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[inykane]

This is not a refined idea, but more like tossing out some thoughts. If I understand the Dwarven Economy as it was (never played it), there was a problem with plenty of dwarves running around with too many coins and not knowing what to do with them. There is a way to balance this meaningfully with features like begging, thieving and giving gifts.

Some useless dwarves end up being poor, because they do not earn enough to pay for their desired standard of living. They will then resort to begging, which will cause unhappy thoughts in most dwarves. The beggar will become unhappy and so will the one he targets, but also those who witness begging, especially if it is excessive or aggressive. Giving a gift, however, would cause happy thoughts all around and strengthen bonds. A dwarf would be more inclined to beg from his friends than from strangers. So beggars would tend to start pestering those closest to them, causing them to like them less.

To add to the fun, the guard would sometimes arrest aggressive beggars or beat them up on the spot.

Contrary to humans, dwarves could function such that the more coin you had, the more inclined you would be to extend a helping hand (and thus be prone to attract a swarm of beggars). Of course some beggars would resort to theft and pickpocketing, adding to the fun factor with the predictable social consequences.

The main thrust of the idea is this: useful dwarves end up rich and the useless ones end up poor. The rich get happier, gain more influence and thus become even more useful and productive by giving out gifts to those poorer than they are. The poor will end up spending their ever diminishing supply of social capital by resorting to begging. For the economy this means that those with too much coin are inclined to give it away and those with too little are inclined to beg for it, thus creating a balance in the economy.

A bonus in this is a creation of different social classes. Those who have will always tend to have even more, and those who do not will always tend to have even less, while the middle class balances there on the fence between the two extremes. Run out of productive work and see your life ruined. Beautiful.

[Vaughn]

I like this. Finally, all these cheese makers and gelders will provide some fun.

[Roofless]

I didn't play the economy version myself, but I believe excess capital was not the point. The point was that at dwarves had income per job done. Thus, if you have full stock on everything you don't need anything done, thus dwarves lose income due to overproductivity.

[FantasticDorf]

I didn't play the economy version myself, but I believe excess capital was not the point. The point was that at dwarves had income per job done. Thus, if you have full stock on everything you don't need anything done, thus dwarves lose income due to overproductivity.

I find the concept of free money 'falling from the sky' as a reward for doing a job a little sketchy; especially when it can be melted down into free materials. Money would need its own material template and to be incompatible for melting down.

Economic ideas have come and gone and mostly flopped on account of people trying to implement the 'rich and poor' without much thought as to the game as it is now vs reality.

Spoiler: a long quotational exerpt by goblincookie (click to show/hide)

This thread has the same problem that most of the other economic suggestions have, it proposes introducing a whole set of economic institutions into the game, with all their rather realistic consequences but provides no reason why any of those institutions are in any way rational.  In Dwarf Fortress we create a whole new society from the ground up, we do not simply inherit institutions from the past, so irrational insitutions do not make sense.  It also has the usual package bundle setup by which a whole set of things are thrown in together that happen to exist in the real-world, even though the vast majority of these things are quite capable of being implemented independantly without eachother. 

Fact is that as things presently stand the communist status quo is not only the optimal economic system but it will be so even if (theoretically) there were a million dwarves in your fortress.  In order to have other insitutions make sense we have to model some kind of flaw into the economic model or else all we are doing by introducing 'capitalistic' institutions is making the game less rational and less functional.  Also this is not a package deal, you do not get the whole bundle of institutions all at once but instead someone has to set the institutions up one by one.  Historically this process took millenia to complete.

My own view is that probably that if there is a physical manifestable stockpile (and i mean stockpile literally, swag bags/stacks of coins as a target for theives if not stored away from your wagon) to be drawn out of, it should be administered via meetings with the relevant mayor/expedition leader and the administrator (as well as the trader getting his delegated amount of fiscal wealth to use in trading and the recordkeeper to work with the administrator in tracking and calculating how much is paid to specialists for jobs/set wages) atleast once a month/year at random intervals (to stop a swarm of dwarves running all at once if they need to be paid and also stopping them from running into your 'vault' to collect potentially wrong amounts of minimum wage themselves)

You can probably draw the starting amount of coins as per excess (also a case of whether copper coins change into silver coins magically when a 100 copper coins are drawn into the same pile or its calculated out into basic divisions of a amount so the entire fortress wealth isnt divided between 2 silver coins meant to pay 7 or more dwarves) embarkation points, encouraging the practice to get metalworking up (or whatever relevant material your entity has for coins) and operational in order to smelt embark brought bars of metal into coins directly if the need arises.

Also its probably a case that forcing a player to pay their dwarves as per standard might not be preferable or even flexible for every fortress. The ability to turn that off in the infig settings or alternatively in the in-game settings by a set number of actions (Z, move over to the ECONOMY screen, set all rooms to no-rent and set no-pay) even with economy (for trading etc) on at the expense of no happy thoughts from getting paid/spending or extreme negative thoughts from not being paid when due or unable to pay (dwarves would probably still be annoyed at transitioning pay to no-pay after formerly receiving paid work, in the case that they are still paying for rent, as you would have just cut off their breadline) .

If people want a communist fortress where money only applies to actions of the state in relevancy to the outside world (such as in extreme conditions where living day by day is too knife-edge to care about a pay dispute, like a glacier or evil embark), they can do that. If people want to reap the rewards of large mineral deposits (for minting and expanding your coin amount) and a profitable locations/trading relationship that brings in a lot of cash and the interests of the monarchy to send a tax collector around to be forwarded directly as relation improving tribute (alternatively having monarch in house and sending out a tax collector to bring money to you) you probably can do that also under that model.

Make the dwarf state rich with coin contributions besides from bartering trade presents = More embark points for more fortresses = Better fortress startups = Paint a huge target over your backs for enemies at fortress start with the additional coins you bring unless you spend it all on munitions = Expand and repeat.

====================================================================

Sorry if i've hijacked the thread a bit.

I really like the OP's beggar solution for bothering dwarves, it fits in very well and looks like just thing adventure mode needs around the Trade depot and as a sidepiece to hillock drunks to make it look even more alive (besides world gen homeless/poor being caught by the authorities for stealing goods) in hard times more of these people will turn up, and being the obscenely rich soul you are from your conquests run through towns showering gold coins for instant fame and notoriety.

[LordFreezer]

There is a way to balance this meaningfully with features like begging, thieving and giving gifts.

Also gambling.  Gambling with outsiders is mentioned as a future feature, I can see a struggling Dwarf trying to get a bit of extra cash this way, perhaps even resorting to cheating.

Busking would be a couple of steps up from begging.  Urist finds a busy intersection and starts performing, to the enjoyment, or horror of anybody walking by.

[inykane]

One concern is that how deep the economy should cut. Right now it is communism, so how to integrate it so that it makes sense. One way is to leave everything else as it is but introduce jewelry and other trinkets as something that has a cost in coin. So prestigious dwarves have splengid jewelry, while the common folk have almost nothing. Wealth moves in a way of giving gifts in the form of jewelry, which strengthens bonds.

The other part of personal wealth could be clothing. So, you could invest in either long term durable goodies or short term comfort (clothes), but in practice you need both to stay happy. When you run out of coin, you end up selling your trinkets in order to get a pair of new boots.

The fun part here would be that the economy is in no way controlled by the player. The king (or the expedition leader or whoever who is in charge) decides who gets what. The nobility he favors might get some yearly allowance, which they could in turn divide as they please (or keep it all). Whoever is in good terms with the leader tends to get these shares. The way to get coin is to either please the leader or someone else lower down in the chain. Some are pleased with good performances in music, some admire good cooks, some are thrilled by masterwork mechanisms and so forth.

The point is that everyone tries to connect with the flow of wealth (except the leader, who owns it all). Wealth and influence are tracked by the jewelry and clothing one wears, so more dwarves try to acquint them and do things they seem to find worth rewarding - begging included. Begging is of couse a skill, so poorer beggars will end up begging from the wealthier ones - maybe receiving old tattered clothes as gifts. Meanwhile the game trudges along as always, but the dwarves just end up wasting spending more time begging and trying to please someone wealthier than they are.

If you really want you could include room rent in this formula, but personal clothing and jewelry might be enough.

So basically you take our garden variety communism and turn it into a system where the leader basically owns it all. And when there is an accident, the whole river of wealth might find completely different directions of flow, generating tantrums and other such fun.

[Ungweliante]

This idea sounds somewhat right-wing.

Would there also be things such as rehabilitation back into society, welfare funds, unions and organized rebellion when things get too unjust ?

Edit: grammar, unions

[Fleeting Frames]

In the middle ages, what you had were guilds. Which are curious possibility.

Still, the criticism of annoying player for minimal benefit is valid. You could lock trade caravans away behind having economy enabled, I suppose, but most economy suggestions read like they'd make fortress less productive - while you'd expect instead labour specialization to give greater production.

[Ribs]

Economy. Big walls of text. Someone quotes goblincookie. This is going to be a great thread everyone.

Economic ideas have come and gone and mostly flopped on account of people trying to implement the 'rich and poor' without much thought as to the game as it is now vs reality.

You see, the thing is people want the game to go into the direction it's already going: the colorful simulation of "reality". We should consider that, perhaps, if a more realistic economy is developed to a certain extent the beurocratic way production is currently handled may prove unsatisfactory. Or maybe it would simply be interesting if the game could simulate a proper economic system that supports a "bourgeois" class to go together with the current nobility. Why not?
 

Also its probably a case that forcing a player to pay their dwarves as per standard might not be preferable or even flexible for every fortress. The ability to turn that off in the infig settings or alternatively in the in-game settings by a set number of actions (Z, move over to the ECONOMY screen, set all rooms to no-rent and set no-pay) even with economy (for trading etc) on at the expense of no happy thoughts from getting paid/spending or extreme negative thoughts from not being paid when due or unable to pay (dwarves would probably still be annoyed at transitioning pay to no-pay after formerly receiving paid work, in the case that they are still paying for rent, as you would have just cut off their breadline) .

I think that wouldn't be hard to solve. Rent may as well be "taxes". If you're short on coins you may want to start renting your rooms, as a way of taxing them. Obviously, that would prevent migration of dwarves that already have a personal stash of their own, and make dwarves that did have their own stash want to leave because of this new rent edict/law/act/whatever. That's where the system would get interesting. Also, you can always hace dormitories ready and free (or much cheaper) for people who can't afford rent.

Maybe you WANT to attract wealthy dwarves to your fortress, so you assure outsiders that your place is more or less rent free and make hard laws to reflect that assurance. Or maybe you'd find other ways of attracting them, such as outright selling rooms as private property so wealthy people would have a way of migrating to your fortress resting assured that they wouldn't be bothered by the fickle renting taxation like the rest of the plebs, as well as providing you with quick cash from immigrants who want to buy property/wealthy citizens who want to make sure they don't have to pay rent anymore.

If people want a communist fortress where money only applies to actions of the state in relevancy to the outside world (such as in extreme conditions where living day by day is too knife-edge to care about a pay dispute, like a glacier or evil embark), they can do that. If people want to reap the rewards of large mineral deposits (for minting and expanding your coin amount) and a profitable locations/trading relationship that brings in a lot of cash and the interests of the monarchy to send a tax collector around to be forwarded directly as relation improving tribute (alternatively having monarch in house and sending out a tax collector to bring money to you) you probably can do that also under that model.

The thing about a coin based economy is that it creates a lot of inflation. So, finding a way of taking money away from your dwarves may be a good way of controling it, but do it too much and they get mad. Also, if your productivity is doing ok and your stockpiles are full of food, none of this should be a problem. Breadlines are only a thing when there is shortage. In fact, the game currently deals with this poorly; when there's a shortage of important, there's no real rationing system.

This idea sounds somewhat right-wing.

Would there also be things such as rehabilitation back into society, welfare funds, unions and organized rebellion when things get too unjust ?

Edit: grammar, unions

Welfare funds sound a bit anachronistic to the "era" DF is trying to simulate, but it could done. Maybe temples and guilds would provide such services, with guilds dubbing as unions and temples/some charitable order providing welfare/rehabilitation for the poor. Also, the top administration itself (mayor, king, etc) can distribute food for the poor on occasion, etc. I'm all for rebellions and such.

[FantasticDorf]

If people want a communist fortress where money only applies to actions of the state in relevancy to the outside world (such as in extreme conditions where living day by day is too knife-edge to care about a pay dispute, like a glacier or evil embark), they can do that. If people want to reap the rewards of large mineral deposits (for minting and expanding your coin amount) and a profitable locations/trading relationship that brings in a lot of cash and the interests of the monarchy to send a tax collector around to be forwarded directly as relation improving tribute (alternatively having monarch in house and sending out a tax collector to bring money to you) you probably can do that also under that model.

The thing about a coin based economy is that it creates a lot of inflation. So, finding a way of taking money away from your dwarves may be a good way of controling it, but do it too much and they get mad. Also, if your productivity is doing ok and your stockpiles are full of food, none of this should be a problem. Breadlines are only a thing when there is shortage. In fact, the game currently deals with this poorly; when there's a shortage of important, there's no real rationing system.

This idea sounds somewhat right-wing.

Would there also be things such as rehabilitation back into society, welfare funds, unions and organized rebellion when things get too unjust ?

Edit: grammar, unions

Welfare funds sound a bit anachronistic to the "era" DF is trying to simulate, but it could done. Maybe temples and guilds would provide such services, with guilds dubbing as unions and temples/some charitable order providing welfare/rehabilitation for the poor. Also, the top administration itself (mayor, king, etc) can distribute food for the poor on occasion, etc. I'm all for rebellions and such.

I guess as you point out, it'll probably be a job for the temples/royalty/guild affiliates to deal with the poor, however that may be. Perhaps rooms attached to a temple area might gain some kind of significance for a alms house, unless for whatever reason homelessness/bankruptcy/extreme debt becomes a punishable offense.

• A bunch of homeless dwarves milling around, brooding grude < hate < enemy level relations to nobility figures sounds like excellent fodder to incite a revolt if you can afford to equip, train (by taking them out on adventures, or sparring), house (in your built site) and feed your followers for a peasants revolt for free warm bodies.

• Dwarven laws are already quite severe, with most categories listing under 'serious' punishment for the simple act of stealing a loaf of bread or skipping to 'accidental' executions by guards beating up a prisoner that under dwarven law has retracted their rights to be treated with care, i forsee harbouring extreme debts or, especially debts to royalty and nobility to be a form of oath breaking punishable by death if outside powers like vagabonds and more antagonistic guilds dont extort or kill you for it first.

• Adventurers who take out debts from immensely rich dwarven loan sharks should probably prepare to go into hiding if they cannot return the allotted money in time

> Also, inflation while it is true a lot of currency can damage a economy, it only really applies to money in circulation. If it sits in a pile just being counted up, its merely a enourmous accumulation of wealth. Its when you start spending money (such as in contrast toady already has mentioned before that traders may end up refusing or cutting prices of mass produced goods) that a problem occurs.

• There is little problem filling a vault full of untold riches and huge amounts of coins as long as you are sensible about how to handle and distribute it, its just your good wealth.

> Take for example Mansa Musa (TED-ED youtube video linked) who gained a large amount of wealth from the rich resources of the land around him (in similarity the dwarves intimate connection and proximity to precious metals), and on a pilgrimage crashed the economy of places he visited merely because he distributed it to the poor in alms. His economy could have that much money and remain stable by regulating itself and being sensible (in game terms taking multiple trading partners and being moderate about what is being bought), when he goes out of his way to be outlandish, it causes a crisis.

• Another example of inflation, during WWII, the allies printed german money and literally dropped it behind enemy lines to attack the economy, realistically a rich dwarven adventurer could do the same thing, if they view gold coins as commonplace then start throwing them about. Economic warfare especially to direct megabeast/theiving targets. Money can also be destroyed and recast into metals.

• Darker side to the economy might be that the richer your civ/state compared to your people are (via generous gifts) the more crime such as bandits and dungeon/catacomb vagabond theives may start appearing and growing in number and power. On the flipside this could mean more people to do 'dirty work' like mercenary duties and assassins, not to mention civs that target entities based off a economy/trade trigger.

• Public developments like more provinces/hillocks and mountain halls and laying roads/tunnels etc, is also a good sink for surplus funds, perhaps a new worldgen economy might take into account both population, local trade resources and state wealth before founding new sites rather than a insane spawl as needed for squeezing out additional population. 

[Ribs]

Also, inflation while it is true a lot of currency can damage a economy, it only really applies to money in circulation. If it sits in a pile just being counted up, its merely a enourmous accumulation of wealth. Its when you start spending money (such as in contrast toady already has mentioned before that traders may end up refusing or cutting prices of mass produced goods) that a problem occurs.

There is little problem filling a vault full of untold riches and huge amounts of coins as long as you are sensible about how to handle and distribute it, its just your good wealth.

Yes, I meant circulating wealth. Taxing your dwarves is a good way of getting money away from them and into your coffers. It can also be that you're taxing them just to immeditely spend the money but it's also a way of limiting the currency in circulation.  And as you've mentioned, public development could be a big sinkhole for your resources when dealing with hillocks and other outer-map sites is implemented, so having a stockpile full of gold, wood and stone may be actually useful in the future.

A bunch of homeless dwarves milling around, brooding grude < hate < enemy level relations to nobility figures sounds like excellent fodder to incite a revolt if you can afford to equip, train (by taking them out on adventures, or sparring), house (in your built site) and feed your followers for a peasants revolt for free warm bodies.

Sure. I imagine some of the temples could get money from faithful donors and some of their activities can be poverty relief. Regarding the OP, I think that's one of the main things individual citizens could do with their money:

• donations and fees (temples, guilds and other associations)
• individual purchases of goods, mainly in fairs and other shops
• long term investments such as buying their own shops from you (like in the old economy) and maybe other small holdings such as rooms

[Tatterdemalian]

I didn't play the economy version myself, but I believe excess capital was not the point. The point was that at dwarves had income per job done. Thus, if you have full stock on everything you don't need anything done, thus dwarves lose income due to overproductivity.

I find the concept of free money 'falling from the sky' as a reward for doing a job a little sketchy; especially when it can be melted down into free materials. Money would need its own material template and to be incompatible for melting down.

Economic ideas have come and gone and mostly flopped on account of people trying to implement the 'rich and poor' without much thought as to the game as it is now vs reality.

Spoiler: a long quotational exerpt by goblincookie (click to show/hide)

This thread has the same problem that most of the other economic suggestions have, it proposes introducing a whole set of economic institutions into the game, with all their rather realistic consequences but provides no reason why any of those institutions are in any way rational.  In Dwarf Fortress we create a whole new society from the ground up, we do not simply inherit institutions from the past, so irrational insitutions do not make sense.  It also has the usual package bundle setup by which a whole set of things are thrown in together that happen to exist in the real-world, even though the vast majority of these things are quite capable of being implemented independantly without eachother. 

Fact is that as things presently stand the communist status quo is not only the optimal economic system but it will be so even if (theoretically) there were a million dwarves in your fortress.  In order to have other insitutions make sense we have to model some kind of flaw into the economic model or else all we are doing by introducing 'capitalistic' institutions is making the game less rational and less functional.  Also this is not a package deal, you do not get the whole bundle of institutions all at once but instead someone has to set the institutions up one by one.  Historically this process took millenia to complete.

Pretty much this, to be honest. Dwarf Fortress is not, and probably can not be, a perfect simulation of reality. The game treats "the labor theory of value" as a law of physics, for example, and so the only economic system that *can* function for any length of time without direct intervention is communism.

[Shazbot]

To say dwarven society is ideally this or that system because Toady has yet to code the elements of an economic simulation is as fundamentally flawed as saying humans are not intended to fly because God did not give us wings.

[Ribs]

Pretty much this, to be honest. Dwarf Fortress is not, and probably can not be, a perfect simulation of reality. The game treats "the labor theory of value" as a law of physics, for example, and so the only economic system that *can* function for any length of time without direct intervention is communism.

I disagree. While something like modern-day market capitalism would probably not be possible, simulating "scientific socialism" and all that entails wouldn't be possible either. Any tried human economic system, from "hydraulic despotism" to "religious communism" or whatever you can think of is too complex if you attempt to simulate it perfectly. Communism, as far as I understand it, also needs "direct intervention" to be implemented, unless we are talking about the game being stuck with an extremely simplistic economic framework (basically the one we have right now). I hope that's not the case.

But even if it does, what we currently have in dwarf fortress is a very strage system that's incredibly authoritarian yet arbitrarily (and even bizarrily) communal in some aspects, with some basic goods like food and clothes apparently shared but not distributed, where the greedly take whatever they want. You can give your dwarves whatever you want in terms of rooms and furniture, and all they can do in turn is throw tantrums if they feel like they haven't been given enough. Only the nobility demands better accomodations more aggressively, and there are no guarantees for anyone, etc. I guess that if you squint and tilt your head 90 degrees it could maybe remind some people of communism, but not really.

We have no real idea of what Toady is going to do with the economy. He talked of fairs and markets, so there's that. That doesn't exclude the possibility of us ending up with a quasi-communist system of society as our only real option but it doesn't mean that these are the limitations of what he can do. It will all deppend on how the Fortress Starting Scenarios release go (where they will touch on expanding the framework of law, custom, rights, property and status), and how well that is implemented.

Personally, I feel like rich vs poor, people owning shops, etc, will be implemented one way or another just because those are the kind of features that bring up interesting narratives to the game. What was the last RPG, western or otherwise, where you didn't see that as a thing? It's very common and useful. Also, it's just interesting. That is why bringing the economy back but functional this time is so important to a lot of people. Maybe it will never be fully implemented because it wouldn't work with the mechanics of the game, but I think it's worth a try.

To say dwarven society is ideally this or that system because Toady has yet to code the elements of an economic simulation is as fundamentally flawed as saying humans are not intended to fly because God did not give us wings.

That's probably the case. Hopefully, coding these elements is not only Toady's intention, but also feasible, because admitedly it does sound really complicated to implement things like realistic fluctuating values of goods, etc.

[Tatterdemalian]

Pretty much this, to be honest. Dwarf Fortress is not, and probably can not be, a perfect simulation of reality. The game treats "the labor theory of value" as a law of physics, for example, and so the only economic system that *can* function for any length of time without direct intervention is communism.

I disagree. While something like modern-day market capitalism would probably not be possible, simulating "scientific socialism" and all that entails wouldn't be possible either. Any tried human economic system, from "hydraulic despotism" to "religious communism" or whatever you can think of is too complex if you attempt to simulate it perfectly. Communism, as far as I understand it, also needs "direct intervention" to be implemented, unless we are talking about the game being stuck with an extremely simplistic economic framework (basically the one we have right now). I hope that's not the case.

Communism needs direct intervention in real life because humans are not a hive mind of clones with only minor variations according to specific templates. The dwarven race of Dwarf Fortress, on the other hand, are implemented this way, because it's the only feasable way to implement any large number of similar objects in a computer simulation. With the economy disabled, each takes according to his/her needs, and each labors endlessly to the best of  his/her means. This is the final stage of communism, at least how Marx envisioned it, and Fun happens when the player fails at it, whether due to carelessness, the RNG, or most commonly, both.