Print

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

[PastaCrusade]

My Idea/Suggestion is to make trading for coins (aka selling) a viable way to store wealth in you fortress.  As it stands right now, bartering (trading a good for another good) is simply superior to buying (trading away coins) and selling (trading for coins).  My idea to to reduce the trade penalty when using coins.

Now, I'm not saying I want trading coins to be better then bartering.  I just want it to be an option that's as good.

Here is an example of what I mean.

If i have 1000 DB worth of goods and I trade them for 750 DB of something else, then I have a return of 75%.  If I sell my goods for coins, I get 750 DB worth of coins, still a 75% return.  But when I then spend my 750 DB coins, I only get 562 DB wroth of goods, an overall return of only 56%.  That's what I dislike.

My solution is to increase the return percentage (when one side is only trading coins) by taking the Square root of it.  In my example, I have a trade return of 75%.  √75% is about 86.6%.  My first transaction would be selling 1000 DB worth of goods for 866 DB worth of coins.  Then I buy goods with my 866 DB in coins, and get 749 DB worth of goods, about a 75% return.

I know its a minor issue, but I think it would open up other possibilities.  They are always talking about Inns and travelers visiting your fortress on the DF Talks.  It would make reimplementing the Dwarven Economy slightly less painful.  How cool would it be to sell a bunch of junk to merchants, give the money to your dwarfs, and have them buy trinkets they want.  By making Coins a useful vessel for trade all kinds of avenues open up.

And no, I'm not worried that people could brake the game by minting their own coins.  Correcting the small but noticeable trade penalty for coins pales in comparison to coins lack of a quality value.  Minting would still be a bad idea, just less so.

Thanks for your time.  And criticism will only refine the idea.

[Trif]

There is no penalty on coins, your math is just off. If you trade anything, the trader keeps a profit of 25%.

You sold 1000DB worth of goods and got 750 coins - 25% loss for you. Now you sold your 750 coins for goods, and got 562 DB worth of goods - your return is (562/750)*100 = 74,9% .
If you tried selling 1000 DB coins, you'd get 750 DB worth of goods.

[PastaCrusade]

I'm not saying there is a penalty for using coins above the normal cut the merchants get, otherwise I would have posted it as a bug.  Coins are just another good.

My point is that the Overall trade penalty for using coins as a medium for trade means you suffer the standard trade penalty twice, because buying and selling are separate transactions.  75% of 75% is the 56.2% I used in my example.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Quite obviously planned ;P (otherwise coins wouldn't be in the game as is)

There actually used to be a full-blown economic system back in the day, it was taken out due to how buggy it was though, but the general plan is to reinstate it soonishly with supply and demand calculations, trade routes etc ^^

[Cool Guy]

Quite obviously planned ;P (otherwise coins wouldn't be in the game as is)

There actually used to be a full-blown economic system back in the day, it was taken out due to how buggy it was though, but the general plan is to reinstate it soonishly with supply and demand calculations, trade routes etc ^^

He knew about the old economy, he mentioned it towards the end of his post.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Quite obviously planned ;P (otherwise coins wouldn't be in the game as is)

There actually used to be a full-blown economic system back in the day, it was taken out due to how buggy it was though, but the general plan is to reinstate it soonishly with supply and demand calculations, trade routes etc ^^

He knew about the old economy, he mentioned it towards the end of his post.

Ah, missed that line ^^

[GreatWyrmGold]

Something like this makes sense, IMHO. Coins should have some reason you make them. Of course, traders should also come with coins.

While Toady's revamping coins, he could fix the bug that causes some coins (ones made in custom reactions or found on the persons of some major leaders come to mind), probably by giving coins the bit of code that causes blocks and whatnot to not have quality.

[weenog]

Coins are just slugs of metal, with no more value than the material they're crafted from; they're not actually useful for anything.  They should barter for less than goods, as if you were trading scrap copper (or whatever metal) that has to be melted down, purified and worked before you can do anything good with it.

Currency allows you to easily transfer and redeem debts in a non-specific way, but only if everyone involved recognizes the value and nature of the debt, and the trading tokens.

I'm thinking coins should barter for significantly less than their value (because they have no inherent use) under normal circumstances, but within your own civilization (assuming a working economy), and with allied civilizations that maintain trade agreements with yours, they should barter at a higher value because of their attractive fungibility.  Merchants would take their profit cut either way.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Coins are just slugs of metal, with no more value than the material they're crafted from; they're not actually useful for anything.  They should barter for less than goods, as if you were trading scrap copper (or whatever metal) that has to be melted down, purified and worked before you can do anything good with it.

By that logic, anything without a good, practical use is also worthless except for scrap.

Currency allows you to easily transfer and redeem debts in a non-specific way, but only if everyone involved recognizes the value and nature of the debt, and the trading tokens.

I'm thinking coins should barter for significantly less than their value (because they have no inherent use) under normal circumstances, but within your own civilization (assuming a working economy), and with allied civilizations that maintain trade agreements with yours, they should barter at a higher value because of their attractive fungibility.  Merchants would take their profit cut either way.

I think that "within your own civ" was implied. If not...well, many non-American nations accept the American dollar; perhaps human or elven nations would accept coins from a powerful dwarven nation, or at least one they regularly trade with. Currency from their own nation would be preferred, of course, but dwarven coins would be worth more than mere "slugs of metal."

[Boomboom]

Coins only make sense in an economy that has taxes, and they originally came about as a by-product of warfare.  Perhaps coins would be proffered when sending trade caravans to other civilizations, as an excise tax, say 5% of the total value of your caravan has to be provided in coin to the civilization or the caravan would be turned back at the border.  Likewise, any incoming caravans could be excise-taxed on entry into your civilization's territory, and whatever rate you set the tax too would determine how much goods they would send: a 50% excise tax would result in a caravan carrying less in trade goods, say. 

The other effect would be to pay dwarves for their military services in coin depending on how many days out of the year they are active.  The soldiers could then contract services from civilian dwarves, such as paying a craftsdwarf to decorate a cabinet of theirs with bones or something.  Dwarves could be free to create items for their own consumption and use, but any such unsolicited items would require a workshop tax on production, so that anything a dwarf produces on their own would result in some coin going back to the government.  In this way some things could take care of themselves, like if a soldier wants a leather waterskin made out of their favourite animal's hide, and have it decorated, he could issue the contract to any dwarf who has the requisite skills to do it, and the soldier would return his current waterskin to the stockpile and keep the new one on him as an "attached" item, similar to how dwarves already grow attached to certain items.  Soldiers could also contract their favourite foods as their rations in the above process, and return their current rations to the pile.  This would make for more happy dwarves and more needs being met independently of micro- or macro-management.

For added fun, dwarves may sometimes cast coins into wells that they frequent, generating happy thoughts depending on the value of the well, and extremely happy thoughts if somehow their wish should come true.  On the flip side, other dwarves that have made wishes at the same well may become annoyed by the fact that their own wishes hadn't come true, generating bad thoughts.  Dwarves might start fist-fights with thieves that try to dive and take any such placed coins, even if ordered to by fortress management, meaning any such deposited coins would have to be forbidden.  However, the coins could be declared as charity for worthy causes, like helping orphaned dwarf children, or provided medical attention to injured pets and such, in which case the well-wishers might not be so perturbed.

For even more fun, some merchants might try to use debased coins and pass them off as more valuable coins, and so could the dwarves against other civilizations and even on each other, generating many unhappy thoughts for aggrieved parties if they should find out, and diplomatic breakdowns between traders and civilizations.  Likewise, soldiers paid in debased coins might grow to resent that and generated more unhappy thoughts.

[Neonivek]

Coins seem to me less like they are important for your Fortress tradings and more that it is something you need to support an economy within your fortress.

Which it isn't useful right now because there is no fortress economy and even if there was your Dwarves do not desire it.

I'd think after a period of time Dwarves would start to get mad that they arn't getting paid real money.

[Trif]

Coins are just slugs of metal, with no more value than the material they're crafted from; they're not actually useful for anything.  They should barter for less than goods, as if you were trading scrap copper (or whatever metal) that has to be melted down, purified and worked before you can do anything good with it.

By that logic, anything without a good, practical use is also worthless except for scrap.

Consider the time period of DF. The value of currency in medieval / renaissance times wasn't directly regulated by central banks, coins had innate value because they were made out of valuable materials (unlike the scraps of paper or bits of information nowadays).

Coins are far from useless, though. They have lots of advantages over other means of storing value. Coins don't rot, die or break, for example. Their value is comparatively stable, they are easy to store, easy to swap against more practical goods; and maybe most important: you can compare the values of other goods using coins.
That was maybe the main confusion in this thread: in DF, everything has a universal, unchanging value, which makes trading easier, but defeats the main point of a currency. Once we have some supply and demand, coins will have to be used for trading, and the trader profits won't be as apparent.

Also, if you flip a coin, you get a random outcome :D

Currency allows you to easily transfer and redeem debts in a non-specific way, but only if everyone involved recognizes the value and nature of the debt, and the trading tokens.

I'm thinking coins should barter for significantly less than their value (because they have no inherent use) under normal circumstances, but within your own civilization (assuming a working economy), and with allied civilizations that maintain trade agreements with yours, they should barter at a higher value because of their attractive fungibility.  Merchants would take their profit cut either way.

I think that "within your own civ" was implied. If not...well, many non-American nations accept the American dollar; perhaps human or elven nations would accept coins from a powerful dwarven nation, or at least one they regularly trade with. Currency from their own nation would be preferred, of course, but dwarven coins would be worth more than mere "slugs of metal."

The Spanish dollar is a nice historical example. It was accepted in basically all of Europe and the colonies because Spain had lots of economical power and their coins were of high-quality silver.
The caravan arc should give some nice options. It would be fun to establish your currency in the trading nations and then just screw with everyone's economy.

[Deepblade]

We're probably better with coins having a set value based on material instead of getting a quality modifier.

Coins back in the day were only as valuable as the metal they were made of cause if you melted that coin down, with enough coins, you would get a bar. What influenced the value of the coin was the strength of the nation that minted those coins and the purity of the metal they used. A weaker country would almost always use a less pure silver. But, we don't support metal purity, for now, and our forts thrive far too easily for our prestige to influence coin value too much imo.

Though if we can get a nice non annoying way to handle coins it'd be interesting to see people file off tiny shavings of coins for the dust to make a tiny profit.

[PastaCrusade]

I think the central debate has become whether or not coins should be used as a currency, and if so, how.
My original post assumed it should.

The way different Civs deal with coinage is a separate issue.  How will money exchanging work?  How will trade routes between different Civs work if they don't take each others money?  Valid questions all, and I have opinions on them, but my original post was a suggestion to solve the problem "How do we make coins a currency while crossbow bolts are not?"

And about filing coins, I think you would just not transact the amount of coins agreed upon.  If a trader files off 1% of each coin then gives you 100 coins, your coin stack would still say its 100 coins until restacked (see Bloat251 on the Dev plan) where it would reveal that you only got 99 coins.  Fractional coins could be determined randomly or rounded.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Coins seem to me less like they are important for your Fortress tradings and more that it is something you need to support an economy within your fortress.
Which it isn't useful right now because there is no fortress economy and even if there was your Dwarves do not desire it.
I'd think after a period of time Dwarves would start to get mad that they arn't getting paid real money.

Coins are small, durable, and function quite well as a measure of value, making them useful in both intra- and intersettlement trading.
Agreed with the rest, though.

Coins are just slugs of metal, with no more value than the material they're crafted from; they're not actually useful for anything.  They should barter for less than goods, as if you were trading scrap copper (or whatever metal) that has to be melted down, purified and worked before you can do anything good with it.

By that logic, anything without a good, practical use is also worthless except for scrap.

Consider the time period of DF. The value of currency in medieval / renaissance times wasn't directly regulated by central banks, coins had innate value because they were made out of valuable materials (unlike the scraps of paper or bits of information nowadays).

Coins are far from useless, though. They have lots of advantages over other means of storing value. Coins don't rot, die or break, for example. Their value is comparatively stable, they are easy to store, easy to swap against more practical goods; and maybe most important: you can compare the values of other goods using coins.
That was maybe the main confusion in this thread: in DF, everything has a universal, unchanging value, which makes trading easier, but defeats the main point of a currency. Once we have some supply and demand, coins will have to be used for trading, and the trader profits won't be as apparent.

Also, if you flip a coin, you get a random outcome

All of those apply to DF coins, at least in 1.0.

Currency allows you to easily transfer and redeem debts in a non-specific way, but only if everyone involved recognizes the value and nature of the debt, and the trading tokens.

I'm thinking coins should barter for significantly less than their value (because they have no inherent use) under normal circumstances, but within your own civilization (assuming a working economy), and with allied civilizations that maintain trade agreements with yours, they should barter at a higher value because of their attractive fungibility.  Merchants would take their profit cut either way.

I think that "within your own civ" was implied. If not...well, many non-American nations accept the American dollar; perhaps human or elven nations would accept coins from a powerful dwarven nation, or at least one they regularly trade with. Currency from their own nation would be preferred, of course, but dwarven coins would be worth more than mere "slugs of metal."

The Spanish dollar is a nice historical example. It was accepted in basically all of Europe and the colonies because Spain had lots of economical power and their coins were of high-quality silver.
The caravan arc should give some nice options. It would be fun to establish your currency in the trading nations and then just screw with everyone's economy.

Indeed.

I think the central debate has become whether or not coins should be used as a currency, and if so, how.
My original post assumed it should.

The way different Civs deal with coinage is a separate issue.  How will money exchanging work?  How will trade routes between different Civs work if they don't take each others money?  Valid questions all, and I have opinions on them, but my original post was a suggestion to solve the problem "How do we make coins a currency while crossbow bolts are not?"

And about filing coins, I think you would just not transact the amount of coins agreed upon.  If a trader files off 1% of each coin then gives you 100 coins, your coin stack would still say its 100 coins until restacked (see Bloat251 on the Dev plan) where it would reveal that you only got 99 coins.  Fractional coins could be determined randomly or rounded.

1. Civs would exchange money based on what they felt the others' currency was worth.
2. Same way most trade works now in DF--barter.
3. I dunno, what is it about putting 100 coins in a pile that makes it obvious that 1% is missing from each? I'd rather have finding out require actually trying, and yet possible on stacks as small as 1.