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Yes, please give us Vikings and Ninjas and Knights.

Yes, but only if it doesnt take too much work.

Maybe better to only make one civ, as close to vanilla DF humans as possible.

Maybe better to only make one civ, as close to MDF humans as possible.

No, I dont like it because it doesnt fit a procedually generated fantasy world.

No, I dont like it, because... (please post the reasons)

[Guthbug]

Whomever is making the manual for humans, it might help if the upgrades and items requiring coin (such as Deon's tavern, etc.) had it listed as to how much coin they require. Some list it, some don't.

[Guthbug]

Also, water is a huge problem in freezing biomes if you don't have a cavern source.

Even with dfhack, I can't get a decent water source that doesn't freeze. Indoor water even in the basement of a building will freeze.

If someone has figured a way around this, I'd love to hear it.

[vonsch]

Cool I'll give that a shot, thanks!

Unrelatedly... OMG this is killing me. I'm trying to build a wall, and there's two spots where construction keeps getting suspended. My mason walks over, stands on the spot where the wall should go, and suspends the construction due to a creature occupying the spot. The creature is himself! There's plenty of other spots he could stand and build it, but he insists on standing right where the wall should go.

Eh, fixed it by building a wall next to where I want it, deconstructing it and then building it again in the proper place. Stupid humies.

Sometimes D-O-R on the spot will fix it. Sometimes it's because a prior worker was interrupted and dropped the block on the spot. The dwarf (err, humie) walks into it to pick up the block, then rather than stepping back, tries to build it while there anyway...  Of course, his feet are in the way. As Guthbug said, stop the construction (which drops the block outside the spot) and restart it. That combined with D-O-R has always worked for me.

D-O-R is also great when the silly dwarf (err, gnome... err, humie!) insists on standing on the cavern side of the wall so he can wall himself in with the head-snapping spiders or because he's feeling a real urge to fast. Or you can use the old start a wall on all the spots you don't want him to stand and suspend it, but then you have to come back eventually and remove those. You can forget the traffic designation and it won't result in a oops wall later. 

[Fleeb]

Yeah, I figured it wasn't a bug related to humans, just didn't know where better to vent my frustration

[Meph]

Also, water is a huge problem in freezing biomes if you don't have a cavern source.

Even with dfhack, I can't get a decent water source that doesn't freeze. Indoor water even in the basement of a building will freeze.

If someone has figured a way around this, I'd love to hear it.

Brew drinks? Just because humans done need them, doesnt mean they wont use them.

Otherwise: Cavern lakes. 

[Guthbug]

Yeah, I figured it wasn't a bug related to humans, just didn't know where better to vent my frustration

Vent on, brother. Vent on!

I just had this major epiphany for humans. I was out in the garden earlier thinking about what they lacked. It seemed to me that every other race had something special to them and humans just didn't have that.

Then it clicked when I came back in and sat down to play a bit ...

Trade.

Whatever you're missing, you can get. You just have to find some raw material to sell for it.

Looking at the economy though, it's borked. It doesn't appear to have any "Adam Smith" style value add.

For instance, buy silk cloth, turn it into a silk shirt and it's value increases dramatically over the original cloth. You have used labor to increase value (a basic economic principle) ... however it's not reflected in the merchant stalls because you can't sell the shirt for more coin!

I can hold the shirt until a caravan comes along and then sell it for the traditional "wealth" in a barter exchange, and use it to trade for gold bars. Then I can take those gold bars and mint gold coins with them, but unless I get much more than 3,000 sovereigns per gold bar, then I've lost money.

See the economic problem?  (I'm a gardener and author of children's books, not an economist, so I can't guarantee I'm explaining the principle correctly.)

[Guthbug]

Brew drinks? Just because humans done need them, doesnt mean they wont use them.

Otherwise: Cavern lakes.

They won't use them for some poor soul in the hospital. He requires water in a bucket.

Cavern lakes are my preferred method, but there's not always one on the first cavern level and I don't know that I can drill down to the second.

[Meph]

You can sell a silk shirt in at the clothing merchants.

But Adam Smith like supply and demand (reactions prices that change) I cant do.

[Guthbug]

You can sell a silk shirt in at the clothing merchants.

But Adam Smith like supply and demand (reactions prices that change) I cant do.

Well, skip the demand and just look at the principle of labor value add.

1 hematite ore < 1 iron bar < 1 iron dagger

If I dig the iron ore out of the ground, it has a value of 500 shillings.

If I smelt the iron ore myself, using a piece of charcoal (1 log) and some human labor, then I should be able to sell the iron bar for (for instance) 500 sovereigns.

Then upwards of there would be the 3 iron bars + 1 charcoal which goes into an iron sword. How many sovereigns is that worth?

It's the same basic economic principle that makes the world go around. A piece of bologna is worth $0.10 and 2 pieces of bread is worth $0.25, but a sandwich costs you $5.

There is a base multiplier that goes into each "upgrade" of materials as the labor gets added to it. But the reverse seems to be true in this economy, which means humans are the worst businessmen in the history of the masterwork universe.

sell 4 iron bars nets 500 sovereigns.
Buy hematite ore costs 1500 sovereigns.

So unless smelting the ore nets you 12 iron bars, you are operating at a LOSS.

Simply: You cannot buy raw goods and turn them into finished goods for a profit within the human economy.

[Guthbug]

Have only tested this for a little bit so far, but yeah, it seems to be like what I'm saying unless I'm missing something:

Buy 1 malachite bearing ore = 500 sovereigns

Run malachite bearing ore through ore processor and it produces 1 pure rock

Smelt pure rock and it creates 4 copper bars.

4 copper bars sold back to metal merchant = 500 sovereigns.

So all the extra time and labor the humans put into it is less worth than a sweat shop in Mumbai.

[Guthbug]

This may somewhat resolve itself in the voucher system I'm looking at now.

Weapon merchant ... to get a steel battle axe costs 4 steel vouchers at 2500 gold each.

That is 10,000 gold.

4 copper bars = 500 gold, so if I smelt 80 copper bars it is worth one steel battle axe.

Compare this to fishing.

3-4 fishermen consistently pulling fish out of the river nets me 500 gold on a fairly constant basis (if I eat no fish). You will have money coming out of your ears. Same with hunting if you can kill big things.

Selling crops is a complete waste of time. Each plant stack creates one seed which creates one new plant stack which then must be used to brew a drink for sale, consuming a barrel or pot in the process. You lose money selling agricultural products.

So a small fishing village by the sea, a lake, or river with its primary vocation being fishing will be ROLLING in gold while the village with access to underground gold deposits will be poor.

ETA:

Ok, checked the math before I posted. There DOES seem to be a way to generate income based on brewing.

If you buy plants, they come in stacks of 6 for 500 gold. Since the still will use a whole stack for a drink, you can't make a profit by selling that drink.

But if you produce seeds and then plant large fields of the stuff, you will get a stack from each set of seeds you planted, which can then make a large batch of alcohol to sell, and generate new seeds for a constant renewable source of income. It's harder than fishing, but if you paired it WITH fishing then you would be ROLLING in gold.

--- Theoretically, anyway. Needs some testing to see how the individual stacks are consumed.

[Guthbug]

Ok, tested another fort away from water and was able to viably build an economy upon strawberries and strawberry wine.

Planted a strawberry field, disable strawberries for cooking. (Make sure your people have other forms of food so they don't eat your profits.)

At harvest time, rapidly turn it into strawberry wine and then forbid it so nobody drinks it. Store it in a different stockpile for ease of use. Once you have brewed all the strawberries, unforbid and quickly sell it all.

You will have all the seed you need to plant the fields again, plus plenty of wine to sell (even if someone drinks some). A sustainable and renewable resource which can be ramped up quickly by buying strawberries and strawberry seeds from caravans. The brewery extension would be a huge value add, allowing a village to quickly become the Milwaukee of its day.

Of course this is still very baseline agricultural economy and not what I would think humans would do in the high end. I think from looking at it, the sell prices for metal bars, clothing, and finished goods (non-smithing) need to be doubled over that of their raw material base cost. This simulates the labor value add and would even allow you to create a viable fortress/economy where you imported raw materials and turned them into export goods for trade.

[Guthbug]

Oh, as it is now ... I see a future in every human city where you progress to the point where it's better to make items for normal trade with the other races in exchange for gold bars (or crates of gold bars) which you turn into gold coins.

Perhaps this is as intended, being indicative of nation-states.

[Kiefatar]

Not gold bars... Meat or other materials.

You can buy crates of cloth and leather pretty cheaply via bartering and turn them into gold fairly easily. Same with bartered booze and other food stuffs.

[Guthbug]

Isn't the gold bar the highest return? A raw one costs about 140 (dwarf bucks or whatever the native system is) and it turns into 2500 sovereigns.

The inherent economic system sort of borks all human trading. When I can trade a food pot prepared by a master cook for half of everything the traders bought, it sort of makes everything else seem weak.