We could spice up the system of material values by applying a scarcity modifier to the price and perceived value of goods. For example, a fortress with abundant stone but no trees would place a higher value on wooden items than on stone items.
When you trade with a caravan, you trade at the caravan's home civilization scarcity levels. So, if a caravan from the Mountainhomes comes along, they may give you a high price for wood, but a low price for gold and steel. A human caravan would place little value on wood, but a high value on gold and steel. Considering this system, it would be more amusing to have caravans appear from various locations, not just your civilization's capital. Merchants might start with a subtle hint about their origin, like "We come from the jungle, SwollenTaint, to the west of here". "Okay, these guys don't need wood". Retired fortresses might also send caravans to your current fortress.
Inherent value of an item would still impact the value. Let's say the lowest scarcity modifier can be x0.2 and the highest can be x5. Gold has a value of 30 and oak has a value of 1. So a fortress drowning in gold would place a value of 6 on gold and a fortress devoid of wood would place a value of 5 on wood, while an elf would value gold at 150 and wood at 0.2. Items would also be affected by the scarcity of other items in a similar class, such as wood, metal, stone, cloth, glass, ceramic, etc. or the type of item, such as doors, chains, instruments and so forth. So a fortress with an abundance of earthenware products would not be as impressed as usual with stoneware or porcelain, but would still consider it superior to earthenware.
Scarcity would of course change over time. I'm thinking the game should not check constantly for scarcity updates, but rather monthly, seasonally or yearly. In the long run, values should revert to an Earth-like level. For example, if you fortress does have a lot of gold but only a few underground trees, eventually, the gold veins will run out but the trees will keep growing back, pushing down the value of wood and raising up the value (or at least relative value) of gold again. World scarcity levels would also eventually impact domestic prices. For example if a far off city hits a magnetite vein and starts producing an excess of iron, they will export the iron to other nearby cities. The price will then drop in the nearby cities, and they will trade iron items to your fortress at a reduced price, flooding your own fortress with iron and decreasing the value.
You would probably want to do a major adjustment to the base material values as they are designed to reflect scarcity already.
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Topic: Prices impacted by scarcity (Read 637 times)