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[GavJ]

This might be of interest.

In terms of specific goods and their relative values and demands, I'd suggest merely putting all that in the raws.

[NEEDED_GOOD_TYPE:BUILDING_MATERIALS]
[AMOUNT:5] as in, per year per citizen of this entity. Units unclear at the moment, would need defining somehow, whatever.
[OPTION:(item and material token):(preference for this option)] for examples:
[OPTION:A:WOOD:NONE:WOOD:NONE:2]
[OPTION:B:BOULDER:NONE:INORGANIC:NONE:5][REACTION_CLASS:BUILDING_STONE] can use reaction classes just like in reaction raws
etc.
[OPTION:C:A:B:6] <--perhaps some way of specifying that certain mixtures are even more preferable? (Not terribly well thought out yet. If not, you don't need the "A" and "B" stuff at all)

So every year, the demand for building materials is 5 units per sentient in the civilization, and stone is 2.5x more preferable than wood for building (directly affects price curves), but either can be swapped for the other if the price difference at market goes beyond the preference difference (if stone is 3x more expensive, then they'll buy wood, because 3 > 2.5)

And then so on for whatever other classes of things people might want

[NEEDED_GOOD_TYPE:SPICES]
[AMOUNT:1]
[OPTION: blah blah

[NEEDED_GOOD_TYPE:FURNITURE]
[AMOUNT:3]
[OPTION: blah blah
[OPTION: blah blah




Thus, your thread represents a personal preference mod, but other people can do whatever trade systems they prefer, instead, without it being actually very complicated at all. Toady would need to put in some basics, but ideally, they are all customizable like this. (also, the cost of mining originally and over time should be in the relevant material raws, and raws for anything like trade routes too, specifying cost per distance or blah blah)

[GoblinCookie]

Caravans refuse to buy goods that are massively in excess of the settelements they are set up to visit's demand last year.  So precious metals, gems and coins will not be able to be sold unless there are settlements that wish to buy those things, that is settlements with a present surplus of goods.

A better way to do this is:
1) Use trade routes (important again) to calculate distance and terrain difficulty into some overall difficulty score for the trip.
2) Have a general cost assigned to difficulty points for caravans.
3) Caravan weight also adds incrementally more difficulty and cost of travel. Thus you can now list all available potential goods in order of expected profit (based on supply demand etc) / pound, and you can recalculate total trip profit after each addition. Go down the list, adding the highest profitability / pound goods available (up to the amounts of each they expect the player to buy), in that order, until the caravan is full.
4) Now go back and look at the intermediate calculations for total trip profits after each addition. Choose the load with the highest expected profit. This may be in the middle (a not full cart), if for instance, the last load of stuff filling up the cart was bulky low profit things they don't expect you to buy, then they wouldn't bother hauling them expensively to you.
5) They also have a rough estimate of how much profit to expect from the return goods, which is just based on last year in some way. If the sum of outbound and inbound = 0 or negative, then you don't get that caravan at all that year.
6) If positive, then you do get the caravan, and once they arrive they will trade ANYTHING you have for whatever its going rate is from supply/demand/your location. That's just good business -- once you've invested in the trip already, you would buy anything with >0 profit, even if it's less than what you hoped for (although you may be wary of future trips).

Actually I do not think that the caravans necceserily are motivated by profit, they appear to be overtly political and controlled by the civ-level authorities as their main instrument of power.  If it is costly to go someplace, they will simply deduct the costs from the profit of the rest of the civilization's easier roots.  That is because for political reasons not sending a caravan means the same as granting it complete independance.

The caravan keeps track of the total demand of all the settement in it's trade route, dwarf or otherwise.  It simply refuses to buy more goods than it can concievably sell to all the settlements on it's route.  So if it has been glutted with a resource, it simply will not buy it.  The other key element here is all goods are ranked into various categories, with coins as the highest good. 

Food is at the bottom of the pile, drinks are near the bottom, gold and silver bars are near the top and coins are the top and a settlement when buying prioritises the demands lower on the list, sacrificing say coins in order to buy food.  When all absolutely other demands are glutted but the settlement can still sell things it stocks up on hard currency.  That means that we replicate the way that currency works rather well without having to introduce a special financial mechanic. 

The great thing about this is that we can have a world market operating over hundreds of years, with no artificiality to it at all.  If you make a world where metal is scarce, you will have a hard time buying metal from caravans.  While if you make a world where it is superabundant, you will find yourself unable to sell almost any metal to the caravans at all; the superabundance of the materials renders it worthless to them because nobody will buy it. 

[quote author=GavJ
I would add though that local resources don't just leap out of the ground for you though. It costs money to mine things. More money the deeper you mine, too. They should only mine goods if the going rate for them is greater than the cost of mining. And if you want to get especially fancy, they have X amount of labor available for trade, and mining requires labor AND cost. In which case, they'll mine only the most profitable things until they run out of labor or investment capital for the resources needed. Then, even if there's a ton of profitable stuff nearby, a small, low-population settlement won't mine very much of it at all.
[/quote]

It costs no money to mine things in dwarf fortress because nobody GETS PAID!  Got it? 

This as far as we know also extends to the people manning the caravans.  Caravans then would consume a certain minimal amount of food and drinks, so if they are short of those things they will demand you sell them those items before any other other transaction can occur and a certain amount of food and drinks are kept in reserve.  They could also consume horses and wood in order to expand. 

The limitation for mining should instead be exactly what it is in game terms as much as feasible.  The total number of picks in the settlement and the total number of miners (we have to simplify it here so only miners can mine).  What is mined should be what is available in the local area.  As time goes on, the settlement digs deeper, so the resources it gets are those available deeper and deeper into the earth. 

[GavJ]

Okay, that's an interesting take to consider them as political tools.

However:

1) The logic doesn't really apply to anybody except the dwarven caravan. You ARE politically independent from the human caravan, and since they don't negotiate with you at all about politics, they seem entirely profit driven, which should operate roughly along the lines I outlined.

2) Even if it is a political tool, whether that actually changes anything with regard to trade goods depends... Specifically, the homeland cannot simultaneously expect tribute AND subsidize trading with me, those are contradictory concepts. You sort of have to pick one. 

2a) If they're subsidizing me, then they should be giving me certain amound of charity for free every year, probably things that advance their agenda especially (like metal ores that I lack to make weapons to help fight our mutual enemies). Essentially the way you would model this would be to do what I outlined above, but shave off X amount of money off the top every year representing the subsidy they're willing to pay. If that's less than travel costs, then just treat travel costs as smaller. If larger than travel costs, then provide the leftover as free "store credit" on the trading screen. Additionally, give a boost to the cost/pound of any strategic resources - i.e. if a good has political value, pretend it's a bit more profitable than it actually is.

2b) On the other hand, if they treat me like a colony and expect me to enrich THEM, then their caravan should operate just like any purely-economically minded caravan. I.e. what I described in the previous post. Because that's what will most enrich them. Their motives are essentially exactly the same as a corporation. They aren't gonna give me free handouts of any sort, because a colony that can't take care of itself is a pointless colony if you're of the perspective that they are tools for homeland enrichment.

2c) One other option is actually expecting me to provide MORE than normal profit to them, as if in the form of something like national taxes. Which would work as in 2b, but starting out when they arrive with negative "store credit." And if you don't get it at least above zero for a couple years or something, then you get punished. For example, they send an army to replace you as overseer, and you can give in, or declare independence and fight them like a siege, and then maybe they send more troops, etc.

In no set of circumstances do I see how it makes sense to ignore caravan traveling cost -- no matter how far or short of a trip -- but then never subsidize any goods on top of that.  That would be bizarre. It doesn't line up with any realistic set of goals.

Coins and gems being treated as special also doesn't make sense. Gems are commodities like anything else, and if there's not enough demand for the jewelry and decorations to be made out of them, then their price will fall. Simple as that. Just like lumber or anything else.  And coins make even less sense, because I don't WANT dwarven coins from the caravan... considering that they're useless to then use to trade with elven or human caravans who don't use the same coins...  I only want goods with inherent value.

If coins are worth exactly their base metal cost, then they're okay, but might as well just be ingots then.

It costs no money to mine things in dwarf fortress because nobody GETS PAID!  Got it?

No... of course it costs a lot. $$ changing hands is by no means a prerequisite for there being costs.

The costs I am mentioning is in an economics sense. As in literally, they do not leap out of the ground at you. Obtaining 500 bars of iron requires:
* A ton of dwarf labor that you could have been spending on other stuff. Both mining and smelting. That makes it an opportunity cost equal to at least the value of whatever else those dwarves would be doing.
* A ton of coal or charcoal, etc. which has economic value
* Overhead in the form of resources spent to build smelters and to dig out rooms for them and blah blah.

If you were the owner of a mine or other industries -- private or government -- and you ignored those costs involved with mining, you would bankrupt your state or your company in the blink of an eye... using unpaid slaves has nothing to do with it. All the above costs still apply.

If you DO pay your workers, then the only difference is that the labor costs goes from being an opportunity cost to an explicit cost, which usually isn't actually that big of a practical difference.

[Scruiser]

IRL the value of coins was originally the value of the metal in them, and it was only as empires made laws about defacing their coins (if they were worth less than the metal in them) and who could mint coins (if they were worth more than the metal in them) that they become a fiat currency.  Thus I must agree with GavJ about the coins.  The could start as just a way of trading value for a given high value metal, and become gradually decoupled from the metal value as groups/civilizations try to invest or speculate (see the colonial eras obsession with gold specie).
So the game needs wealthy individuals/groups to use precious metals and gems as a luxury item like IRL in order to create the demand for them to serve as a valuable trade good like they are IRL.

[GavJ]

Some other issues with coins:

1) If seeds are worth usually, on average, about 1 dorfbuck (not exactly in a real economy, of course, it varies), and they don't rot either, then they make a better currency than gold, because in a famine or siege, they hold their value, whereas gold becomes less inherently valuable in crises. Or fill in various other alternatives. A boulder is also way the hell more useful and inherently valuable than a gold coin, and retains value better when I'm stuck inside freaking out how to build emergency doors and walls, not paying merchants.

2) If coins were to count as being worth more than their metal's commodity content, then why would your fort not simply counterfeit coins all day long?

[GoblinCookie]

Okay, that's an interesting take to consider them as political tools.

However:

1) The logic doesn't really apply to anybody except the dwarven caravan. You ARE politically independent from the human caravan, and since they don't negotiate with you at all about politics, they seem entirely profit driven, which should operate roughly along the lines I outlined.

2) Even if it is a political tool, whether that actually changes anything with regard to trade goods depends... Specifically, the homeland cannot simultaneously expect tribute AND subsidize trading with me, those are contradictory concepts. You sort of have to pick one. 

1. Yes the trade between civilizations should be governed by a more profit based system than is the case with dwarven caravans.  Essentially the monarch/ruler should demand that every dwarf settlement recieve at least one caravan per year before foreign trade is allowed.

A lot of this is gameplay based, the caravan at present also doubles as a political envoy and settlements kind of need trade in order to acquire weaponry to defend themselves early on. 

2. Are they?  You have to consider that by subsidising you now they can increase your production later so that you can pay them tribute then.  Think of it as investment, the centre invests at a lost in farflung outposts so that ultimately they can potentially provide them with resources that are not plentiful in their native enviroment. 

2a) If they're subsidizing me, then they should be giving me certain basic staples for free every year, things that advance their agenda (like metal ores that I lack to make weapons to help fight our mutual enemies). Essentially the way you would model this would be to do what I outlines above, but shave off X amount of money off the top every year representing the subsidy they're willing to pay. If that's less than travel costs, then just treat travel costs as smaller. If larger than travel costs, then provide the leftover as free "store credit" on the trading screen. Additionally, give a boost to the cost/pound of any strategic resources - i.e. if a good has political value, pretend it's a bit more profitable than it actually is.

The subsidy only consists of the expense of sending you the caravan, both the costs of the journey and the fact is it not available to say trade with the elves instead.  So the subsidy in question is the opportunity to trade, not the goods that you can buy.  They are not giving you freebies, the opportunity to trade *is* the freebie. 

2b) On the other hand, if they treat me like a colony and expect me to enrich THEM, then their caravan should operate just like any purely-economically minded caravan. I.e. what I described in the previous post. Because that's what will most enrich them. Their motives are essentially exactly the same as a corporation.

They in this question is *your civilization*.  They are for political reasons making sure that all settlements get a dwarf caravan so that they do not become isolated and drift away. 

I never suggested that the caravan should trade differently.  I suggested that the civilization should always make sure there is at least one caravan arriving at each of it's settlements independantly of the costs of the journey and whether

2c) One other option is actually expecting me to provide MORE than normal profit to them, as if in the form of something like national taxes. Which would work as in 2b, but starting out when they arrive with negative "store credit." And if you don't get it at least above zero for a couple years or something, then you get punished. For example, they send an army to replace you as overseer, and you can give in, or declare independence and fight them like a siege, and then maybe they send more troops, etc.

That all depends upon how a civilization is organised.  At the moment it seems rather like Switzerland used to be, very decentralised indeed. 

They should primarily want troops and supplies for said troops and in wartime. 

In no set of circumstances do I see how it makes sense to ignore caravan traveling cost -- no matter how far or short of a trip -- but then never subsidize any goods on top of that.  That would be bizarre. It doesn't line up with any realistic set of goals.

I never said we ignore caravan travelling cost, only that we should in the case of dwarf settlements that do not presently have a caravan attending to them.

Coins and gems being treated as special also doesn't make sense. Gems are commodities like anything else, and if there's not enough demand for the jewelry and decorations to be made out of them, then their price will fall. Simple as that. Just like lumber or anything else.  And coins make even less sense, because I don't WANT dwarven coins from the caravan... considering that they're useless to then use to trade with elven or human caravans who don't use the same coins...  I only want goods with inherent value.

The most useless objects are at the top of the list, the most essential items are at the bottom.  What you are saying is exactly the point, a AI settlement will trade money to meet the demand for all the items lower down, which means everything else.

Just as they will trade beer in order to buy food if they have no money.  The first things the fortress sells are those items highest on the list, which ultimately means money.  The first things it buys are the things lowest down on the list, ultimately that means food. 

They will not sell gems for food if they have money.  If they have no money they will sell gems.  Then they will sell say metal bars, then furnature etc.  All the way they are progressing from the useless to the essential.   

Fortresses that presently have a surplus of everything else buy money.  You as the gold/silver producing settlment 'sell' money up to the amount that the other settlements demand.  Those settlements store up money because they can use it to buy things in the future and it has a high trading value.  You can do the same as well in the late-game. 

What this kind of means is that the older the history of the game, the more money will be in demand.  Because the more overall surplus that is being produced by settlements, the more money is demanded so the more you can sell.   

If coins are worth exactly their base metal cost, then they're okay, but might as well just be ingots then.

Obviously they are worth more than their base metal cost.  The amount they are worth more is dependant upon their quality value of course. 

No... of course it costs a lot. $$ changing hands is by no means a prerequisite for there being costs.

The costs I am mentioning is in an economics sense. As in literally, they do not leap out of the ground at you. Obtaining 500 bars of iron requires:
* A ton of dwarf labor that you could have been spending on other stuff. Both mining and smelting. That makes it an opportunity cost equal to at least the value of whatever else those dwarves would be doing.
* A ton of coal or charcoal, etc. which has economic value
* Overhead in the form of resources spent to build smelters and to dig out rooms for them and blah blah.

If you were the owner of a mine or other industries -- private or government -- and you ignored those costs involved with mining, you would bankrupt your state or your company in the blink of an eye...

It did reveal that you were thinking in real-life economics sense rather than dwarf fortress economics sense.   

That is where it gets difficult and complicated.  Ideally we want it to work as a simplified version of a dwarf fortress game, so it kinda natural and you fit into the system quite nicely.

An AI settlement will have a number of miners.  The number of miners is limited by the number of picks.  Ideally we want to model it so that the more metals an AI settlement demands, the more they will demand picks and the more picks they get the more miners that we will have. 

What we would have to do is compare the maximum amount the caravan that arrives in a settlement has as a metal surplus with the maximum amount that the caravan is prepared to buy (that is the total demand for that metal on the trade route) then it will try and increase production of metals.  Initially it will put in a demand for X number of picks and as long as all demands lower (more essential) than picks are fulfilled it will buy up picks using the least essential objects it has (ultimately money).

If noone sells them a pick within the year, then they will instead create themselves a new metalsmith's forge and a metalsmith to create themselves a pick if neither are available.

Trade then drives specialisation just as it does in real-life, especially when money is involved.  Because money is useless, a settlement will trade it's useless money for picks, because those are lower ranked as money is practically worthless.  This means instead of everyone making their own metal objects, we end with some settlements with metalsmiths and others with miners, creating a feedback loop by which one makes picks to increase the number of miners and the increased number of miners produces more ore to feed an increased numbers of smiths.

All this of course goes askew (as it should) when the miner settlement manages to exhaust it's reserves of ore, causing that settlement to respecialise and the metalsmith's settlement if it cannot find another source in it's trade routes would do likewise. 

[GavJ]

You have to consider that by subsidising you now they can increase your production later so that you can pay them tribute then.  Think of it as investment

That's fine, but it still has to be one or the other for any given year.

So the subsidy in question is the opportunity to trade, not the goods that you can buy.

I understand that's what your suggestion implied, but why? This doesn't make sense to draw a weird line in the sand there like that. You should be willing to invest a certain amount to get them on their feet, based on how much you hope to get back (which should be roughly the same for each settlement, a priori).

Amongst other bizarre things this would imply, would be that settlements further away from the mountainhomes get more subsidy than ones nearby, because the journey is more expensive. Why do they deserve more subsidy? Why is that in the civ's interests? It isn't, really.  If a settlement is 10 feet away from you, then you are free to use that money you would have spent on a long journey to directly help them with food and stuff.  On the flip side of the coin, if some idiot migrants go 5,000 miles away and only have sand to trade you, then you're just going to write them off as a loss.

They are for political reasons making sure that all settlements get a dwarf caravan so that they do not become isolated and drift away. 

Can you specify what these "political reasons" are, exactly? Because the only ones I can think of are A) fattening them up for economic gain later on, or B) maintaining a military fort or whatnot, to stop or check troop movements or guarantee territory claims.

Neither of those makes sense to subsidize a journey no matter how long only but then arbitrarily stop right there and not spend a single penny on supplying them directly. On the contrary, in both situations, the colony's existence and prosperity has some $$$ value to you politically. And that's how much you should spend on them, distributed across all costs - journey AND/OR direct support, however far that amount of money goes. Which is an amount that should logically be determined by the political value of their existence, not their distance.

[snipping a couple more points that seem to hinge on the same disagreement as above]

They will not sell gems for food if they have money.  If they have no money they will sell gems.  Then they will sell say metal bars, then furnature etc.  All the way they are progressing from the useless to the essential.   

So you're saying money is the most useless, so it goes outbound first, alright.
That makes a lot more sense than what I thought you meant before.

Still, though, why would a colony want money at all, ever? The civilization would do just as well to sell base metals or essentially intentionally use something like grain or salt as money.
The reason being that no colony wants to end up in a situation where they have dwarven coins and then can't buy human goods because they don't use dwarven coins.
If dwarven coins are worth only their weight in metal, then okay, humans would take them without you suffering a loss, but then it just essentially becomes a cluttery, redundant feature versus ingots.

I guess I wouldn't have a problem with it, since it doesn't hurt anything, but it feels odd.



Now if you are going to suggest there are things like banks, or whatnot, then that's a whole different story for money...

[GoblinCookie]

You have to consider that by subsidising you now they can increase your production later so that you can pay them tribute then.  Think of it as investment

That's fine, but it still has to be one or the other for any given year.

Not if it is a a forced trade.  You WILL give me this and in return YOU WILL be having that.  That is what I was saying, the basic assumption is flawed.  That does not have to be voluntery and can be artificially stimulated for political reasons. 

I understand that's what your suggestion implied, but why? This doesn't make sense to draw a weird line in the sand there like that. You should be willing to invest a certain amount to get them on their feet, based on how much you hope to get back (which should be roughly the same for each settlement, a priori).

Who is THEY in this case?  They means presumably the settlements in your civilization, but you are one of the settlements in your civilization and compared to the loss that your dissapearance into isolation represents for them politically, the costs of the caravan which are only food and beer (no money involved) are trivial even if it was to the furthest away island on the edge of the map. 


Amongst other bizarre things this would imply, would be that settlements further away from the mountainhomes get more subsidy than ones nearby, because the journey is more expensive. Why do they deserve more subsidy? Why is that in the civ's interests? It isn't, really.  If a settlement is 10 feet away from you, then you are free to use that money you would have spent on a long journey to directly help them with food and stuff.  On the flip side of the coin, if some idiot migrants go 5,000 miles away and only have sand to trade you, then you're just going to write them off as a loss.[/quote]

It is in the Civ's interests to grow, expand and survive.  Historically they did so, which means they have rejected the kind of logic that your expound.  If nobody ever subsidised the outlying areas, then no civilization would ever have expanded.

Your wellbeing is here the intrinsic goal and the cost here is relatively speaking trivial.  They grow and expand through you, even if you do not sell them a thing.  The danger here is that you might simply dissapear into isolation, you are almost being bribed with an opportunity which if you take it will bind you closer to the rest of your civilization.

Can you specify what these "political reasons" are, exactly? Because the only ones I can think of are A) fattening them up for economic gain later on, or B) maintaining a military fort or whatnot, to stop or check troop movements or guarantee territory claims.

Neither of those makes sense to subsidize a journey no matter how long only but then arbitrarily stop right there and not spend a single penny on supplying them directly. On the contrary, in both situations, the colony's existence and prosperity has some $$$ value to you politically. And that's how much you should spend on them, distributed across all costs - journey AND/OR direct support, however far that amount of money goes. Which is an amount that should logically be determined by the political value of their existence, not their distance.

The value of keeping up communications and continually tempting the locals with the benefits of continued assosiation are always going to be worth the relatively trivial costs of the caravan when seen on a civilization level basis. 

So you're saying money is the most useless, so it goes outbound first, alright.
That makes a lot more sense than what I thought you meant before.

Still, though, why would a colony want money at all, ever? The civilization would do just as well to sell base metals or essentially intentionally use something like grain or salt as money.

Because those things are useful.  You see the fundermental paradox here, money is actually valuable because it is the completely worthless thing that you can most afford to lose.  This means that the fortress's money is really just the least useful item that it has.  Gems are lower ranked than coins, because they are more useful being afterall rather pretty decorations, gold bars are lower ranked because they can turned into pretty decorative objects and more money. 

If all a fortress has only base metals, then it will indeed use these as money, so that is exactly the situation.  But if a fortress has coins it wants to keep it's base metals because those unlike money are useful.  It wants to keep useful things because it can do something with them. 

The reason being that no colony wants to end up in a situation where they have dwarven coins and then can't buy human goods because they don't use dwarven coins.
If dwarven coins are worth only their weight in metal, then okay, humans would take them without you suffering a loss, but then it just essentially becomes a cluttery, redundant feature versus ingots.

I guess I wouldn't have a problem with it, since it doesn't hurt anything, but it feels odd.

Now if you are going to suggest there are things like banks, or whatnot, then that's a whole different story for money...

A fortress that mines gold and turns it into coins for export is essentially acting as a bank.  It is buying goods in exchange for coins, those coins are able to be sold because they in demand by the mega fortresses that presently are in overall surplus.  So it is essentially issuing credit to those fortresses, which those fortresses will then use when the tables are turned for whatever reason and the coin producer is extracting payment from the other settlements surplus goods.

I do not understand the point about dwarven and human money.  There is no reason that a dwarf civilization would not end up using human money exclusively if the only source of currency was a human gold mining town.  Coins are just artificial gemstones made of metals.  The better 'cut' they are, the greater their value like with gemstones.  The limiting factor here is demand, remember that a caravan will not buy in advance of what they can sell of anything. 

When they have things to sell but have already met all their demands, a settlement would try and buy gemstones or coins or whatever they can get that is useless but has high value.  If they cannot get coins, they buy gemstones, if not that then something lower down on the list, like gem-studded furnature.  This means that the more advanced and developed the world the the more it becomes moneterised, which reflects rather nicely the actual historical process. 

To start with everyone will be trading valuable goods with eachother any because nobody is producing a surplus that is not directly used for barter, no caravan will buy coins.  As the history progresses, more highly advanced settlements develop and start to wish to stockpile coins as a store of their credited wealth.  Eventually there will be so many coins and gemstones floating about that all transactions with caravans will be done by medium of coins. 

[Scruiser]

Some other issues with coins:

1) If seeds are worth usually, on average, about 1 dorfbuck (not exactly in a real economy, of course, it varies), and they don't rot either, then they make a better currency than gold, because in a famine or siege, they hold their value, whereas gold becomes less inherently valuable in crises. Or fill in various other alternatives. A boulder is also way the hell more useful and inherently valuable than a gold coin, and retains value better when I'm stuck inside freaking out how to build emergency doors and walls, not paying merchants.

   Seeds would be valuable in some cases, like in areas were new crops are being sowed.  In the middle of cities no so much.  Still, the game should probably be adjusted dwarf bucks so that the minimum amount doesn't break when dealing with extremely cheap items (i.e. seeds, globs, powders, small rocks, etc.).  Coins are more compact to carry/don't rot so that would be the "realistic" reason against there use as currency.
That has got me brainstorming though.  Other non-metal coinage currencies throughout history: cowrie shells (apparently independently on multiple continents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_money), gold powder/dust (ancient Japan, American wild west), tea bricks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_brick, rice (Japan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_currency).  It would be fun if the game supported a dynamic system for non-metal currencies to arise from high value types of goods.

2) If coins were to count as being worth more than their metal's commodity content, then why would your fort not simply counterfeit coins all day long?

IRL, real empires debased their own currencies multiple times whenever they hit hard economics conditions (kinda like modern governments, *ducks from angry political conversation*) The wikipedia article on Japanese currency mentions changing back to rice as the drop in metal content eventually devalued the currency.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_currency)  Romans debased their currency also (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_currency#Debasement_of_the_currency).  So it is a perfectly realistic situation.  The game would give you a warning if you tried to order coin production without permission (if your civilization's central governement claimed sole authority).  If you coined currency anyway, you could get away with it for a while, but eventually your civ would someone to inspect for the source of counterfeit money.  Then your metal smith+mayor+baron would all get hammered (best case scenario), or your home civ would outright send an army to subdue you.  Citizens within your fort might revolt at the rebellious act of debasing the currency, or at resisting the Mountainhome authority when they came to punish you.  Or maybe you could avoid getting caught indefinitely bribe the inspector, frame a human site, or just have a ridiculous high ranked liar talk to the inspector.  (Either way it would be FUN)

You have to consider that by subsidising you now they can increase your production later so that you can pay them tribute then.  Think of it as investment

That's fine, but it still has to be one or the other for any given year.

Not if it is a a forced trade.  You WILL give me this and in return YOU WILL be having that.  That is what I was saying, the basic assumption is flawed.  That does not have to be voluntery and can be artificially stimulated for political reasons. 

GoblinCookie, I think at this point it would be more productive to start listing and elaborating on more example cases of motives of the Mountainhome.  I think in some cases it does make sense for them to basically subsidize you.  This depends on Toady working out the whole "starting scenarios" thing.
A few example I thought of
   Military Outpost:  Occupy an important pass, occupy a trade route for protection, occupy a contended location, attack passing armies (that would be a fun reversal as they try to cross the map and you are the aggressor).  As a tradeoff, you get invaded on the first summer.  On the plus side, it should give you some free military gear on embark, and the allied trade caravans should be willing to give you credit for each enemy killed (or something like that).
   Key Economic Resource:  Mountainhome needs iron, or tin, or exotic wood, or whatever.  As a tradeoff, you must meet quotas of exports for this key resource.  More embark points in exchange for promising even higher quotas would be cool.  Failing to meet quotas is punishable.
   Build Economics Relations:  Dwarfs have invaded elves and killed them off in large numbers in the recent past.  The elves in turn offer excellent trade goods are bare minimum prices in the hopes of making you favorable to them. (I know some players on this form would sell out their home civ for cool animals) 
   
Outside of specific scenarios, however, I think the profit margins would be the trade caravans focus, even with home civilization relations, although your civilization will be more likely to engage in a specialized trade scenario.

[GavJ]

the costs of the caravan which are only food and beer (no money involved) are trivial even if it was to the furthest away island on the edge of the map.

The costs of sending a caravan... of wagons... across the entire world... "are trivial?"
Ermmm

Okay, let's give it a shot. The cost of a caravan:
1) A good dozen or so dwarves, occupied for months at best. All of those dwarves could be doing other things, like mining and brewing and armoring, or defending other settlements. Thus the cost of not having them around is equal the the added value of ALL the goods they would have produced and possibly even the loss of other settlements if those guards had been there to defend houses and not wagons. A dozen dwarves can produce/defend a lot of value in that time.
2) Whatever the chance is that the caravan will be lost, multiplied by (the entire value of everything in the caravan PLUS the loss of any aid to the target settlement PLUS the entire lifetime production or protection potential of every dwarf in the caravan who dies (i.e. several times the value of #1)). And anybody who has played adventure mode for 10 minutes can tell you that the chance of losing a caravan going across the whole world is probably well above 50%, both ways, if we're being honest probably higher.
3) The strategic disadvantage of your enemies (bandits or enemy civs) getting control of all of the stuff in your caravan, multiplied by the chance of it being lost.
4) The cost of operating the caravan, which is food, booze, spare parts, ammunition as expendables, as well as a large overhead cost of equipment and outfitting, which you hope to get back but still have to spend initially (and risk losing), including all of the dwarves' clothing, armor, weapons, the wagon, and the livestock.
5) The potential loss of a skilled diplomat/noble, which presumably is seen as a much greater loss to the mountainhomes than other dwarves. Also, that diplomat is occupied for months, stopping him from performing other valuable potential duties for the realm like negotiating with hostile nations, which is an opportunity cost.
5) If the caravan visits multiple settlements, then the risk gets higher, because they stand to lose even more goods (if it's for profit) or they stand to endanger more settlements through no resupply that year (if it's supporting them).
6) The very significant cost of ships and crews and the additional significant risk of sinking for caravans that cross bodies of water, OR likewise additional huge costs for pack trains, sherpas, whatever (or mining crews if tunneling) to cross mountains.

A caravan, just like in real life, represents a HUGE investiture for any real distance. One that is proportional to distance though. A "caravan" to go 5 miles down the road is no big deal. You probably don't even need guards, etc.  Whereas one to go to an island on the other side of the world might be a massive drain on the national treasury (considering they'd probably have to send out like 10 of them to ensure one gets there, and fleets for each one... and 100 dwarves' lives at stake, blah blah).

Countries simply do not send expeditionary forces across the world just to sell some random pig farmers living in a hole in the dirt some old rags, purely because they're there... Nor would the mountainhomes pay 150,000 dorfbucks for such a mission only to have the trader when he arrives haggle with the inhabitants over 7 or 6 bucks for every piece of cheese or whatever. That's plain silliness.

WHETHER they send a caravan to you should depend on your strategic value (military strength and economic potential, possibly many other things as game features are added to let players interact beyond their forts more) and/or your expected goods profits, compared to your distance. And if your strategic value is a lot greater than the cost of the distance, then they should be quite willing to invest the leftover funds for such an important strategic fort by giving you more resources that you need to further the cause.

Basically:
* Calculate the caravan as if it were purely for profit (like human), including distance.
* Now consider the strategic value of the settlement, and consider a proportional amount of the costs subsidized. If any strategic value is left over, begin subsidizing the goods in the caravan as available for free when it arrives. If more strategic value is still left over after THAT, begin signing up the members of the caravan to stay at the settlement as migrants, or brining a cashbox, or other things.
* If the strategic value + the potential commercial profit is not enough to cover the cost of the trip, you simply don't get a caravan. UNLESS you have a taxation model, in which case, taxes you plan to extract from the settlement can help cover the cost. But even then, if taxes + profit + value don't = cost, still no caravan.

It is in the Civ's interests to grow, expand and survive.  Historically they did so, which means they have rejected the kind of logic that your expound.  If nobody ever subsidised the outlying areas, then no civilization would ever have expanded.

What logic? I never suggested otherwise.

What I said was that the value your settlement holds to the mountainhomes can be calculated as your strategic value to them, but it is NOT a function of distance from the capital. A gold mine 20 feet away from the capital is for the most part just as valuable as a gold mine 100 miles from the capital (or might be less or more). And a military output at a major river junction 200 miles away might be equally as important as a mountain pass fort 10 miles away (or less. Or more).

Therefore, it is illogical that the subsidies they pay to help out their forts would be dependent upon distance, which they are under your formulation -- you're saying they should only subsidize the trip, not any goods in it. Since a trip's cost is very much proportional to its length, this is just another way of saying that subsidy = distance from the fort. But that does not make sense. Subsidy should = strategic/commercial to the mountainhome, which is by no means the same thing, and is unlikely to even be correlated to distance.

money stuff

Okay sure. I disagree about several things you said about money here, but since it wouldn't hurt anything done the way you suggested, it doesn't really bother me. If people want money like that, go for it. Not worth arguing about.

The game would give you a warning if you tried to order coin production without permission (if your civilization's central governement claimed sole authority).  If you coined currency anyway, you could get away with it for a while, but eventually your civ would someone to inspect for the source of counterfeit money.

Fair enough, that does actually sound amusing. Though the novelty would get old after a couple of times and become just sort of a cheap obligatory trick to do for some certain amount you know you can get away with. Which soudns tiresome, but maybe there's a defense of some sort against that.

[GoblinCookie]

GoblinCookie, I think at this point it would be more productive to start listing and elaborating on more example cases of motives of the Mountainhome.  I think in some cases it does make sense for them to basically subsidize you.  This depends on Toady working out the whole "starting scenarios" thing.
A few example I thought of
   Military Outpost:  Occupy an important pass, occupy a trade route for protection, occupy a contended location, attack passing armies (that would be a fun reversal as they try to cross the map and you are the aggressor).  As a tradeoff, you get invaded on the first summer.  On the plus side, it should give you some free military gear on embark, and the allied trade caravans should be willing to give you credit for each enemy killed (or something like that).
   Key Economic Resource:  Mountainhome needs iron, or tin, or exotic wood, or whatever.  As a tradeoff, you must meet quotas of exports for this key resource.  More embark points in exchange for promising even higher quotas would be cool.  Failing to meet quotas is punishable.
   Build Economics Relations:  Dwarfs have invaded elves and killed them off in large numbers in the recent past.  The elves in turn offer excellent trade goods are bare minimum prices in the hopes of making you favorable to them. (I know some players on this form would sell out their home civ for cool animals) 
   
Outside of specific scenarios, however, I think the profit margins would be the trade caravans focus, even with home civilization relations, although your civilization will be more likely to engage in a specialized trade scenario.

From the point of view of the game it actually is a case of the anthropic principle.  The fact that our fortress was set up in the first place means there must have been a reason to set it up. 

All those reasons are good ideas.  Probably we should create a rationale randomly based upon various factors, with militery outpost being the last resort reason.

The civilization should certainly make demands of your civilization to send troops or military related equipment to supply it's armies when at war.  But that is beyond the scope of the thread. 

The costs of sending a caravan... of wagons... across the entire world... "are trivial?"
Ermmm

Okay, let's give it a shot. The cost of a caravan:
1) A good dozen or so dwarves, occupied for months at best. All of those dwarves could be doing other things, like mining and brewing and armoring, or defending other settlements. Thus the cost of not having them around is equal the the added value of ALL the goods they would have produced and possibly even the loss of other settlements if those guards had been there to defend houses and not wagons. A dozen dwarves can produce/defend a lot of value in that time.
2) Whatever the chance is that the caravan will be lost, multiplied by (the entire value of everything in the caravan PLUS the loss of any aid to the target settlement PLUS the entire lifetime production or protection potential of every dwarf in the caravan who dies (i.e. several times the value of #1)). And anybody who has played adventure mode for 10 minutes can tell you that the chance of losing a caravan going across the whole world is probably well above 50%, both ways, if we're being honest probably higher.
3) The strategic disadvantage of your enemies (bandits or enemy civs) getting control of all of the stuff in your caravan, multiplied by the chance of it being lost.
4) The cost of operating the caravan, which is food, booze, spare parts, ammunition as expendables, as well as a large overhead cost of equipment and outfitting, which you hope to get back but still have to spend initially (and risk losing), including all of the dwarves' clothing, armor, weapons, the wagon, and the livestock.
5) The potential loss of a skilled diplomat/noble, which presumably is seen as a much greater loss to the mountainhomes than other dwarves. Also, that diplomat is occupied for months, stopping him from performing other valuable potential duties for the realm like negotiating with hostile nations, which is an opportunity cost.
5) If the caravan visits multiple settlements, then the risk gets higher, because they stand to lose even more goods (if it's for profit) or they stand to endanger more settlements through no resupply that year (if it's supporting them).
6) The very significant cost of ships and crews and the additional significant risk of sinking for caravans that cross bodies of water, OR likewise additional huge costs for pack trains, sherpas, whatever (or mining crews if tunneling) to cross mountains.

From the point of view of a whole civilization the costs are trivial, this is what I meant.  But that is rather beside the point.....

A caravan, just like in real life, represents a HUGE investiture for any real distance. One that is proportional to distance though. A "caravan" to go 5 miles down the road is no big deal. You probably don't even need guards, etc.  Whereas one to go to an island on the other side of the world might be a massive drain on the national treasury (considering they'd probably have to send out like 10 of them to ensure one gets there, and fleets for each one... and 100 dwarves' lives at stake, blah blah).

Countries simply do not send expeditionary forces across the world just to sell some random pig farmers living in a hole in the dirt some old rags, purely because they're there... Nor would the mountainhomes pay 150,000 dorfbucks for such a mission only to have the trader when he arrives haggle with the inhabitants over 7 or 6 bucks for every piece of cheese or whatever. That's plain silliness.

You forget that nations will wage highly expensive wars over basically worthless islands, ie the Falklands Islands.  Sending caravans is basically the same illogic, they need the caravans to be sent or else they will lost said remote outpost even IF it succeeds in isolation.

Political entities willl frequently go to ruinous expense for purely political reasons with no concievable economic payback in anything like the short term.  Thing of the caravan as a disguised militery operation rather than an economic one. 

WHETHER they send a caravan to you should depend on your strategic value (military strength and economic potential, possibly many other things as game features are added to let players interact beyond their forts more) and/or your expected goods profits, compared to your distance. And if your strategic value is a lot greater than the cost of the distance, then they should be quite willing to invest the leftover funds for such an important strategic fort by giving you more resources that you need to further the cause.

Basically:
* Calculate the caravan as if it were purely for profit (like human), including distance.
* Now consider the strategic value of the settlement, and consider a proportional amount of the costs subsidized. If any strategic value is left over, begin subsidizing the goods in the caravan as available for free when it arrives. If more strategic value is still left over after THAT, begin signing up the members of the caravan to stay at the settlement as migrants, or brining a cashbox, or other things.
* If the strategic value + the potential commercial profit is not enough to cover the cost of the trip, you simply don't get a caravan. UNLESS you have a taxation model, in which case, taxes you plan to extract from the settlement can help cover the cost. But even then, if taxes + profit + value don't = cost, still no caravan.

I fundermentally agree that the caravans should calculate distance and ease of travel as a factor in decided what route to follow.  I also believe however that a special caravan (if controlled by the AI) should at least irregularly arive at any settlement of a civilization that is not getting any other caravans.  This caravan would otherwise behave normally for the rest of the route or if all settlements are getting visited by the normal economic manner. 

This special caravan is the caravan of the civilization itself and is controlled by the monarch's government.  All other caravans belong to a settlement and a settlement can have as many caravans as it has nobles present (ie baron and above).  Eventually even the human player would be able to create caravans if he meets the requirements and engage directly in a trade mini-game, planning routes for his caravan.  Caravans would be built out of wood like buildings and traders are assigned with the nobles screen.

1.  How could the caravan calculate profit from a human controlled settlement?  In an AI controlled settlement it can use the AI economics/production script to figure it out.

2.  This is actually similar to my idea.  It got forgotten somewhere along the line that a settlement will not trade unless it's own needs are met nor will it leave.  That means that far away settlements will end up having to give the caravan stuff in order to make it's return journey. 

3.  I disagree with that idea.  As already explained the place had to have greater than 0 economic+strategic value or it would never have been created in the first place.  Unless we can actually do things to reduce our strategic value below 0 perhaps, in which case your idea of no caravans makes sense.

What logic? I never suggested otherwise.

What I said was that the value your settlement holds to the mountainhomes can be calculated as your strategic value to them, but it is NOT a function of distance from the capital. A gold mine 20 feet away from the capital is for the most part just as valuable as a gold mine 100 miles from the capital (or might be less or more). And a military output at a major river junction 200 miles away might be equally as important as a mountain pass fort 10 miles away (or less. Or more).

Therefore, it is illogical that the subsidies they pay to help out their forts would be dependent upon distance, which they are under your formulation -- you're saying they should only subsidize the trip, not any goods in it. Since a trip's cost is very much proportional to its length, this is just another way of saying that subsidy = distance from the fort. But that does not make sense. Subsidy should = strategic/commercial to the mountainhome, which is by no means the same thing, and is unlikely to even be correlated to distance.

The civilization WANTS to have the settlement, or else it would never have set it up in the first place.  In order to keep the settlement it NEEDS to recieve a Caravan from them, expense be damned. 

Profits/Losses and all the rest are irrelavant.  If the trip is not profitable it is then best seen as an expense paid in order to purchase a valuable good, the good in question is the alignment of your settlement to the civilization. 

You have yet to explain what the problem with a caravan consistantly running a loss for greater political ends actually is?

[vache]

The nature of a fort's existence and its role within a civilization will evolve over time too. 

A fortress established to be a small military outpost may suddenly find itself with a new governor installed from the mountainhomes.  He may be some minor lord that they gave the position to just to shut him up, but he is too ambitious to be merely the governor of a small outpost, and orders the craftsmen to produce a large surplus for export.  Over time, the fortress may be known more for its economic power than military, which extends the influence of the civilization further around the outpost.  Soon the civilization promotes the minor lord for his efforts, and he, pleased that the fortress is now a bustling economic center, decides that it should also become a cultural center.  He now orders a certain amount of architectural value to be produced and attempts to import valuable works of art.  But the booming fortress has attracted the attention of those outside the dwarven civilization as well, and soon the goblins begin laying season-long sieges against it, so the fortress finds itself in need of weapons and armor once again.

This is just one example of course, but it should show how the desired trade goals change from each standpoint.  Also, I imagine immigration would also be affected, like the when, how many, why, and how skilled.  I always thought it was odd that immigrants didn't come with the caravan for protection.

Also, suppose that caravans aren't chartered by the civilization itself, but from a merchant's guild, or similar entity.  Their motives would be different than one organized by the government.  You would have to negotiate with them up front to determine what they were going to bring and what you were willing to offer in return.  It might involve sending a messenger out to a fortress containing a guild hall to have them relay your needs to the capital in order to form an agreement.  Eventually, the merchant's guild might want to establish hall in your fortress, and they pay you a small tax for the property and provide more access to trade goods, but if you fail to buy enough goods, they cancel the agreement.

[GavJ]

the Falklands Islands.

You're comparing the cost of international travel in 1982 to the 1300s? >.>
To get across the Atlantic in 1982, you pay a week's wages, and get there in a day, with peanuts and beverages (or similar equivalent for military transport)
To get across the Atlantic in 1350, you'd have to invent a couple of technologies for boats and navigation, guess that the continent existed, then buy a fleet of your newly designed ships costing a good chunk of your country's GDP, then face probably a 50-70% chancing of death one way or the other.

(In the 1300s-1400s, whole countries often only had like, a couple dozen ships in their entire navies at one time)

Political entities willl frequently go to ruinous expense for purely political reasons with no concievable economic payback in anything like the short term.  Thing of the caravan as a disguised militery operation rather than an economic one. 

That's called being dumb... throwing money away on stuff that isn't worth that much HAPPENS sometimes. Lots of countries and rulers make bad decisions now and then. That doesn't mean it should be enshrined as a simulator rule, though >.>

Sure, if you want to do a dice roll and on critical failures, they are decided to be dumb enough to launch missions like that, then okay. But not routinely.

Or perhaps even better: Actually keep track of the nation's coffers. And if they roll to send off some preposterously wasteful mission, then they actually can end up going bankrupt and stand a decent chance of getting extinguished by goblins shortly after. Fine by me. Would lead to more dynamic geography *shrug*

How could the caravan calculate profit from a human controlled settlement?

1) Use last year's trade data from that human player.
2) If there isn't sufficient data (such as your first caravan from them), assume that the player settlement is acting like an AI settlement WOULD act, if situated in the same location.

That means that far away settlements will end up having to give the caravan stuff in order to make it's return journey. 

That's not something that should happen ad hoc. It should only happen if it was planned that way originally. I.e. if the mountainhomes have laws for settlements to be required to pay X many taxes or tribute.  Otherwise it makes little sense for the settlement to pay for their return, which it often wouldn't be able to afford anyway. A much more reasonable and beneficial approach for the whole nation would be to say "oh you fell on bad times or miscalculated. Just stay with us and do our civilization's good works from here."

As already explained the place had to have greater than 0 economic+strategic value or it would never have been created in the first place.

Not true. To be worth it to MAKE a settlement, it only has to have the total value to them of a ONE-WAY trip + a paltry 1250 or whatever embark points + those 7 dwarves' usefulness.

Which could easily in some cases end up being less than the cost of a TWO-WAY trip (especially repeated two-way trips!) + a caravan laden with usually 50,000+ embark points of goods + like 10 dwarves' usefulness.

In such cases where the strategic value falls in between those two benchmarks, you would still have settled it, but would have planned all along to have the settlement receive no future support, at least not until/if it thrives and sends back word or something that circumstances have changed.

These would be your highly risky investment "shots in the dark" of which the civ would send out many possibly, and expect many to fail, but those that do succeed might reap large rewards with exotic goods and far flung diplomatic powers.  But they have to earn that spot fending for themselves first, because the caravan investment early on isn't worht it -- it is better spent sending out two more shots in the dark to other locations instead, for instance.

In order to keep the settlement it NEEDS to recieve a Caravan from them, expense be damned.

1) Why does it "need" a caravan? Most of the time as a player I don't even want a caravan, much less need one, to make my fort successful.
2) Saying "expenses be damned" when talking about investments (which are inherently all about balancing expenses, political or $$ or otherwise) is, again, called being dumb. Countries are indeed dumb sometimes, but not most of the time. The ones that are dumb all of the time get taken over by ones that aren't.



Vache,

The nature of a fort's existence and its role within a civilization will evolve over time too. 

Didn't see your post until after I wrote mine, but yes, absolutely that. If you're a "fire and forget" type of settlement, you may not get any caravans at first, but if/when you send out your own envoys to inform the mountainhomes that you've become a roaring success, then absolutely, that changes things and it may now be worthwhile to trade with you, due to your larger strategic importance now that you succeeded, and your larger profit potential.

[GavJ]

Explicit examples. Let's say both of these are acting as pure colonies in the interest of the homeland, not independent businesses.


Example 1:
Imagine there's a farming colony, it costs $10 to establish a one-way self sufficient expedition there. It costs $20 to send a round trip caravan. The farm can produce $10 worth of excess grain per year for the homeland.

If you were to send a caravan every year for four years, you'd be losing $12.50 of total resources for the civilization every year. ($10 taxes - $2.50 that year's share of the establishing cost - $20 trip = -12.50)

If you were to send a caravan, say, every 4 years, and pick up the total $40 of grain that has been built up, then in your first trip there, you'd pay off the trip itself and the establishment cost and make an additional $2.50 a year profit overall. ($40 taxes - $10 establish cost - $20 trip = $10/4 years = $2.5 profit per year)



Example 2:
Imagine there's a river fork fortress. It has a strategic military value just for existing equal to an equivalent of $20 a year to you. It also happens to produce valuable fish, worth $10 a year, but they are too perishable to last for years and can't build up year to year. Establishment cost is $16, caravans cost $30. They also need $5 of metal imports each year to keep the fort running.

Option 1: Send a caravan every year, grab the fish, drop off the metal. In 4 years, you'd be earning ($10 fish + $20 strategic - $4 that year's share of establishment - $30 caravan cost - $5 metal = -$9 lost per year total, -$36 overall). The next 4 years, it would be ($10 fish + $20 strategic - $30 trip - $5 metal =  -$5) * 4 = -$20 overall

Option 2: Send extra metal initially ($15 extra establishment cost) and a caravan in 4 years to resupply. In total, you'd be earning ($10 for fish just once + $80 strategic - $31 establishment - $30 one trip = $29 earned, total). The next 4 years, it'd be ($10 fish + $80 strategic - $20 metals from the last caravan - $30 one trip = $40 earned, total).



Edit:
Thinking through those made me think, though... why not just options for any of the above play formats, in the form of different player-choosable fort "backstories" ? Which are already planned, but specifically with regard to trading:

"Fully supported government outpost" where they give you supplies every year for free and possibly even troops and things (trained migrants). However, you're expected to comply with explicit intstructions sent to you.
"Benevolent homeland" where they expect fewer explicit accomplishments from you, and still usually send caravans and maybe a little bit of stuff now and then. Might taper off in later years.
"Normal" where the homeland only helps you if it is calculated to give them an overall payoff eventually (sort of like the above examples), with a little leeway for the unexpected. Might include mandatory trade agreements at the start of a fort.
"Mercantile expedition" where you are funded by a merchant guild, and they don't give a crap about you or your men's lives at all. They demand money and will come and get you / try to replace you if you don't cough up their investment + interest, at least. You are fully free to do whatever you want as long as you meet quotas though.
"Subjugated Colony" where it's similar to mercantile expedition, but worse -- they expect payments for little or nothing in exchange indefinitely, not just until they've gotten their investment back.
"Fugitives" where you're running from the law or religious persecution or whatever. You get no help, and your civilization might even be hunting for you. If they find you, they may pardon you in exchange for hefty fines and taxes in excess of normal for however long you've been gone, and try to kill you if not, and then at best you would become a harshly subjugated colony afterward. Possibly even they're right on your heels and invasion occurs very soon. Few embark points.

etc.

[GoblinCookie]

You're comparing the cost of international travel in 1982 to the 1300s? >.>
To get across the Atlantic in 1982, you pay a week's wages, and get there in a day, with peanuts and beverages (or similar equivalent for military transport)
To get across the Atlantic in 1350, you'd have to invent a couple of technologies for boats and navigation, guess that the continent existed, then buy a fleet of your newly designed ships costing a good chunk of your country's GDP, then face probably a 50-70% chancing of death one way or the other.

Your response suggests ypi have completely not understand what I was referring to.  I was not implying that the costs are equivilant, I am implying that the logic behind sending caravans at a loss to far flung outposts is equivilant in motive to waging such wars, not that there is any comparison between the total costs.

(In the 1300s-1400s, whole countries often only had like, a couple dozen ships in their entire navies at one time)

Political entities willl frequently go to ruinous expense for purely political reasons with no concievable economic payback in anything like the short term.  Thing of the caravan as a disguised militery operation rather than an economic one. 

That's called being dumb... throwing money away on stuff that isn't worth that much HAPPENS sometimes. Lots of countries and rulers make bad decisions now and then. That doesn't mean it should be enshrined as a simulator rule, though >.>

Sure, if you want to do a dice roll and on critical failures, they are decided to be dumb enough to launch missions like that, then okay. But not routinely.[/quote]

They are not being dumb.  They are simply not treating everyone and everything as a resource to be exploited mercilessly.  They actually understand that one should make sacrifices for the wellbeing of your people and for your ideals in general. 

Or perhaps even better: Actually keep track of the nation's coffers. And if they roll to send off some preposterously wasteful mission, then they actually can end up going bankrupt and stand a decent chance of getting extinguished by goblins shortly after. Fine by me. Would lead to more dynamic geography *shrug*

Except that they cannot go bankrupt because the only thing that dwarves are 'paid' in essentially is food and beer.

10 dwarves will eat the same amount if they are in your stronghold for a year as they would if they spent a year manning a caravan.  So they do not even starve to death if they 'spend' too much on caravans. 

That's not something that should happen ad hoc. It should only happen if it was planned that way originally. I.e. if the mountainhomes have laws for settlements to be required to pay X many taxes or tribute.  Otherwise it makes little sense for the settlement to pay for their return, which it often wouldn't be able to afford anyway. A much more reasonable and beneficial approach for the whole nation would be to say "oh you fell on bad times or miscalculated. Just stay with us and do our civilization's good works from here."

Tribute to whom? Remember that we are not actually paying tribute to say the king, because the king like everyone else has no private property.  Therefore you would just be giving the tribute from your collective hands to the hands of the settlement that the king happens to live in.  Potentially (as happened in my game) the king is actually 'collaborating' with those who occupied their home settlement.  This means that we end up paying tribute right into the hands of a bunch of foreigners!

The only kind of 'tributes' that make sense are of a military nature, when at war the civilization should demand you raise forces for the war effort based upon your population and/or give up food/beer for the troops.  But that is beyond the scope of the thread and would fit better in militery suggestions or such-like.  That and relief efforts/charity perhaps to help settlements that have been pillaged by enemies or suffered some kind of natural disaster. 

Not true. To be worth it to MAKE a settlement, it only has to have the total value to them of a ONE-WAY trip + a paltry 1250 or whatever embark points + those 7 dwarves' usefulness.

Which could easily in some cases end up being less than the cost of a TWO-WAY trip (especially repeated two-way trips!) + a caravan laden with usually 50,000+ embark points of goods + like 10 dwarves' usefulness.

Because if they send no caravan they will not keep the settlement at all whether it succeeds or not.  Why would they not become independant or pledge allegiance to the nearest other civilization if they have recieved nothing at all ever from the rest of their civilization?

In such cases where the strategic value falls in between those two benchmarks, you would still have settled it, but would have planned all along to have the settlement receive no future support, at least not until/if it thrives and sends back word or something that circumstances have changed.

These would be your highly risky investment "shots in the dark" of which the civ would send out many possibly, and expect many to fail, but those that do succeed might reap large rewards with exotic goods and far flung diplomatic powers.  But they have to earn that spot fending for themselves first, because the caravan investment early on isn't worht it -- it is better spent sending out two more shots in the dark to other locations instead, for instance.

This is where the malevolance of your intended political ethos for the game becomes quite clear and I wonder if you are trying to create a colonisation model exclusively for GOBLINS! 

These are not 7 slaves valued solely as an asset for some cold-hearted economist elite sitting around in some tower counting their green zircons.  The idea that they would actually sacrifice something in order to insure the greatest chance of success for each new outpost seems completely alien to you. 

Throwing groups of your people randomly into the wilderness with no support so that say 10% of them can actually survive and become something 'worth it' is not a risky investment shot, it is pretty much evilness incarnate.  And guess what, those who survived have done so entirely on own with no help from you, why would they give a damn about your civilization? 

1) Why does it "need" a caravan? Most of the time as a player I don't even want a caravan, much less need one, to make my fort successful.
2) Saying "expenses be damned" when talking about investments (which are inherently all about balancing expenses, political or $$ or otherwise) is, again, called being dumb. Countries are indeed dumb sometimes, but not most of the time. The ones that are dumb all of the time get taken over by ones that aren't.

1. If a settlement does not need a caravan, then it is now completely self-sufficiant of the civilization that it is part of. What keeps the settlement in the fold if it needs the civilization for nothing at all?  Loyalty is not free.  People you owe you nothing but a death-march into the wilderness end up feeling that they owe you nothing.  Therefore the gambit is worthless, if they die you lose, if they live you lose also because they do not care a damn for your civilization. 

You think fear of the goblins will keep them in line?  Well since they owe you nothing why would they not just turn at the nearest goblin settlement and pledge their undying loyalty.  It not as if the 'evil' goblins have a clear advantage on the zircon counters back in the homeland that forever send groups of 7 to remote islands and then abandon them to die.

2. I would much rather live in a country operating according to your version of stupidity than one operating according to your version of cleverness.  Not that I would exactly want to live in either mind you.

If you cannot afford the cost of keeping something then you do not set it up in the first place.  The fact that the settlement was initially created indicated it at least initially had value enough to make it worth keeping.  Yes expenses are damned, this is not stupidity this is an expression of the simple fact that if you have made your bed you have to lie in it. 

The alternative I guess would be a dwarf fortress version of the American War of Independance but that did not end well for us (the British).