I'm no expert. I trust that toady will look at what actual economy's existed in the time period he wants the game to present and then analyze those systems and model them for his game.
Also is being called George R.R Martin supposed to be some kind of insult? because I think most people would take it as a complement, personally I don't care so call me whatever you like.
I would like to point out that with all your comments about DF economy being perfect you have proven my point that your focused on what DF is now not what it will be and I'm not saying that what I think is the objective truth and is guaranteed to happen just that any of the current systems are subject to change and that I think an improved version of the original economy will happen.
The problem is that inference between DF and Middle Ages is almost totally invalid. The
George R.R Martin defense is when you try to use historical accuracy as a justification or reason for adding in to a fictional world a large amount of unpleasant elements (sexism, rape, random atrocities in his case). It is like the starving peasants earlier, that there were starving peasants in medieval times does not mean that Toady One *has* to wreck the game economy that presently does not support starving peasants (unless everybody at the site is one) because DF Fortress is
not Medieval Times.
That is what I call
"There were no dragons" answer to the
"George R.R Martin defense", Westeros is not medieval Europe because there were no dragons in medieval Europe. So if the the devs want to add starving peasants into their world it is an active choice on their part, it is not something they have has to do for reasons of historical accuracy. In my opinion a truly talented author is defined by their ability to develop a fictional element *as* itself as opposed to forever trying to develop it in line with it's initial inspiration, whether that is real history or another authors element (I *am* a fantasy author by the way
). So if the team manage to truly make their dwarves into something that is *not* medieval people or Tolkien's dwarves that would be a greater accomplishment than mindlessly replicating them as a society of medieval peasants; but to do that they must grow what is already there and not throw everything away that does not fit with the source.
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Topic: Adventure Mode Housing? (Read 19921 times)