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[Euld]

(Lol I'm tired, so I hope this post is coherent enough to read.  This post is made with the assumption that the problem with dwarves making little piles of money everywhere and wasting time will be resolved somehow.)
Paper money however, at least in the US, is made from cotton, so dwarf paper money would probably be made at a clothier and would require a dye of any color as a reagent.  I choose any color 'cause it could be annoying to have to cultivate and grind up three different dyes AND enough pig tail or rope reed or spider web to print three different kinds of paper money.  At the clothier, you would be allowed three different options, to print 1, 5, or 15 monetary value paper money, and the image on each one is not decided until the first of each one is printed (dunno what the image would be, either random or perhaps one of your artifacts, but it won't matter which dye is used).  But, the paper itself won't represent any value until you designate a "hoard" (probably using the zone function) and designate items to be put in the hoard.  Checking on the hoardmaster will show not only how many coins he wants minted, but also how much value he wants in the hoard and how much money he wants printed.  This way, if you want to have an economy, you don't have to use up tons of precious metals to have one.  Anything with worth can be assigned to the horde, like all those leather/silk clothes the goblines left for you that you had encrusted with green glass so your jewelers could have some practice ^_^

[chinkeeyong]

Interesting idea, but I see no reason to stick specifically to paper money. If the player had the ability to designate anything he wanted as currency (with this example being a new type of cloth product), that would be awesome.

[HastyLumbago]

I think it would be just as useful to mint chits, and designate a bank. the bank vault keeps the money, and every dwarf gets a chit.

kind of like a debit card.

[Neonivek]

The problem with Paper money is that it doesn't have real value. It needs to be backed by a real system and back then that system was real wealth (Like a Fortress brimmed with gold that you could exchange the currency for).

So if paper money exists I want the environment to reflect its existance.

if you want to have an economy, you don't have to use up tons of precious metals to have one

On the contrary you need tons of precious metals to establish a paper economy because you need to back up paper cash with something of real value that contains some level of pernamence. Having Paper money actually not be tied to real money comes a bit later.

Now if those precious metals could be stored in another fortress then that is fine. That is currently what Fortresses start off as.

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

Having Paper money actually not be tied to real money comes a bit later.

And even that is contested by the Europeans... Not that I support baseless monies, since they made economies a bit unstable.

[Starver]

I've a feeling that paper money might not fit the DF era.  Which is not to say that some sort of less formal "promisary note" issue can't be spun by a sufficiently advanced economy, or perhaps (if we can get over the fact that owned objects don't change hands) a hybrid system where the coin economy (when it arises) has a parallel/piggy-back goods exchange system.

Which doesn't stop a pre-economy Dwarf from aquiring any number of silk socks and finding themselves rich, and also has the possible disadvantage (and thus actually in keeping with the DF philosophy of there being a million ways to lose?) of vanity goods speculation or even artifact exchange in order to facilitate the movement of wealth, to then fail miserable when the item is stolen/destroyed.  (Or, worse, the 'loss' covered up in ever more virtual valuations and speculation, until the point when some debt needs to be recovered and there is nothing to back up the supposed wealth of a certain individual, toppling the whole system in a frenzy of economic implosion.)

No, I don't think the above paragraph is easily workable.  I'd stick to using coins if necessary, but in the expectation that purses of some kind could be added to simplify the hauling of "ready money", but backed up by the credit system that is currently 'ethereal' in nature, but perhaps transferable to actual 'books' that the accountant/treasurer assigned-noble does actually maintain.  (If you feel that the potential (and/or deliberate) loss of those books would be something you'd want to risk(/exploit)...  At the moment it seems to be a "collective consciousness" knowledge of the wealth of all non-noble residents.  Perfect and yet intangilble.  Which is why I suppose a lot of people turn the economy off, and settle back into the more feudal supply-and-demand non-economy that exists in the initial settlement.

The opportunity to guide which of several (suitable in-character) economic models/mixture of models get used would seem interesting.  But would that immediately arrive (or even eventually lead up to?) a paper economy?  Unless done specifically to annoy the elves, given the current tendency for one entire tree to become a log to become a single 'block' and then to become a single wooden earring (at least in the hands of the inexperienced), so it seems natural that one entire tree would eventually become one (or maybe three/nine, I suppose) treasury note of some kind.

(Back to game mechanics, if we currently have problems with coin haulage, in leiu of a 'purse' mechanism, then we'd have similar problems with paper haulage, in leiu of a 'wallet' of some kind.  Unless you go down the lines of having multiple magnitudes of value to specifically handle this issue, but then you'd have to deal with 'change', as well.)

[Quift]

For the love of god!

I think I might have argued against this so many times it has become some sort of pet peeve.

This would lead to either the game being horrbily unbalanced and artificial economy wise, or for an even more fun variant if implemented correctly this would lead to the entire economy crashing regularly in each and every fortress. and when I mean crashing I mean 90% unemployment, 1200000000% inflation crashes.

once a year.

not to mention that this particular "solution" just instead creates the problem of dwarves leaving small heaps of paper all over the place instead. The actual problems with the ecoonomy is more related to the very finite demand for goods within the fort, and the infinite demand outside it. Not to mention that most "finished goods" in the fort have no actual use, making it very weird to motivate the traders buying them at all in the first place.

[kurokikaze]

Does it mean dwarves should invent printing?

[Starver]

Does it mean dwarves should invent printing?

You speak the truth, man...

[LordDemon]

While we are on the subject of money, shouldn't we be able to use coins other then copper/silver/gold in our economies? Coins should be based on the alue of metal anyway, so why not allow trade with iron coins? Sure, they might be very low in value, but if you have spare iron. Lead might be another idea. Or, if you lack gold but have rosegold, aluminium or platinum, why not use them as high value coins in trade?

I'd like an option to make coins out of any material, and have them used in economy. Of course, the coins could also have a rarity based value (a year 102 copper coin migh be worth more then few gold coins, if it is the only one in existence, but only to people who are interested in coins.) but that could be added later. Right now, I'm happy if my dwarfs can drink ale and pay it with iron coins.

[Neonivek]

Well usually for credit systems to work you need it to be backed by something usually an organisation such as the government or a guild

So I could fully imagine a Prince writing official notes that could be exchanged at the treasury or a merchant guild supporting such a system between merchants. (I heard that guilds sometimes did this and other things such as making you liable for cost fluxuations out of your personal account even if you bought them in the first place or something... Yeah times were tough and I STILL don't understand it.)

shouldn't we be able to use coins other then copper/silver/gold in our economies?

I think a lot of it had to do with use and a simplification of the system. PLUS Iron Coins rust to nothing while Copper and Silver just tarnish.

Also ignoring coin collection. YES coins of different years sometimes could have different values but that was due to the purity of the material in question. Though usually the market forced all coins to have the same value which caused problems in the long run (Royalty was infamos for inflating the economy)

[Quift]

Lead Coins? That is MAAAADNESSS!

Which means that there is a historic precedence. Sparta actually did use lead coins as a way to keep money in the country. Then again they were useless and they ran an oligarchic police state where 90% of the population where held as slaves.

So maybe it is not completly applicable.

/Trivia

[Dwarf]

Nah, please no paper money. Good old coins with actual material value. Copper, Silver (=10x copper) and Gold (=10x silver).

[kurokikaze]

Why restrict this to metals? Engraved small cut gems (or even large for big sums) can work as well.

[Dwarf]

Why restrict this to metals? Engraved small cut gems (or even large for big sums) can work as well.

Oh yeah, and that of course. I didn't specifically mean metals, but just anything of real valor. As it stands, 100$ are worth about... what, 3 cents?