Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Sarmatian123]

I give the idea its own thread, as I think it merits more attention than it seems to be getting at the moment.

Well, feudalism was as it appears now after intensive talk with GolblinCookie, just my loose economy proposal. I am fan of bottom-up economic solutions, so when you build economy this way, the resulting economy can be anyone surprise. I was suggesting feudalism, because in Poland it was such a smashing success of combination of tribal, feudal and mercantile economic systems. LOLZ? Plus all historian call it "feudal", even if everyone of them notices, it had something to do with very early form of much later historically appearing mercantilism.

Approval granted.

[GoblinCookie]

Well, feudalism was as it appears now after intensive talk with GolblinCookie, just my loose economy proposal. I am fan of bottom-up economic solutions, so when you build economy this way, the resulting economy can be anyone surprise. I was suggesting feudalism, because in Poland it was such a smashing success of combination of tribal, feudal and mercantile economic systems. LOLZ? Plus all historian call it "feudal", even if everyone of them notices, it had something to do with very early form of much later historically appearing mercantilism.

Approval granted.

What is mercantalism?  I though that was simply a trade policy meaning basically the same as protectionism, not a system. 

The statement about Feudal Poland being a smashing success is supposed to be sarcasm right?

[Sarmatian123]

[...]The sad fact is that the new Feudal Poland was a paper tiger (tribal Poland was not) and the only thing that allowed it to survive was that potential enemies looked at the material facts (the population, the economy and the political unity) and naturally assumed that this was a power that would not fall easily if invaded.

The problem is they eventually found out just what a paper tiger Feudal Poland was, resulting in the Russians, Austrians and Prussians simply carving the thing up.  In the end the exact amount of Tribalism Poland's Feudalism had retained mattered not one bit, Poland was wiped out and brought into line with the rest of the world. 

I know that story a little better. With exception of first lightning fast Mongol/Tartar invasion, where Tartars after their win over Polish, turned away and run like panic scared chickens, they all had disastrous casualties inflicted on them. The last victim was Sultan of Ottoman Turkey, who proclaimed that starting wars with Poland was the biggest mistake of entire Ottoman Empire's history. A chair for a Polish envoy was always present in Turkey in any international meeting, even during 123 years when there was no Poland on map of Europe. That was a lesson hard learnt by Ottoman Turkey. Turks were extremely successful at winning battles with superior in troops and equipment armies. Turkey also for long time was occupying some of Polish strongholds. However their empire crumbled in foundations just because of Polish stubborn resistance and fighting back whenever and wherever. Not exactly forgiving Christians we Polish are, aren't we.

The paper weight was result of few decades civil wars for throne of Poland and of a 100 years earlier taking place revolt against king, which faulted Polish democracy system. In result Poland became for many decades a colony of Russia, who won with other powers intervening in this Polish civil war. Poland then got partitioned by neighboring states, when it tried to reform its democratic system to a more able. Proving it could. Proving neighbors were still very afraid of what Poland could do to them.

There is only one way of forming functional economies.  Surplus values goes up, capital goes down; this applies to Tribalism, Feudalism, Capitalism and Socialism, all economies then are really top-down, any claiming otherwise are lying to you. 

Mercantilism: Queen Elisabeth's England.
Neomercantilism: American Dream. Bismarck's Germany. After ww2 Japan's Economic Miracle. River Han Economic Miracle. (Singapore Economic Miracle?)
State Capitalism: 21st century communist China.

This is not that those, according to you "lies", seem to work extremely well in comparison to top-down economies like socialism and liberalism, but people actually are starved for improvement of life quality, which those bottom-up economic systems bring to society in such (10-20 years?) relative short amount of time.

The goblins are in the exact same situation the dwarves are in, except worse.  Dwarf feudalism could feasibly develop because their hillocks could evolve from being aboveground farming fortresses into a more hobbit-like situation (dwarves live in individual family hobbit-holes).  The goblins live however in dark pits, which means they have applied the dwarf feudalism problem to an even larger degree since all their sites have the problem.

I will disagree. From what I have seen playing Fortress Mode, Goblins form civilization simply, because they are forced by evil higher force. Goblin state is a pure and simple dictatorship. A form of absolutism. However it is liberal absolutism in a way how they live with personal freedom under rough oppression from their leader. Their society has almost no rules, but egoism and... I guess... profit? Which leads me to conclusion that Goblins should try between sieges to try at least to trade with Dwarves. Unless we conclude it is not liberalism, but an utter anarchy. However then Goblins despite claims of personal freedom should be actually slaves to a dictator. Now Goblins are not presented as slaves. More like slavers with their kidnapping habits. Yeah, liberal dictatorship, this fits the best for Goblins imho. So here I will agree with you to disagree with you.

Both humans and elves could become Feudal quite easily, the elves actually easier than the humans.  It does not have anything to do with being technologically primitive, the tribes of Poland, Scandinavia, Scotland, Ireland and so on were on a technological par with their feudal neighbors, it is just that is easier for an ordinary elf couple to go and have their own tree-house than it is for an ordinary dwarf or goblin to have their own personal underground fortress. 

The transition to Feudalism however in dwarf hillocks society is problamatic for a basic reason.  *WE* are not to that Feudalism, because Feudalism is about nuclear families subordinating themselves to more powerful nuclear families RATHER than their extended family in order to overcome their inherent lack of independant viability.  *We* are the thing that gets eliminated as part of the transition to Feudalism.

Still historians are using term feudalism very loosely to all medieval economic systems. Even, if those were a real struggle between true tribalism, true feudalism and emerging true capitalism. I don't think any historian so far was so hard on pressing border lines between those different economic systems within those European feudal systems. Is presenting only pure and true vanguard systems realistic even for a fantasy simulation? It could be an utopia simulator, but should it be? Perpetum Mobile always works on paper.

[Sarmatian123]

The statement about Feudal Poland being a smashing success is supposed to be sarcasm right?

So you think Prussia was to contrary? Prussia's economy, like today's Northern Korea's economy, did serve under military.

So you think in EU 1 million of Polish workers living and working in England is a sign of success of Polish economy? While feudal Poland had 0 Polish workers abroad, but instead millions of Germans, Appalachians and Dutch living and working in Poland. Plus Poland was supporting largest Jewish diaspora in world. Not Russia. Not any German statehood. Not even them all combined.

So you think that Warsaw dictated latest fashion in cloths for entire Central-Eastern Europe for over 300 years, like today Paris does, was sign of economic and cultural weakness?

I have written you, why Poland had tiny professional royal army and civilian militia mass-levy. It was due bugged democracy. Democracy simply failed Poland. Did you never hear about Weimar Republic in Germany? It failed too. Democracies can fail. Democracies are not perfect God's given society orders. Only patching that lone legal weakness in Poland brought panic struck neighboring countries to unite and band together to invade Poland and only then to remove it from map. Why would anyone internationally ally together, band together against some weak Russian colony and that together with Russia? Like Russia would need helpers...

[GoblinCookie]

So you think Prussia was to contrary? Prussia's economy, like today's Northern Korea's economy, did serve under military.

So you think in EU 1 million of Polish workers living and working in England is a sign of success of Polish economy? While feudal Poland had 0 Polish workers abroad, but instead millions of Germans, Appalachians and Dutch living and working in Poland. Plus Poland was supporting largest Jewish diaspora in world. Not Russia. Not any German statehood. Not even them all combined.

So you think that Warsaw dictated latest fashion in cloths for entire Central-Eastern Europe for over 300 years, like today Paris does, was sign of economic and cultural weakness?

I have written you, why Poland had tiny professional royal army and civilian militia mass-levy. It was due bugged democracy. Democracy simply failed Poland. Did you never hear about Weimar Republic in Germany? It failed too. Democracies can fail. Democracies are not perfect God's given society orders. Only patching that lone legal weakness in Poland brought panic struck neighboring countries to unite and band together to invade Poland and only then to remove it from map. Why would anyone internationally ally together, band together against some weak Russian colony and that together with Russia? Like Russia would need helpers...

I am quite aware that modern Poland like the rest of Eastern Europe is on the road to becoming a desolate wilderness, I don't think you will like my reason for that though.  I was not making a comparison between Feudal Poland and modern Poland, the latter is probably even more wretched.  Maybe if the Prussians had not destroyed Poland they might have been economically outcompeted, but that was really one more reason for them to help destroy Poland.

I did not say that Feudal Poland was economically weak, I actually said that Feudal Poland's economy was decent which was why it survived as long as it did, the other powers did not realize quite how weak Poland actually was because they gaged from their economic position that Poland could potentially field a pretty powerful army if attacked.  As I said we are dealing with a paper tiger (an English phrase that appears strong but is weak), as soon as the other powers figured out that Poland's strength was on paper they tore it apart.  They all banded together because they did not want the Russians to have it all, not because it was too strong for them to take down alone, similar things happened in the 19th Century with Africa.

Though you are quite correct as to the reason you draw false analogies to other democracies.  The problem is not that Poland was a democracy and that democracy in general sometimes fails, the problem was that Poland became a Tribal Democracy while being a society that was now Feudal.  As I said, the historical process is while intelligible, not very tidy; Poland transitioned from Tribalism to Feudalism in a more messy way than other countries and did so during the 14th-15th-16th centuries (not earlier).  A messy transition means there are a lot of leftover institutions, laws, customs, ideas from the defunct social order leftover within the social order that is something.  The normal course of event is for a series of usually rather nasty events to happen which 'tidy things up', that is they purge the leftover institutions from the new society (they won't come back since their time is past).  In Britain the final 'nasty event' was the our swift surrender to what was effectively a Dutch invasion which we like to call the 'Glorious Revolution'. 

The fact that history is messy does not mean that history is forgiving of those who use this fact to 'disobey' it.  Poland did something which is rather rare, they actually developed an element from the old tribal order and then made it into their government without reverting to the old order 'in general'.  However old order elements always weaken the new order, provided the elements are marginal this does not matter that much but promoting an old order element to great importance fundamentally weakens the system.  In effect, if you want to live under a Tribal Government while Feudal you must *restore* Tribalism, if you want to live under a Feudal government while Capitalist you must *restore* Feudalism; if you do otherwise you only make yourself weak. 

History has a means to 'correct' such 'abominations'.  That means is foreign countries, when we restored our Feudal monarchy despite having transitioned to Capitalism this created a similar (though not as serious) situation to what Poland did in relationship to Tribalism.  Our surrender to the Dutch invasion (which we like to think as us overthrowing our oppressive catholic monarch James II ) corrected the historical untidiness resulting from the indecisive outcome of the British Civil War.  So really England and Poland are not so different, except that Poland committed a greater 'crime' and received a harsher 'punishment'. 

[Sarmatian123]

Yes, I agree. Historic similarities in development of England and Poland. Both democracies under royals. Then with Partitions of Poland and Adam Smith it all goes split.

20 years ago I noticed myself the Eastern Europe, as mainly potatoes growers' steppes and hills. Plus Siberian mines exploited like a mining African colony by Russia to fund their military industry and army. No future. No industrialization. No serious economic development. No future.

V4 countries are changing this now. Building infrastructure and economic connections. Securing energy supplies. Combining their military efforts in some areas. Partially thanks helping funds from EU, but partially from Polish Intermarium idea. Poland in particular is slowly adopting more and more neomercantile policies, which can turn this Eastern European country into next industrial power house. Something that makes Hungary ecstatic, as they were trying to do something alike earlier. It does not make Germany a happy camper with V4 in EU. Not wonder that Brussels attacks Poland in any invented by imagination possible way and for utterly no legit reason. It seems now UK gone in Brexit, so EU just targeting next "uncomfortable" country on their list of undesirables to get rid off with it. When Polexit happens, the Polish-British economic union is just matter of months imho. Both Poland and UK have same objectives, re-industrialization and creating well payed jobs home instead of outsourcing industries to countries like China and... Germany. UK and Poland both economically are heading away from liberalism. Will Polish and British tribalism return now, as result of answer in our countries to failed social experiments with secularism and multiculturalism? Can we really remove completely tribalism and would that be beneficial? Those are our roots, aren't they.

[GoblinCookie]

Yes, I agree. Historic similarities in development of England and Poland. Both democracies under royals. Then with Partitions of Poland and Adam Smith it all goes split.

20 years ago I noticed myself the Eastern Europe, as mainly potatoes growers' steppes and hills. Plus Siberian mines exploited like a mining African colony by Russia to fund their military industry and army. No future. No industrialization. No serious economic development. No future.

V4 countries are changing this now. Building infrastructure and economic connections. Securing energy supplies. Combining their military efforts in some areas. Partially thanks helping funds from EU, but partially from Polish Intermarium idea. Poland in particular is slowly adopting more and more neomercantile policies, which can turn this Eastern European country into next industrial power house. Something that makes Hungary ecstatic, as they were trying to do something alike earlier. It does not make Germany a happy camper with V4 in EU. Not wonder that Brussels attacks Poland in any invented by imagination possible way and for utterly no legit reason. It seems now UK gone in Brexit, so EU just targeting next "uncomfortable" country on their list of undesirables to get rid off with it. When Polexit happens, the Polish-British economic union is just matter of months imho. Both Poland and UK have same objectives, re-industrialization and creating well payed jobs home instead of outsourcing industries to countries like China and... Germany. UK and Poland both economically are heading away from liberalism. Will Polish and British tribalism return now, as result of answer in our countries to failed social experiments with secularism and multiculturalism? Can we really remove completely tribalism and would that be beneficial? Those are our roots, aren't they.

This thread is now officially 100% derailed.   

In answer to your questions, neither Britain nor Poland are tribal and neither of them are going to return to those roots anytime soon.  The similarity between Britain and Poland is that both of them underwent historical transitions that got 'muddled' and were helped to complete those transitions by a 'helpful' invading foreign power.  They are not however the same transition and the outcome was far happier for Britain than for Poland.  Poland 'got stuck' between Tribalism and Feudalism, so Feudal Austria, Prussia and Russia helped destroy Tribalism to make Poland fully Feudal; Britain 'got stuck' between Feudalism and Capitalism, so the Dutch helped to destroy Feudalism to make Britain fully Capitalist; wiping out the tribal parts of Scotland that Feudalism had been unable to stamp out in the process also. 

The thing is however that in both of your prospective futures for Poland, in both the desolate wilderness one and the national resurgence one; Poland remains 100% Capitalist.  That is because economic liberalism and mercantalism are not structural questions, they are superstructural questions; which is to say they are questions of ideological belief and government policy, not of the underlying nature of the society which gives rise to them (this does not mean they are inconsequential).  Both Poland and Britain made the historical error of transforming the underlying nature of their society (the structure) which retaining too much of the superstructure of their old society.  Orphaned superstructure, in Poland's case a form of democracy, in Britain's case the exact opposite; that is the retention of the Feudal Monarchy, weakens societies and make them more easily conquered by other purer societies (societies that replaced more of their superstructure in the transition) which are stronger, which go on to eliminate or reduce the orphaned superstructure. 

To return to topic, the problem with most economy-related ideas in Dwarf Fortress is related to this problem; they propose a set of ideas which are superstructural in nature, essentially being matters of ideology and policy.  This creates a situation akin to the orphaned superstructure problem that turns up in pretty much all societies and has similar consequences in DF as it does in RL, that is it makes things dysfunctional.  The difference between real-life and DF however is the latter is fictional, which allows for the creation of specific mechanics by the creator to force the dysfunctional system to actually work, even if it does not make any sense.  The creators essentially want a particular trade policy to exist in the game, but that is a trade policy would not naturally exist so they have come up with the idea of essentially forcing economic specialization of different types of sites by mechanical decree, which they like to call 'starting scenarios'.  The idea of an economy working in this fashion is balmy, but as I said unlike in real-life it does not have to actually make any sense. 

[Sarmatian123]

I don't mind "allows for the creation of specific mechanics by the creator to force the dysfunctional system to actually work, even if it does not make any sense". Making sense is not essential for economy to work with very exceptional results and economic growth like many Asian Tigers show. After all imho, contrary to socialism and liberalism, economy shouldn't even be an ideology, but a pragmatic solution to finite resource management. Basically exactly what definition of word "economy" means and implies.

From my 2 years of playing Dwarf Fortress experience, the only economic system that makes most splash in DF is... the bartering system. Goods paying for goods. We are now just being theoretic, what developers could go with economic systems as alternative to this barter system. Therefore I pointed out rather obvious and neutral economic improvements, that could be done even now in the game, without any damage to implementations of some other economic systems in future. Barter economic system is pretty basic, isn't it.

Now on topic derailed part; Imho, the orphaned structures, are essential to well being and continuity of the nation and country, as they provide link between past and future. Continuity, which basically says... we are not those foreign invaders who did all those modern changes, but native old folks still living in this country. So basically Poland is currently a republican democracy, but returning its old feudal monarchy superstructure alike it is currently in existence in England would strengthen Poland to more diligently tend to its own economic welfare. After all, we all want our countries economy to be high tech topped up like those Asian Tigers and monster large like the German economy. Also it is possible too without much export, but many countries in the world are simply just not populous enough to support such well developed modern economy without exports. So creating EU or building large countries like Britain, Germany, Italy or France from smaller states still makes lots of sense. I don't think we will see with few exceptions (Brexit?) trend of abandoning those large economic cooperation constructs. However I do believe we will see some major change by whom and on what economic foundation they are being made up. Lots of BITs will be said up and renegotiated between countries no matter the reasons. India like few years ago said up like almost 100 BITs in one swift move for renegotiating them.

[GoblinCookie]

I don't mind "allows for the creation of specific mechanics by the creator to force the dysfunctional system to actually work, even if it does not make any sense". Making sense is not essential for economy to work with very exceptional results and economic growth like many Asian Tigers show. After all imho, contrary to socialism and liberalism, economy shouldn't even be an ideology, but a pragmatic solution to finite resource management. Basically exactly what definition of word "economy" means and implies.

From my 2 years of playing Dwarf Fortress experience, the only economic system that makes most splash in DF is... the bartering system. Goods paying for goods. We are now just being theoretic, what developers could go with economic systems as alternative to this barter system. Therefore I pointed out rather obvious and neutral economic improvements, that could be done even now in the game, without any damage to implementations of some other economic systems in future. Barter economic system is pretty basic, isn't it.

Now on topic derailed part; Imho, the orphaned structures, are essential to well being and continuity of the nation and country, as they provide link between past and future. Continuity, which basically says... we are not those foreign invaders who did all those modern changes, but native old folks still living in this country. So basically Poland is currently a republican democracy, but returning its old feudal monarchy superstructure alike it is currently in existence in England would strengthen Poland to more diligently tend to its own economic welfare. After all, we all want our countries economy to be high tech topped up like those Asian Tigers and monster large like the German economy. Also it is possible too without much export, but many countries in the world are simply just not populous enough to support such well developed modern economy without exports. So creating EU or building large countries like Britain, Germany, Italy or France from smaller states still makes lots of sense. I don't think we will see with few exceptions (Brexit?) trend of abandoning those large economic cooperation constructs. However I do believe we will see some major change by whom and on what economic foundation they are being made up. Lots of BITs will be said up and renegotiated between countries no matter the reasons. India like few years ago said up like almost 100 BITs in one swift move for renegotiating them.

What do you mean by the Asian tigers not making sense?   

The barter system is the trading superstructure that corresponds best with the tribal structure of the society (tribal societies do not use money much).  In actuality though we do not have a barter system, but rather we are modelling how barter works under cash economies.  Bartered goods do not really have a 'value' in a barter economy, because that is a concept produced by the existence of money, nothing is 'worth anything', it is instead either in demand or surplus to it's present holders.  When people barter in a barter economy they swap the surplus items for the in-demand items that are surplus to the other party.  The main economic task for the devs is to actually model how the barter economy works on it's own terms, otherwise we are just bartering items according to their money value in their respective markets rather than according to their actual use-value to us. 

This is an example of an orphaned superstructure in present game practice.  The traders are trading things according to a numerical 'monetary value', even though neither of them would actually be trading in those terms but are instead aiming to trade everything they have surplus of for everything they demand.  Orphaned superstructures undermine the functioning of the system, in this case however the dysfunctionality of the systems work to the player's advantage.  When trading the player knows what the objects are *actually* worth (in barter terms) but the AI does not meaning the player can essentially defraud the AI by selling them a large quantity actually worthless junk in return for items of value.

By specific mechanics I didn't mean like potential real-life policies which are superstructure, I meant things like the caravan.  The economic basis does not exist for any form of commerce in the game, but we still want to see the commerce superstructure exist in the form of the caravan.  Hence the devs add in a specific mechanic to make the orphaned superstructure (of trade) exist in the absence of any structure to support it (there is no economy outside of fortress mode and world-gen), this is what I meant by that term.  Obviously in real-life you cannot do this, but in a game you can, the problem is that in a game you can keep adding more and more of them in. 

If we try to make an unnatural amount of commercial activity exist for our tribal society, one mechanic to use is to force everyone to only do one thing.  However this is quite dysfunctional, for instance if we have declared that hillocks may only produce food and must buy all other goods from other sites, this creates a load of trade provided there is a demand for food elsewhere.  If there is an overall surplus of food then there is nothing for the hillocks to sell, but they are still prevented from doing anything else.  But you can keep adding more and more mechanics in, how about we magically turn all hillocks which cannot sell their food into factories.  Except of course then there are too many manufactured goods to be sold either, so we end up going backwards and forwards between factory and hillocks.  The mechanic we are using to force there to be more trade than there needs to be cannot allow a proper balance of manufacturing and agriculture to exist because if we allowed everyone to do everything that would undermine the whole setup we are building in the first place and the amount of trade would go down to the natural amount.

[Sarmatian123]

What do you mean by the Asian tigers not making sense?   

Japan, huge external debt and AAA bond rating. Does it make sense, when you don't look into details? Protectionist policies, supposedly damaging economy, but when enforced in actuality promote economy, enlarge local market, protect end goods development and sale. State moving into business side, well some say the most sense would be to leave everything to market forces to do it naturally, but state's investments rise jobs, increase availability of raw and half-products, provide infrastructure needed for development of high tech ventures and generally rise all people's living standards, while enlarging local economy. So something that makes sense in actuality is inefficient unguided bomb hitting too far from target and to no effect. Lets consider this Tsunami, which hit Japan like year or two ago. Any liberal economy it would take 100 years to rebuild the road infrastructure. Japan was done with all repairs and reconstruction of roads and highways in 3 months. In England an impossibility without some nationalization. Like after this train crash in London like 10-15 years or so ago.

There is a modern barter system developed today by scientists. It is a theory how we could do away with liberal model of free trade, without changing anything really in free trade. I am not for free international trade, but barter trade seems also little too grindy. Countries do not share same development levels to consider international free trade as mutually beneficial arrangement. No matter how it is conduct.

BACK TO TOPIC!

In DF the offer of goods from supply and trade caravans is based on resources available at their home. Imho it makes sense. AI should do little of everything to be successful. Players can do specializations. However amount of bought or sold goods is not mended by home's population. It would put some realism into this trade for sure, leaving players with question what to do with endless number of master quality goods, they accidentally overproduced when skilling up their craftsmen. They can't destroy it hehehe. There was some suggestion, that farm production should be changed, so it would take like at least more plots and more growers to feed a fortress. Limiting number of craftsmen or limiting number of industries player could build could be the mechanics for creating a more trading economic systems and allow not even very bright player to specialize some parts of his fortress economy and shine like a naturally born economic genius.

[GoblinCookie]

Japan, huge external debt and AAA bond rating. Does it make sense, when you don't look into details? Protectionist policies, supposedly damaging economy, but when enforced in actuality promote economy, enlarge local market, protect end goods development and sale. State moving into business side, well some say the most sense would be to leave everything to market forces to do it naturally, but state's investments rise jobs, increase availability of raw and half-products, provide infrastructure needed for development of high tech ventures and generally rise all people's living standards, while enlarging local economy. So something that makes sense in actuality is inefficient unguided bomb hitting too far from target and to no effect. Lets consider this Tsunami, which hit Japan like year or two ago. Any liberal economy it would take 100 years to rebuild the road infrastructure. Japan was done with all repairs and reconstruction of roads and highways in 3 months. In England an impossibility without some nationalization. Like after this train crash in London like 10-15 years or so ago.

There is a modern barter system developed today by scientists. It is a theory how we could do away with liberal model of free trade, without changing anything really in free trade. I am not for free international trade, but barter trade seems also little too grindy. Countries do not share same development levels to consider international free trade as mutually beneficial arrangement. No matter how it is conduct.

What you are saying is not things not making sense, it is just evidence that the protectionist policy is superior to the free trade policy. The question is given that the free trade policy is clearly inferior, why does it continue to be promoted?  My answer is that it is promoted selfishly by mercantile interests who profit from there being a larger amount of trade in the world, even though it actually to the ruin of most countries.

BACK TO TOPIC!

In DF the offer of goods from supply and trade caravans is based on resources available at their home. Imho it makes sense. AI should do little of everything to be successful. Players can do specializations. However amount of bought or sold goods is not mended by home's population. It would put some realism into this trade for sure, leaving players with question what to do with endless number of master quality goods, they accidentally overproduced when skilling up their craftsmen. They can't destroy it hehehe. There was some suggestion, that farm production should be changed, so it would take like at least more plots and more growers to feed a fortress. Limiting number of craftsmen or limiting number of industries player could build could be the mechanics for creating a more trading economic systems and allow not even very bright player to specialize some parts of his fortress economy and shine like a naturally born economic genius.

In real-life the thing that drives specialisation is the fact that it is not possible for one site to produce everything and still produce a surplus sufficient to meet the demand of other sites.  It only makes sense to have specialised farming sites like hillocks appear to be *if* the total demand for food cannot be met except by subtracting labourers from other pursuits.  If I can simply produce a mountain of food, enough to meet the entire demand of all my trading partners *and* produce enough manufactured goods to meet my own demands, there is no realistic reason for specialisation. 

If you want to produce more of one thing then this would come at the expense of other things, except in DF this is not the case. By making dwarves eat more and requiring more labour hours to be spent tilling the fields would incentivise specialisation without any need for restrictions on what the player or AI can do.  That is because if I have a demand of one site for lots of manufactured goods, then I cannot meet the whole demand of that market while at the same time producing a food surplus for another site.  This creates space for a specialised farming site to exist.

[Sarmatian123]

What you are saying is not things not making sense, it is just evidence that the protectionist policy is superior to the free trade policy. The question is given that the free trade policy is clearly inferior, why does it continue to be promoted?  My answer is that it is promoted selfishly by mercantile interests who profit from there being a larger amount of trade in the world, even though it actually to the ruin of most countries.

Yup. That's about it. I solemnly agree. However my point was rather heading at the superstructures of those economies. How the economic abstractions existing in them were created from bottom-up or top-down approach and therefore those abstractions do not make much sense when are being looked upon from the other point of view. This is how Japanese dept comes to play in here. A liberal country with equal debt is basically at bottom of those bonds rankings. Not at the top. From 18th century this is what Adam Smith's British School of Economics and Alexander Hamilton's American School of Economics were bitterly clashing about. Plus of course pointing out each others systems' weak points. Both were competing with each other. Even in beginning of 20th century, after ww2, there was a royal battle in financial world of USA between representatives of Chicago Economy School and Austrian Economy School, both at spear of development of neomercantile and neoliberal economies. Liberals won btw.

BACK TO TOPIC!

In real-life the thing that drives specialisation is the fact that it is not possible for one site to produce everything and still produce a surplus sufficient to meet the demand of other sites.  It only makes sense to have specialised farming sites like hillocks appear to be *if* the total demand for food cannot be met except by subtracting labourers from other pursuits.  If I can simply produce a mountain of food, enough to meet the entire demand of all my trading partners *and* produce enough manufactured goods to meet my own demands, there is no realistic reason for specialisation. 

If you want to produce more of one thing then this would come at the expense of other things, except in DF this is not the case. By making dwarves eat more and requiring more labour hours to be spent tilling the fields would incentivise specialisation without any need for restrictions on what the player or AI can do.  That is because if I have a demand of one site for lots of manufactured goods, then I cannot meet the whole demand of that market while at the same time producing a food surplus for another site.  This creates space for a specialised farming site to exist.

If we remove caves, then basically we have sites, which can't grow food. Traditionally Mountainhome is created in one of such biomes. However player can enlarge area of embark and besides the surface there are always also 3 caves. Mining would bring profitable industries forward too.

If we need 10x10 tiles instead of 1x1 tiles for same farm plot's production, then we are basically coming near this goal. How to achieve this would be hard to arrange though. Here are few ideas of mine:

We could make every crop grow for 1 year. [With MODERN requirement of clean glass window-walls and clean glass floors built 1 lvl up, on surface of course, with lava heaters of course, to ensure 2-3 harvests of a crop during a year.] Right now crops are harvested like every 1-2 months. Increasing food intake by Dwarves could also help, but it would be hard to keep your Dwarf fed in adventure mode.

More Dwarves are needed to tend farming too. So farm plots need to be overgrown by weeds during this 1 year and growers would need to keep fields clean from weed. It would work like harvest, but of weeds, and if weeds are not removed in certain time, the seeds inside will be lost. Weeds could appear every month and destroy seeds if not removed at the end of the month. This whole mechanic will hit fps hard though. Even if we time weeds on 1st of each month or season. Weeds could not grow if there is a crop for harvest and crops would need to wait for 1 month for weed to be taken care of and poping out directly when there is no weed no more. FPS could be ruined by this.

The only solution here besides forcing lower growing output per grower would be further limitation of how many Dwarves are on a site. All Dwarves coming after some point would need an incentive of gift to caravan.

Furthermore we need to lower value of food. Making food really cheap would have an impact here. In such design at least at beginning players wouldn't be creating all industries at start, but the most lucrative. At least at the start, before player can afford to purchase more Dwarves to settle in their embark. Birth of specialization! Like in real word settlements specializing only in food (probably aquifer blocks mining?) would stand as poor settlements. Improved only by services, arts and possibly a cloth industry. Like in a real life. Oh yes. Cloth would have to be made cheap as well too. Hm.

[Sarmatian123]

About automation of industries and economic activities. Currently there is employed an interesting mechanism of locations. It applies only to arts, creating written artifacts and basically tourism.

However locations could be used for farming and pastures. Currently we assign all activity for farming from farming plots. We could do so from farming locations for many plots, while tracking visually supply of fertilizer more easily in the game. Assigning what crops to plant before growing seasons start. Assigning farmers to weed the plots and to plant and to harvest the crops. Now it is packed in order menu. We would still need to construct farm plots.

Same for automation of pastures, there in location we could check how big pastures we need to set to maintain how many animals (greasing factor) and how many of what sexes to keep, when to milk or share them automatically and when start to butchering oldest ones when hitting the greasing limit. We would still need to put i-zones in. Like with taverns.

Location could help with automation of a loom workshop with silk farm without need  to create special burrow for them. Making decision when to pull the lever and wait or pull the lever and harvest webs completely automatic.

There can be done lots of fun with location window mechanics to further make economy in Fortress Mode more fun. Also AI could profit from such automation, when running its own settlements.

[GoblinCookie]

About automation of industries and economic activities. Currently there is employed an interesting mechanism of locations. It applies only to arts, creating written artifacts and basically tourism.

However locations could be used for farming and pastures. Currently we assign all activity for farming from farming plots. We could do so from farming locations for many plots, while tracking visually supply of fertilizer more easily in the game. Assigning what crops to plant before growing seasons start. Assigning farmers to weed the plots and to plant and to harvest the crops. Now it is packed in order menu. We would still need to construct farm plots.

Same for automation of pastures, there in location we could check how big pastures we need to set to maintain how many animals (greasing factor) and how many of what sexes to keep, when to milk or share them automatically and when start to butchering oldest ones when hitting the greasing limit. We would still need to put i-zones in. Like with taverns.

Location could help with automation of a loom workshop with silk farm without need  to create special burrow for them. Making decision when to pull the lever and wait or pull the lever and harvest webs completely automatic.

There can be done lots of fun with location window mechanics to further make economy in Fortress Mode more fun. Also AI could profit from such automation, when running its own settlements.

Anything to make the interface less clanky. 

The interesting thing here is not on-site locations, along the lines of what we have already for recreation but off-site locations.  Sites setting up location outside of their actual boundaries, making little islands that are not full sites but which are integrated economically and politically into the site whose center is distant. 

[Sarmatian123]

Anything to make the interface less clanky. 

I concur. It should work perfectly fine in Linux window too.

The interesting thing here is not on-site locations, along the lines of what we have already for recreation but off-site locations.  Sites setting up location outside of their actual boundaries, making little islands that are not full sites but which are integrated economically and politically into the site whose center is distant.

I see you point with AI, though I don't play adventure mode. I played it only once. I couldn't feed my Dwarf. World seemed just empty wilderness with no safe starter town for new players to learn ropes. It certainly could improve those AI settlements. Purchasing anything else then the uneatable tree nuts from Elves in their forest tree-tops towns would be a great difference, when all you know is how to throw a rock more or less accurately and have some butchered goods from butchered small animal to sell.

For Fortress Mode, players do make embark of size 1x1, 2x2 or 3x3, as going 8x8 is crashing game I think. Plus impossibly low fps. However when embark is confirmed it leaves entire rest of this local area unsettled. I could imagine, players could gather packs of 10 Dwarves with proper skills, armor and weapons and send them to some of those other grids to form some village size locations. Farming, pasturing, mining, fishing, logging, tavern maybe (let visitors be served offsite while providing some random chance for more info in c-menu) and so on? So long of course it could be done without much cpu usage. It could diversify economy of embark from farming settlements into more mining and industrious one. Even arts and cultural ones. Eventually you can run out of ores, so sending mining party to a location to get more adamantine candy could also make sense for raw materials supply. Player would have however need to form a standing army of sorts, as maybe there would be some goblin/gremlin raids/ambushes there in progress. Not full sieges though.

However the thing is to find a logical sink for produced goods and in medieval Europe, there was scarcity of those. Cities were rare. Caravans didn't move a lot goods and took sweet time to move. Ships were kind of location limited as well. Probably gifts sent to mountain homes make here most sense, if Dwarves go for more feudal/tribal economy solutions. Mountain home specializing rather in maintaining standing Dwarven professional royal military makes most sense. Plus those Mountain homes would not fall so easy any more to Goblin raids. Now, they are just way too much a push overs and mountain home serves only purpose of sending raids to ruins. What you think?