Print

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

[Flaede]

Currency could be used in the future to deal with all sorts of non-material needs . . .

- pay off bandits to leave your trade routes alone
- pay tribute to foreign lands
- hire a quick mercenary army
- purchase goods that can't be made domestically (books, whenever libraries get in)
- pay a bounty to hunters for the ears of some pesty animal
- offer a bonus for immigrants of a certain type
- bribe the human kingdom to cut down the elven forest
- pay for information from travelers

. . . especially once a supply/demand economy is in working order, and not everyone considers gabbro mugs legal tender.

I like pretty much all of these ideas.
But as for that last one, I hope someday we can use currencies that aren't metal coins.
Bone coins is a favorite of mine. Glass beads? Tulips, maybe?

[Veroule]

I think everyone is missing what should be the Goblins primary food source...Elves.  Goblin snatchers should be a form of hunter, and the Goblins shouldn't be converting other species to thier point of view, they should be using them as live stock.
Coins and currency are quite silly, using them does not eliminate a barter system.  Barter transactions are the exchange of goods/services with values agreed upon by the parties involved.  Understanding that currency is another 'good' with a value that has to be agreed upon only takes hearing the words inflation, deflation, or exchange rate.

Coins were originally invented because people had trust issues.  The idea behind coins is that a government entity certyifies the weight and purity of metal in the coin.  The reasons for using particular metals are lost in antiquity, but I mostly think it is because people like shiny things.

[Funk]

the reason for the metal of high value coins is A) gold and silver are rare and hard to difficult to counterfeit.

B)wear resistance and anti-corrosion properties, the main reason for makeing coins is there long life, Bank notes only last a few years.

[NW_Kohaku]

Gold also had ceremonial and percieved magical properties - because of its uncorroding nature gold and silver were believed to have spiritual properties. 

The phrase "born with a silver spoon in their mouth" comes from the fact that children from wealthier families who could afford silverware were less likely to die young - silver has anti-bacterial properties, while wooden spoons can carry diseases from one user to the next.  Not understanding bacteria, it was thought this was a magical property of silver that protected people from disease.

[Josephus]

I think everyone is missing what should be the Goblins primary food source...Elves.  Goblin snatchers should be a form of hunter, and the Goblins shouldn't be converting other species to thier point of view, they should be using them as live stock.

Why? Just because your mental image of Goblins is as ignoble, dirty cannibal savages, doesn't mean that everyone else's is as well. The fact that Goblins have slaves implies they see value in other beings. Specifically, as cannon fodder. Why eat them when they can use them to soak up crossbow fire?

[Willfor]

Or they could have other reasons for taking the children of other civilizations.

[Rose]

Or they could have other reasons for taking the children of other civilizations.

You really should give a warning that whoever watches that is no longer a virgin.

[Chthonic]

Currency could be used in the future to deal with all sorts of non-material needs . . .
. . .
. . . especially once a supply/demand economy is in working order, and not everyone considers gabbro mugs legal tender.

Except that each civilization has its own currency. So either you could trade within your own civ only, if you could exchange it somehow, or if you could force them to convert to your currency.

This might be useful though.

Maybe civilizations could accept the currency of other civilizations . . . but some civilizations' coins are more desirable than others.  This could be to the point where, say, Civ A's coins are highly valued so that what in Civ C costs 15 B silver pennies costs only 12 A silver pennies.

Values like this could be the results of treaties or trade agreements between friendly civilizations, and one aspect of warfare might be attempts to devalue enemy nation's currency.

Assuming, of course, that coins have some value beyond just their metal content.

[Mel_Vixen]

Or they could have other reasons for taking the children of other civilizations.

That movie was iirc one of toadys inspirations for the snatching thing.

IT would be cool thought if the gobins would have a preverence for catchyMusic and musicals as only form of art they know.

[Armok]

Gold also had ceremonial and percieved magical properties - because of its uncorroding nature gold and silver were believed to have spiritual properties. 

The phrase "born with a silver spoon in their mouth" comes from the fact that children from wealthier families who could afford silverware were less likely to die young - silver protects people from disease.  Not understanding the reason silver protects people from disease, it was thought this was a property of silver that protected people from disease.

fixed.

[Flaede]

Or they could have other reasons for taking the children of other civilizations.

That movie was iirc one of toadys inspirations for the snatching thing.

IT would be cool thought if the gobins would have a preverence for catchyMusic and musicals as only form of art they know.

I've always wondered - does that made Jareth/Bowie a demon? Forgotten Beast?

[vlademir1]

One thing that personally comes naturally to mind with the recent discussion of outlying community sprawl here is the idea of court life. 
The Barron, Count, Duke and King should realistically receive representatives from outlying communities in their domain delivering them information, local requests and offered goods and dispatching them back with instructions and agreements. As well they'd periodically be traveling around their own domain and going to the court of the local noble next up the chain of command and similarly receiving those from the next level down the chain. 
Of course to really handle this properly, once your fortress has a Mayor (ie you're big enough for someone higher up to care you exist at all) you should occasionally have mandates and demands delivered from these nonlocal officials as well as appropriate means to make requests from them.  Aside from this you should have appropriate rooms for the next level individual because they'll occasionally come visit. Giving them unhappy thoughts should make them less likely to comply with your requests as well.  Once the higher nobles come to live in your fortress they should need extra bedrooms, etc. of appropriate quality and enough room in their office/throne room for their visiting lesser noble guests as well.
Aside from this you really shouldn't see large migrant waves beyond this size without requesting additional manpower (a few small ones here and there is a different matter though) and the caravans probably shouldn't bring much unless you request it at this point.

I'm bringing all this up though because it's unclear to me from either the former or current dev pages whether Toady has given as much consideration to realistic civilian bureaucracy as he has on the military side.  The closest I can remember seeing are having your local militia called up as part of a larger army and improved diplomacy.

I of course realize this is all really dependent on stuff that is still unimplemented like dwarves being able to leave the local map.

Or they could have other reasons for taking the children of other civilizations.

That movie was iirc one of toadys inspirations for the snatching thing.

IT would be cool thought if the gobins would have a preverence for catchyMusic and musicals as only form of art they know.

Of course the snatching thing is part of the traditional mythos of the Fae, of which Elves, Dwarves, Goblins and other standard fantasy races were all part (changlings being the most common). 

[tfaal]

However, Toady One and Three Toe's sources of inspiration tend to be the most banal available, so it is entirely plausible that Labyrinth was the genesis of that feature.

[NW_Kohaku]

One thing that personally comes naturally to mind with the recent discussion of outlying community sprawl here is the idea of court life.  etc.

You might be interested in the recent Dwarven Imperialism thread, or this post from the Kingdom Mode thread that groups all the relevant old devlist stuff.

Still, yes, Toady seems more interested in military than civil matters, just looking at those old devpage items.  I do hope that civil matters are given a great deal of depth, as I see this as one of those things that could potentially be of benefit to people of multiple playstyles - if you have a court with various agents and officials and nobles, you can delegate the matters that don't interest you, and handle the matters that do interest you personally. 

[Josephus]

One thing that personally comes naturally to mind with the recent discussion of outlying community sprawl here is the idea of court life.  etc.

Still, yes, Toady seems more interested in military than civil matters, just looking at those old devpage items.  I do hope that civil matters are given a great deal of depth, as I see this as one of those things that could potentially be of benefit to people of multiple playstyles - if you have a court with various agents and officials and nobles, you can delegate the matters that don't interest you, and handle the matters that do interest you personally.

The part of this intrigues me is not the increased level of bureaucracy, but what this could mean for court intrigues. After all, how can you manage your kingdom when your ministers and officials are all plotting to stab each other (and the king) in the back? This would relate, of course, to in-fort factions, cults, and whatever.