Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Roflcopter5000]

1) Pretty, pretty please abstract coins. Not in all senses, as the process of minting coins and the relative weight of coins add value to the game. But for intra-fortress commerce, it would make so much more sense if, essentially, the dwarves all ran around with debit cards. Back the spending with actual currency, located on the dwarf's person or (if he owns one) in his coffer, but please don't bog the fortress down with dwarves 'physically' hauling coinage about.

2) A proper economy is going to essentially be a constant push for expansion, or your nobility will slowly acquire all of the wealth in your fortress. They need more gold-sinks. Religion would be a fantastic way to do this. Religion could increase the spending of nobles in a few ways (a need for statues or items that a deity favors, in addition to a nobles preferences), but adding in alms for the poor would be a fantastic way to re-distribute wealth to the lower classes. The amount that the various temples demand in tithes could insure that you nobility never posses more than a certain % of the wealth in your fortress at any given point. And of course, priests have no need for worldly things, so they would liquidate almost all their cash either by buying food, drink and clothing for the priesthood, or giving to the poor (haulers). This would not only stabilize the economy, it would also provide a powerful incentive to build temples. The amount that of wealth that a single temple could 'recycle' could be based upon the value of the temple, allowing you to essentially set the minimum standard of living for your dwarves by controlling the extravagance of your temple(s).

3) In the real world, guilds/unions are often a pain because they require a great deal of over-head. They raise the base-line labor cost, and interfere with production. However, one of the great benefits of unionization is a standardization of goods and services. This could be reflected by allowing guild halls to rapidly train new laborers/craftsdwarves up to a certain level of skill, based upon the value of the guild hall.

4) The logistical overhead of maintaining functioning temples/guild halls is wonderful for increasing the challenge and complexity of game play, but although resources come in nigh infinite supply, dwarves are capped at 200. I strongly suggest either cross-functionality of institutions or of the dwarves themselves. IE, priests could take very little/no time out of their days for their priestly duties, or instead of a temple for every dwarven god or a guild hall for every profession, make merely one temple or one crafstdwarves hall. It reduces the flavor, but without consolidation you could easily end up with 10-20% of your maximum fortress population tied up in an infrastructure that produces nothing, which is neither fun nor dwarvenly. =)

5) The ability to request more frequent caravans, or to send expeditions to distant civilizations to make more trade contacts. In fact, one could arguably say that once your fortress hits a certain amount of export/year, it would become a more frequent destination for trade caravans... This has the added benefit of not requiring a whole lot of extra development time. Also, more frequent caravans (especially dwarven caravans) give currency a greater impact, as liquidating large portions of your stockpiled goods would be far more desirable if there was actually something to buy. Currently the mass production of trade goods leaves you with... Well, a whole lot of trade goods, and stock-pile issues.

6) Foreign weaponry is cool. It has a good potential to add a lot to the game. But foreign ranged weaponry requires ammunition. Truly, can a master dwarven woodcrafter not wrap his head around the mysteries of a simple arrow? I mention this here because foreign goods will only be worth purchasing if they are useful. And few things are more useless than a bow without ammunition.

[TheyTarget]

1) I think it basically does this if you just don't mint coins. How about some form of noble, that keeps track of each dwarfs income, and expenses, and then just manages a massive horde of coins, which eventually would only be used, when your fort traded with outside nations.

2) I guess I agree, or I just can't think of any problems with that, or anything to add.

3) Sure sounds good, I want guilds, they make me happy.

4) This is probably how it's going to go. I strongly support single temple, as I've stated else where, it makes sense to me, that while there are many Gods in dwarf fort, they could all still be part of the same pantheon. Guilds, could probably be an advancement of the manager. Starts with manager, eventually becomes a group of dwarfs, probably divided up among, woodworking, stoneworking, hunting/related, farming, fishing, metal smithing, crafting(and maybe jewelry), and engineering. We already have nobles to manage the healthcare system, and we used to and still do in ways, have ones to manage the military, so I kind of expect it to work like chief medical dwarf/manager. This is what makes sense to me, and becoming 8-10 dwarfs, depending how they format it, which is not more then a military squad, which is what the captain of the guard gets. I think, 30 dwarfs in a fort of 150-200 is not to much of a strain, considering most people can't find use for more then 80 dwarfs.

5) Don't hold me to this, but I thought something similar, to this is actually coming.

6) How about adding in foreign labour? Sure your dwarf can't make arrows, but the human carpenter you just hired sure can make them fast. Also just adding any form of foreign bought labour would add a lot to economy. Hire mercenary's, guards, craftsmen, etc.

Some very good ideas.

[Roflcopter5000]

I think a 'banker' or whatnot would be awesome. I think the broker used to occupy this role?
But I think minting coins is a great idea... A currency would be immensely valuable with an increasingly significant world economy, especially if (as I believe there is reason to suspect) you will eventually dispatch caravans of your own. The idea of currency adds many things, the concept of exchange rates, you would need to know if the person you are trading with values -your- currency, or if you are trading with a small back-water settlement (or the elves) they may have little use for currency, and place a much higher value on goods or livestock/food/drink instead. Also, if caravans across the world (again, perhaps even yours) are shuffling large amounts of currency about, the become strategic targets, for you or for bandits/what have you. So I think minting coins of various metals is a fantastic addition to the game...
Right up until dwarves are stopping in the middle of their jobs to shuffle 5 copper pieces from one spot to the next, or your banker/broker realizes that your ratio between coins of different values is off, and people are unable to make change for their transactions... There are a lot of reasons why 'physical' currency for intra-fortress transactions produces a huge head-ache. But, the abstraction of currency inside the fortress essentially puts a divisive line between inter-and intra-settlement commerce. It also provides for some interesting head-aches, like, this dwarf has 'x' currency in his coffer when he dies, and no heirs. Does this wealth evaporate? Does it go into the fortress coffer? If it becomes fortress wealth, then essentially you've generated supplies that didn't 'physically' exist before the dwarf died.
So, to elaborate slightly on this suggestion, I suggest dwarves use an abstracted currency inside the fort that is backed by a reserve of 'physical' coins. The amount of wealth circulating inside the intra-fortress dwarven economy is limited by the value/number of coins you have minted and set aside for this purpose, though the currency does not actually leave the store-room, or coffers. Perhaps dwarves write checks, if we need this level of in-world justification. I've kind of always felt like dwarves must be bureaucratic, in addition to being industrial (how else to they figure out what to do with all their wealth?), so it feels like a dwarfy thing to me. The remaining decision would be whether or not/how this reserve could be tapped by the player... In theory, your fortress could be indebted to yourself. This could be an interesting addition to the game, or a royal head-ache, depending on how you look at it. I mean, I assume that if the player borrows against his dwarves without replacing the reserve, the effects would be more or less the same as failing to print enough currency. But there is the issue of which dwarves the player just borrowed from when he sold off that currency... So I suggest, until somebody has a solution to that hassle, that the currency flagged for intra-fortress use be untouchable. And this amount can of course fluctuate naturally, in the ever so likely event that large numbers of your dwarves die, their liquidated assets just become fortress coin again.
Seems relatively simple and elegant, unless I am missing something.