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[Stronghammer]

Hello and welcome to the grand opening of the dwarven merchant mod. Have you ever wished you could run a fortress off of trade? Have you ever dreamed of a fortress with row after row of warehouses full to the bursting with other peoples stuff? Have you ever wanted to be king (or queen) of trade? Well here at the dwarven merchant guild several grey beards have put their collective wisdom together to bring you the dwarven trade teleporter. Using this technology one can setup a merchant stall (foolishly labeled as a workshop by some) to buy and sell goods. Many different goods can be bought and sold at these stalls for a small profit. Why not more profit you say? Well it is at a massive profit however the Merchants Guild taxes you on your trade so you only earn ten percent. Now, now don't balk at such a low profit margin, using merchants you can eventually trade your way up to buying and selling steel easily the most profitable venture. As the grey beards come up with more magical runes that allow for more goods to be traded, they will be placed here for everyone to use.

Ok fluff aside. This mod creates two workshops (currently) that allow you to trade in goods for Marks (short for Modern Alchemical Runes of Knowledge Symbols M.A.R.K.S) and then buy goods for a slight less cost of Marks. This means that you can sell wood for four marks and then buy wood for three. So ya your just exchanging goods over and over again to make a small profit that can then be used to buy more goods (sounds fairly close to medieval trade to me). Currently the amount of profit received is 10 percent to a minimum of one. Seen as sell one wood for 4 buy it for 3, and then Steel buy for 30 sell for 33.  I will be adding more goods and workshops as soon as I can. However it will take time as I have to create two reactions for every good as well as balance the relative costs. Currently the ratios I find are fairly balanced (except for weapons and armour, still needing to work on them) for the amount of dwarf power and time invested versus gain. For example you have to go through 33 wood trades to buy one bar of steel, easily the same if not more amount of time to make steel the traditional way. Anyways here it is hope you enjoy.

download here
http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=7467

Thanks for checking it out, please feel free to leave comments below. And yes once Toady puts in merchant caravans for us this will be obsolete, however for the time being I like it and find that even though there is no actual moving caravans it is a fair approximation of medieval trade.

[Markus]

ptw, a unique idea!

[IamanElfCollaborator]

I was planning to implement one of these in my Persona mod, albeit more like a weapon shop than actual raw material being sold.

Still, nifty mod. Quite good for making marketplaces and the like.

Speaking of which, could I use some concepts from this to develop some workshops for my own original mod?

[Stronghammer]

sure thing, just a little credit would be nice. But ya, weapons, armours and cloths are next.

[IamanElfCollaborator]

Sure, will do.

[Stronghammer]

Version 2 has been released

Added is the ability to sell weapons and armors. As well the reactions for buying and selling weapons and armor are more balanced.

[smakemupagus]

I am curious, why did you decide not to use coins?

[Stronghammer]

Because if I used the coins I would be limited to using stacks of them which would make me feel limited. By limited I mean if i have 20 coin I would want them to be able to be stacked and un-stacked I suppose I could just use coins and the stacking be damned but it would still bother me. The other reason is I want the Mark's to have no intrinsic value and to not be made of any metal. The reason for that is I dont want say a bronze mark out valuing the good its being traded for. The other reason is I dont want the Mark's to be able to be smithed as that would then change the value of them and kind of fiddle with my balancing of prices and trade ratios. And other than that nothing really, just personal preference.

[Meph]

I always liked the idea, both in your old mod, and in smakes orc fortress, and his dwarven version. The only reason I never used it is the extreme inbalances (at least from my point of view) that arises from using coins. It was impossible, since metal veins vary from each fortress to fortress, making trading extremely easy in one, and extremely hard in another. And coins-stacks of 500, being split slowly in ever smaller units that hurt FPS.

You solved both. Well done. I will definetly follow this, see what people say to the balancing, and probably will ask you one day if this can be an optional addition to a certain mod of mine.

PS: Extra bonus points for making the currency "marks"

[smakemupagus]

How does it affect imbalance Meph? ...  he still buys and sells precious metal bars, if you're sitting on a vein of silver you can be swimming in Marks just as easily as in Coins.  The idea that a silver vein makes you "rich" is IMO is a feature not a bug, as long as you balance the exchange rate from Marks/Coins into useful objects carefully, but whether it's good or bad it's the same either way.

As for the other thing, coins never get destacked below 500 in Orc Fortress unless you go out of your way to do it yourself, I think you are remembering back to the old dwarven economy days

@ Stronghammer: All good reasons, for using Marks, thanks.  Our implementations are actually different in many ways, but I like to see how you did it too
p.s. small typo -- missed the close bracket on [PRODUCT_DIMENSION:150 a couple times, on BUY_COPPER, SILVER and IRON

[Stronghammer]

To sort of address what you said smake and to sort of explain why I dont like coins. Lets look at a senario if you say use coins then you can smith it out of a metal. By smithing it out of a metal you are adding a "value" to the coin above and beyond what the coin has its self. For example a Mark is worth 1, always is and always will because its made of nothing. A stack of coins has 500 coins being worth ten which is then multiplied by the value of the metal. So if you say want to by 5 plump helmet with the marks system then it is a straight trade of 5 plump for 10 marks. The worth of those mushrooms is 2/1 (marks/plump). Now say you use coins, you put the cost at 500 coins. First if you ignore the fact that now those mushrooms are worth 10. This its self is fine because you can base your economy off of the new exchange rate. However the problem now comes from the variability of the coin metal copper coins will be 20, silver will be 100, gold 300. The exchange rate is no longer constantand thus you will have scenario's where the coins can become higher value then the value that you established for a good. That's my two cents anyways.

[smakemupagus]

Yep, I understand what you are saying.  The way I solved it was to require specific material coins for purchases.  So if you buy 10 iron bars (value 10 bars x 10 for iron = 100) it costs specifically 5000 *gold* coins (value 10 bars x 30 for gold = 300). 

ed.
The biggest difference in our approach I think is this:  It seems like your merchants are members of your own civ working away hard to add value; my merchants are outsiders come to the fort to take our gold and get rich  

[Stronghammer]

Thats a cool way of doing it. Nice idea

edit.. lol darn your fast. Thats a cool way of looking at it as that is how I saw my merchants as working.

[smakemupagus]

>>  Thats a cool way of doing it. Nice idea

Thanks.   I like your way of doing it too, which is why I asked

[Stronghammer]

lol omg your fast I do like your method, thanks for the discussion ideas and feed back.

edit
Oh and Meph, thanks for the visit and the nice comments/compliments.