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[GoblinCookie]

No, it's quite objective to have an economic demand for food, for instance. Food allows your body to survive, and thus produce offspring. Therefore, people who don't value food disappear rather quickly because they starve to death and don't stick around to teach others. Those who do value food spread across the earth. This has nothing to do with politics or ideology, and it is not arbitrary (at least no more than the physics it is based on is arbitrary). It is rational.

And some people will volunterily starve themselves to death.  Even food is only economically valuable if you happen to subjectively value your continued existance.

Even the most basic 'rationality' depends upon subjective values that do not have a rational foundation themselves.  That the reason for some subjective values may be explained in evolutionary terms (the value of food and life) does not make them objectively existing. 

You continue to simply not read whole sets of posts, which makes it inefficient to respond to you. Many counterexamples were give to this. As just one example, fugitive criminals do not have any strategic value to the mountainhomes, yet I think we can all agree that fugitives exist, yes? Therefore, your quote here is disproven: settlements (of fugitives) do not need to have greater than 0 strategic value to the civilization to make sense. In fact, they can even have negative strategic value.

Fugitive criminals do not belong to the civilization in the sense that settlements in the game do.  They are a completely different type of settlement playing a completely different sort of game. 

Every single map in the game has wood available on it. The fact you're saying this leads me to believe you have not been playing the game very long, and may be overestimating the importance or need for caravans out of inexperience. An assumption that explains most of your (IMO incorrect and unrealistic) comments about how settlements "will collapse or drift into isolation imminently without caravans." No, they won't. Self-sufficiency is quite possible and actually fairly easy once you know what you're doing, even on an empty glacier with no plants and virtually no supplies, and deadly cold frostbite temperatures.

1 pick, 1 anvil, glacier:
1) Collapse pillars of ice underground, they become water. You now have drinks to not die of thirst.
2) This buys you enough time to dig to the caverns without too much pressure.
3) You can now solve the second need, hunger, by using herbalism to gather underground plants which can be eaten directly, like plump helmets. OR more easily, by just butchering your pack animals. But you need to gather plants eventually anyway, so...
4) After eating them, you have seeds and can begin farming. For additional water, use more glacier ice or find a cavern lake, until you can start distilling enough plants, at which point you can survive indefinitely.
5) Wall off the area, use trees underground to make your beds (you can also use wagon wood to make earlier beds), and proceed as normal to an arbitrarily powerful fort. Using either the magma sea or underground tree farms to fuel forges and glassworks and things.

Having no metal, on the other hand, is annoying, but has little to do with sustainability. It just means you have to make traps (glass serrated discs, anyone?) instead of relying entirely on a military. (or marksdwarves)

That would work, all provided that you do not immediately run into the numerous deadly monsters that live in the caverns and get eaten.  And it does require that you are in an enviroment with ice, boiling hot deserts do not have ice or much water for that matter. 

It may be possible eke out an existance independantly on a glacier if you know how.  And that is beyond the point, your civilization does not want you to do that because if you are utterly self-sufficant, there is no reason why you would continue to associate with them at all. 

[GavJ]

And some people will volunterily starve themselves to death.  Even food is only economically valuable if you happen to subjectively value your continued existance.

If you want to model existentialist despair in dwarf fortress, go for it. But I think it's safe to say that that is heavily off-topic for the thread, since you could bring up "but maybe they don't even want to live!" in response to ANY feature suggestion ever. So it really should have its own thread.

Fugitive criminals do not belong to the civilization in the sense that settlements in the game do.  They are a completely different type of settlement playing a completely different sort of game.

1) Yes fugitives do still belong to a civilization. Committing crimes and running away is not a free pass for secession.
2) Removing probably 1% of the game's features for a playthrough does not make it "a completely different sort of game"
3) Even if it did, so what? The thread is in the suggestions forum, where we suggest new types of gameplay. Not having it be exactly the same type of game as before is sort of the point.

And that is beyond the point, your civilization does not want you to do that because if you are utterly self-sufficant, there is no reason why you would continue to associate with them at all.

Self-sufficient communities exist throughout the entire world in real life and are generally just as associated with their broader governments as everybody else around them is. In fact, for thousands of years, the MAJORITY of communities were self sufficient agricultural units (actually MORE than self sufficient, since they produced surpluses to fund extravagant nobility lifestyles), and yet still all identified with a broader government. This belief simply does not have a basis in fact.

I have already admitted that if a colony is self sufficient AND has no contact at all with a government, then yes indeed, they might consider themselves independent eventually. Which is why I suggested non-trading diplomatic missions being sent out regularly to forts.

Diplomats and their companions can maintain relations, bring news, make agreements, update citizens about laws and new technology and collect taxes and bring culture and blah blah blah all the things that actually do hold together communities as a nation in real life, even when self-sufficient. And if a settlement in real life is actually self sufficient, this is exactly what would actually happen - they wouldn't send pointless and expensive wagons that would just be ignored. They would send a few dudes on horses to go check in and make agreements and see what's up.

[Scruiser]

All rational economic decisions are ultimately based upon irrational intrinsic value.  In the final analysis 'reason' fails because everything reduces in the end to arbitery values with no rational foundation except in politics/ideology.

This ignores like all of economics, and game theory, and a lot of political theory.  I've explained my points about it, so obviously we just won't agree. Google instrumental vs  epistemic rationality if you want to understand where I (and probably GavJ) are coming from.

I suppose I am.  They were largely redundant within the scope of this thread.  The problems they were supposed to solve have already been solved in a far simpler manner.

Your simple solutions often lack either play-ability, realism, or a method of implementation.  They may have one or two of these things, but at the expense of the third.  Also, most dwarf fortresses players really like complexity, or at the very least can tolerate huge levels of it, given that they play this game at all. 
Also, I explicitly explained why I think some things are relevant to the original topic.

Anyway, I think in the short term, it would make sense for Toady to work on the non trade/caravan visits (as described by GavJ), basic back story behind the embark, and basic economic modeling.  I think together, these three elements will lay the groundwork for more challenging trading, as OP desired.

Okay now I've definitely said all my argumentative points twice in short and long versions so I will just focus on implementations, models, and algorithms for OP.

Continuing with list
World Economic Issues
    - Famine raises demand for food
    - Good harvest year crashes demand for food
    - War raises demand for weapons and armor
    - Prosperity and urbanization raise demand for art
    - Metal demand affected by war also
Dynamic Pricing
    - All worldwide events influence prices (obviously)
    - Fashions to influence prices of types of clothes, types of gem cuts in short term
    - Cultural associations (ie. purple symbolizes nobility, gold symbolizes royalty, etc) to influence prices of different materials in long run
    - Recipes go in and out of popularity in the short and long term, influencing prices of types of food

I'm not addressing implementation obviously, because we already disagree there.

[GavJ]

First:
Basic price algorithm:
1) Each entity has sets of RAWs that dictate things they need, such as
[NEEDED_GOOD:BUILDING_MAT]
[NAME:Building materials]
[AMOUNT_PER_YEAR_PER_CAPITA:5] (units are abstract, bear with me)
[OPTION:BUILD_LOGS:2] (the "build_logs" is a special tag. It corresponds to [PRODUCTION_CLASS:BUILD_LOGS] tags included in any material definition tokens that you want to qualify for this type of good (in this case, you'd put it in all the tree structural material definitions, for all species that seem reasonable to build with).  After that is a number meaning it's relative desirability for this purpose. Different options can be swapped, and will be swapped based on relative desirability.)
[OPTION:BUILD_STONE:5] (stone in this case is more desirable for building for example. They will prefer stone as long as its cost is less than 2.5x as expensive as wood in this example.)
etc.

[NEEDED_GOOD:FOOD]
and so on

2) Each entity also has RAWs for production of resources. Level of production takes into consideration these raws, and also of course the amount of that resource in the given settlement, and current world prices
[CAN_PRODUCE:BUILD_LOGS] (matches up with name fields above)
[MAXIMUM_PER_YEAR_PER_CAPITA:7] (total amount woodcutters can actually work IF there is a surplus of trees. This doesn't dictate amount of wood, just maximum production
[AVERAGE_STARTING_VOLUME:7000] (an average AI-sized settlement is defined as starting out with this much wood. This is matched up to an estimate of the actual average prevalence of things with [PRODUCTION_CLASS:BUILD_LOGS] in an average embark during worldgen, in order to algorithmically come up with an abstract unit <--> actual item conversion rate. So a site with an average number of trees in worldgen has 7,000 "units" of trees to begin with. A site with half the average number of trees has 3,500 units, etc., automatically)
[RENEWABLE:100] if tag is present, units will replenish themselves each year at a rate equal to the number written here per year, up to the original starting volume maximum. A site with double the average number of trees will replenish 200 a year, etc. If not present, there's just a finite amount available, period (metals)
[CHANGING_COST:1.2] How much it costs extra to mine more of the resource for every power of 1/2 the amount of the world average you start with. If you have 1/4 the world average, it costs 1.2*1.2 = 144% to mine each unit for that settlement compared to somebody with world average amounts. If you have 4x as much as average, it costs 1/1.2/1.2 = 69% as much to mine as somebody with world average amounts.
[COST_PER_UNIT_TO_PRODUCE:2] (number of dwarfbucks it costs to gather one unit of logs in terms of time/effort/equipment/skills, etc. It doesn't matter that you don't literally pay woodcutters. (re: Goblincookie's inevitable complaint) This is an economics abstraction equal to the value of that effort, i.e. basically what you would hypothetically pay an imaginary third party to come in and do it on site if they expected no profit.) By having this in entity raws, different races can gather stuff more efficiently, I.e. elves get wood easier, dwarves get stone easier, etc.

[CAN_PRODUCE:BUILD_STONE]
(and associated tags)
[CAN_PRODUCE:ABOVE_PLANTS]
[CAN_PRODUCE:BELOW_PLANTS]
etc. etc.

[PERISHABLE] is also a tag to add to materials now. If they have them, the goods only last a year for global trade, and go poof if unsold. See below.

3) Every year, Use the above information + a site's available resources + its population to figure out the baseline production levels and consumption levels for each settlement.

4) Make adjustments to baseline values of production or consumption based on whether there's a war on, or a climatological situation causing crops to do poorly, or whatever (see list below)

5) Automatically "trade" any matching needs and productions within the same settlement, for free.

6) Determine prices of goods based on supply/demand of each individual pair of settlements and thus what each party would profit (ignoring caravans)

7) Make any adjustments for "strategic value" of the relationship between those settlements, which can add additional subsidies or whatever. Also can add on compulsory taxes and so forth. Also any adjustments for irrationality with dice rolls. Whatever. Various special types of adjustments discussed throughout this thread.

Subtract the cost of a hypothetical caravan between each pair. Subtract this value temporarily from each individual profit margin. See if any of them still remain positive. Take the highest positive result and actually now simulate that settlement sending out a caravan and trading with the relevant neighbor.

9 ) Adjust the production and consumption values to reflect the trades that were just made and subtract some sort of set of resources for the caravan costs (could always be some same set of stuff overhead + another set of stuff * distance, ideally defined in raws. Like a bit of wood, a couple animals, and some food and booze, lowering of production that year to represent loss of labor while they're trading and population requirements and such). Have some chance of the caravan being killed on the way and the sending settlement simply losing all their stuff and dwarves with no trades occurring. Can depend on if at war, etc.

10) Now go back and repeat #6-9 repeatedly, until #8 yields no more positive values. When it doesn't, stop. Trades are now complete for the season.

11) Anybody who didn't trade has their still-unsatisfied needs and unsold goods carried over to the next year. [PERISHABLE] goods go poof, and those settlements re-adjust their production investments of perishables for next year to be more conservative if they wasted some this year.

12) If certain needs pile up too high without being satisfied, settlements can collapse. Like if food needs get too high per capita, population starts getting reduced (fun bonus: you can have a cannibalism ethic that if acceptable, population decrease also lowers the outstanding food need...). If other needs go unsatisfied, the settlement might not collapse outright but may suffer other challenges (lack of building materials = can't expand, for instance. Lack of weapons = more likely to far poorly in battles, etc.). This might just require a whole mess of special tags in raws, not sure how else to do it better.

13) Player trading is treated just like every other kind of trading, except during the cycle of steps #6-9 repeating, if the player is involved, the cycle stops and waits for the player to actually experience that caravan in-game before calculating the remainder.






My edits in orange. Lots of them are just being careful about terminology. "Demand" means a very specific thing - i.e. the demand curve. Not the same as consumption (actual number of things sunk) or relative desirability of different materials -- both of which drive demand. Demand (and supply) are law-based, shouldn't be adjusted directly.

I'm also not clear on why you had two separate headings for that post.

Things affecting prices
    - Famine raises demand for lowers production of food
    - Good harvest year crashes demand for raises production of food
    - War raises demand for consumption of weapons and armor and ammo and probably other things like war animals, anvils, siege engine parts, trap components, splints,  crutches, cloth, etc.
    - Prosperity and urbanization raise demand for consumption of art
    - Metal demand affected by war also accounted for already by consumption of end goods, don't double count.
    - Building material consumption affected by age of settlement and whether it just recently expanded in size category on world map
    - Luxury good consumption affected by wealth of settlement.
    - Most things ALSO (in addition to other notes above) affected by population, of course.
    - Fashions to influence prices relative desirability of different materials for various goods (initial/default in the RAWs per entity, adjusted a little bit to either side for fashion over worldgen) and relative consumption of different luxuries (same)
    - Cultural associations (ie. purple symbolizes nobility, gold symbolizes royalty, etc) to influence prices of different materials in long run
    - Recipes go in and out of popularity in the short and long term, influencing prices of types of food

I'm not addressing implementation obviously, because we already disagree there.

[GoblinCookie]

If you want to model existentialist despair in dwarf fortress, go for it. But I think it's safe to say that that is heavily off-topic for the thread, since you could bring up "but maybe they don't even want to live!" in response to ANY feature suggestion ever. So it really should have its own thread.

I was not suggesting we model suicidal groups of dwarves starving themselves to death.  What I was pointing out that all economics however rational and objective it may in it's models, is ultimately based upon values that themselves are ultimately subjective and non-rational. If you have convinced a group to commit suicide through political means, then economics of that group has now fundamentally changed so that they will happily give away all their food or destroy it. 

All economic theories presuppose a certain social/political/ideological/legal arrangement as an a-priori assumption and often act a form of stealth advocacy for such arrangements because they advocate the values of the order they are founded upon. 

Fugitive criminals do not belong to the civilization in the sense that settlements in the game do.  They are a completely different type of settlement playing a completely different sort of game.

1) Yes fugitives do still belong to a civilization. Committing crimes and running away is not a free pass for secession.
2) Removing probably 1% of the game's features for a playthrough does not make it "a completely different sort of game"
3) Even if it did, so what? The thread is in the suggestions forum, where we suggest new types of gameplay. Not having it be exactly the same type of game as before is sort of the point.

I have highlighted the bit that you seem to have missed.  The objection is not with your idea only that the existing settlements in the game as they stand are evidently not in a fugitive criminal relationship with their civilization. 

Self-sufficient communities exist throughout the entire world in real life and are generally just as associated with their broader governments as everybody else around them is. In fact, for thousands of years, the MAJORITY of communities were self sufficient agricultural units (actually MORE than self sufficient, since they produced surpluses to fund extravagant nobility lifestyles), and yet still all identified with a broader government. This belief simply does not have a basis in fact.

The nobility did not as a rule consume solely the goods produced in their immediate area under their control.  Nor did the wealthier elements of the commoners for that matter.  Brush up on your history a bit. 

Trade routes have existed for thousands of years so self-sufficiency of historical communities is only relative.  And at the same time political integration of historical societies was also relatively weaker than modern societies which fits rather well with the trade creates political centralization. 

I have already admitted that if a colony is self sufficient AND has no contact at all with a government, then yes indeed, they might consider themselves independent eventually. Which is why I suggested non-trading diplomatic missions being sent out regularly to forts.

Diplomats and their companions can maintain relations, bring news, make agreements, update citizens about laws and new technology and collect taxes and bring culture and blah blah blah all the things that actually do hold together communities as a nation in real life, even when self-sufficient. And if a settlement in real life is actually self sufficient, this is exactly what would actually happen - they wouldn't send pointless and expensive wagons that would just be ignored. They would send a few dudes on horses to go check in and make agreements and see what's up.

Why would our self-sufficient troglodyte community that has dug itself into the underground caverns beneath a remote glacier pay taxes or send troops to the civilization?  The diplomat will turn up but he has nothing to offer them, because they are completely self-sufficient.  There are costs to association but no benefits whatsoever.

It is stuff like this that makes me wonder if you are simply arguing with me for the sake of since you are inverting your normal logic.  You are arguing that to the colony continuing to be part of it's civilization has intrinsic value to the colony despite only being an economic cost, violating your normal insistence of economic rationality while arguing with the exact same logic the other way around.  The settlement being part of the civilization has intrinsic value to it, but the same logic apparently does not work the other way around. 

This ignores like all of economics, and game theory, and a lot of political theory.  I've explained my points about it, so obviously we just won't agree. Google instrumental vs  epistemic rationality if you want to understand where I (and probably GavJ) are coming from.

Long live the Appeal to Authority fallacy.  All these 'important economists' disagree with me thus I am wrong.

Your simple solutions often lack either play-ability, realism, or a method of implementation.  They may have one or two of these things, but at the expense of the third.  Also, most dwarf fortresses players really like complexity, or at the very least can tolerate huge levels of it, given that they play this game at all. 

Well that may be your opinion but all GavJ's suggestions by contrast are ridiculously complicated and would add nothing to the game (just like they add nothing to real-life economics). 

What we need is a functional method that will get goods from one place to another.  We do not need to a complex simulation of redundant complexity, based upon disputable economic theories that are not even really based upon the economic realities of the game. 

Also, I explicitly explained why I think some things are relevant to the original topic.

[COST_PER_UNIT_TO_PRODUCE:2] (number of dwarfbucks it costs to gather one unit of logs in terms of time/effort/equipment/skills, etc. It doesn't matter that you don't literally pay woodcutters. (re: Goblincookie's inevitable complaint) This is an economics abstraction equal to the value of that effort, i.e. basically what you would hypothetically pay an imaginary third party to come in and do it on site if they expected no profit.) By having this in entity raws, different races can gather stuff more efficiently, I.e. elves get wood easier, dwarves get stone easier, etc.

The only costs are the available supply of labor and materials which I would simply model directly.  The problem with this model is if you for instance have a surplus of dwarves that cannot be used to produce anything else that you either need or can sell, the 'dwarfbuck' cost of production is actually nothing at all.   

But when I finished my real-life work I will write down my own model in detail. 

[GavJ]

What I was pointing out that all economics however rational and objective it may in it's models, is ultimately based upon values that themselves are ultimately subjective and non-rational.

Sure... an ultimate reality that happens to not matter in any situation other than suicidal dwarves. So please stop derailing the thread with it. This is not the place for epistemological philosophy. That's done in general discussion forum.

There are costs to association but no benefits whatsoever.

There are dozens of benefits that have already been listed in this very thread. Go read the lists we wrote if you are curious. The most prominent example being "The benefit of not being crushed by your civilizations vengeful armies as rebellious scum."

(just like they add nothing to real-life economics)

Adding up costs and benefits before doing shit is the only economic principle I have involved here. And it is not in any way a "disputable economic theory." It is fundamental business 101 stuff life 101 stuff. These are principles that are so basic and uncontroversial that you'd probably get fired from any managerial position in any company on your first day if you expressed doubt about them.

I'm not talking about hedge funds or short selling orange juice futures here. I'm saying, quite simply, "Dwarves should know how to do basic arithmetic and not go bankrupt doing obviously stupid things that can be easily avoided with basic arithmetic." The end.

The only costs are the available supply of labor and materials which I would simply model directly.  The problem with this model is if you for instance have a surplus of dwarves that cannot be used to produce anything else that you either need or can sell, the 'dwarfbuck' cost of production is actually nothing at all. 

The entire algorithm I described in my previous post is for NPC settlements only. Not the player. the player mines stuff by playing dwarf fortress, and just mining stuff like you always have.

There is no such thing as "a bunch of excess idle dwarves" because NPC settlements are not actually simulated to the extend of having idle dwarves or not. Their dwarves are abstract concepts.

[GoblinCookie]

Sure... an ultimate reality that happens to not matter in any situation other than suicidal dwarves. So please stop derailing the thread with it. This is not the place for epistemological philosophy. That's done in general discussion forum.

You want to pass your shaky foundational assumptions off without question under the guise of economics.  But hey, that is sadly what economics is mostly really about.

There are dozens of benefits that have already been listed in this very thread. Go read the lists we wrote if you are curious. The most prominent example being "The benefit of not being crushed by your civilizations vengeful armies as rebellious scum."

That worked rather well for the British in the American War of Independance did it not?  Wise rulers may wish to avoid the cost and risk of war by instead bearing a steady cost without the attendant risk, correct? 

Adding up costs and benefits before doing shit is the only economic principle I have involved here. And it is not in any way a "disputable economic theory." It is fundamental business 101 stuff life 101 stuff. These are principles that are so basic and uncontroversial that you'd probably get fired from any managerial position in any company on your first day if you expressed doubt about them.

I'm not talking about hedge funds or short selling orange juice futures here. I'm saying, quite simply, "Dwarves should know how to do basic arithmetic and not go bankrupt doing obviously stupid things that can be easily avoided with basic arithmetic." The end.

I have to essentially agree with you since your view of what I am saying is so far down the road of strawman, picking holes in it is pointless.

The entire algorithm I described in my previous post is for NPC settlements only. Not the player. the player mines stuff by playing dwarf fortress, and just mining stuff like you always have.

There is no such thing as "a bunch of excess idle dwarves" because NPC settlements are not actually simulated to the extend of having idle dwarves or not. Their dwarves are abstract concepts.

That is a fundamental problem with your idea.  You are not trying to model economics based upon how the game actually works but on how you think the real-world works.  I advocate a yes simplified version of how fortress mode works for AI settlements, you seem to advocate something completely different altogether.  Yes they do mine but in a simplified manner like everything else.

I am not going to write any replies to responses until I have finished writing my ideas out in a similar manner as you have done.

[GavJ]

I advocate a yes simplified version of how fortress mode works for AI settlements, you seem to advocate something completely different altogether.

Players do all kinds of crazy crap that isn't relevant for NPCs. They care about things like how many times you have to click your mouse cause it will make your wrist hurt. Or how fun it is to build a giant golden spire and throw armadillos off of it. Or how long it takes to designate things while paused. And I couldn't care less if my dwarves have no friends and live in a 1x1 bedroom, etc.

Most of it has no meaningful correlation to NPC values or decisions. They don't move themselves around with wrists, and there is no such thing as paused to them, they just have fundamentally different values.

But whatever, okay, we shall see. look forward to the details for sure.

[GoblinCookie]

GoblinCookie's basic idea for caravans and production.

The present system of economic relationships with caravans involved them coming from an abstracted Mountainhome that exists even if your civilization is otherwise totally extinct.  This is should be replaced with a system by which caravans actually exist, are owned by settlements and 'move about' the map along trade routes calculated by the owner settlement according to various variables. 

In order to facilitate this and for other reasons of realism all  AI settlements produce and consume according a (simplified) version of what the player does in fortress mode.  The settlement has a total number of dwarves (these are just numbers and do not need to be fully fleshed out characters with names, though the latter are included as numbers), who are assigned to a number of professions according to the demands of the settlement and those settlements that it is trading with, limited by the available equipment. 

AI settlements also have stockpiles, but unlike player stockpiles they also list things like workbenches because these are considered to equipment in this simplified system as they enable dwarves to work (in the simplified and simulated economic system of AIs, there is no sharing of workbenches). 

Demand
At the core of the system are the demands of settlements.  This comes at bottom from the following sources. 
a) The population.
b) Equipment needed to refit dwarves or create workbenches.
c) Equipment needed to outfit militery forces.
d) Equipment needs to outfit caravans for trade.

The population demands goods based upon it's number and the affluence level of the settlement. The affluence level raises as existing demands are fully met, so the economy does not crash as a result of lack of demand.  At affluence level 0 all dwarves demand is anything to eat and anything to drink.  If they do not get both these dwarves will starve to death or emigrate until there is enough food and drink for everyone in the settlement.  If this goes on long enough the whole settlement population will simply leave en-masse, abandoning their home. 

Some goods are consumption items, like food and drink they are used up.  Other items are added to the 'reserved stockpile' which means that they help continually meet the demand for that item.  So the total number of beds that a settlement owns in reserve (for their simulated dormitories or bedrooms) helps to continually satisfy the bed demand for the appropriate affluence level, they do not continue to demand beds of that level. 

At the apex of the affluence level are coins (money).  This is a unique good in that the demand for this item is infinite, once the settlement affluence level reaches maximum the settlement will attempt to import as many coins as it can because if it finds itself with demands of a lower affluence level not being met it can trade those coins to meet the infinite coin demands of other settlements in return for what they need. 

Remember that while the demand is infinite, they only have a finite amount of surplus wealth to sell in exchange for said coins.  Coins facilitate the rapid transfer of other forms of wealth between advanced settlements as required and the production of coins can help to provide purchasing power to new settlements to acquire goods from advanced settlements provided they have the right materials to make them. 

Production
At core a settlement originally has a group of unemployed dwarves with nothing to do.  They will immediately assign those dwarves to various tasks according to the demands of the settlement.  The settlement always prioritises lower affluence demands (like food and drink) over higher affluence demands like gem-studded furnature.  It also prioritises it's own demands over those of other settlements if those demands are of the same level of affluence.  Military demands are also prioritised over all native civilian demands above affluence level 0 and all foreign demands.

In order to transfer occupations equipment will need equipment (a miner will need a pick) which in this sense includes workbenches which must be made out of the normal materials.  The equipment used in the dwarf's former occupation (if any) are freed up and added to the surplus stockpile for possible trade.  In the same manner as military demands occupational demands are prioritised above all civilian demands, but militery demands always have priority over occupational demands. 

A settlement can only produce things that it would be possible to produce given the local enviroment.  The AI does not assign it's simulated dwarf population to professions that are non-productive given the environment. Resources in the enviroment are divided up into limited and renewable.  Limited resources like metals only exist in a final amount and can be exhausted.  Renewable resources like trees or soil are capped, so the AI can only produce a finite amount using them.

Mining works somewhat in a special manner.  A settlement has a number that represents how far (and in some cases up) the settlement has dug and underground resources can only be extracted, whether by the miners themselves or by others that many z-levels up or down.  Unlike the human player the AI knows how far down the resources are and by mining for these resources it sometimes makes it easier for it to access other resources that it does not presently demand. 

Military
Settlements have a Fear Rating.  This determines what percentage of the settlement's potential workforce will be made into soldiers, leading to demand for military equipment as described above (of the highest quality that can be acquired) and also the demand for mechanisms for traps. The fear rating is affected by numerous factors such as. 

+ Proximity to a foreign settlement.
+ Proximity to a foreign settlement that has attacked your civilization in the past.
+ Having been looted or conquered or raided by beasts in the past.
+ Being at war. 
+ Being a bandit controlled settlement.
+ The Age being above the Age of Heroes in monster power.
+ Being a goblin settlement. 
- Being an elf settlement.
- Being at peace for a long time.
- The Age being below the Age of Heroes in monster power.
- Being on an island with no other civilizations on it.

Trade
The AI stockpile is divided into two categories.  The first category consists of goods that are reserved for consumption or use because they meet a demand whether external or internal.  The second category consists of surplus, goods produced in excess of internal demand.  Trade is carried out through caravans, caravans unlike at present belong to a particular settlement and follow a route from that settlement determined by a complex number of factors.

The AI will treat reserved goods that are demanded at a higher affluence level as surplus goods and trade them for goods of a lower affluence level if it has to.  They will therefore trade reserved gem-studded chests for food and drinks if they need to, if they can acquire it from a settlement or a visiting caravan that demands those goods. 

Essentially the settlement has a demand that is not being met whatever it's origin. It locates the places that have a surplus of the thing that is in demand in it's settlement first.  Then it locates all the other places where it can acquire something that is in demand in the settlements that can provide IT with something.  It goes through the possible options and settles on the route that is optimal given various factors.  Those factors are.

Travel Time:  The settlement wants the caravan to only take a year.  If it takes longer than this to complete, the route is considered undesirable, if it takes less time than this it is considered more desirable.  Roads and flat terrain in general reduce travel time, mountains and seas increase travel time. 

Safety: A caravan going through high-savagery terrain or in the proximity of bandit controlled settlements, enemy settlements, necromancer towers and goblin settlements (even if they *are* goblins) have low safety.  This contributes to 'Caravan failiure rate', meaning the chance of the caravans getting destroyed enroute.  The AI will not send caravans with a failure rate of below 95% (1 in 20), it will instead garrison caravans with troops until it gets to 95% if it can afford this, but the human player can send his caravans on a death-march if he wish. 

Profit: The AI tries to maximise the amount of trade it engages in on it's route but will not trade with enemy settlements for obvious reasons.  It tries to get rid of much of it's surplus as possible and acquire as many in-demand items (remember that this includes other caravans trading with the settlement) while balancing this against the travel time and safety limitations. 

Caravans
A settlement can only have as many caravans as it has nobles present and a caravan requires wood as well as surplus labour.  This means that a caravan will not be created if those things are not available.  Surplus labour is defined as labour that can be laid off from their present occupation at the cost only of surplus production. 

The AI initially calculates the demands and supply of a human settlement exactly as if it were an AI settlement even though it is not.  It would however keep track of the actual trading record of the human player in order to eventually calculate seperately what the actual surplus and demand of the player actually is.  It gradually transitions from a calculation based upon how much you would trade if you were AI to how much you actually trade. 

The human player cannot sell the caravan goods in excess of those in demand along the route that the caravan travels along.  It will simply refuse to buy certain goods, typically superabundant goods like stone for that reason and there is a limit to how much you can sell.  This means that it is not possible to sell a supply of anything that exceeds the overall demand. 

Caravans also demand food and drink themselves.  This is based upon the total population of the caravan, including it's stock of soldiers.  A caravan will buy food and drinks from settlements en-route for it's own route if they are available and routes will be planned accordingly as well as taking food and drinks from it's own settlement. 

Goblins can produce caravans and engage in trade but goblin caravans only ever visit other goblin settlements and as already noted goblin settlements also reduce safety even for other goblins increasing costs.  Goblins can however be traded with by outside caravans that will bear the safety hit.  It would probably be a wise strategy to trade only with outlying goblin settlements that are relatively isolated and then relying on the goblin's own trade network to handle the rest. 

(The Controversial Part)
If a settlement belongs to a civilization and is judged by the AI to have a demand for something but is not due to be visited by any caravans at all, the monarch will intervene.  His own personal caravan (if one exists) will be forced to visit this settlement and sell it what it is judged to need overriding the normal behavior.  If there is no reigning monarch or he has no sendable caravan, then the highest ranking noble's caravan will be selected (randomly if there are several nobles of the same rank)

This is intended to stimulate trade in the long term and avoid complete self-sufficiancy developing on the part of such a settlement.  Such self-sufficiancy would reduce the settlements dependance upon the rest of the civilization to nothing, thus giving them far to much to gain by becoming independant and nothing to lose. 

This is calculated on the basis of an imperative I must visit that settlement on the part of the caravan's routing AI.  In all other respects it behaves normally, trying to find the quickest, safest and most profitable route overall.  Even a journey to the other side of the world is not necceserily completely ruinous because of the numerous settlements that can be visited and traded with between the caravan's own base and the other side of the world. 

There ar a few conditions in which the caravan will not be sendable.  The first is if there is no way that the neccesery supplies can be acquired given the tradable surplus available.  The second is if there is not sufficiant surplus labour or weaponry to aquire the neccesery troops to get caravan failure rate to 95% or above.  The third is if none of the goods that the settlement is calculated to demand can be acquired. 

It is also possible to get rid of the caravan if you consistantly ignore it for long enough that the AI calculates your settlement has a surplus and demand of nothing at all.  Then you are essentially forced to be self-sufficiant until you can actually build a caravan of your own to start trading.

[GavJ]

My major concern with this is actually not the "controversial part" (I still think that's silly, but since you present it as an extra separate caravan, it implies you could turn it off if you want). My problem is the complete un-customizability of the rest of it and how much it would ruin modders.

You didn't mention how the settlements get all the other resources besides minerals, and the fact that they are all different and unique is a trap that's drawing you toward a bad place. An abstract cost to mine system in the raws accounts for anything and everything in one way, even things you haven't predicted or in heavily modified games, no problem. But your system where you actually start to simulate gameplay with hard-coded algorithms industry-by-industry does not.

As I hinted at in my previous post, humans have all kinds of crazy things that motivate them and cause us all to play the game wildly differently. The more you simulate NPCs explicitly, and uncustomizably, the more you just alienate me if I'm not playing YOUR specific type of fortress, because nobody else in my civilization will be abiding by my special needs or desires or mods. If you can mod the abstracted system, then you can just mod these things in and everybody is happy. If it's carefully simulated in core code, you can't, and only people who play exactly like the code suggests they should get the correct experience.

Wool, logs, meat, fish, silk webs, cheese, plants and seeds, leather, tree fruits, water, sand, clay, etc. etc.  None of which you've accounted for yet, each needs to have its own set of (FPS-lowering) detailed fort-by-fort simulations of how much they've dug or cut or sheared and who's doing it and when and how often, and you'd have to keep numbers on all the trees and plants and animals by species in every settlement and how they relate, and blah blah.

And what this does is, well A) slow down your game by quite a lot, but more importantly B) essentially lock in dwarves as the only reasonable species to play, by assuming their whole culture and industrial model and hard-coding it where we can't change it anymore. So then what do you do if modders add their own new materials that you haven't accounted for yet, or remove some, or completely change how stuff is mined (for instance, by requiring that wood by sawn and dried before use, using custom workshops)? None of this is possible anymore when the economy is specially simulated by NPCs versus abstract goods. At best it makes NPCS act completely nonsensically, at worst it crashes the game. You'd be undoing large amounts of flexibility that Toady has built into the game in the past.

Even more problematic, what do you do if I'm not playing as a dwarf, but as a custom species that screws up your hard-coded demands? How does your system would work if I'm using a custom species which does not eat (no farming, no demand or trade in food) or drink (no booze) or have emotions (need to be able to mod out again irrational nationalistic emotions even if you put them in as an option), and is amphibious, and lays eggs, is naked all the time, has 8 legs and all custom clothing, etc.?

Mine would work just fine against such a challenge. Notice that nowhere in my entire suggestion is there a single specific resource or assumption about what species is playing or what their society is like, because you can completely modify all demands and all production uniquely for each entity. You can easily make spiders that demand bones and produce silk for trade and use custom-modded nectar and clay to build their homes, and that make armor out of shells, and that prize kaolinite as their version of gold/jewels but find actual gold/jewels/coins useless biped toys. No problem-o, just whip up some custom raws. The complexity of my plan is almost exclusively in the complexity of the raw tags and other customizability I suggested, not the actual economics, which are like maybe 25% of the effort. The reason is because of this stuff I'm describing now.

[Scruiser]

I agree with most of GavJ's criticisms, but at this point I just want to bounce ideas around.  Direct rules may be simpler and easier to program in the short run, but in the long run, it takes more and more rules to catch all the edge cases.  But that said, I definitely prefer discussing specific ideas over arguing economics back and forth.  Reading it over closely again... I actually do roughly agree with your ideas about production GoblinCookie.

First:
Basic price algorithm:
1) Each entity has sets of RAWs that dictate things they need, such as

   Hmm... dictating needs at the entity level... it is more direct and simpler than calculating all of the needs from lower level traits... and making the parameters modable should make it possible to get realistic and playable values if Toady were willing to take input directly from forums (I think he has with some of the material RAWs in the past, when they were presented in an organized and documented manner with references).
   Just to try a different idea, I will break it up at a slightly lower level (still like your idea GavJ, but just as a though experiment).  Maybe try to enumerate the needs by category in the civ definition, then let the game calculate the production of raw materials and finished goods from those needs....
so for dwarf's rooms:
[PERSONAL_ROOM:LOW_INCOME:4:BED:CABINET] for a low income dwarf, their rooms are 4 tiles (i.e. 2x2) in size and have a bed and cabinet)
[PERSONAL_ROOM:MED_INCOME:8:BED:CABINET:CHEST:CRAFT]
[PERSONAL_ROOM:HIGH_INCOME:12:BED:CABINET:CABINET:CHEST:CRAFT:MISC_FURNITURE]
or clothes:
[PERSONAL_CLOTHES:MID_BODY:LEGS:FEET]  where articles of clothing are needed/worn
[FASHION:HEAD:MID_BODY]
   For food needs, they would be calculated entirely from the creature RAWs... hopefully they will be expanded to specify different quanties of food and different calorie/protein/nutrition requirements.  The site then just calculates it needs based on number of creatures and the RAWs of each creature.
  The game could calculate backwards from finished item needs to raw material needs (i.e. no direct specification for wood, just a specification for beds and furniture and stuff that requires fuel)
   So the game looks at the demographics of a site population, identifies what they need to fill out their different categories of needs and then calculates the site needs for that year from that.  Note that these raws will also specify

   For resource production, the game does the opposite.  Take in all local site resources available, take in skills and traits of local creatures, creatures assume professions based on needs but prioritized by skills each has, then calculate actual resources produced.  So if a site need X amount of woods cut, the game approximates that it needs Y wood cutters, then it selects top Y woodcutters in site population.  Obviously, it would have to have some algorithm for prioritizing during shortcoming of resources. 

Hmm... that is actually pretty close to GoblinCookies idea for production.

At the apex of the affluence level are coins (money).  This is a unique good in that the demand for this item is infinite, once the settlement affluence level reaches maximum the settlement will attempt to import as many coins as it can because if it finds itself with demands of a lower affluence level not being met it can trade those coins to meet the infinite coin demands of other settlements in return for what they need. 

Raw greed for wealth (gems, precious metal, coins, and high priced commodities in general), does actually sound like an interesting mechanic to me.  It would drive conflict/motivations once the basic need demand are met.  Plus it fits with the whole greedy dwarf mythology.  Rating the demands by level of importance versus affluence seems like it might work.  Like food is always high importance, but caviar and brie are luxury items that forts only prioritize as they reach a high level of wealth.

My edits in orange. Lots of them are just being careful about terminology. "Demand" means a very specific thing - i.e. the demand curve. Not the same as consumption (actual number of things sunk) or relative desirability of different materials -- both of which drive demand. Demand (and supply) are law-based, shouldn't be adjusted directly.

Yeah, you're right, that was sloppy of me, especially since I've been talking about economics much of this thread.  I will be try to be technical when my suggestion needs it.  To clarify even further: On the global scale famine reduces aggregate food supply.  In the micro-economic terms of your fort (viewing it as like a single business), this famine would cause traders to have a higher demand for food (because they would be wanting more of it to ship elsewhere).  Did I get that right ?  I took macro and micro in high school, but I haven't refreshed since then.

[GavJ]

If Toady's willing to make raws at an even more precise level than what I suggested, that would be awesome, no problem with that at all. I was just trying to suggest what seemed to me like a minimum amount of raws to make it powerful.

Precision detail isn't really a problem as long as it's happening in a customizable context. I'm happy with Cookie having most of the detail he wants, as long as it's not written into the hard code. That is going to require hugely more syntax complexity though. So although I don't disagree with the sentiment Cookie suggests in and of itself, I do think it's impossible to do "lots of detail" AND "simple code" without making the game worse.

"Lots of detail" and "very complex code necessary to make that detail customizable" is fine. (i.e. Scruiser + Cookie amalgam)
"Lower settlement detail / more abstraction" and "moderately complex code to make it customizable" is also fine (my plan)
"Almost no detail" and "super simple code" makes for a playable game and doesn't step on modders but itn's as much fun (current game as it stands now)
"Lots of detail" and "simple code" however, is only really possible if you make it simple by hard coding one specific playstyle, which is bad (Cookie plan by itself)

For example, with your clothing needs example: that's fine, because if I want to play some sort of mod that doesn't use clothes in a traditional way, I can just not put any of those tags in or set them to something null or whatever. That's all the difference in the world from an alternative of code that assumes clothing detail without letting me change it.




There are lesser problems with too much precision, though, potentially:
1) Toady might possibly have better things to spend his time on.
2) It's inefficient if he's going to change some of the underlying features later on.

But those are more things for Toady to worry about than us, probably.

Raw greed for wealth (gems, precious metal, coins, and high priced commodities in general), does actually sound like an interesting mechanic to me.  It would drive conflict/motivations once the basic need demand are met.  Plus it fits with the whole greedy dwarf mythology.

Again, this is an example of something that's fine if you can modify it or turn it on or off by having is in the raws and such. But if you hard-code it, then you're assuming people are playing dwarven civs and damaging flexibility of the game. Elves, for example, would not act like that at all.

Yeah, you're right, that was sloppy of me, especially since I've been talking about economics much of this thread.  I will be try to be technical when my suggestion needs it.  To clarify even further: On the global scale famine reduces aggregate food supply.  In the micro-economic terms of your fort (viewing it as like a single business), this famine would cause traders to have a higher demand for food (because they would be wanting more of it to ship elsewhere).  Did I get that right ?  I took macro and micro in high school, but I haven't refreshed since then.

Well it depends. Since we are discussing more versus less detail here, you could do this with more or less detail.

You COULD just define demand curves and supply curves directly, in the simplest of all abstract modeling. But if you do that, it implies you don't want ANY other detail, because these are the solutions of the more detailed equations. This is essentially "skipping right to the end" i.e. highly abstract method.

But none of the three of us so far have actually suggested anything close to that level of abstraction.

1) The CURRENT game is the most abstract of all our proposed systems, almost as abstract as you can get while having goods being sold at all. It just jumps straight to prices and abstracts away even supply and demand themselves.

2) The next most would be something that alters supply and demand but not prices directly. Something more like a very primitive half-hearted attempt at an economy that is trying slightly more than DF but still usually failing. Like, I dunno, Runescape, or oldschool Pirates! Gold of the Caribbean.

3) Mine is the next most abstract, but I was suggesting that you actually still simulate cost of production and need while taking into consideration alternative goods, etc. The relative desires for stuff, the amount of resources available (abstractly), the cost of "mining" them (abstractly) etc. are what you would push around in that model.

4) Cookie's is the next most abstract. In his model I'm not sure what you'd push around, because he only gave one example (mining) that isn't really an industry that is affected by weather or politics much (lol). Guessing though, that for something more like farming, he would want to model something like the size of fields that the fort has, and the yield of a farm, and a few details like that. In which case, a famine would be modeled by making farms smaller (flooding/dust bowls), or abstractly lowering farm yield in general.

5) In your next most abstract version, where there's potentially even more detail, you would potentially push around even more detailed variables. Like, I dunno, individual crop species blights?

6) Basically, real life we have the MOST massively complex thing.



With different models, we are ignoring different amounts of real life. The more you ignore, the more you push forward the point at which the environment would be modeled as intervening. And the faster your game is. And the easier it is to code while still being customizable. Whereas the less you ignore, the more powerful it is.

[Scruiser]

"Lots of detail" and "very complex code necessary to make that detail customizable" is fine. (i.e. Scruiser + Cookie amalgam)
"Lower settlement detail / more abstraction" and "moderately complex code to make it customizable" is also fine (my plan)
"Almost no detail" and "super simple code" makes for a playable game and doesn't step on modders but itn's as much fun (current game as it stands now)
"Lots of detail" and "simple code" however, is only really possible if you make it simple by hard coding one specific playstyle, which is bad (Cookie plan by itself)

This sums up our discussions really well.

Raw greed for wealth (gems, precious metal, coins, and high priced commodities in general), does actually sound like an interesting mechanic to me.  It would drive conflict/motivations once the basic need demand are met.  Plus it fits with the whole greedy dwarf mythology.

Again, this is an example of something that's fine if you can modify it or turn it on or off by having is in the raws and such. But if you hard-code it, then you're assuming people are playing dwarven civs and damaging flexibility of the game. Elves, for example, would not act like that at all.

Greedy behavior calculated from Greed trait+ Immoderation with a little bit of Pride, Vanity, Thoughtlessness, and Single Mindedness in the mix, influenced by valuation of Power and Commerce.  The last personality update actually got all the pieces in place.

Your six levels of abstraction represent the issue well I think.  Also, I think there is another questions to ask besides what level of abstraction the final, complete game has.  We need to consider how Toady gets there, since even the big updates often only make intermediate steps in making things happen.  For example, Toady could work really heavily with all the personality updates he made in the last update to get really detailed individual behavior and then work on interactions between personalities and personalities effect on world-gen.  By modeling individual personality with a good AI, the interactions could create high level behavior in civilizations and entities.  Or Toady could go the other way and work on entity AI and gradually improve that.
What intermediate steps do you think Toady should take to achieve "more challenging trading"?

[GavJ]

What intermediate steps do you think Toady should take to achieve "more challenging trading"?

That's a tough one. Personality and ethics and all that are certainly helpful and could be leveraged. And they were good things to do as foundation early on, because they have various uses, and aren't just dead weight waiting for a specific future feature before becoming useful.

Other things like that? Hm...

I can't really think of much, honestly. Almost nothing in any of our different plans makes much sense done piecemeal. NPC production and consumption are useless no matter how you work out their details, prior to the whole economy simulations being activated. And NPC-NPC trade is meaningless without production and consumption. NPC-Player trade could maybe be made a little bit more realistic without the rest, but it would require parallel mechanics that probably wouldn't actually be "intermediate" so much as "unrelated band-aid fix and needing to be replaced later when doing it correctly"

The only thing I can think of is to implement world-scale pathing for trade routes in a more advanced fashion. Namely, taking into account roads and enemy territory, etc. not just oceans and mountains and a fixed radius, like currently. Stuff like:
* Grasslands allow further radius of trade routes than hills and forests do. You can use the same sorts of pathing costs as are in fortress mode for "restricted traffic" and such for different terrains. Then have a customizable number in the raws or whatever that says the total allowed travel distance number, and the cost of different biomes. Each tile grassland uses up 3 points, marsh uses up 10, mountains 30, or whatever. (also in raws, entity-specific. Elves can move through forests faster and such)
* Enemy territory blocks the trade routes of civs hostile to them (so you have to go around which may make the distance too far and thus trade not available)
* Roads greatly extend distance of trade for civs that are at peace with the road's owner (lowest travel cost, of 1, for example).
* Walls (which are suggested in the code as a future feature) block trade routes, actual settlements themselves do too if youre not at peace with them
etc. etc.

That would make current type trading slightly more interesting. AND it would be relevant to upcoming army control features by having them work similarly. So it has some intermediate value to it, but would also help make advanced trading slightly easier later on.

[Scruiser]

A few more intermediate steps
If Toady is planning on ultimately going with a level 2 or 3 of modeling (to use your list from early) as opposed to a level 4 or 5, then he could implement some very basic dynamic pricing rules, just enough to feel it out and see if he is going in the right direction.  Like during caravan trading pay more for weapons during war or more for food during famine.

Another major issue is that the game doesn't track resources to finished good fully.  Right now, a dwarf civ can have no access to iron, but still have steel somehow (I've noticed it on embarks where the game forced me to buy steel anvils because there was no iron anvils).  Its even worse in mods with materials produced by long chains of reactions.  The home civ can have the final item/material while having none of the intermediate resources.  If the game started tracking things like this (i.e. resources to final product) it would force a few other changes on Toady (crude stone anvils as a fallback, demand for iron/flux stone to produce steel).  It would be a start to calculating production levels and stuff like that.  As an intermediate change, it would alter what caravans and invaders have.