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[ColonelTEE3]

My economy started up (the book keeper came). And he came with immigrants, immigrants whom i cannot personally assign beds until they become legendary which im guessing won't happen quite too soon.

I have free beds open, but how do i get them to "rent" them?

[Amir Alawi]

Drown them.  Or lock them up and starve them.  My legendary dining room is full of masterpiece engravings of dwarves withering away.

[Jedev]

You have to designate the bed as a bedroom. Just don't assign it to anyone and after a minute, someone will rent that room.

[Seshat]

If they can afford a rentable room, they'll rent it.

I have some nasty, tiny rooms, like so:
(B is bed, C is cabinet, X is box, D is door)

Poverty-stricken housing:

---
|BD
---

Doing okay-ish housing:

-----
|CXBD
-----

Wealthy housing:

-----
|C B|
|X  D
-----

All these rooms are smoothed, but not detailed. I also maintain barracks for those who can't even afford the poverty housing.

Fancier rooms are available, but rarely get rented.

[Dwarmin]

Make sure all dwarves are always doing something. I think its a natural increase in difficulty-in the beginng you can ignore a dozen idle dwarves, but when the economy starts you will get a lot of unhappy dwarves. Almost Everyone of my 130 Dwarves has a enclosed room and a bed(except for the philospher?)-i havent had to build a barracks for anyone but soldiers. I keep 'em hauling.

[Valarauka]

I'm still playing my first ever fort; I'd been spoiling my dwarves and made the mistake of engraving all the bedrooms. When the economy started up basically everyone who wasn't legendary got evicted because room rents were starting in the 700s and going up (even though they were puny little 3x1 rooms with low grade furniture). I ended up having to build a whole new set of 'housing projects' for them, with nothing but a door and a bed, so they could afford the rent.

[AlanL]

If only you could manipulate the economy... ah well, I intentionally never start the economy so all of my guys can enjoy a 3 by 3 room with decent furnature, smoothed all around (and depending on the fortress, engraved). I eventually plan on fitting all housing in my fortresses with non-lethal magma and water availability, perhaps i could try giving everybody a fancy quarters, their own dining room, storage, and good stuff made out of valuable material for everyone.

As far as I'm concerned, capitalism inside of a dwarven fortress is a nice idea but fails in practice.    :p

[ March 03, 2007: Message edited by: AlanL ]

[Momaw]

Dwarven currency is based on precious and semi-precious metals. But the actual in-game intrinsic value of the coins are near zero because the only thing metal is good for is making into things, and when you melt the coins you'd only get a small portion of the metal back. Coins have some trade value, but trade will make up a very small portion of your fortress industry. Its main value is almost entirely relative, like any modern currency based on public trust, where a coin or bill has a RELATIVE value only because everybody agrees that it does.

But one of the central problems with the dwarf economy is that that it doesn't follow the fundamental principle of supply and demand, which is what sets the relative value of the currency; what the market is actually willing to pay based on how badly people want it versus how much is available.  If you have nothing but legendary bedrooms, then the relative value of a legendary bedroom should logically plummet to meet the average income of your citizens. Because the supply of expensive housing is higher than the demand for expensive housing. If the prices were enforced, then the currency would devalue to the point that flipping a lever or harvesting a plant would be worth a handful of gold so that everybody could afford to have a bed.

Of course this is complicated by the fact that it's not really clear who is actually getting paid for use of the room, why they should be the one collecting, and what they can do with the money once they've got it.

This will doubtless improve in later versions.

[AlanL]

It likely would be a noble getting paid, who would in turn blow it all on fancy stuff.

[Valarauka]

Very insightful post, Momaw. I guess we're all really waiting for the economy to get implemented properly...