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[Nick K]

Well, nice coincidence this - I'd just registered so I could post my thoughts on the coins issue, and this topic appears!

Anyway, in modern times coins a valuable because they are backed by a government and have no substantial intrinsic value of their own.

However, in ancient times (which DF more closely resembles), this was not the case AFAIK. In these times coins were valuable not because some institution backed them but because they were valuable in their own right due to being made of precious metals. I'm sure I've read about Phoenician coins and whatnot being used in Britain, although I'm no historian.

IMO in DF the value of a coin should equal the value of the metal in it. I know that raw metal bars are valueless, but this isn't realistic - weren't gold ingots used as a way of keeping lots of value in one place? Coins were basically a way for the precious metals to be distributed in small enough quantities to be useful in the economy and in standardised amounts so that anyone could know the value.

In this case foreign coins would be valuable due to the gold (or whatever) in them. The value would not decrease with distance, but only if the metal itself was considered less precious in that kingdom. Realistically, I guess the traveller might have to visit a specialist to have the value of their coins confirmed, but I don't think that sort of micro would add to df.

So, in conclusion, allowing coins made of precious metals to be valuable in any civ would be more realistic that the current method.

It would also be much less annoying in adventurer mode, would open the door for fortresses to sell crafts for money to humans and would be a huge help when trader mode is eventually implemented.

[Felix the Cat]

The big reason why local coins were preferred was that local coins were of known value and composition. In the Roman Empire, people knew that a silver coin with Caesar's image on it was guaranteed to be silver throughout*, that it had a known weight, and that others would also know and trust these facts.

*Actually, as the Roman economy declined, the emperors debased the coinage several times, reducing the actual amount of precious metal in a given coin. They did this because of inflation: before debasement, the coin would have been worth more melted down and sold than it would have been worth in buying goods. This shows the fallacy in saying that "the value of a coin should equal the value of the metal in it" - while the statement is obviously true (a one ounce silver coin is worth one ounce of silver, etc), it doesn't address the real measure of the value of a monetary unit, which is how much it can buy.

Interestingly enough, coin debasement is alive and well today, even though we use fiat currency instead of coins made of precious metals. The main coin that has been debased? The penny. The value of copper has steadily risen at above the rate of inflation. In 1985 the composition of the penny was changed, increasing the proportion of zinc and decreasing the amount of copper. The penny will have to be debased again soon: if current trends continue, a penny will be worth more melted down than it will be in your pocket in (IIRC) 2009.

[Tamren]

quote:Originally posted by Grek:
<STRONG>Right now nobles get everything they want for free.</STRONG>

And we kill nobles with impunity using creative plumbing. Both will eventually be changed. If the penalty for killing nobles ever increases we would need to give them better abilities to make up for it. In fact we need to do that now anyway seeing as only a handful are worth thier keep.

quote:Originally posted by Grek:
<STRONG>I don't realy like that plan. A dwarf should get payed based on the following things: the wage for the job times the quality modifier of the product made (if any) plus a bonus from the noble if it was a mandate.</STRONG>

Well the problem with that is you would need to ensure that class of worker has enough to do and divide it among all of the available workers. Otherwise some would grow impoverished because they have no work to do, even though they have the skills. Dwarves should be paid for the skill they have, this way skilled carpenters will earn more than noob carpenters.

Of course, this assumes that jobs can take more than one dwarf. I have high hopes for expandable workshops. In such a workshop, you would make one single room where ALL of your carpenters worked. If one dwarf can make a table in 10 minutes, 2 dwarves working on the same table should go much faster right?

Since the workshop is making the items, and all of the dwarves work in it, then paying dwarves by work completed would be an effective system.

quote:Originally posted by Grek:
<STRONG>Would money from the roman empire be excepted in mideval china? They should have different money, and the value of another empire's money should go down at as you move farther and farther from that empire's citys.</STRONG>

In that case you should be able to convert currency at local banks. If you know where you are headed you can cash in all your money for a different kind.

quote:Originally posted by Nick K:
<STRONG>IMO in DF the value of a coin should equal the value of the metal in it. I know that raw metal bars are valueless, but this isn't realistic - weren't gold ingots used as a way of keeping lots of value in one place?</STRONG>

Good point you guys, coins having worth from material makes sense. But there has to be a government backing it up, otherwise you could dig up some gold, make it into coins and be instantly rich.

I guess in the beginning currency would not mean very much in your outpost. Bartering would be the method of trade. Once you have the right nobles in your fortress (from your empires government of course) you can say "this is a dwarven gold coin from our city, our goverment guarantees that it contains this amount of gold and is worth this amount"

You guys are right of course that currency loses value the farther you take it from the parent kingdom. Your neighbor would accept your coins because he knows exactly who you are. A kingdom on the other side of the world who has never heard of your city would pay you for the metal content of the coins, but would not let you use them as legal tender.

That said, the race that minted the coin should be important as well. Humans trade EVERYWHERE, so human coins should be standardized and widely accepted anywhere humans are well known. Isolated communities would be wary of outside coins or even still rely on bartering.

Like you said, bars could be used as mass currency. There should be a stamp or engraving on it to make it valid. Otherwise it is simply a valuable chunk of metal. The stamp ensures that the bar has a set value and is guaranteed to contain the right amount of metal.

Right now we do not have to deal with thievery in our own fortresses, not counting kobolds and nobles of course. But thieves will eventually get smarter and storing coins and gold bars out in the open just wont cut it anymore. We will need to figure out the mechanics behind vaults and the like.

[Tamren]

quote:Originally posted by Felix the Cat:
<STRONG>*Actually, as the Roman economy declined, the emperors debased the coinage several times, reducing the actual amount of precious metal in a given coin. They did this because of inflation: </STRONG>

That brings up a good point, would we have to deal with inflation in any form? If you simply produced a mountain of coins or dug up a huge load of platinum and sold it, it would be worth less and less, a loaf of bread would cost 500$!

What real life methods of controlling inflation exist? I know very little on that subject. At the very least, the "money grubbing" nobles should control or advise you on that situation.

[irmo]

quote:Originally posted by Tamren:
<STRONG>
Good point you guys, coins having worth from material makes sense. But there has to be a government backing it up, otherwise you could dig up some gold, make it into coins and be instantly rich.</STRONG>

Uh, you can do that.

quote:<STRONG>
You guys are right of course that currency loses value the farther you take it from the parent kingdom. Your neighbor would accept your coins because he knows exactly who you are. A kingdom on the other side of the world who has never heard of your city would pay you for the metal content of the coins, but would not let you use them as legal tender.</STRONG>

What they would do, realistically, is insist on weighing the coins and testing their purity.  After that, they can melt them down and make them into bars, local coinage, or limited-edition collectible action figures if that's what they do over there.

The issue isn't so much because they're not local coins so much as because you're not local, and so they have no recourse.  Even if you paid with their coins, they could be counterfeit.  And for that matter, any other goods you offer in trade are going to have the same problem.  So I'd treat it as yet another reason long-distance trade is expensive--besides the cost of transportation itself, and protection, and taxes, and the merchants demanding more profit if they're going to spend six months on the road, there's also the trust barrier.

Speaking of the merchants: sorting out problems like this is, after all, their job.  It's not like you're going to some village on the other side of the world and offering your weird local coins which you promise, cross your heart, are 100% silver.  You're trading with guys who handle foreign coinage all the time.  If they're really suspicious of your coins, they should just charge an extra fee to assay them.

quote:<STRONG>
Like you said, bars could be used as mass currency. There should be a stamp or engraving on it to make it valid. Otherwise it is simply a valuable chunk of metal. The stamp ensures that the bar has a set value and is guaranteed to contain the right amount of metal.</STRONG>

That is, bars = giant coins.  Makes sense.

[Tamren]

Well the problem with digging up a ton of gold and minting it is that it devalues the currency because there is so much of it. Of course thats more of a problem with paper money, as the paper is worth as much as the government says it is. I suppose making more coins would not be the same as printing up a crapload of paper money just to make yourself richer.

[I3erent]

Some civs should have different levels of economy in different worlds.  Some may not yet barter through currency, some may,

[Tamren]

That is especially true when you think of the elves. They show up to your fortress with plants and cloth to trade, useful stuff of course.

But since they do not smith anything for export, its doubtful that they would use metal currency. They could write numbers onto leaves for all we know but they certainly do not trade with em.

[Fishersalwaysdie]

So we could buy elvish corn for cheap coins, take their land and make a holiday in their honor?

[Tamren]

Sure why not   :p

Personally i wouldnt but if Toady wanted to put that in that would be neat.

[ August 31, 2007: Message edited by: Tamren ]

[Felix the Cat]

A further idea I had. Sort of a minor overhaul of the way work works.

Workshops have two possible settings for how they are used:
-Personal
-Communal

Communal workshops work exactly the way workshops work now. They are entirely controlled by the player, and their output is entirely owned by the player (aka the government, the nobility, society, the will of the dwarves, the "force behind the throne", or however you like to think of the player as being).

Personal workshops are quite different. When a personal workshop is created, it is immediately claimed by the highest level dwarf of the relevant type. The workshop is now almost entirely in the hands of that dwarf, and that dwarf will devote most of his time to working in that workshop. When the dwarf would otherwise be idle, he would now go to his workshop and do various things - the two that immediately come to mind would be creating trinkets and other things that he likes, which are added to his personal possessions, given to a friend, or sold to a shop, and improving the workshop area to make it more pleasant to work in - engraving the walls, upgrading the workshop, maybe trying to obtain new tools or the like.

The player would still be able to order things built at personal workshops. When something is ordered built, the dwarf will finish whatever he is doing, construct the item, and then get paid for the item from the central treasury.

The core concept is that whatever a dwarf makes at his personal workshop, he owns.

Legendary dwarves would naturally demand their own personal workshop, and would throw a tantrum or go melancholy if they did not receive one, depending on their personalities. These demands could also be brought up to the Mayor, guild noble, or other noble, and that noble could mandate the construction of a workshop for the dwarf. Dwarves would always receive a happy thought if they had their own personal workshop ("He was pleased to work in his own [adjective] work area lately.") Dwarves would receive an unhappy thought if the workshop arrangements were less than adequate ("He was annoyed by the pretentious working arrangements of another lately./He was outraged to have to work in a communal workshop lately./He was unhappy at not having his own workshop lately.")

The idea is that, once the economy starts, the best way to go would be the personal workshop route. Additional incentives may be required - I don't know.

This sets up a cycle for goods and money. Crafty-type dwarves would make things at their personal workshops. They would then sell these things to shopkeeper dwarves. The shopkeeper dwarves would then sell things at their shops, and all dwarves would be able to buy things they liked at those shops. Money is injected into the system by ordering things built on the government's tab, and by lower-class hauler jobs and the like. The money circulates with the goods. Merchants would naturally get involved in this cycle - crafty-type dwarves would try to sell things to the merchants, and all dwarves would have the opportunity to buy trinkets and such from the merchants.

This is actually quite realistic for a simple economic model.

Important note: the system works best if the silly "credit" scheme is eliminated. Dwarves can only spend money that they actually physically possess, and they can only actually physically possess it by getting paid, ultimately by the treasury either through hauling jobs or ordered goods. This introduces both supply and demand and monetary management to the model - wages and prices would be set through a supply and demand process, which would naturally be affected by the amount of money that everyone has to spend, which would be a result of how much money the government has put into the system. If the government puts more money into the system, there is greater money supply and prices go up, and laborer dwarves become unhappy because they can't buy as many things. If the government puts less money into the system, there is less money supply and prices go down, and craftsdwarves and shopkeeper dwarves are unhappy because they can't earn as much.

[LordBucket]

I would like to see a player-configurable economy. I want to be able to to decide whether wages even exist, whether dwarves pay for rooms, etc. I should be able to have as capitalistic or socialist an economy as I choose.

[RPB]

You know, 99% of the problems with too many coins lying around could be solved by the invention of pockets. Dwarf walks over to the coin stockpile or mint about once a season, pockets all the loose change belonging to them, and gets back to work. No millions of coin stacks lying around, no continual "store owned item" jobs hauling pennies back and forth across the fortress.

I suppose that if they have a room they should still sometimes go to deposit coins there (after all, I've seen dwarves racking up accounts as high as 19000 before they go legendary, and I'd rather not have them carrying all that around in coins all the time) but it would still be really nice if they handled coins more than one at a time. I guess actually this would probably tie into a general haul system fix, but coins are just where it would really make a HUGE difference over the current system of hauling 1 stack at a time (and not even being able to recombine stacks, leading to carrying coins 1-3 at once).

[ September 06, 2007: Message edited by: RPB ]

[Tamren]

Pockets would be great, but i would think that once dwarves start amassing a large fortune pockets would no longer be big or secure enough. Dwarves would start to demand wallets or belt pouches. Of course thats not a problem at all, you could build a large supply and stick them in a general store.

What do you think of the mint idea? If you didnt catch it earlier it works like this:
1. Forge creates blank coins, using a mold or whatever. These blank coins are not worth anything yet because they are not stamped with the credentials of your fortress bank. This would prevent the problem of cluttered forges.
2. These blanks are taken to the mint. The mints responsibility is to guarantee that every coin the bank puts out is worth the same. The mint weighs and stamps every coin, then bundles them up for transport to the bank. (which is probably nextdoor)
3. Now the bank is where the coins are tallied and distributed. Taking coins out of the loop before they reach the bank is illegal pretty much everywhere.

This way, instead of changing owners all over your fortress and creating a mess, the bank would handle everything. Dwarves would leave the lions share of any money they own in the bank vault under thier name. Rent is deducted from this supply. If dwarves wish to have some money on hand for shopping or otherwise they will get a moneybag and fill it with some coins, then store this bag in a personal chest.

The only time that coins change hands is at the bank where they are not moved. Or in a store cash register (or whatever the dwarves use). No more mess!

--
One thing that can possibly turn into a fiasco is how the money owned by the dwarves and the money owned by the fortress "government" are seperated. Obviously there would have to be some form of taxation. Rent is already calculated as a form of property tax.

If say, a trade caravan comes up to your fortress and you order 10 barrels of beer, whos money is being spent here? Since food is communal this would no doubt come from the government. But lets say your government somehow ran out of money and traden for the same, would it start to borrow money from your population?

As someone mentioned, just minting more coins is only a solution up to a point as that causes rampant inflation. But that is only a problem when a society uses "tokens" for money, just like how we use paper currency.

The current system seems to use the value of the material itself, but that can lead to problems as well. Say you were paying for a solid platinum statue. In order for you to pay the artist for the material used you would have to give him the statues weight in platinum coins! And then add even more for his effort and time.

[Turgid Bolk]

quote:Originally posted by Tamren:
<STRONG>The current system seems to use the value of the material itself, but that can lead to problems as well. Say you were paying for a solid platinum statue. In order for you to pay the artist for the material used you would have to give him the statues weight in platinum coins! And then add even more for his effort and time.</STRONG>

Well, in adventure mode the coins pretty much are just tokens, as they have no value outside the particular civ, but I suppose they still need the metal to make a proper coin.

You wouldn't have to pay the artist all that platinum, cause it's not his platinum raw materials. The platinum he used belongs to the you (i.e. the government). You only commissioned him to sculpt it. Therefore, you pay him the appropriate sum for his services, based on his skill or the quality of the statue. You provided the raw material so he gets no extra pay for that.

Unless you meant some individual was buying the statue, like at a shop...but in that case the artist could afford the material, so some other dwarf can probably afford the statue, and also probably has a concentrated form of wealth like gold bars or gems. If they had banks, he could just pay with a "check" or something. The artist probably wouldn't make the statue unless someone could afford it and requested it specifically, or he just really wanted a platinum statue for himself. (By the way, this leads to the question of whether a dwarf could "build" his statue somewhere, or if you would have to place it for him. Same for a new bed, or armor stand, etc.)

I would think all raw materials belong to the government by default (who commissioned the digging/killing of the animal). I suppose the miner's guild could own whatever they dig up, but they would have to buy the rights to the land and minerals they intend to dig. That would be an interesting experiment, because then the whole fort could basically run itself, the miner's guild would dig for ore and sell it to the smelters, who would refine it and sell it to the metalworkers, etc. etc. Dunno how that would work for other materials like bone and skin...the military is under your control, so anything they kill is yours, but what about stuff the hunters kill? Would trappers own the animals they catch? Woodcutters selling their wood? If food worked the same way, you'd want a balanced way for kitchens to pay farmers the for crops, making sure that demand is met...on second thought, that all seems way too complicated. Viva la communisme!

Maybe we should rename the game "Fortress Economics" (Forconomics?)

[ September 07, 2007: Message edited by: Turgid Bolk ]