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[Hinaichigo]

I guess this might already be planned for the economy release, but it would be cool if you could establish a market similar to the ones that exist in human towns.
It could be a location like a library or temple or tavern, and merchants could come to sell their wares, and you could tax them/charge fees for using your market. And then other visitors and your dwarves could trade with them. Maybe your dwarves could trade their own belongings/money for things they see in the market, beyond the player's direct control. Also you could trade manually like the current trade depots. And thieves and such would also come. It might have a lot of interesting emergent gameplay.

Edit: You could maybe also appoint dwarves as merchants to work in the marketplace too.

[FantasticDorf]

I guess this might already be planned for the economy release, but it would be cool if you could establish a market similar to the ones that exist in human towns.
It could be a location like a library or temple or tavern, and merchants could come to sell their wares, and you could tax them/charge fees for using your market. And then other visitors and your dwarves could trade with them. Maybe your dwarves could trade their own belongings/money for things they see in the market, beyond the player's direct control. Also you could trade manually like the current trade depots. And thieves and such would also come. It might have a lot of interesting emergent gameplay.

There used to be a 'shop' workshop (practically prehistoric version 20.) in prior versions that took produced goods and then sold them at the value they were at worth to your own dwarves, having a same system but instead applying it to selling to visitors could work better. But as the wiki entails, having super high value objects and becoming the 'Selfridges' or 'Harrods' of the DF universe with super inflated prices means they can't actually sell anything to normal folk.

So a bit of tweaking on pricing needed.

[MrWiggles]

And lets us not forgot how crappy coins were. In DF fashion, each coin of various metals were struck, or even casted. And so dorfs spent an inordinate amount of time stacking, fetching coins. And stacking has remained a technical issue with DF. In DF fashion when a coin was made, a single coin was placed on a single tile in a stock pile. And eventually you just got coins being littered everywhere. On the plus side, the Manager wasnt involved in who got paid or how much anyone dorf had. So the economy, for what it was, didnt need coins. It could all be done on credit. However you couldnt trade this credit to traders, but they traders would accept the coins. And then you'd wait 5 in game years for the dorfs to fetch one coin at a time.

And beside the inability to decide what quality goods are produced at, which meant over time your goods would be unaccessible to the dorfs living there, dorfs were paid by job done and each job had different pay out for job. Hauling jobs were paid the least, and were often destitute.

[Splint]

Assuming such issues are fixed beforehand, I support this idea, though I'd say it'd be smart to provide "stalls" in the form of tables. The more stalls, the more villagers who show up to peddle goods to the Fort inhabitants (and, consequently, spend it/thier own money in your tavern...)

I'd also like to see more caravans per season based on the number of depots available in the marketplace area, potentially allowing for a far greater variety of goods to be brought in by the fortress government if you happen to have multiple civs for each trade season in range.

Dwarf Civ 1 brings  much needed coal.
Dwarf Civ 2 brings plentiful gold and exotic meats.
Home Civ has plentiful flux stone and tin ore.

Elf Civ 1 brings elephants and giant eagles
Elf Civ 2 brings wolves and cheap cloth
Elf Civ 3 brings sunberries for the ever coveted Sunshine

Just as examples. I do agree though that it'd be visually more interesting and would give dwarves a little more to do on thier down time besides listen to bad poets and terrible acapella bands.

[Hinaichigo]

What does currently happen when you have multiple civs of the same race within range?

[Splint]

What does currently happen when you have multiple civs of the same race within range?

You'll only ever get one caravan from your home civ, even if others of the same race are in range.

Same goes for other races - one per customer as the phrase goes.

[MrWiggles]

Well ToadyOne has talked about having a trade fair once a year. And everyone, including multiple caravans of the same race from different civs will all come to trade with the fort.

[FantasticDorf]

Heh farmers market. Bringing out your prize crundles for display for a little tourniquet.

[Bumber]

Heh farmers market. Bringing out your prize crundles for display for a little tourniquet.

Tourniquet? You mean like the surgical kind or a turnstile?

[FantasticDorf]

Well dwarf customs to hammer the meat to make sure its tender while judging the best in show contest so i guess its needed. 

In reality i just realised i had the two mixed up, just a prize ribbon, i mean a rosette not a tourniquet.

[GoblinCookie]

Well money and markets are really like the hit-points and magic-points of RPGs, an abstract mechanism that tidily conceals any basis they *may* have. In most cases it is fine because the economy is nearly completed abstracted, but the need to be able to entirely unabstract the DF economy causes a ton of problems that would not normally exist in a game like this. 

The basic question is rather, what is the point of money and markets at all? As far as I can tell 'paying' dwarves is far less efficient than simply giving them a limited, rationed access to whatever it is they might want, the reason being is that from our site POV we are basically giving folks money in order to buy things from us (and other sites in the same situation) which are priced according to whatever either we should decide or someone else.  If it is us doing the pricing then we just end up paying dwarves to buy stuff from us and when it is others doing the pricing we have no idea what everything is going to end up costing, therefore no way to guarantee that they will be able to buy anything at all given their wages.  Since we are going to be minting coins or selling stuff for money in order to pay folks to buy stuff, we need to know how much money we are going to be needing to pay our dwarves in order to buy stuff IN ADVANCE of actually paying them because we cannot pay them more money than we have.  We do not know in advance how much everything is going to be worth, so we cannot figure out how much money we are going to need to get in order to pay dwarves the correct amount to buy

So in a very convoluted way we get back to the situation of I want my dwarves to be able to buy X amount of Y hence I give them X amount of money because that is what said item is worth.  Against simply acquiring the items ourselves in whatever manner and giving them the amount of the item that we want them to be having in the first place, which is basically the basis of the far complex calculations which we are making as to how much to pay our dwarves.  If we get our complex calculations wrong in the other sense (they get too much) it is actually much worse than giving them too little money in one respect which is the problem is not immediately obvious.  Our dwarves end up with treasure stacks piled high in a world where precious metals are finite and at this point there is no reason to get the prices right for anyone, basically we can set the prices too high for stuff without having any consequences (for us) until they use up their precious metal stacks but other folks end up suffering since we are the one's who now have the world's precious metals.

The only way to make money work is to make it another 'good' that is rationed out to folks along the lines we mentioned before.  So basically we keep our hands on the actual goods and then trade them for money only when we need money for something.  What the 'something' however is that needs money, that is the problem. 

[LMeire]

Well money and markets are really like the hit-points and magic-points of RPGs, an abstract mechanism that tidily conceals any basis they *may* have. In most cases it is fine because the economy is nearly completed abstracted, but the need to be able to entirely unabstract the DF economy causes a ton of problems that would not normally exist in a game like this. 

The basic question is rather, what is the point of money and markets at all? As far as I can tell 'paying' dwarves is far less efficient than simply giving them a limited, rationed access to whatever it is they might want, the reason being is that from our site POV we are basically giving folks money in order to buy things from us (and other sites in the same situation) which are priced according to whatever either we should decide or someone else.  If it is us doing the pricing then we just end up paying dwarves to buy stuff from us and when it is others doing the pricing we have no idea what everything is going to end up costing, therefore no way to guarantee that they will be able to buy anything at all given their wages.  Since we are going to be minting coins or selling stuff for money in order to pay folks to buy stuff, we need to know how much money we are going to be needing to pay our dwarves in order to buy stuff IN ADVANCE of actually paying them because we cannot pay them more money than we have.  We do not know in advance how much everything is going to be worth, so we cannot figure out how much money we are going to need to get in order to pay dwarves the correct amount to buy

So in a very convoluted way we get back to the situation of I want my dwarves to be able to buy X amount of Y hence I give them X amount of money because that is what said item is worth.  Against simply acquiring the items ourselves in whatever manner and giving them the amount of the item that we want them to be having in the first place, which is basically the basis of the far complex calculations which we are making as to how much to pay our dwarves.  If we get our complex calculations wrong in the other sense (they get too much) it is actually much worse than giving them too little money in one respect which is the problem is not immediately obvious.  Our dwarves end up with treasure stacks piled high in a world where precious metals are finite and at this point there is no reason to get the prices right for anyone, basically we can set the prices too high for stuff without having any consequences (for us) until they use up their precious metal stacks but other folks end up suffering since we are the one's who now have the world's precious metals.

The only way to make money work is to make it another 'good' that is rationed out to folks along the lines we mentioned before.  So basically we keep our hands on the actual goods and then trade them for money only when we need money for something.  What the 'something' however is that needs money, that is the problem.

I dunno about you, but to me the theme of the last few updates would seem to indicate that Toady prioritizes an accurate simulation over game mechanics and efficiency.

Also dwarves will totally hoard non-perishable luxuries like earrings and those can get pricey with a skilled craftsdwarf so there's that.

[Hinaichigo]

The basic question is rather, what is the point of money and markets at all? As far as I can tell 'paying' dwarves is far less efficient than simply giving them a limited, rationed access to whatever it is they might want, the reason being is that from our site POV we are basically giving folks money in order to buy things from us (and other sites in the same situation) which are priced according to whatever either we should decide or someone else.  If it is us doing the pricing then we just end up paying dwarves to buy stuff from us and when it is others doing the pricing we have no idea what everything is going to end up costing, therefore no way to guarantee that they will be able to buy anything at all given their wages.  Since we are going to be minting coins or selling stuff for money in order to pay folks to buy stuff, we need to know how much money we are going to be needing to pay our dwarves in order to buy stuff IN ADVANCE of actually paying them because we cannot pay them more money than we have.  We do not know in advance how much everything is going to be worth, so we cannot figure out how much money we are going to need to get in order to pay dwarves the correct amount to buy

So in a very convoluted way we get back to the situation of I want my dwarves to be able to buy X amount of Y hence I give them X amount of money because that is what said item is worth.  Against simply acquiring the items ourselves in whatever manner and giving them the amount of the item that we want them to be having in the first place, which is basically the basis of the far complex calculations which we are making as to how much to pay our dwarves.  If we get our complex calculations wrong in the other sense (they get too much) it is actually much worse than giving them too little money in one respect which is the problem is not immediately obvious.  Our dwarves end up with treasure stacks piled high in a world where precious metals are finite and at this point there is no reason to get the prices right for anyone, basically we can set the prices too high for stuff without having any consequences (for us) until they use up their precious metal stacks but other folks end up suffering since we are the one's who now have the world's precious metals.

Money wouldn't need to be used in every situation, as bartering was common back in feudal times. It also depends on the dwarves' social structure/property law. It seems like some people think of them as a living in kinds of communes, but perhaps that just follows from not having the economy or money really used in fortress mode. Although, as you expressed it sounds complicated to set up properly. Anyway, as a stopgap measure until that's sorted out (although they might end up being done in the same release) there could be internal communism as there is now within the fortress population, but the marketplaces could be used to trade with people from outside the fortress population. Also, in the old days before paper and fiat currency (and certainly in fantasy settings), the nominal value of money was fixed to the value of the material of the coins themselves. In other words a 1 oz. gold coin was worth 1 oz. of gold. That was the idea anyway, but there was of course coin shaving, and abrasion of the coin material over long periods of time by handling, and financial manipulations, etc. So, discrepancies between the nominal value of the coins and material values of the coins did occur, but the idea was that they were related. I'm not really sure where I'm going with this...

[Splint]

Oh god, here we go again...

[FantasticDorf]

Kind of sort of ignoring the walls of text above me (sorry nothing personal but its mostly a essay on communism), minting coins specifically for your own vendors to use as spare change (or to use with peddlers who won't buy, only sell) from a marketplace sounds like a viable alternative given that copper, silver & gold already have associated values and are in the game (if they aren't being used for wages, guilds or any of that malarkey)

Not hard to say that Race X accepts shells as a unit of currency so you task your fishermen & fish cleaners to get enough legal tender etc, though there's a problem there if you don't have the ability to mint coins out of shells unless you get it from somewhere else.

> Peddler X comes from your bar to do some trading in your depot/a table in your marketplace location area laying out the goods infront of them, fortress dwarf hauls gold coins after the broker comes and agrees (and/or the dwarves grab a few coins from the stack themselves and buy goods individually) on a price on the fortresses behalf to buy the goods. As just a alternative method of giving your dwarves accessories/things on a semi-regular basis, especially objects like different stone types that dwarves like but aren't on your map geology.

Obviously the difference between your own peddlers and such is that you could lay down a stockpile to use for selling to out of town folk, in a previous format the shop workshop would have worked for this purpose of direct stockpile connection, but locations can recognise stockpiles within their borders (all your spare equipment you want to sell goes to the depot anyway in common practice so its easier & timely to load into the wagon) and probably work it out (though you might be challenged if they try to sell a item bin whole or you're a item bin manufacturer)