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[Urist Arrhenius]

The thing is, this isn't age of empires or something. The goal isn't to give the player pawns they can move about at their will, it's to make a bunch of little people that the player directs in a sort of vague fashion. And those little people having the ability to make little decisions would be great. Not like "where should this wall go?" but definitely "What sort of room should I rent?" or "What clothes should I buy?"

[Waparius]

I think some people have sort of the wrong idea about my suggestion.

Basically, the idea is that the player is still in charge of designations, builds workshops and fields and stockpiles and so forth. They would also be able to order most things to be made as before (an exception for hot meals, since they would no longer last - instead maybe an order to have a feast or something).

The difference is that dwarves would also be able to autonomously perform gem-setting, craft, farm and kitchen work for themselves and each other; performing player- or noble-ordered labour would be a way for money (in the form of internal credit) to enter the system. Dwarves can buy and sell from each other via internal credit. They can also use money or barter to buy and sell from merchants, who are entering and leaving the marketplace on a much more regular basis than currently.

To keep things simpler, mining and smelting and similar resource-extraction is player-controlled and private labour can only use stockpiles designated for that purpose, or a dwarf's own possessions.

Dwarves prefer to do a small set of labours and dislike a small set of labours. A dwarf will always try to do their preferred job if it's available, but if they are unable to make a living they will volunteer for another task, generally either hauling or one that dwarves don't do on their own - mining, logging, the militia, etc, but if another type of work is doing well they may choose that instead, but almost never their disliked labour (depending on personality). They can also be assigned by the player, even to hated labour (the latter at the cost of an unhappy thought).

So it works like this - urist mcStonecrafter is commissioned by the Baroness to make her consort an amulet. He creates a masterwork, and makes a lot of money, in the form of credit. Urist would celebrate by buying his favourite -plump helmet roast-, but he's been getting a lot of work lately and isn't hungry, so he takes his +sheep wool coat+ to the gemsetter to get it decorated and feels very pleased with himself. The gemsetter uses the money to put food on the table but due to a gem shortage work has been slow lately; several months later, after selling some of his rings and puzzle boxes to make rent, the gemsetter takes up a pick and heads for the gold mines the player just designated under the second cavern.

If the player sets up a new militia squad and doesn't go through manually selecting new members, a bunch of dwarves who like being in the army join up right away, but so do some broke dwarves who would otherwise be pushing a minecart somewhere.

[Ops Fox]

That doesn't sound so bad, I do however think it would be better for the economy to separate jobs and skills from one another.

Currently a dwarf with a certain skill active will search for a job of the relevant type in his burrow.

Rather than an active skill choosing jobs, the player could create a Job which has associated task with it like farm this plot, haul food in this burrow and mill at this quern. Once the job is created the player can designate how many dwarfs they want working this job and the wage those dwarfs who get it are paid. Dwarfs could then pick jobs based off what skills they have and their work preferences to earn wages for rent and purchasing things.

This way dwarfs wont have active skills players have to turn on and off, the dwarfs picks a job and works it earning a wage and skill levels in what ever they happen to be doing.

This way the player still has a lot of control over their fort without having to micromanage and command every dwarf, they can set up their stockpiles, workshops and such then assign jobs that use those things, but the dwarfs decide what work they do.

[Vattic]

I saw that on the wiki that's why I suggested the dwarfs only use credit for inter fortress goods like rent and food. The only time a dwarf should use coins is when they need to purchase something from the caravan, in which case the caravans will take the loose change off the map with them.

I was just answering your question.

That is similar to how the old economy worked though isn't?

[GoblinCookie]

The thing is, this isn't age of empires or something. The goal isn't to give the player pawns they can move about at their will, it's to make a bunch of little people that the player directs in a sort of vague fashion. And those little people having the ability to make little decisions would be great. Not like "where should this wall go?" but definitely "What sort of room should I rent?" or "What clothes should I buy?"

Indeed.

The "buying" part however in the equation and the "renting" part however are quite mechanically redundant. 

They already make decisions as to which empty room to move into and which clothes to help themselves too. 

I think some people have sort of the wrong idea about my suggestion.

Basically, the idea is that the player is still in charge of designations, builds workshops and fields and stockpiles and so forth. They would also be able to order most things to be made as before (an exception for hot meals, since they would no longer last - instead maybe an order to have a feast or something).

The difference is that dwarves would also be able to autonomously perform gem-setting, craft, farm and kitchen work for themselves and each other; performing player- or noble-ordered labour would be a way for money (in the form of internal credit) to enter the system. Dwarves can buy and sell from each other via internal credit. They can also use money or barter to buy and sell from merchants, who are entering and leaving the marketplace on a much more regular basis than currently.

To keep things simpler, mining and smelting and similar resource-extraction is player-controlled and private labour can only use stockpiles designated for that purpose, or a dwarf's own possessions.

Dwarves prefer to do a small set of labours and dislike a small set of labours. A dwarf will always try to do their preferred job if it's available, but if they are unable to make a living they will volunteer for another task, generally either hauling or one that dwarves don't do on their own - mining, logging, the militia, etc, but if another type of work is doing well they may choose that instead, but almost never their disliked labour (depending on personality). They can also be assigned by the player, even to hated labour (the latter at the cost of an unhappy thought).

So it works like this - urist mcStonecrafter is commissioned by the Baroness to make her consort an amulet. He creates a masterwork, and makes a lot of money, in the form of credit. Urist would celebrate by buying his favourite -plump helmet roast-, but he's been getting a lot of work lately and isn't hungry, so he takes his +sheep wool coat+ to the gemsetter to get it decorated and feels very pleased with himself. The gemsetter uses the money to put food on the table but due to a gem shortage work has been slow lately; several months later, after selling some of his rings and puzzle boxes to make rent, the gemsetter takes up a pick and heads for the gold mines the player just designated under the second cavern.

If the player sets up a new militia squad and doesn't go through manually selecting new members, a bunch of dwarves who like being in the army join up right away, but so do some broke dwarves who would otherwise be pushing a minecart somewhere.

Essentially this is what the player already does, he designates things to be done and the dwarves autonomously do those things.  There is no need for money to be involved in any of it, money is basically a redundant irritant to the system since it adds a whole new question aside from 'can it be done by me?' and 'am I allowed to do it?', which is 'can I afford to do it?'. 

Mechanically speaking 'am I allowed to it?' means the same as 'can I afford to do it?', except that while the former is rationally assigned by the player, the latter is assigned by a mechanical process that does not have consciousness at all and will in all probability clash with the rational plans of the player.  That is until someone figures out how the mechanism works, posts it on the online tutorial and hey presto the player now simply has to carry out certain irrational mechanical tasks, wasting resources and 'can I afford to do it?' mean's nothing other than the player's 'am I allowed to it?' for everyone.

In your example you have identified an issue, which is VERY clunky way that decorating items works and then you have proposed commercialising the issue as a solution.  Everything that is actually useful either to the player or to the individual dwarves about your example is actually going to work far better if money is kept out of the equation.

So it works like this - urist mcStonecrafter is commissioned by the Baroness to make her consort an amulet. He creates a masterwork, and makes a lot of money, in the form of credit. Urist would celebrate by buying his favourite -plump helmet roast-, but he's been getting a lot of work lately and isn't hungry, so he takes his +sheep wool coat+ to the gemsetter to get it decorated and feels very pleased with himself. The gemsetter uses the money to put food on the table but due to a gem shortage work has been slow lately; several months later, after selling some of his rings and puzzle boxes to make rent, the gemsetter takes up a pick and heads for the gold mines the player just designated under the second cavern.

The essential issues here are that individual dwarves cannot communicate with the fortress in order to produce specific items they personally want, that dwarves cannot give gifts to their intimates and that dwarves cannot have individual items they personally own decorated once they have taken them from the stockpile.  These are all solvable within the present economic framework in the following manner.

1. Personal Wants: Dwarves that want something that they cannot presently acquire from the stockpiles logs their demands so that the player can arrange for them to be met by going to the office of a noble.  Since Baroness has an office, she simply goes to her office and logs down her demands for the player to read.  The player has the manager place an order for the total number of amulets of a given type that all the dwarves that could not get amulets want.  Once the orders are placed then urist mcStonecrafter makes one or more amulets and the Baroness picks one up.

2. Gifts: The Baroness does not however want the amulet for herself but for her Consort.  This is easily arranged, since Consort has a list of things he wants but not all these demands are activated.  The Baroness checks through the list of things Consort likes and comes up with an amulet.  Once she has acquired the item from the stockpile Baroness goes up to Consort and gives him the item, improving relations and making Consort happy.

3. Decorating personal items: urist mcStonecrafter wants to decorate his +sheep wool coat' with gemstones.  In the same manner as 1, he logs his personal demand to have an item decorated in a noble's office.  A new type of reaction is added into the game which is decorate personal item with gemstone, the manager puts in an order for the total of all dwarves that have logged such a demand and Gemsetter gets to work.  Unlike with normal production the Gemsetter meets with urist mcStonecrafter in person, is given the +sheep woold coat+, hauls it to the jeweler's workshop, hauls a gemstone, decorates the item and urist mcStonecrafter picks the item up either from the workshop or the stockpile since it belongs to him.

[Waparius]

In the current system the player still has to order the dwarves to make every sock and stone craft. I'm suggesting instead that the player designate a few stockpiles (maybe workshops, depending on what's easiest) and then dwarves order other dwarves to make items/meals for them. Credit and money regulates how much most dwarves can order from one another. It should be possible for dwarves to feed and clothe and accessorise themselves. The only thing in my example directly done through player input is designating a gold mine.

[HartLord]

In regards to the very real issue of different price-level housing, using zoning similar to how RL cities do would probably be the easiest way to give Dwarves autonomy in digging/building. Just designate a large area and say, "This is for housing." Dwarves then on their own time carve/build houses/bedrooms there. There could be an option to decide what level of housing is built there. You could do the same for workshops, with the option to specify what kind of workshop is allowed in that zone. Other types of private dwarf-designed structures such as merchant shops might be allowed using their own zones. Zones would probably need to be able to overlap.


Raw resources could simply be set to "Public" or "Communal" or whatever so dwarves know they can use them as they like. Like forbidding or dumping.


Renting rooms has come up, and a logical follow up on that is buying rooms/land. I don't think, at first at least, the question of buying vs. renting land should be available. A fortress is basically a government structure; if dwarves want to buy land, they should have to go to the hillocks or mountain halls. In the fortress they can only rent rooms.

I could see dwarves that own a workshop in the hillocks and come to the fortress to set up a market stall in the market zone/place to hawk their wares. They may or may not have to pay rent for their spot in the market.

[GoblinCookie]

In the current system the player still has to order the dwarves to make every sock and stone craft. I'm suggesting instead that the player designate a few stockpiles (maybe workshops, depending on what's easiest) and then dwarves order other dwarves to make items/meals for them. Credit and money regulates how much most dwarves can order from one another. It should be possible for dwarves to feed and clothe and accessorize themselves. The only thing in my example directly done through player input is designating a gold mine.

The size of your gold mine decides how much gold is available to your dwarves.  The problem is that you cannot determine or regulate how much gold your dwarves are actually going to want to use, instead all you can presumably do is set the prices of the gold that you are selling to the dwarves.  If the dwarf gold miners set their own prices, then it will be according to some mechanism that will be all over the wiki leading to us setting the prices by proxy through designating/forbidding gold. 

Problem is that you do not know how much money your individual dwarves actually have on average nor the level of inequality between dwarves, so what your idea results in is not a simpler, less interventionist economic system but us having to constantly trawl through hundreds of bank accounts and then having to do complicated mathematics to determine how expensive gold really is. 

It gets worse if we allow dwarves to privately engage in external trade, if we have our own sealed off little economy then we at least vaguely know how much currency is out there because we ultimately chucked all the currency into our sandbox economy in the first place.  With external trade we can have a 'wonderful' outflow of currency causing everything to suddenly become un-affordable and mass starvation beckons, or we can have a 'wonderful' inflow of currency leading to us having to a demand-spike since everything is suddenly majorly cheap. 

You claim that dwarves should be able to feed, clothe and accessorize themselves but there is simply no need to introduce internal commercial activity in order for this to happen.  Dwarves already autonomously do things, so we can simply designate resources for dwarves to use autonomously without ever having to introduce commerce into the equation, resulting in all the problems above mentioned.

In regards to the very real issue of different price-level housing, using zoning similar to how RL cities do would probably be the easiest way to give Dwarves autonomy in digging/building. Just designate a large area and say, "This is for housing." Dwarves then on their own time carve/build houses/bedrooms there. There could be an option to decide what level of housing is built there. You could do the same for workshops, with the option to specify what kind of workshop is allowed in that zone. Other types of private dwarf-designed structures such as merchant shops might be allowed using their own zones. Zones would probably need to be able to overlap.

Raw resources could simply be set to "Public" or "Communal" or whatever so dwarves know they can use them as they like. Like forbidding or dumping.

Renting rooms has come up, and a logical follow up on that is buying rooms/land. I don't think, at first at least, the question of buying vs. renting land should be available. A fortress is basically a government structure; if dwarves want to buy land, they should have to go to the hillocks or mountain halls. In the fortress they can only rent rooms.

I could see dwarves that own a workshop in the hillocks and come to the fortress to set up a market stall in the market zone/place to hawk their wares. They may or may not have to pay rent for their spot in the market.

You seem to want to turn this game into SimCity, but there is a reason why that game does not have a realistic resource-based economy unlike Dwarf Fortress. 

[HartLord]

You seem to want to turn this game into SimCity, but there is a reason why that game does not have a realistic resource-based economy unlike Dwarf Fortress.

I'd just like for it to be possible for dwarves to dig their own rooms out, albeit in some way we can reasonably control. Everyone who wanted to completely control the layout of their fort could safely ignore the feature.

I'll admit I was very ecstatic watching my dwarves mine out a vein of ore for the first time without my constant intervention.

[Ops Fox]

I'd have to agree with the sentiment that zoning and letting dwarfs build things themselves is taking it to far.

Adding a feature to set rent when you create a bedroom and maybe a way to connect other rooms to that rent-able unit would be all I'd add to housing. An example of connecting rooms would be creating a two-story unit, a dinning room on the bottom floor and a bedroom on the top floor, then when you go to set rent from the bed>create bedroom menu you could include the dinning room as part of that unit. The important thing for this is the ability for the player to set the rent price, rather than some formula based on furniture quality.

I also dont think giving dwarfs in a particular line of work autonomy from the state is a good idea just because they dont understand the resource situation nor do they understand your plans for the fort. Something more along the lines of them buying specific goods you ordered to be made and designated for the purpose of being sold to your dwarfs would be a better system. Such as ordering the construction of a variety of crafts like mugs and figurines, then putting them on sale for your dwarfs, and those who have enough money can go buy them. This way you dont have to worry about your stone crafters deciding to use up some of your rare magma proof or super dense rocks because you had not gotten around to organizing them yet.

The thing is, this isn't age of empires or something. The goal isn't to give the player pawns they can move about at their will, it's to make a bunch of little people that the player directs in a sort of vague fashion. And those little people having the ability to make little decisions would be great. Not like "where should this wall go?" but definitely "What sort of room should I rent?" or "What clothes should I buy?"

Indeed.

The "buying" part however in the equation and the "renting" part however are quite mechanically redundant. 

They already make decisions as to which empty room to move into and which clothes to help themselves too. 

I would not say the buying and renting part is redundant.

If dwarfs get happier thoughts from wearing ≡wool socks≡ then from wool socks and you have a limited supply of ≡wool socks≡, would you not want your mason to have ≡wool socks≡ and you hauler to have wool socks. Of course you could specifically order you mason to grab those ≡wool socks≡ and assign him the fancier room so that he is happier or you can let the tried and true method of supply and demand sort it out for you.

basically Urist McHauler buys the ≡wool socks≡ at the state price of 2☼ because the player was to lazy to give different prices to different quality levels. McMason whose job earns him significantly more than McHauler, sees that McHauler has these nice socks so he offers 5☼, which McHauler quickly accepts. Netting McHauler 5☼ to buy another pair of socks with and cover rent or food while McMason gets an additional happy thought from comfy socks. The player did not have to designate anything but the starting price in that scenario and that scenario would work for all goods, getting the most out of your supply of socks without any effort on the players part.



I imagine the Dwarven economy to look something like this:

Players create those job groupings I mentioned earlier so that than can easily control the amount of labor being done and what dwarves are being paid for that labor. This reduces micromanagment as the player no longer has to assign specific active skills and burrows, a dwarf arrives at the fort and sees that there is an opening in the player made farmer job, the dwarfs sees that many of the skills he has alligns with those used by the farming job so he signs up for that one.

The player sets rent right alongside making bedrooms so the additional hassle is significantly reduced, then newly arrived dwarfs will rent a room based on their jobs wage. This will quickly sort the dwarfs you value highly, like metalworkers whose job you probably gave a higher wage to and dwarfs who are expendable into nice housing and cheeping housing.

The player then can order crafts like socks and mugs to be made in the regular way, then they could designate a pile of those crafts to be sold to the general dwarven community with the rest going to the caravan. From there the market forces I mentioned earlier, which the player controls directly through wages and rent decides who gets what.

Since the player sets wage they would have a pretty good idea of how much money a given dwarf makes based off their job, there would be no need to check the bank balance of each dwarf. If you have some dwarfs without rooms, simply create more jobs or bump up the wage of the job they have now. Of course some way to look at the finances of your fort would be needed, but you should have a fairly accurate idea of how much each dwarf has kind of like your stocks. And like you stocks with it recordkeeper you could assign a banker noble to help manage the forts financial assets.

[Waparius]

I also dont think giving dwarfs in a particular line of work autonomy from the state is a good idea just because they dont understand the resource situation nor do they understand your plans for the fort. Something more along the lines of them buying specific goods you ordered to be made and designated for the purpose of being sold to your dwarfs would be a better system. Such as ordering the construction of a variety of crafts like mugs and figurines, then putting them on sale for your dwarfs, and those who have enough money can go buy them. This way you dont have to worry about your stone crafters deciding to use up some of your rare magma proof or super dense rocks because you had not gotten around to organizing them yet.

If dwarves only took materials for their own work from specifically-designated stockpiles (that is, you have as an option, "make available for private use" or something), then it would be easier to manage that sort of thing, the same way that linked stockpiles make it easier to control what items get encrusted with gems or built out of magma-safe rock. Stockpiles default to "unavailable for private use".

The size of your gold mine decides how much gold is available to your dwarves.  The problem is that you cannot determine or regulate how much gold your dwarves are actually going to want to use, instead all you can presumably do is set the prices of the gold that you are selling to the dwarves.

Interesting point - I had vague ideas of a supply/demand system regulating prices of various things, but hadn't thought out all the details there. The biggest point was having dwarves prioritise things in a heirarchy-of-needs sort of way, meaning that if you have lots of gold but little food then dwarves would naturally spend their gold on food.

 

If the dwarf gold miners set their own prices, then it will be according to some mechanism that will be all over the wiki leading to us setting the prices by proxy through designating/forbidding gold.

 But I don't see how people being able to use the wiki to hack around with gold prices would ruin the experience for those of us who don't want to hack around with gold prices. I mean, it's not like everyone uses danger rooms or trap corridors.

It gets worse if we allow dwarves to privately engage in external trade, if we have our own sealed off little economy then we at least vaguely know how much currency is out there because we ultimately chucked all the currency into our sandbox economy in the first place.  With external trade we can have a 'wonderful' outflow of currency causing everything to suddenly become un-affordable and mass starvation beckons, or we can have a 'wonderful' inflow of currency leading to us having to a demand-spike since everything is suddenly majorly cheap.

Well...sort of? Again, dwarves would be going by their needs - if they have no food but lots of gold, then gold gets traded to hilldwarves and merchants for food. The hilldwarves may not value the gold so much, or they may not be able to afford it, meaning that dwarves look for other avenues of work - suddenly you find your goldsmiths learning how to be stonecrafters or clothiers instead, because at least they can afford food. If on the other hand the dwarves find themselves very wealthy indeed, well, they start spending their money on heaps of expensive crap and suddenly there's a fortress full of dwarves in embroidered <<*giant cave spider silk*>> clothes with two rings on each finger demanding more room in their quarters.

Additionally, concrete currency would be mostly for outside trade, and that mostly in the form of barter, since dwarves could handle everything inside their fort on credit, which was the way most medieval societies did everything anyway.

This ought to impact migration, too - if a dwarf is unhappy enough he ought to pack up his possessions and leave, whether for the hills or another fortress. If the fort's full of wealthy dwarves, more migrants ought to arrive to seek their fortune. (Personally I think migration needs a serious revamp - I hate the huge waves we get before we have a chance to really get established, and as others have often suggested, dwarves should be able to leave if they get too fed up with the fortress as well).

You claim that dwarves should be able to feed, clothe and accessorize themselves but there is simply no need to introduce internal commercial activity in order for this to happen.  Dwarves already autonomously do things, so we can simply designate resources for dwarves to use autonomously without ever having to introduce commerce into the equation, resulting in all the problems above mentioned.

It would be a way to regulate things like dwarves working their preferred careers, purchasing items to display their wealth, selling said items in times of trouble (meaning that rich dwarves could keep working their preferred jobs at no profit till the money ran out) and market stuff. If dwarves can just do what they want without money, then there's less interesting situations like legendary metalcrafters being forced into hauling work due to lack of demand. Also it would help with migration being a thing.

[Ops Fox]

If the dwarf gold miners set their own prices, then it will be according to some mechanism that will be all over the wiki leading to us setting the prices by proxy through designating/forbidding gold.

 But I don't see how people being able to use the wiki to hack around with gold prices would ruin the experience for those of us who don't want to hack around with gold prices. I mean, it's not like everyone uses danger rooms or trap corridors.

An Issue I see is when the dwarfs tank the economy because they are controlling their own prices and the player has to go to he wiki to find out why dwarfs are starving.

Hence with the exception of dwarfs buying things from other dwarfs all state goods should have their prices set by the player this way starving dwarfs will be able to find food and if they want better food leave that up to them buying it off dwarves who bought it off the state in the first place.

[GoblinCookie]

I would not say the buying and renting part is redundant.

If dwarfs get happier thoughts from wearing ≡wool socks≡ then from wool socks and you have a limited supply of ≡wool socks≡, would you not want your mason to have ≡wool socks≡ and you hauler to have wool socks. Of course you could specifically order you mason to grab those ≡wool socks≡ and assign him the fancier room so that he is happier or you can let the tried and true method of supply and demand sort it out for you.

basically Urist McHauler buys the ≡wool socks≡ at the state price of 2☼ because the player was to lazy to give different prices to different quality levels. McMason whose job earns him significantly more than McHauler, sees that McHauler has these nice socks so he offers 5☼, which McHauler quickly accepts. Netting McHauler 5☼ to buy another pair of socks with and cover rent or food while McMason gets an additional happy thought from comfy socks. The player did not have to designate anything but the starting price in that scenario and that scenario would work for all goods, getting the most out of your supply of socks without any effort on the players part.

As There is no particular reason why you would care how the socks of various qualities are distributed among your dwarves, the present situation works rather well enough.  Sock distribution all goes on largely autonomously and requires neither player input nor prices in order to work at the moment. 

Automation of production has it's uses, prices however do not have a use and for every instance where the pricing system works out better than the present system there will be several instances of disasters arising as a result of problems in the pricing system; disasters that would never happen with the present system. 

Interesting point - I had vague ideas of a supply/demand system regulating prices of various things, but hadn't thought out all the details there. The biggest point was having dwarves prioritise things in a heirarchy-of-needs sort of way, meaning that if you have lots of gold but little food then dwarves would naturally spend their gold on food.

The price of gold however is regardless of the situation in relation to the relative price of plump helmets, still going to be influenced by the available amount of gold that is surplus to demand.  If set by the player we still run into the problem of the player having to determine the amount of coins the average dwarf has in order to determine how expensive while if it is set by a supply+demand mechanism we run into the problem that the player has to ensure that there is not too much gold designated or too little designated so the price will be optimal, while still having to determine the amount of money in each dwarf's pocket. 

But I don't see how people being able to use the wiki to hack around with gold prices would ruin the experience for those of us who don't want to hack around with gold prices. I mean, it's not like everyone uses danger rooms or trap corridors.

Hacking the gold prices is not avoidable unlike danger rooms and trap corridors.  You set the gold prices either directly or through designation.  'Hacking' is basically simply not playing the game to lose, you are making sure that you are setting a price that is correct.  Correct in this context brings us to the redundancy of commerce, we are setting the price in order to ration the goods.

We want to make sure that no dwarf ends up with more than one unit worth of gold, so why not simply directly ration gold so that no dwarf ends up with more than one unit? 

Well...sort of? Again, dwarves would be going by their needs - if they have no food but lots of gold, then gold gets traded to hilldwarves and merchants for food. The hilldwarves may not value the gold so much, or they may not be able to afford it, meaning that dwarves look for other avenues of work - suddenly you find your goldsmiths learning how to be stonecrafters or clothiers instead, because at least they can afford food. If on the other hand the dwarves find themselves very wealthy indeed, well, they start spending their money on heaps of expensive crap and suddenly there's a fortress full of dwarves in embroidered <<*giant cave spider silk*>> clothes with two rings on each finger demanding more room in their quarters. 

Remember that I am talking about the need to set the prices based upon the available currency available to the average dwarf, not the general functioning of the economy and how it results in poverty for some but riches for others. 

Additionally, concrete currency would be mostly for outside trade, and that mostly in the form of barter, since dwarves could handle everything inside their fort on credit, which was the way most medieval societies did everything anyway.

If credit is non-convertible then you have solved the money fluctuation problem in regard to credit but we still have to go through hundreds of accounts checking how much credit everyone has in order to determine prices. 

This ought to impact migration, too - if a dwarf is unhappy enough he ought to pack up his possessions and leave, whether for the hills or another fortress. If the fort's full of wealthy dwarves, more migrants ought to arrive to seek their fortune. (Personally I think migration needs a serious revamp - I hate the huge waves we get before we have a chance to really get established, and as others have often suggested, dwarves should be able to leave if they get too fed up with the fortress as well).

Indeed but none of this has any relation to the thread topic.  Dwarves could already theoretically emigrate without any need for any changes in the economy.

It would be a way to regulate things like dwarves working their preferred careers, purchasing items to display their wealth, selling said items in times of trouble (meaning that rich dwarves could keep working their preferred jobs at no profit till the money ran out) and market stuff. If dwarves can just do what they want without money, then there's less interesting situations like legendary metalcrafters being forced into hauling work due to lack of demand. Also it would help with migration being a thing.

Legendary metalcrafters are not forced into anything, the way things work at the moment is that everyone does every job that they are permitted to do and are able to do.  Differences in status between the Legendary metalworker and the hauler peasant can easily be modeled without any need for currency by having everyone estimate their worth to the fortress and dynamically generate more demands which are processed by the centralized demand screen+manager screen. 

Add emigration into the picture and things get better.  The highly skilled worker estimates his value to the fortress as high and makes many extravagant demands.   If those demands are not met then he becomes unhappy and emigrates away while the less skilled worker whose demands are less stays; all without ever introducing money into the equation.

[Andeerz]

GoblinCookie, may I suggest you (and everyone else) take a look at counting's suggestions about the economy and proposed mechanisms for commodity valuation?   The mechanisms proposed there would allow for procedural and non-arbitrary determination of value for commodities, as well as procedurally determining currencies (well, commodity monies)!  No player input required!  No messing with gold values, prices, or crap like that unless you want to!  Here are two of them:

• http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=85289.msg2296845#msg2296845 
• http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=88258.msg2413199#msg2413199
  

And these kinds of models actually have been implemented in simulations developed by researchers as well as at least a few games.  I do intend on expanding on counting's suggestions at some point when I have time to finish studying the papers he referenced... But, from what I have read so far, in principle, they could work in DF and it would be a beautiful thing.  The thing that I can't quite get at right now is the initial determination of value... the language is dense in some of these.  I have a feeling that this is a large part of where heirarchy-of-needs-based valuation might come to fore in particular.   

I'd just like for it to be possible for dwarves to dig their own rooms out, albeit in some way we can reasonably control. Everyone who wanted to completely control the layout of their fort could safely ignore the feature.

I'll admit I was very ecstatic watching my dwarves mine out a vein of ore for the first time without my constant intervention.

I really like this idea, HartLord.  And those who oppose it, it would obviously be an optional thing.  Also, there are already mechanisms in place for NPCs to employ their own layouts for fotresses (look at the towns and stuff generated in world-gen).  It wouldn't be a far leap at all to allow dwarves to do this autonomously, expanding upon an existing layout.  Of course, this would be at the player's discretion.  Also, this stuff could also pave the way for better non-player-run forts (including formerly player-run forts be allowed to be run by the computer), as well as having a way for different kinds of architecture as a knowledge to have a way to plug into the game.

[Ops Fox]

As There is no particular reason why you would care how the socks of various qualities are distributed among your dwarves, the present situation works rather well enough.  Sock distribution all goes on largely autonomously and requires neither player input nor prices in order to work at the moment. 

Automation of production has it's uses, prices however do not have a use and for every instance where the pricing system works out better than the present system there will be several instances of disasters arising as a result of problems in the pricing system; disasters that would never happen with the present system. 

The socks thing was just an example, I dont even think dwarfs care about the quality level of their clothing right now, but I have no doubt they eventually will. In which case being able to ensure your metal-smiths are happier than some random group of haulers is important and since the current system basically hands things out randomly, this gives some a guarantee the wealthiest dwarfs have the best stuff.

The present system currently just randomly hands out clothing to the first dwarf to pick it up, that's not much of a system. Pricing and more importantly the setting of wages gives the player some control over it.

The example might work better with prepared meals though since dwarfs do currently care about what they eat, only gaining a happy thought if the meal contains something they like.

Do you have an example or some idea about what sort of disaster could arise from [Player creates job with wages, Player sets rent, player sets starting price for goods then lets dwarfs work it out for themselves]?