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[Ekaton]

What I love the most about DF is that you can produce so many different things and trade with others, but what's the point of trade without proper demand? I present to you a system that could be both easy to implement and would provide basic economy to the game. It will benefit both fortress part of the game - you will have to plan your production accordingly and the adventurer part since you can trade.

Supply and Demand
1. Every settlement should produce certain things, the bigger it is the more things it will produce, and this could be further modified by access to different goods, ingredients, metals, and the general world's demand for goods.
2. Since sites are producing things, they will need things too - if they're producing axes, they will need metals. If they're producing clothes, they will need wool etc. It can be achieved by using a certain number of local settlers - if a 100 dwarves live in a fortress, 25 of them might be producing food, 25 tools, 25 weapons and armors and others will be idlers, nobles, performers, priests, etc. Every dwarf can use 5 iron bars per day, so we have maximum demand for 125 iron bars per day. If 50% of demand is satisfied than the price is 200%, if 75% - 150%, if 100% - 100%, anything else they will buy for 90%, or proportionally less the more iron they have stockpiled.
3. To know how much to produce the game can make a check of needs - if the nearby settlements need 150 axes in total per day, the site will produce and try to sell that amount and will try not to exceed it. Of course we need an element that accounts for economic information not being perfect, so they will most likely produce more or less, depending on their manager's skill or to simplify, randomly between 10% more than really needed and 10% less.
4. The more those needs are satisfied the lower the price, in the same way I explained before. Food can be a different category, since if some creatures are starving, they are willing to pay a lot more to live than someone who needs more iron to produce more and be rich.
5. Food and beverage consumption can be tied to how large creatures are to simplify things, weapons to how much they use and break in battle, tools to how much they produce/mine, and can be random as well - game can make a random site open a new mine, and they will, for example, need 25 picks, and then 5 every month to account for equipment breaking, being lost etc. Again, the same mechanism, and the game needs to keep track of individual equipment that the site has.
6. Materials - game should take into account how much something costs comparable to how well it will perform. Steel and iron picks should therefore be preferred over copper ones if a site can pay for them, if not, it will not choose steel at all, and will only consider iron, if it can't pay for iron, it will consider only copper. The same mechanism can be applied to other things as well. It can be decided by assigning a richness factor to a settlement that will be altered by trade and producing goods. A site that buys a lot and not sells enough will soon be forced to buy cheaper things and then to stop buying altogether, selling its stockpiles in the process as well.
7. Game can compare demand and materials at hand. If a site has 100 copper but the demand is only for 25 copper swords and 75 copper cups, it will produce only 25 swords and 75 cups. If there is demand for 100 swords and 100 cups, it will produce 100 swords since those are more expensive. Again, simple comparison. If there is demand for 100 steel swords but site has no steel, it will try to get it provided that the price of material is lower than the price of end goods.

That's it for now, I will expand it later when I have new ideas. Please comment and tell me what you think!

[MrWiggles]

The game already has supply and demand. It right now only works during World Gen, I think. But in adventure in you can see all sorts of goods, from all over the world in various settlements.

There is a trade overhaul and a economy overhaul planned for fortress mode, where this supply and demand will matter to them more. ToadyOne plans to do away with seasonable trade caravans do more of a once a year Fair, where everyone that can reach the fort goes and trade at the fort, including the various hill dorf community that live near by.

[GoblinCookie]

Pretty good, except for this bit. 

4. The more those needs are satisfied the lower the price, in the same way I explained before. Food can be a different category, since if some creatures are starving, they are willing to pay a lot more to live than someone who needs more iron to produce more and be rich.

Prices are actually redundant on that basis.  The site can just calculate the total number of surplus items that it has against the total number of in-demand items and based upon the total number of OTHER economic entities it is in contact with calculate the optimal exchange based upon what it THINKS the other sites would have to sell, dividing the surplus among the total demands they THINK the other site with.  This appears to the player as the price of the item but between the AIs there is no need for them ever use prices at all since they can simply pass the items to eachother based upon the actual supply+demand situation itself since they are using an economic calculus existing explicitly within the game. 

To clarify the AI would ideally trade 3 whatever for 30 whatever but to the player this appears as 1 of this for 30 of that, which is the price of the item effectively.  If the player does not behave 'optimally' it adjusts it's projection of the production and demand of the player, which leads to a custom model being used to assess the players economic position by the AIs in general.

[JohnnyYuma]

Sounds about right. I only wonder if DF can handle so many additional calculations to depict the world economy. Would probably need to be done in ticks like once per week or something.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Sounds about right. I only wonder if DF can handle so many additional calculations to depict the world economy. Would probably need to be done in ticks like once per week or something.

As Toady said in the PC Gamer interview (paraphrase). It doesn't matter if they have to utterly destroy the game and rebuild it from scratch, the vision is a fantasy world generator with mythgen, magic, alternative dimensions, boats, politics, society and a world economy (for starters). Should be Ok.

[JohnnyYuma]

Sounds about right. I only wonder if DF can handle so many additional calculations to depict the world economy. Would probably need to be done in ticks like once per week or something.

As Toady said in the PC Gamer interview (paraphrase). It doesn't matter if they have to utterly destroy the game and rebuild it from scratch, the vision is a fantasy world generator with mythgen, magic, alternative dimensions, boats, politics, society and a world economy (for starters). Should be Ok.

Economy fuels everything and in my opinion should be the very foundation of a fantasy world simulator. Hope Toady One will focus on economy after his next update.

[KittyTac]

Sounds about right. I only wonder if DF can handle so many additional calculations to depict the world economy. Would probably need to be done in ticks like once per week or something.

As Toady said in the PC Gamer interview (paraphrase). It doesn't matter if they have to utterly destroy the game and rebuild it from scratch, the vision is a fantasy world generator with mythgen, magic, alternative dimensions, boats, politics, society and a world economy (for starters). Should be Ok.

Economy fuels everything and in my opinion should be the very foundation of a fantasy world simulator. Hope Toady One will focus on economy after his next update.

Nope, the release after artifact release will be myth&magic. Then we'll get starting scenarios for forts, THEN misc things like boats and economy.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Sounds about right. I only wonder if DF can handle so many additional calculations to depict the world economy. Would probably need to be done in ticks like once per week or something.

As Toady said in the PC Gamer interview (paraphrase). It doesn't matter if they have to utterly destroy the game and rebuild it from scratch, the vision is a fantasy world generator with mythgen, magic, alternative dimensions, boats, politics, society and a world economy (for starters). Should be Ok.

Economy fuels everything and in my opinion should be the very foundation of a fantasy world simulator. Hope Toady One will focus on economy after his next update.

Nope, the release after artifact release will be myth&magic. Then we'll get starting scenarios for forts, THEN misc things like boats and economy.

Yup, and both mythgen and scenarios are looking to be multiple release size extravaganzas.
Not sure I'd call economy "misc" though.

Or boats actually, because that's "boats and moving fortress parts" which is taking bits of the map and moving them about. That's a pretty major overhaul (and one that surely invites major environmental disasters if mythgen doesn't get there first).

[Anandar]

Something i would like to point out is supply and demand really only works when there is a need for (insert item here) if one trades picks for steel to make more picks to be sold, what is there to stop the site your trading with making their own picks with the mats they mine which would render trading with your fort void... you would have to either find a new site or a new trade material, but if the focus was on economy within the fort as well as outside items could wear out over time based on the tasks they are used for eg mining pick wears more compared to a battlepick, this would in turn make mugs and toys etc more viable for trade and one could use racial backgrounds for increasing desire for items, dwarven smithing, bows and arrows from elves are better, human food production or building mats etc...