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[xzaxza]

Hi,

I've been thinking about this quite a lot, much more than would be reasonable. I was thinking about the economy, starting from these three things:

Code: [Select]

[CURRENCY:COPPER:1]
[CURRENCY:SILVER:5]
[CURRENCY:GOLD:15]
First, considering modern prices, that's a pretty wild ratio. Ratios of current prices would be something like 1-85-7500. I know DF isn't exactly supposed to reflect modern prices, but it seems bit silly anyway.

Also, it's always kind of bugged me that - with the economy disabled - copper coins are worth less than one dwarfbuck. Yet something like, say, an olive pit is worth one dwarfbuck. Pits are literally useless, yet copper is one of the most useful materials in the world. Isn't that what should define value; if it's good for anything? And after that, supply and demand. Surely, based on its usefulness alone, copper should be much more valuable than a pit.

Thus, firstly, the material values of metals should be increased dramatically. But even with that being done, it dawned to me that value is cultural. Surely dwarven civilizations should adore metals even more than anyone else. And a dwarven civilization whose home mountain has huge abundances of, say, nickel, tin, zinc and gold, but no copper, would value copper even more, as none of their common metals are weapon/armor grade. Heck, would they even know about those things before making contact with other civs? Also, with no access to copper or silver, their currency should be something different as well.

Similarly, a civilization whose main god is a god of lead would probably hold lead in very special regard. Or a warlike civilization would disregard ornamental materials and only value weapon/armor grade stuff.

And what about elves? They, too, have the default currency tokens. But they're supposed to hate metals. Why would their currency be based on them? In human history, lots of various things have had a sort of monetary value, including stuff like animals skins or furs, mollusk shells, whale teeth, etc. Knowing elves, they'd maybe prefer something like pearls, gems, or maybe stuff like seeds and fruit, over coins. What about goblins? Elf ears? Dwarf noses? Human bone necklaces?

So, the values of a culture should largely determine material values for their culture. And in turn, those should probably affect how those cultures develop. Say, a culture who worships gold could want to focus on acquiring more gold, either by founding new sites on gold-rich places, or perhaps even by conquest. Or a civ who values pearls could want to start an outpost at a place with pearls (once oysters and mussels actually provide pearls somehow).

And on a more general note, maybe cultures could and should diverge more from the basic archetypes. I know it happens to some extent, but still. Or maybe cultural spin-off things, like cults, guilds, etc., could take things even further.

But to return to what got me started, coins... I can't think of a reason why cultures shouldn't have distinct or even unique currencies. Just take a bunch of available (preferably non-weapon grade) alloys and go wild. Maybe even add a couple of fictional ones just for the sake of it. Frankly, for a project as complex as Dwarf Fortress, sticking to plain copper-silver-gold is way too straightforward. Just look at old English money. A pound is 20 shillings. A shilling is 12 pennies. A penny is further divided to two halfpennies or four farthings (quarter pennies). Then there's threepence and sixpence (coins worth three and six pennies), groat and half-groat (four and two pennies)... And florin (two shillings), crown (five shillings), half-crown (two shillings and 6 pennies), half-sovereign (ten shillings), half-guinea (ten shillings and six pennies)... And guineas themselves were worth 21 shillings, which is one shilling more than pound itself. When reality's been this funky, I want to see a currency system like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

[CURRENCY_BY_YEAR]
[CURRENCY:NICKEL:1]
[CURRENCY:ZINC:2]
[CURRENCY:PEWTER_FINE:4]
[CURRENCY:PEWTER_LAY:5]
[CURRENCY:PEWTER_TRIFLE:7]
[CURRENCY:COPPER:15]
[CURRENCY:BRASS:20]
[CURRENCY:BRONZE:25]
[CURRENCY:BILLON:60]
[CURRENCY:SILVER:100]
[CURRENCY:ELECTRUM:2500]
[CURRENCY:GOLD:5000]

Philosphical concerns

What if a dwarven civilization has no access to weapon grade materials? How will they get picks?

Well, if they have gods, just give them a few picks made of that god's divine material. This also solves the paradox of the original anvil. In fact, give them a couple of anvils of divine materials regardless of whether they start with iron. Wars sparked over those artifacts would be fun.

TL;DR:
 - cultural preferences should determine how much they value items and material (+ supply and demand on top of that)

[xzaxza]

Oh, and since I was talking about coins, and I forgot to specifically mention it: sometimes a culture could pick a base other than 10 for its numbering system, which would then be reflected in appropriate places. Especially if it's a creature with non-standard set of limbs, fingers or toes (a token that modders could use?)

[aSpatula66]

Keep in mind that outside of the correct civilization a single coin is worth material value ÷ 500 (0.004) but in the correct civilization a single copper coin is worth 1. This means single a copper coin worth is 250 times the value it should be. Taking your value for gold coins in the example, a single gold coin would be worth 62500 times the amount it should be worth. Also keep in mind that every npc in adventure mode who has access to a pouch spawns with at least one of each coin type, so with that example you could just murder a random farmer to get 7739 dwarfbucks.

[xzaxza]

Keep in mind that outside of the correct civilization a single coin is worth material value ÷ 500 (0.004) but in the correct civilization a single copper coin is worth 1. This means single a copper coin worth is 250 times the value it should be.

Yes, I'm aware. This is partially why I'd increase material values of metals significantly.

Taking your value for gold coins in the example, a single gold coin would be worth 62500 times the amount it should be worth. Also keep in mind that every npc in adventure mode who has access to a pouch spawns with at least one of each coin type, so with that example you could just murder a random farmer to get 7739 dwarfbucks.

Well, if something like this were to be implemented, I'm sure it'd make sense to make random farmers less rich. For example, if their civ had the spoilered currencies, they'd be fine with the first 6 types of coins. Unless they're from a civ that makes even their chamber pots out of gold, so it'd be normal for everyone to carry gold on them. But this only further underlines my point, value is cultural. Back in the day, explorers traded cheap glass trinkets to various indigenous peoples for pearls and diamonds and gold and whatnot, and both sides thought they were on the winning end of the bargain.

[xzaxza]

I did some adding up, and looks like the old English used 15 different coins, with value multipliers like this or so:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

1 farthing
2 half-penny
4 penny
8 half-groat
12 threepence
16 groat
24 sixpence
48 shilling
96 florin
120 half-crown
240 crown
480 half-sovereign
504 half-guinea
960 pound
984 guinea

Dunno if all of these could be achieved feasibly with alloys, so maybe there could be different coin sizes per material. And each of those would clearly need similar, but procedurally generated names for them.

[Eric Blank]

I like this suggestion in general, but this brings up an additional point you didn't cover;

Back in the day, explorers traded cheap glass trinkets to various indigenous peoples for pearls and diamonds and gold and whatnot, and both sides thought they were on the winning end of the bargain.

Coinage/money isn't a universal concept at all. Many real-world cultures that do or did use something analogous to currency didn't use anything resembling coinage. Wood "coins" or slips or chips, beads of any material, or just grain/seed are all equally viable, especially when you get down to the nitty-gritty "worth less than a penny per unit," and trade between low-income people for low-value products (when they don't want to barter good-for-good.) And the game doesn't simulate non-metal non-coin currency yet. Beads of stone or gem would make a lot of sense for say elves, who would otherwise not use metallurgy and would thus limit themselves to imported metals (making them obscenely valuable to elves who have a use for metals, even if culturally they aren't desirable) or to naturally occurring native metals (native gold, silver, or copper.) Beads in fact work well for many human cultures (which are supposed to get more diverse in the future), and even dwarven cultures (beard decorations and currency.) In fact, the game could even flip a coin on whether a civ chooses to develop coins or beads as a preference for currency, with beads being smaller on average. Salt is an important trade good that also served in the past as an equally important currency in the ancient world (before people could, like our dwarves do, dig down hundreds of feet into the earth and exploit the fact you have a 1/3 chance of being situated over a large salt deposit, so maybe dwarves ruin the usefulness of that if they're exporting as much salt as modern salt mines are.) Gold dust has traditionally had value (among Europeans at least) in the Americas, and I can even see dwarves wanting, say, small diamond or garnet grains for the same reason we do today; garnet makes great sanding/polishing material and both are excellent for reinforcement in the edges of metal tools, which dwarves might be able to figure out, or at least used as tips for gem cutting implements.

We also haven't discussed the value differences of different sizes of coinage. Very tiny 1-2mm copper beads vs 6-7mm copper coins and beads vs huge palm sized pieces. Real world exchange rates and trade practices can get complicated for in-game implementation fast when you remember not only are those currencies worth different "penny"/"pound" values but that's not necessarily because of differences in material, but also size of the coinage of a given material, say copper or zinc, and even respect one nation has for another (exchange rates between nations)

So yeah, even considering how the game needs a base material value multiplier and civs want cultural/local value multipliers based on their access/needs, any change to the current system can also implement non-coin and non-metal currency that, or even raw resources like granulated salt or gold dust as analogues, including beneath the value of individual coins of any material. Wood coins (or stone/gem coins even, among dwarves) could be situated beneath the cheapest metal coinage, and beads of any material could be worth 1/4 that of a coin of equivalent material. Grain or salt could be the absolute minimum value-per-unit-division, but currently POWDER_MISC item type can only be divided into 150 units, as opposed to the 15000 that thread can be divided into. If powder could also be divided into 15000 units, salt could be traded grain-for-thread with partial thread spools or cloth bolts, or damaged clothing that would be worth less than a single ☼