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[FearfulJesuit]

I have been ruminating over how one could make the economy work. I believe I've put in the idea of a bank before and I shall do so again, along with some other ideas.

DF banks, at least for now, will not really be banks. That is to say, they will not do what banks usually do today: make loans and deal in interest. Right now they're deposit boxes, and their main purpose is to make the economy run with fewer hitches. Back in 40d, dwarves carried coins around, and the algorithm had the unintentional side effect of making them break them down into smaller and smaller stacks, which could bring a fort to a standstill.

It'd probably be difficult to redo the algorithm to do what we want it to do, so why not find an alternative?

Banks are run by bankers. When the economy kicks in, at 20 dwarves I think it is, you will need to build a bank and appoint a banker. The bank can be built from a chest, a table, and a chair, as well as a piece of stone or wood or whatever.

The banker acts as a sort of extra bookkeeper in the bank. He's required for the bank to run, but about all he can do is manage the accounts and make a mandate for more coins to be minted. As your fortress grows, it may be a good idea to open other bank outlets and appoint staff for them.

Now we get to talk about guilds, which used to exist. Here are my ideas.

A guild can be formed from a certain industry once there's 20 dwarves, at least 3 members of that industry (any less and the guild will be more of a tax than a help to the fort), and they don't have a grudge between them if there's a relatively small number of them (which would hinder the formation of the guild). There must also be a perceived need for representation. If your mechanics are getting work, selling their wares to the shop and depot (more on that in a bit) and running a bit more than a living wage, have enough workshops, and don't run out of raw materials, they very likely won't feel that their industry needs a special interest group. If one of these things is lacking, however, bring on the RNG to generate chances that they do form a guild.

If they do form a guild, they will attempt to include all dwarves whose highest profession is in that job, save for, perhaps, a well-hated member of the group. If their work is in demand, they will add new jobs; if their work suddenly falls off then the least-experienced members will be dropped off the list.

Guilds can make mandates. This may involve...
-building new workshops
-increasing raw materials
-selling more of their products by caravan

Guilds rely on each other. Certain raw materials, specifically bones and raw stone, cost nothing, but most others do, and they are bought from the guild that made them. The guild then works on them, then sells their product on to another guild for further processing, or to the broker for sale, or to the shop for sale to other dwarves. The money they make is then split among them with the purpose of giving everybody 120% of the money needed for food, booze, clothing and rent, any extra being saved in the guild office.

As for civilian clothing (haven't gotten to military yet): a dwarf can wear 1 piece of clothing in each slot, and when it becomes a xxclothingxx he goes to the shop and buys a new one with his own money, throwing the old one away.

[counting]

May I asked what's the functionality of the bank and bankers? What's the purpose of a coin system that just distributes coins and than just gathers them all back to the same place? You're idea sounds more like a king's/ruler's vault. A monetary system that doesn't have a proper function as a medium of exchange will not work at all, but seems redundant.

In a small enough group, bartering and gifted or a shared community economic system is more viable. Exchanging commodity->money->commodity, has extra costs than just simply getting the commodity you want (gifted, or community), or a bartering commodity->commodity. Only when the costs of getting the commodity are too high (too many commodities, too many entities, too complex of a bartering chains) will make the monetary system a necessity, and a banking system needed. Other than that it's just a deposit box system at best. (As you said)

I may suggesting why not make it a full deposited system? not just for the non-functional coins, but all those things a dwarf should be kept in safe, (precious one), and make a deposited list for a dwarf. And a dwarf may not need to carried everything around causing extra times. It will be a first step toward personal ownership of items, and maybe latter a real commodities exchanging system.

As for the guild, historically, guilds are linked to another system involves merchant-like middlemen, people who will guarantee the incomes of craftsmen and supply raw materials to the craftsmen. Who are members of the guild can enjoy the benefits (The amount of the benefits are linked to ranks). So it's more of an early companies rewards system in medieval era, since most crafts are homemade, and no central quality control or payments/insurgences existed. I don't know what's the functionality of guilds in DF will be right now, but clearly they will not quite like the guilds in real world. (They will need a working market system first)

And I honestly don't know much about clothes. But a shop wasn't just a shop in medieval era, they often functioned as pawn shops and recycling centers. Used items, clothes, can be return to shops exchanging for new ones. I think this will help to create a more functional market system, before introducing coinages/money into DF. Modern shopping concept was established after mass production being used to produce "cheap" commodities. Things are relatively expensive in medieval era, a year's earnings may not be enough to buy one pair of shoes, due to the lack of supply with slow/inefficient homemade goods.

In medieval era, general populations acquire the things they needed by making them themselves mostly, and only upper class rich citizens had the luxury of going to the markets to buy extra things. And people are mostly sellers not buyers. The earnings are mostly used to pay off taxes or exchange for the raw materials immediately. People won't keep much coins (or not at all) on them. Only when the populations are large enough in a city/town than the need of markets/shops and money will be necessary. 

[Dsarker]

I believe he wants the banks to be more of a vault. You need the banker to keep track of people's money, he makes sure that the amount of coins available remains as needed, and so on. I'd suggest he should also change the worth of coins (so if you have too many, they are each worth less or if you have too few, they are each worth more), but only to about 20% difference either way. The worth of a coin would be based on the dorfbux worth of the fort. If you had too high inflation, they might set stacks of coins to be melted as well.

[counting]

So the banker's job is to follow and ask every dwarf how many coins they have on them? or he just magically know that? (It doesn't have to be an actual mechanism, system can count that very well. But in that case the banker is just a representation interface, and I may say quite a redundant one). Or the bank has to issue bank notes? Giving dwarfs little deposit accounts? In that case, we may as well stick to the unrealistic dwarfbuck, since coins doesn't really represent a medium of exchange at all. The economy problems will always remain, if we don't modified the unrealistic "magical base value" system.

The coins should NOT have "value", they ARE the unit of measurement for truly functional as currency. (Like asking a question about how much a dwarfbuck worth of dwarfbucks has no meaning at all.)

But it make sense to monitor the monetary supply/demand. It's one the major functions of the central bank. Though, Not for the FUN to the player, but actually if coins do represent the measurements of the commodities, they need to be checked for inflation/deflation. It's the ratio between commodities and coins are important. not the absolute quantity of them. Making hard limits will causing serious troubles than it shouldn't be. Imagine you only have 20% more amount of coins, but twice amount of productions. Deflation is as deadly as unhealthy inflation

[noit]

The bank and bankers/tellers, would hold all coins. the only time a dwarf would access the bank is to receive the exact amount of coins that are tasked to complete a specific purchase they are making. And also to deposit their pay, if not an auto-deposit system for simplicity.

To make a real economy out of it instead of just a buying system, a Fortress Treasurer would mandate more coins to support a growing economy. The value of these coins doesn't need to be adjusted artificially, because they are based on the real value (on the dorfbuck scale) of silver, tin, copper, etc. The way to emulate inflammation and the fluctuations of a real economy would be to adjust the cost of goods dependent on how much of a product there is available.

To illustrate further this mechanism: There are Troll Fur Pants everywhere, so Troll Fur Pants are cheep. If Dorfs buy lots of Troll Fur Pants, they get more expensive. If there is a lot of activity in the fortress and Dorfs have a lot of money, this will happen in every sector.

Now you link the Pay Scale of Dorfs to the Cost of Living(and average of what value supply-and-demand has given to the items in your fortress), and now you have a real fluctuating economy ready to boom and crash. You'll be left with five legendary bone carvers(bolt makers) wearing three Giant Cave Spider Silk Dresses each, while the rest of your Dorfs are sleeping at the Hospital because they can't afford rent -- just like the real world.

Their are other factors that could be worked in, like the amount of gold effecting the value of dorfbucks based on gold and so on, but I don;t think it would be necessary.

[sockless]

Coins aren't really necessary in the game.

I believe that coins back then were worth their value as bullion and didn't have any extrinsic face value. The cost of making coins is actually fairly minor.

We could have a perfectly functional economy by abstracting currency so that it doesn't actually physically exist, sort of like dwarven EFTPOS.

If we are to keep coins, then it's more worthwhile to make fix the current system so that things can be restacked, as it also affects bolts and arrows and probably some more stuff, or in the future it would affect other things as well. Compared to some of the stuff that Toady is currently doing, fixing stacks is relatively easy, or at least from what I've heard.

The way to emulate inflammation and the fluctuations of a real economy

Ha.

Anyway, all this stuff about inflation and almost every other aspect of the economy has already been suggested and discussed, Counting has contributed quite a bit on the subject, as he's getting a Ph.D in economics or something.