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[GoblinCookie]

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?

I tend to play 6X6 embarks, it is only at that size that the map-edge stops being a mechanic. 

The scarcity of manufactured goods is linked to the amount of work employed in everything else.  If it is effortless to feed my dwarves then the entire population can be employed making things, meaning that we end up with a finished goods mountain.  If everyone is busy in the fields, only a small amount of labour is available to make finished goods. 

[Sarmatian123]

The scarcity of manufactured goods is linked to the amount of work employed in everything else.  If it is effortless to feed my dwarves then the entire population can be employed making things, meaning that we end up with a finished goods mountain.  If everyone is busy in the fields, only a small amount of labour is available to make finished goods.

One of my impressions playing this game is... everything goes so fast, maybe too fast. Then everything barely moves when slow fps hit.

Dwarves sleep like few days per season, while it is like 8h daily activity for us. Slowing time maybe advisable? Better to do it before implementing economy though.

Tbh I wouldn't mind in first window in vanilla client to have clock with date displayed. I always press z-key to see what day is currently.

Work activity would need take longer time. This is true, but on the same note... walking and hauling could be performed faster.

[GoblinCookie]

One of my impressions playing this game is... everything goes so fast, maybe too fast. Then everything barely moves when slow fps hit.

Dwarves sleep like few days per season, while it is like 8h daily activity for us. Slowing time maybe advisable? Better to do it before implementing economy though.

Tbh I wouldn't mind in first window in vanilla client to have clock with date displayed. I always press z-key to see what day is currently.

Work activity would need take longer time. This is true, but on the same note... walking and hauling could be performed faster.

Basically the time-discrepancy between fortress mode (unrealistic) and adventure mode (realistic) is pretty much the stupidest idea that the devs have implemented.  I would have preferred that they made fortress-mode semi-turn based, in that you turn up every day in the year, set your orders up in real-time and then potentially skip to the next day, with you returning to real-time if something significant happens in the mean-time.  That way you can use the same time for both modes, which makes things work a lot better when you aim to integrate the two modes (which is the point of the economy). 

But what I am basically proposing is that we keep things the same but use multi-hauling in order to have a dwarf eat a far larger amount of food in one meal-time, perhaps increasing the amount of mealtimes by about 3 as well.

[Sarmatian123]

In Fortress Mode growth of the world stops after world generation. Right? So how does it work in adventure mode? Is this the reason for time dilation?
What's the point with economy, if world is basically frozen in time, so only your own fortress is developing and growing. Right?

PS. My Mountainhome was razed by Goblins into ruins, that could be explored. However they contain king and local baron. I don't want to raid, as I don't want to cause hostilities with Mountainhome. Can Mountainhome grow again and become again a Dwarves settlement instead of ruin? What would you do with it?

Merchant caravan bringing taxation from embarks to king should bring such sites back to life imho. How it works now? Will it for ever be a ruin?

[GoblinCookie]

In Fortress Mode growth of the world stops after world generation. Right? So how does it work in adventure mode? Is this the reason for time dilation?
What's the point with economy, if world is basically frozen in time, so only your own fortress is developing and growing. Right?

PS. My Mountainhome was razed by Goblins into ruins, that could be explored. However they contain king and local baron. I don't want to raid, as I don't want to cause hostilities with Mountainhome. Can Mountainhome grow again and become again a Dwarves settlement instead of ruin? What would you do with it?

Merchant caravan bringing taxation from embarks to king should bring such sites back to life imho. How it works now? Will it for ever be a ruin?

It is not so much frozen in time as the values are frozen.  Things like population and goods available to the site for use are fixed at the end of world-gen, this means if the population or number of goods goes down it will go back up again but only to the level that it was at the end of world-gen.  Sites are regularly reclaimed if unoccupied by suitable civilizations after world-gen, but what you will find is that the goods on the site will always correspond to those made by the original civilization, not their present inhabitants however long after world-gen it is.  But if your own civilization's holdings were razed then you don't have to wait for somebody else to do it,you can simply reoccupy one of the abandoned fortresses yourself and claim all the wealth that there was when it was reocuppied. The tag for reclaiming sites is [LIKES_SITE] if I recall correctly, which makes me wonder if it would be possible to mod the game so can reclaim a human town, major forest retreat or dark fortress.

It gets more complex in that some items are magicked into existence when required, based upon the civilizations goods rather than any economic data.  The weapons in the hands of invading soldiers and encountered in adventure mode are not based upon the economy date but are instead simply created abstractly as the situation requires.  This is why there is less need for the economy than you would think, most things can be introduced into either mode without it.  The point of the economy is the other way around, it is to allow the player to affect the wider world; so that if you sell a load of adamantine weapons to one side in a war that can alter their fortunes. 

[auzewasright]

Economy is coming in 20 years. Patience is a virtue!

You seem to post this every time someone mentions the economy.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Economy is coming in 20 years. Patience is a virtue!

You seem to post this every time someone mentions the economy.

And 20 years from now he'll be proven wrong.

[Anandar]

Economy cant work if the resources, population count, ect keep resetting to the same post worldgen values, as economy relies on supply and demand, and that supply and demand needs to constantly be in a state of flux, demands and needs will change and the more something is supplied the less it is needed so you would look for a new place to supply and get your forts needs met, also with the variety of any/everything on any given embark being so high, there is less requirement for supply and demand.... higher quantities  and less variety on an embark site will create better supply and demand, if an internal supply and demand is created for any site eg urist mcminer likes mahogany, and wants to get a bed or a chest or what have you made of mahogany urist mccarpenter needs to get mahogany by supplying urist mclumberjack with furiture also or send finished goods away and have mahogany returned to make urist mcminers stuff and urist mc miner gives urist mc carpenter ore to get new tools made by urist mcsmithy... if items have wear and tear this will also allow for supply and demand and needs and wants to make trading and an economy work, as a fort currently runs every dwarf works for the good of the fortress as a whole rather than for their individual needs so an internal economy is not viable, but if as i mentioned above resource types were much more limited per site and sites needed to trade items they had to other sites to increase overall variety of base goods through too finished products site based trade would be viable, and if sites were not capable of setting up such levels of self sufficiency site based trading would also become more viable...

[GoblinCookie]

Economy cant work if the resources, population count, ect keep resetting to the same post worldgen values, as economy relies on supply and demand, and that supply and demand needs to constantly be in a state of flux, demands and needs will change and the more something is supplied the less it is needed so you would look for a new place to supply and get your forts needs met, also with the variety of any/everything on any given embark being so high, there is less requirement for supply and demand.... higher quantities  and less variety on an embark site will create better supply and demand, if an internal supply and demand is created for any site eg urist mcminer likes mahogany, and wants to get a bed or a chest or what have you made of mahogany urist mccarpenter needs to get mahogany by supplying urist mclumberjack with furiture also or send finished goods away and have mahogany returned to make urist mcminers stuff and urist mc miner gives urist mc carpenter ore to get new tools made by urist mcsmithy... if items have wear and tear this will also allow for supply and demand and needs and wants to make trading and an economy work, as a fort currently runs every dwarf works for the good of the fortress as a whole rather than for their individual needs so an internal economy is not viable, but if as i mentioned above resource types were much more limited per site and sites needed to trade items they had to other sites to increase overall variety of base goods through too finished products site based trade would be viable, and if sites were not capable of setting up such levels of self sufficiency site based trading would also become more viable...

The economy actually cannot really work if there is too much flux in supply and demand.  Both because it increases the load on the processing power and because it means shortages/oversupply problems become rampant.

[Sarmatian123]

The economy actually cannot really work if there is too much flux in supply and demand.  Both because it increases the load on the processing power and because it means shortages/oversupply problems become rampant.

Well, somehow economies always managed to work, no matter the circumstances. The only failings were in business plans, which caused business bankruptcies. Economy is not about sustaining bankrupted businesses alive, but to manage limited available resources. So financial flow is not the economy and it works only in reverse to real economy workings. Managing resource flow is easier!

We solve issues with oversupply in DF with QS. In future, when QS will be banned from DF, we could use solutions like Treasury Workshop, which I proposed in this thread. Depots already work like that.

Having Trading Depots specialized as Dispensaries also solves issue, when Dwarves obtain their corporate communal benefits, instead of purchasing merchandise.

The thing is to overproduce product, store overproduction and let trade and dispensaries to slowly distribute this created supply. Once it runs dry, we can have job manager to start on auto another batch of overproduction. It is not JIT system, but for centuries things worked that way.

[GoblinCookie]

Well, somehow economies always managed to work, no matter the circumstances. The only failings were in business plans, which caused business bankruptcies. Economy is not about sustaining bankrupted businesses alive, but to manage limited available resources. So financial flow is not the economy and it works only in reverse to real economy workings. Managing resource flow is easier!

We solve issues with oversupply in DF with QS. In future, when QS will be banned from DF, we could use solutions like Treasury Workshop, which I proposed in this thread. Depots already work like that.

Having Trading Depots specialized as Dispensaries also solves issue, when Dwarves obtain their corporate communal benefits, instead of purchasing merchandise.

The thing is to overproduce product, store overproduction and let trade and dispensaries to slowly distribute this created supply. Once it runs dry, we can have job manager to start on auto another batch of overproduction. It is not JIT system, but for centuries things worked that way.

Somehow the economies always managed to work regardless of the circumstances?  This presumably includes massive famines in which thousands or even millions starved to death.  Are you sure that by economies working you are not actually meaning to say 'economics working', as in like the law of gravity working when are person hurtles off a cliff to their death?  The economy is not the same thing as economics. 

An economy can only deal with a limited amount of flexibility.  That is because to produce something somebody must assign capital and labour to producing the correct quantity of the the thing to meet the demand.  There are ways to increase the flexibility, but it is still the case that there is a finite about of uncertainty that an economy can deal with.  The inherent flexibility of things like the weather made societies for most of history vulnerable to famine, without being able to reliably predict the total output is not possible to

Giving stuff away does not solve the oversupply problem because oversupply is defined as having a greater amount of something than the demand.  At the moment we get rid of oversupply by dumping it on the caravan, but if we model the whole economy of the world according to present productivity/demand ratios then the whole world will end up with an oversupply of everything, meaning we can no longer get rid of our supply, meaning the game economy comes to a halt.  By come to a halt I mean literally, the solution is for most folks to simply stop working. 

[Sarmatian123]

@GoblinCookie

You missing the point by negating those seasonal schedules in many today existing business plans. Entire industries like tourism or agriculture are entirely rooted in those. Where is constant flow of anything? It exists only in processing scale industries, like chemical plants. However assembly line mass production, like car manufacture, is already an inch under in this scale of industries. Then we have the regular assembly line production. In the end we have workshop scale production. Economy is flexibility. Without flexibility we have no economy. One moment economy is called feudal and next moment it is called mercantile, but it is still the same economy. Sure some economics stay the same, but economy still serves same and one purpose. Economy is a management of finite resources. Even if something catastrophic happens to resources. Economy will simply change. Some economics will die and new will be discovered, but economy survives, so long there is a last human being around.

So what is causing famine? Economy or bad business plan? When government gives up control over economy to "invisible hand of market", then government has to deal with results of human stupidity soon or later. It is so, because economy could arrange even a revolution of starving masses. Economy will eventually fix the human error. Lets be honest, the science of economy is not even looking for the balance of the economic flow. Those people, who think they are in control of economy are using blunt tools like finances. It is like using huge blacksmith hammer to fix watch. Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails. Think about famine happening in a world which overproduces food, which all of humanity needs to survive. This is not even an issue with economy. This is a logistic issue of failed food distribution. Now, what caused that in turn could bring answer where the "human error" idiot is hiding. Maybe it is some mining corporation CEO, who looked to rise profit in his mining corporation (unregulated by local government, who sold them mining permit for a share in profit) up 5%, so he can have 13th wage a year payed as bonus on Christmas. Then economics played in like pollution caused by mining, land erosion due missing farmers gone mining, low existential wages for miners etc etc etc. Then weather got seasonally dry like it always does from time to time. People found themselves in famine. So who caused famine? Economy or unregulated bad business plan?

[GoblinCookie]

@GoblinCookie

You missing the point by negating those seasonal schedules in many today existing business plans. Entire industries like tourism or agriculture are entirely rooted in those. Where is constant flow of anything? It exists only in processing scale industries, like chemical plants. However assembly line mass production, like car manufacture, is already an inch under in this scale of industries. Then we have the regular assembly line production. In the end we have workshop scale production. Economy is flexibility. Without flexibility we have no economy. One moment economy is called feudal and next moment it is called mercantile, but it is still the same economy. Sure some economics stay the same, but economy still serves same and one purpose. Economy is a management of finite resources. Even if something catastrophic happens to resources. Economy will simply change. Some economics will die and new will be discovered, but economy survives, so long there is a last human being around.

So what is causing famine? Economy or bad business plan? When government gives up control over economy to "invisible hand of market", then government has to deal with results of human stupidity soon or later. It is so, because economy could arrange even a revolution of starving masses. Economy will eventually fix the human error. Lets be honest, the science of economy is not even looking for the balance of the economic flow. Those people, who think they are in control of economy are using blunt tools like finances. It is like using huge blacksmith hammer to fix watch. Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails. Think about famine happening in a world which overproduces food, which all of humanity needs to survive. This is not even an issue with economy. This is a logistic issue of failed food distribution. Now, what caused that in turn could bring answer where the "human error" idiot is hiding. Maybe it is some mining corporation CEO, who looked to rise profit in his mining corporation (unregulated by local government, who sold them mining permit for a share in profit) up 5%, so he can have 13th wage a year payed as bonus on Christmas. Then economics played in like pollution caused by mining, land erosion due missing farmers gone mining, low existential wages for miners etc etc etc. Then weather got seasonally dry like it always does from time to time. People found themselves in famine. So who caused famine? Economy or unregulated bad business plan?

Food distribution is part of the economy, business plans are also part of the economy; your question is a trick question therefore.  Yes, the economy can have a net surplus of food (like it does in RL) but if it does not get to the hungry people then it is not the economy working.  The reason why thing don't get to where they need to be is because of flaws in information created by the instability of things, the greater the instability in the real-world to more likely it is that decisions are made based upon out of date information.  You are correct in that resource wise the economy can deal with almost anything, the problem is that the situation as regards resources must be known; in effect the worst situation is where people think there is a surplus when there is actually a shortage, but once people realize there is a shortage then the problem goes away. 

To return to topic, computer games do not naturally lean in that direction.  We do not want a static economy that is working at 100% efficiency, because such an economy has no 'room' for the player to 'fit into'.  On the other hand we want the economy to work reliably enough so that players can acquire the items they need to slay dragons or whatever.  The devs are in the unenviable position of having to balance opposing interests which are playable as opposed to how things are in the regular game where only one side of the economy is playable.  We need players to be able to sell stuff, which means we cannot have the AI economy work so well that everyone already has everything that they want and can afford, which means there must be shortages to be met.  At the same time we need the player to be able to acquire goods themselves that they need. 

It seems natural disasters go together with the economy.  We have some hurricane, tornado, crop failure, plague or whatever other desctructive factor is beyond the control of mortals happen periodically, in order to temporarily create space for the player to fit into without having to make the AI economic system itself dysfunctional in general.  Disasters create demand spikes and supply shortages randomly, without this being the general state of the whole game regardless of what happens.

[Sarmatian123]

@GoblinCookie

Treasury Workshop, Trade Depot, Shop, Dispensary are part of the logistics in economy like caravans or shipping.

Stockpiling overproduction and unpredictable caravans and unpredictable shipping is what makes this economy feel realistic to players. This way there is a created supply for visiting adventures to purchase weapons, armor, food or goods. There is opening for player to send carpenters to cut wood instead or idle miners to smooth floors and walls in caverns, so less vermin is created there. There is no need for creating additional trade imbalance between sites. Economy should work without famines and catastrophes as well. Imbalance already is ensured by environmental economic inabilities of Elves, militarism of Goblins and Human greed. The guaranteed shortage is of adamantine or various metals, as well as some species dying out from over-hunting. I wish it applied to vermin too lolz. However justification of encrusting industry is still missing imho by badly designed Dwarven need of items acquirement.

Imho economy does not need to be applied in one release, as ready top-down design. More naturally economy is, when it is released patch by patch, one  functional element after another functional element in bottom-up design, which is easier for developer to balance and to add further economical elements.

[Anandar]

For DF to have an economy running world wide so to speak, each individual site needs to have its own internal supply and demand... as things are unless the player makes restrictions on themselves any fort they make is capable of self sufficiency.
If we have less variety and need to look at other sites for things like flux stone or food or even tools, this starts a supply and demand in game, if the dwarves in your fort work for their own benefit rather than the good of the fort this creates an internal supply and demand, which can leade to the need to trade with other sites for things your dwarves need,  eg a site near a river would have game , fish and wood, to sell, a mountain start would focus on mining and would need food and wood to make tools for its self, a site on more of a plain will focus on farm land, sites on sand would make glass to send out and so on... focused sites as i said before rather than self sufficient sites will allow an economy to work,