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[Phlum]

This is an idea that I’ve been toying with for the last couple days,

I has maths, it’s not an abstract idea i have no idea how to add
now don't tell me math is abstract by definition

-   The Problem, in dwarf fortress we have fixed monetary values. this means that no matter how many *<*steel helmet*>* a society has, the value of the helmet stays the same at a value of 3000 or so dorf bucks. An inverse of this is that you can have only a single plump helmet it’s still worth 5 dorf bucks. this problem causes another problem, the fact that all populations have the same values for the same stuff, a fix for this would allow

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 a starving fortress could literaly sell itself for a plump helmet barrel.
dorfs could start scaming the living daylights out of elves by giving them one sword for a caravan.
i could go on forever.

-   The solution, if you take the population of each civilization or site or whatever groups of people you want to divide prices by (as in the where prices change, as in, by town or civ, or valley), and give each person in this site or civ a value, then the sum of the values of each person is equivalent to the wealth of the civilization or site.

-If one dorf has a value of $100 then a population of 100 dwarves has a value of 10,000. This value is equivalent to the value of the population's total possessions.

o    This wealth is then divided equally between all types of materials, like steel and cheese

o   All the value of the material is then divided between all the types of objects that the material is made of.

   this should mean that all steel tables are worth all the steel blocks in the fortress. As all the cheese wedges in the civ are worth the same as all the cheese tables (this could get interesting with artifacts).

   This should mean that all the cheese in the site or civ value is worth all the steel.

[Example]
    There are 100 dorfs in a population; each dorf has a value of $10,000,
-   Total population value is $1,000,000
    There are 4 materials in this population’s stocks ABC and D
-   Therefore there the total value of all A B C and D are 250,000,
    So if there are 100 units of A, one unit of A is worth 2,500
While if there are 15000 units of B, each unit is worth 17 or so (16.667 if you do the math)
-and so on, you can do the rest.
   [/Example]

    You would perform the same operation to divide the costs of types of items made of a material, and makes items that you don’t have, literally priceless.

    This is thought to be a way to calculate base price, which would be the same as supply.  Now that we are at a point in the development where the world of DF becomes more active, we must add motivations for the people of the computer world. Money is probably the easiest to implement, namely because of how related money is to math.

Later on there could be demand, which I am at a loss to know how to implement. Demand is somewhat different; I had thoughts on it myself, but are relatively half-baked.

See below

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

to start,
If an item is used in the making of another item, its value should increase by 10% of the value of the highest value item that it can make. This effect doesn’t stack, doesn’t relate to quality of work at all, and doesn’t include the value of encrusted items, so no artifacts, or <wood doors>.
So the value of iron bar may be a base of $100, but because iron bars can be made into $2000 iron shirts, the value of an iron bar is now $300 just because it can make more expensive stuff, just as the highest value item that wood($50) can make is a wood door($300) inflating the price of wood to ($80).

Ok part one is over, this would be mostly supply again, other ideas would require a new dorf brain

[XXSockXX]

Math makes my brain hurt.

I'm not sure if a pseudo-medieval economy should be entirely supply/demand based, but this sounds like good groundwork.

Couldn't you perform this supply calculation for every site in the world and then, with supply values for every site, calculate demand by price differences? So if a human town has lots of cloth (low price) and your fort has none (high price), your fort has a high demand for cloth. This would ensure that humans always have a high demand for steel, which would be realistic. On the other hand dwarfs would always have a high demand for wooden weapons, which makes no sense...

[LrZeph]

Couldn't you perform this supply calculation for every site in the world and then, with supply values for every site, calculate demand by price differences? So if a human town has lots of cloth (low price) and your fort has none (high price), your fort has a high demand for cloth. This would ensure that humans always have a high demand for steel, which would be realistic. On the other hand dwarfs would always have a high demand for wooden weapons, which makes no sense...

Well, it could be that cultures might have a 'want' for things, potentially defined through the raws.

Let's just say a value from 0 to... 1000? Which represents how valuable something is to them. A value of 100 is standard pricing, a medium demand, where 1000 is maximum demand (Dwarves towards 'candy' perhaps?) and 0 being absolutely no demand, which would be innocent animal parts for the Elves, or food plants for kobolds.

[GoombaGeek]

Math makes my brain hurt.

I'm not sure if a pseudo-medieval economy should be entirely supply/demand based, but this sounds like good groundwork.

Couldn't you perform this supply calculation for every site in the world and then, with supply values for every site, calculate demand by price differences? So if a human town has lots of cloth (low price) and your fort has none (high price), your fort has a high demand for cloth. This would ensure that humans always have a high demand for steel, which would be realistic. On the other hand dwarfs would always have a high demand for wooden weapons, which makes no sense...

Wouldn't it be "maths make my brain hurt"? Because maths is plural

and the more maths you had the coolers you is.

[pisskop]

I like this, but I figured Toady would cover it when (yes when) economy goes back online.  Ptw in any case.

and the more maths you had the coolers you is.

Is this why I'm not  'fresh to death'?

[XXSockXX]

Wouldn't it be "maths make my brain hurt"? Because maths is plural

I can't count beyond one forgot. In my native language it's singular.

[Damiac]

Supply and demand would be more of a factor in a pseudo-medieval economy, but it would be on a smaller scale.  People would probably be less likely to consider what they could get for an item they're trading for from another civ, and be more concerned with what they need. Meaning if they have plenty of food in their civ, they'd pay less for your food.  If they don't have many good weapons, they'd pay more than a civ you have already overloaded with steel swords.

But I guess that all depends on how much the other civs are trading with each other.  Basically, the more trade going on throughout the world, the more supply and demand are going to average out.  With the seasonal trade we have now, you'd expect your trading to cause pretty big spikes in both supply, and demand.

[XXSockXX]

People would probably be less likely to consider what they could get for an item they're trading for from another civ, and be more concerned with what they need. Meaning if they have plenty of food in their civ, they'd pay less for your food.  If they don't have many good weapons, they'd pay more than a civ you have already overloaded with steel swords.

But I guess that all depends on how much the other civs are trading with each other.  Basically, the more trade going on throughout the world, the more supply and demand are going to average out.  With the seasonal trade we have now, you'd expect your trading to cause pretty big spikes in both supply, and demand.

Actually I think it would be the other way round. Civs would be pretty much self-sufficient and mostly luxuary goods would be traded. Nobles would influence trade a lot, regardless of what the common people need.
Also with the trade we have now there would pretty soon be infinite supply of many things, except for a few rare metals or gems. With an old enough fort you could easily feed/clothe/arm an entire world. That has to be taken into account somehow too.

[Phlum]

Supply and demand would be more of a factor in a pseudo-medieval economy, but it would be on a smaller scale.  People would probably be less likely to consider what they could get for an item they're trading for from another civ, and be more concerned with what they need. Meaning if they have plenty of food in their civ, they'd pay less for your food.  If they don't have many good weapons, they'd pay more than a civ you have already overloaded with steel swords.

But I guess that all depends on how much the other civs are trading with each other.  Basically, the more trade going on throughout the world, the more supply and demand are going to average out.  With the seasonal trade we have now, you'd expect your trading to cause pretty big spikes in both supply, and demand.

Math makes my brain hurt.

I'm not sure if a pseudo-medieval economy should be entirely supply/demand based, but this sounds like good groundwork.

Couldn't you perform this supply calculation for every site in the world and then, with supply values for every site, calculate demand by price differences? So if a human town has lots of cloth (low price) and your fort has none (high price), your fort has a high demand for cloth. This would ensure that humans always have a high demand for steel, which would be realistic. On the other hand dwarfs would always have a high demand for wooden weapons, which makes no sense...

I think your missing something I was trying to get across in the OP post; this is how you would calculate base price for specific populations, NOT how you find the final price Which would require demand

[Trif]

Economics based on supply and demand are already planned. Toady worked on bits of it before focusing on the hero role and activating the world.

World economy

• Supply/demand based on current available entity resources etc.
• Expand on trade/tribute relationships formed in world generation
• Ability to get some supply/demand information about nearby locations from travelers and others
• Ability to get that information yourself and trade it to merchants, especially as explorer
• Improved dwarf mode trade agreements incorporating all the world gen/supply/demand/merchant info etc.]

[Cobbler89]

"Math" is just short for Mathematics, which, in English, is... sorta ironically singular. (Merriam-Webster, if you want to look it up, says it is "plural but usually singular in construction", whatever that means exactly -- I'd interpret it as "you say it like it's singular, but it refers to a collection of things", but I missed the part where the field of Mathematics is a collection of things, or maybe I don't know how to read a book of grammar.)

[Phlum]

"Math" is just short for Mathematics, which, in English, is...

I love how half the people here Talk about how the word math is used.

Anyway, anyone have a good idea on how to add demand?

[Revanchist]

No additions, but I agree that this would make a good (albeit intensive) way of calculating prices. It would emphasize trying to play an active role in global economics, and I'd say yes to anything that lets you scam the elves.

[thisisjimmy]

Apparently, "math" is American short form of mathematics while "maths" is the British short form.

If you want to base prices around economic theory, then you have to account for both supply and demand and their elasticity.  The supply on its own tells you nothing about an item's value.

For example, let's say no one had any use for barrels of blood.  It wouldn't matter if there was only a single barrel of blood in the whole world; it still wouldn't have any value.

If I understand your suggestion correctly, cheese would be very expensive in a fortress that starts a small cheese industry.  As the cheese industry grows, the total value of the industry would remain constant and the price of each piece of cheese would drop.  If this is the case, why would a dwarfy entrepreneur ever want to expand their business? If the total value of cheese in fortress is always $250,000, why not just make one piece of cheese and sell it for $250,000? 

You can find the price of a good by finding the intersection of the supply and demand curves.  It will be a bit tricky for the game to model these curves well.  A demand curve indicates how much of a good consumers are willing to buy at any given price.  A supply curve indicates how much of a good industry is willing to produce at a given price.  You'd expect different curves depending on the good in question.  For example, if there's a famine, you'd expect people would be willing to pay almost anything to avoid starvation.  However, if there's a gold statue shortage, people will only spend so much before they decide to simply live without a gold statue.

You could potential estimate demand by modelling the needs and desires of the populace of each site.  If the humans in the neighbouring site like gold jewelry, then there is demand.  If they also lack gold on their site (low supply), they should be willing offer you good trade deals in exchange for gold.

[dwarf_sadist]

In order to get economics working, you need to split each piece into chunks, as the OP did. However, the base cost of a unit is not considered by the amount of units, it is considered by the cost of production. The production cost is hard to calculate in a game this complex, with it depending highly upon the cost of labour, the ease of which you can move the resources to the production centers and how many breaks the haulers take. I shall explain this in RP story style:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ex: A carpenter starts up his business of building barrels, and only barrels (a fairly profitable business). Each barrel requires a certain amount of wood, a certain amount of Urist-Hours to create and a minimum number of workers. Lets say each barrel requires one piece of wood, requires two hours to make one barrel and requires only one competent carpenter (which the owner is). If the oakfarmers union decides to sell oak wood for 22 Ur, then the base price will be 22 Ur.

Of course, it's not as simple as that. In order to get from the wood stockpile to the carpentry workshop, haulers must be hired. If the haulers must hand balm everything, then each hauler is going to be paid for their time, which could be quite expensive if the distance traveled is far. With wheelbarrows or minecarts this cost could be reduced, but minecarts could have tolls when traveling down certain passages, or could require a license.

There is also the problem with rent and salary. How much should each worker get? How much per month does the workshop cost? Are there taxes to consider? Since a single barrel takes 2 hours to make, what effect does this have once you calculate the rent and salary? Once all these questions are answered you have your base price, as long as the price of oak does not change, nor the labour cost of woodcutters, haulers, or carpenters; and as long as the rent remains the same, taxes do not increase, no accidents occur during hauling, the passage way being used is blocked, the workers don't go on break early, there is no emergency such as a siege or fire and as long as there is wood to buy.

This is not including the use of multiple resources, multiple product types, mandates, quotas, tariffs, emergency orders, or products requiring multiple workers working at once (Armok forbid multiple Professions working side by side).

That is the supply side. Now the demand side is a bit more complicated...