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[frodo0800]

WAIT!
If all the nine releases are in one arc this mean that more arcs will come?

[Lectorog]

I think you should probably read through this page.

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html

[Neonivek]

WAIT!
If all the nine releases are in one arc this mean that more arcs will come?

technically there arn't arcs anymore so to speak. It is now an informal designation.

Though yes there will be more arcs.

[Miuramir]

My concerns are not because I don't know what's the schedule of planning and releases, but the lack of a clear monetary system planning. I don't know the revives of the old coinages failure will be such a good idea into an over designed caravan arc. You can see so many plans involved spending "money", and in the field of productions, but hardly any plan of a "money supply" mechanisms. It's not simply as you set a wage rate and giving out money as you like. Hence my problems are how workers, employment, markets, and possibly banks actually integrated with each other?. They are not some economics voodoo, but the fundamental elements in the field of economics.

This is a very modern approach to economy, and probably inappropriate for DF.  Traditional money supply mechanisms were that you dug some sort of precious metal out of the ground, minted it into coins, and spent it.  If you didn't spend enough of it on a military, someone who had spent more would take it from you. 

DF's nominal cut-off date is 1400, or more generally "Late Medieval but pre-Renaissance", with a strong European bias.  At that time, the charging of interest was still considered usury (Christian) / riba (Islamic), a serious sin and crime.  Price models were, where considered at all, generally based on Aquinas's Just Price, a primitive version of Cost-of-production theory of value. 

The beginnings of modern economic thought are arguably with the School of Salamanca, starting roughly a hundred years after the nominal cut-off and well into what most people would consider the Renaissance.  I strongly recommend reading the Economics section of that entry to get a feel for how primitive things were at the time.  The concept that things could have more or less value solely due to their relative scarcity was not really advanced until Martín de Azpilcueta in the early 1500s, with the benefit of the significant changes caused by the Spanish importation of precious metals from the Americas to analyze.  Luis Saravia de la Calle writing in 1544 had a comparatively modern-sounding approach:

Those who measure the just price by the labour, costs, and risk incurred by the person who deals in the merchandise or produces it, or by the cost of transport or the expense of traveling...or by what he has to pay the factors for their industry, risk, and labour, are greatly in error.... For the just price arises from the abundance or scarcity of goods, merchants, and money...and not from costs, labour, and risk.... Why should a bale of linen brought overland from Brittany at great expense be worth more than one which is transported cheaply by sea?... Why should a book written out by hand be worth more than one which is printed, when the latter is better though it costs less to produce?... The just price is found not by counting the cost but by the common estimation.

Note however that nearly a hundred and fifty years after the nominal cutoff, this was considered both revolutionary and controversial; and was not followed up on in detail by society until much later even than that. 

There are a wide variety of other things that we take for granted that are comparatively recent.  A generation later, Martín de Azpilcueta's genius student Diego de Covarubias y Leyva advanced the then-revolutionary idea that that "people had not only the right to own property but — again, a specifically modern idea — they had the exclusive right to the benefit from that property, although the community might also benefit. Nonetheless, in times of great necessity, there all goods become a commons."

Note that this doesn't mean that the underlying code shouldn't have some more functional ideas about supply and demand; however, expecting the individual and state actors to have any sort of modern fiscal planning or concept of monetary policy would be inappropriate.  People simply didn't understand that adding more money to the economy was a problem until well *after* the deluge of new specie from the exploitation of the Americas. 

[Neonivek]

Well don't forget that while the "Cut off" was the 1400s, that the only race that approaches (and even goes beyond) that cut off is the Dwarves (and maybe humans in a few ways).

So you have other economic forms in the mix. THOUGH for simplicity I actually assume Toady is going to limit it anyhow.

People simply didn't understand that adding more money to the economy was a problem until well *after* the deluge of new specie from the exploitation of the Americas

It was quite wonderous the inventions that they created after that point for the economy. To the point where you realise that problems with the economy was quite common.

[counting]

This is a very modern approach to economy, and probably inappropriate for DF.  Traditional money supply mechanisms were that you dug some sort of precious metal out of the ground, minted it into coins, and spent it.  If you didn't spend enough of it on a military, someone who had spent more would take it from you. 

DF's nominal cut-off date is 1400, or more generally "Late Medieval but pre-Renaissance", with a strong European bias.  At that time, the charging of interest was still considered usury (Christian) / riba (Islamic), a serious sin and crime.  Price models were, where considered at all, generally based on Aquinas's Just Price, a primitive version of Cost-of-production theory of value. 

The beginnings of modern economic thought are arguably with the School of Salamanca, starting roughly a hundred years after the nominal cut-off and well into what most people would consider the Renaissance.  I strongly recommend reading the Economics section of that entry to get a feel for how primitive things were at the time.  The concept that things could have more or less value solely due to their relative scarcity was not really advanced until Martín de Azpilcueta in the early 1500s, with the benefit of the significant changes caused by the Spanish importation of precious metals from the Americas to analyze.  Luis Saravia de la Calle writing in 1544 had a comparatively modern-sounding approach:

The medieval ear in Europe is a step backward from the previous more complex economy world of Rome and near East. Without the previous economic development, and monetary system to setup the "market price", there will be no just price. Without the credit system, there will be no long term trading. Without the previous financial structure, there will be no unified precious metal using as commodity money. It's not that it didn't exist, but when the society stepped backward, there was no need for all of them. However, the character and shadows from the past still lurking behind the scene. (Like fairs market left from Rome era)

And even if we only want to implement elementary market in DF, then are we talking about the pure bargaining economy? Since as you described precious metal is dug up and processed, then exchanged with others. There is no mark of "money" in that anywhere, not even as "commodity money". If you want to using "commodity money" hence able to calculate the "cost-of-production". At least, you need to setup a deposit and exchange mechanism. Also the most importantly, the mechanism to "distribute" them. (The all important money flow)

And price is just price, there is no other definition for price - the ratio between money and commodity. Whether it is uniform or locally, or defined by church, etc. It's always the relative amount of money vs commodity is important. People have doing it since the very first commodity money emerged. (thousands of years ago). And they are always evolved from bottom-up. I won't going into the detailed about how commodity money evolved and can be implemented in DF. Search "Dwarconomy", and you can see my essay. And usury aside, clever merchants already find many way around it for thousands years, and the very first private banking service already existed in 9th century, and were writing checks since 12th century. People in medieval era were not fools. The phenomena may be recorded very late, but the practice existed long before that. (Like the word capitalism is not widely used till 19th century, but you must look into 13th century to find its origin, perhaps earlier)

What I am interested here, is the money supply mechanism. It's the basic of any monetary system. (If you don't want a bargaining system like currently in DF). Thinking that a miner dug up the raw metal, a blacksmith smelt it, then again made it into coinages or not. There are many agents involved. And after that, who will exchange the gold bar or coins from the blacksmith? In what ratio, and with what commodity and by whom during the exchange? After change hands, how does the entity decide how much to spend during next exchange for other commodity? How much should the entity storage it and where by what means? In what place these transactions take place? Who will do the book-keeping and count the numbers? How to determine the speed of transaction? What happens when there is not enough money during any transaction process? All these are practical issued need to be designed or the monetary system will never work. Unless you just treat the coins as simple commodity, and there is no need for caravan arc anyway. (Coins are redundant again)

[RAKninja]

HECK this game is on it's alpha stage and it has more content than nay other game in history!

Ignoring the tyop, I think this is rather unproven. I think most MMORPGs have a chance at that title, if only by the sheer diligance of adding new dungeons and gear for several years.
However, DF might have more FEATURES then any other game in history.

i disagree,  MMOs tend to not be moddable.  modibility ensure content for near perpetuity.  example:  morrowind.  in the time that i've played morrowind, i've experienced everything a bunch of MMOs had to offer.  conversly, i have not yet done everything in vanilla morrowind, let alone the really popular mods.

[frodo0800]

hey guys all those things  i've said about 500 dorfs on the fort i meant:money flowing in the same fort not within the dwarven empire (that would be nice too) with rents,shops and taxes.

[counting]

hey guys all those things  i've said about 500 dorfs on the fort i meant:money flowing in the same fort not within the dwarven empire (that would be nice too) with rents,shops and taxes.

I think it's about scale. And it's historically linked not only to the absolute number of population, but the density and the distribution of population. Think of different sizes of local maps with same amount of population. And a fort only occupied the center small portion of the map. So a map twice as wide with twice times population, can in effect be 2 forts in one map with 2 centers. The differences will be the forts off map in the former is controlled by computers, not by players. However if the simulation is real enough, you will not feel the different between them. And the traveling distance and transportation cost should be the same in both. Other economic activities as well.

On the other hand, imagine if in the future computers are powerful enough to simulate the whole world in one giant map, but players can only control a certain "territory", it should be theoretically the same as current DF.  In this case, the problem is how dense the population is in a local area. The population concentrated territory will be towns and fortresses, while elsewhere is empty wildness between them. So currently the population limited by computing power is in effect limited how big a concentrated area can be. But a world of 2000 population of 4 concentrated areas with 500 pop each, will behave differently with 10 areas with 200 pop each in economic activities. Hence, what you said really CAN make a difference in simulating economy.

And historically, a city or town will have a central market, local markets, and surrounding country side with villages, and trading posts between trade route. And more powerful(populated) the center is, the wider area it controls. (with many territories). But how concentrated and dense the population should be different from civ to civ by their characteristic.

[Drevlin]

It's creepy because I will play constantly at 1 FPS. My PC is scared 

EDIT: Obviously it's awesome, but I'm concerned about performance

There is a time when he have to say goodbye to our old friends, the computers. Do not get sad - it is time then for a new one.

Dwarf Fortress: the actual killer application!

To think... in 5 years the multicore support will be entirely unneeded.

Why? We are moving into a massive multicore computing right now

[Miuramir]

What I am interested here, is the money supply mechanism. It's the basic of any monetary system. (If you don't want a bargaining system like currently in DF). Thinking that a miner dug up the raw metal, a blacksmith smelt it, then again made it into coinages or not. There are many agents involved. And after that, who will exchange the gold bar or coins from the blacksmith? In what ratio, and with what commodity and by whom during the exchange? After change hands, how does the entity decide how much to spend during next exchange for other commodity? How much should the entity storage it and where by what means? In what place these transactions take place? Who will do the book-keeping and count the numbers? How to determine the speed of transaction? What happens when there is not enough money during any transaction process? All these are practical issued need to be designed or the monetary system will never work. Unless you just treat the coins as simple commodity, and there is no need for caravan arc anyway. (Coins are redundant again)

Well, one obvious approach is to consider "Why are coins useful?"  Because they offer considerable convenience to all parties.  You don't have to spend nearly as much time worrying about or testing either the weight or the purity of the metal, it's generally in sizes that are useful both physically and for transactions, and there's the overarching threat that a powerful organization (the state, usually) will come down hard on anyone who attempts to cheat the process. 

Various gold-rush economies have functioned with gold dust as effective currency; but this generally requires most parties to have fairly accurate scales, a stretch for non-dwarven medieval settings (having a mechanism be a requirement for a money-changer's shop or mint would be interesting flavor, though).  While the widespread Spanish dollar (8-real coin aka piece of eight) (and to a lesser extent the Thaler) were technically post-period, it's a good model for what might happen when a dwarven kingdom sends off an expedition that finds vast quantities of silver & gold.  Originally, the precious metals were sent back to Spain (the mountainhome) to be minted in the existing royal charter mints, but eventually there were charters for mints in the new world, closer to the sources of production. 

The obvious DF take is that part of "the economy" is that once you've gotten, say, a Baron and exported $X in refined precious metals you either have a "Mint Master" arrive (similar to how the Dungeon Master used to work), or perhaps more usefully are considered to have a charter and can appoint one.  You can then start minting coins which are "official".  (Realistically, Count would probably be a better choice.) 

The counterpart to this ("why bother?") would logically be some sort of "hassle and conversion loss" penalty.  Official same-civ coinage would have a value multiplier of 1.00x for all trading purposes.  Other good coins perhaps 0.98x, precious metal bars and gems 0.95x, and most trade goods a lesser fraction; one interesting option would be to have it based on a table or equation keyed off of (value / weight), starting at say 0.90x and going down.  This would simulate the transport hassle with a simple mechanic, and encourage forts to trade smaller, more valuable items naturally. 

[counting]

Well, one obvious approach is to consider "Why are coins useful?"  Because they offer considerable convenience to all parties.  You don't have to spend nearly as much time worrying about or testing either the weight or the purity of the metal, it's generally in sizes that are useful both physically and for transactions, and there's the overarching threat that a powerful organization (the state, usually) will come down hard on anyone who attempts to cheat the process. 
...

The counterpart to this ("why bother?") would logically be some sort of "hassle and conversion loss" penalty.  Official same-civ coinage would have a value multiplier of 1.00x for all trading purposes.  Other good coins perhaps 0.98x, precious metal bars and gems 0.95x, and most trade goods a lesser fraction; one interesting option would be to have it based on a table or equation keyed off of (value / weight), starting at say 0.90x and going down.  This would simulate the transport hassle with a simple mechanic, and encourage forts to trade smaller, more valuable items naturally.

This is the one of the 4 functions (characteristic) of currency - unit of count or divisibility. I've made a post in the past that can tell you the reason why coinage is such a unique kind of commodity money. (Divisibility is not coming naturally for metal, it's the other quality of precious metal makes it a good candidate with other 2 functions of money, so coins are created artificially to fulfill this role).

And by your proposal, like an officer appointing in mintage, I believed you are talking about a top-down approach in order to make the standardized and generalized coinage across an entire civilization possible. Hence I believe there must be other monetary and financial structures working behind it. I think invoking the infrastructures from the past history, indeed may help the design of economy system in DF. but it needs to be more concrete in order to translate it into DF and function properly.

However I don't get the part of multiplier. Are you talking about the property of transaction cost during exchange using commodity money? It's exactly the difference of transaction cost make precious metal a good candidate for the role of money (one of the other money characteristic). And there's many economics theories and ACE models built to test the emergence of money through this property. So, on top of that, you are trying to make even more difference in transaction cost into different coinages(money)? I guess I can make a model and test this theory. I imagine that it won't work as good as it hope for. A 2% or 5% difference in transaction cost isn't going to be large enough to make the separation in medium of exchange on different markets trading with each other.  (Common medium doesn't need to be the best kind, but one of the better kinds which exchanged with largest quantity. Hence it's likely the one with largest quantity will eventually dominate the market as in history). Still, we only see the role of money, and lack the financial infrastructure that will allow money to flow, and controlling the speed of transactions. (If it's a top-down approach, and you know MV=PQ, right?)

[YetAnotherStupidDorf]

There is a time when he have to say goodbye to our old friends, the computers. Do not get sad - it is time then for a new one.

New computer will not help you. For predictable future, computers will have more and more cores with about same speed per core. Since DF is practically single-core game and will be single-core for predictable future, we are screwed.

[Miuramir]

The counterpart to this ("why bother?") would logically be some sort of "hassle and conversion loss" penalty.  Official same-civ coinage would have a value multiplier of 1.00x for all trading purposes.  Other good coins perhaps 0.98x, precious metal bars and gems 0.95x, and most trade goods a lesser fraction; one interesting option would be to have it based on a table or equation keyed off of (value / weight), starting at say 0.90x and going down.  This would simulate the transport hassle with a simple mechanic, and encourage forts to trade smaller, more valuable items naturally.

And by your proposal, like an officer appointing in mintage, I believed you are talking about a top-down approach in order to make the standardized and generalized coinage across an entire civilization possible. Hence I believe there must be other monetary and financial structures working behind it. I think invoking the infrastructures from the past history, indeed may help the design of economy system in DF. but it needs to be more concrete in order to translate it into DF and function properly.

However I don't get the part of multiplier. Are you talking about the property of transaction cost during exchange using commodity money? It's exactly the difference of transaction cost make precious metal a good candidate for the role of money (one of the other money characteristic). And there's many economics theories and ACE models built to test the emergence of money through this property. So, on top of that, you are trying to make even more difference in transaction cost into different coinages(money)? I guess I can make a model and test this theory. I imagine that it won't work as good as it hope for. A 2% or 5% difference in transaction cost isn't going to be large enough to make the separation in medium of exchange on different markets trading with each other.  (Common medium doesn't need to be the best kind, but one of the better kinds which exchanged with largest quantity. Hence it's likely the one with largest quantity will eventually dominate the market as in history). Still, we only see the role of money, and lack the financial infrastructure that will allow money to flow, and controlling the speed of transactions. (If it's a top-down approach, and you know MV=PQ, right?)

I was attempting to come up with an easy to compute simulation mechanism to represent a wide variety of "messy" real-world considerations that are probably not going to be practical to model in detail; that could additionally be "patched in" to the existing system with an easy transition mechanic. 

Right now, all items are treated as having an intrinsic "worth", and almost all trade interactions are carried out using that worth without any consideration for actual value or, particularly, overhead.  (I will attempt to use "worth" for the game-computed internal abstract price of an object or service in this discussion, before any external modifiers; "value" would be after multipliers for being requested, etc.) The only limiting factor is that in certain versions, there is a maximum weight of goods that the traders can carry away with them, which assigns in effect a very weak and single-stepped value/weight filter.  (If your primary trade good for the first trade caravan is ordinary obsidian mechanisms, you may find that the traders cannot carry away enough of your worth for you to buy everything you want and could theoretically afford of theirs, for example.)   There is little need for coinage, as almost all items are traded with equal ease and at their full worth. 

Realistically, a supply caravan would want to come away primarily with easily-spendable money, and other items in decreasing order of some combination of fungibility and liquidity.  Recognized foreign nation coins would probably be the next tier, followed by bullion bars and gemstones still considered at some level as "money", just less efficient forms in small quantities.  (Historically larger amounts were simply by weight; if you have to pay 10,000 Roman pounds of silver as Danegeld, it probably doesn't matter nearly as much what shape it's in.) 

There's a fuzzy boundary, but somewhere you probably cross from "money or close equivalents" to "trade good".  The level of additional hassle necessary to convert a trade good into money when the caravan returns home (or gets to its next destination) is difficult to model.  In the interests of having a first-cut approximation, I suggest looking at what you might call "specific worth", the worth of the item divided by its weight.  The heavier an item is, the more hassle it is, and the caravan should consider it having a value which is less and less of its worth as it gets heavier.  If set with care, this single, easily computable number could represent a wide variety of real-world economic factors and generate both a better feeling and better operating simulation for very little computational cost. 

It is easily extendable by biasing the specific worth tables based on the distance from the caravan civ to the fortress, to represent the additional overhead of long journeys; further refinement might be by assigning a variable weight to tiles crossed based on their terrain and savagry, so a caravan that has to cross many squares of haunted jungle and a difficult mountain pass would have a stronger preference for easily-portable, high-valueable, non-spoiling items (and once this has been calculated, you could also use it to increase the expected profit). 

Another related approximation would be to introduce a (fractional) multiplier to represent spoilage / upkeep; for foods, live animals, etc.  This might help offset the "prepared meals" export problem somewhat, and would have useful synergy with other effects. 

The current equation for trading with a caravan, abstracted, looks something like this (trader on the left side, fortress on the right):
worth * request * profit = worth * request

What I'm proposing is something along the lines of the following:
worth * request * efficiency * upkeep * profit = worth * request * efficiency * 1/upkeep

where:
worth = current internally computed DF "true" worth, or its eventual replacement

request = multiplier based on whether an item has been specially requested and at what priority, otherwise 1

efficiency = multiplier based on how easily traded, carried, and exchanged the good is; modifiers close to 1 for money, and dropping with increasing weight for non-monetary trade goods; may be itself modified by distance or weighted distance

upkeep = multiplier based on an abstracted idea of how perishable a trade good is, or how much upkeep is required e.g. for live animals.  Inert goods at 1, other items less; a simple table might start with preserved food at 1 (reflecting that the caravan can eat it themselves in an emergency), perishable food at 1.2,x live herbivores & omnivores at 1.5x, carnivores at 2.0x, and fish at 3.0x (you have to carry all the water as well); may be itself modified by distance or weighted distance.  This could also be used to handle fragile items which require extra care in transit and extra packaging; for a somewhat arbitrary example, you could assign green glass a 1.2 modifier and crystal glass a 1.5, for instance.  From the caravan side, these additional costs / inefficiencies / overhead have *already* been expended, so they effectively make things more expensive; for the fortress side, they *will have to be* expended, so they effectively reduce the value of relevant trade goods. 

profit = the profit ratio the caravan is expecting

[counting]

...
The current equation for trading with a caravan, abstracted, looks something like this (trader on the left side, fortress on the right):
worth * request * profit = worth * request

What I'm proposing is something along the lines of the following:
worth * request * efficiency * upkeep * profit = worth * request * efficiency * 1/upkeep
...

I think you got the idea of how bargaining economy might work quite well. But a little over designed it with too much assumptions. Hence I guess you have not considered the usage of coinages or monetary system in DF.

Your "equation" is analog to what we called the transaction cost in effective price in a trading post model. As price is defined by the equation :

Pa(b) = {Qb - V(B) - F(Si)}/Qa

which
Qa : the Quantity of commodity A during exchange (trade party 1)
Qb : the Quantity of commodity B during exchange
V(b) : the Variable transaction costs (function) of commodity B
F(Si) : the profit margin and Fixed costs (function) at a exchange firm (in this case a shop as Si)
Pa(b) : is the "Price" of commodity A using commodity B as the measurement base.

the equation can be rewrite as :

Pa(b)*Qa = Qb - V(B) - F

And since minus is easy to calculate as the margin cost, but it also can be rewrite as the proportion ratio in your equations. It can be redefined as :

Pa(b)*Qa = Qb*Vr(B)*Fr  where CostRatio = (X - CostFunction) / X

And you can map the familiar terms into this :
Qn : is request amount in one side of the trade, n=a or b.
Vr : is the combined of efficiency and upkeep during transaction/transportation
Fr : is the desired profit and part of fixed cost related to shops.
Pa(b) : will be the ratio of worth = WorthA / WorthB  as relative value of trade goods A, and trade goods B.

For simplicity sake, we assume there is only 1 good (A or B) in each side of bargaining. And we were able to build models that base on these assumptions, and tested if this can lead to a stabilized market system. You can check my "Dwarconomy part 2" for more detailed settings.

You will see that in this model and a paper[1] that has already done a simulation shows common medium(s) of exchange emerges itself from this pure bargaining model (in very high probability). As long as there is scalability (with the increase of transaction quantity, the transaction cost margin decreases) in exchange, and the transaction costs are different enough with varied commodities.

So precious metal as its characteristic suggested is one of many kinds that has potential to be medium of exchange, and emerged as commodity money, simply because it actually decrease the transaction costs during exchange, and increase the overall output (GDP). In you equations it can be shown if one side of the exchange using a commodity that has near 0 costs (near 1 in ratio of efficiency, and no upkeep), then exchange it with a third party the trading party will gain more commodities in the process.

However, there is actually no need for a magic value of goods in this. Pa(b) doesn't need to be predefined using WorthX/WorthY, but calculated with price mechanism. It can be evolved. (You can see the detailed in my post about adaptability). As the equation suggested "Price" is just relevant to the relative quantity during the transactions, not some universal value system embedded in the heads. Imagine GOD has to implement all the possible products with its inherent "value" in the real world, your brain will exploded with all the possibilities of combinations in material values from the past to the end of time. Like aluminum will magically has value and keeps constant from caveman to future super-intelligence human. It's not natural and unrealistic, and people don't actually do that. You can ask yourself do you calculate how much flour worth, the transportation cost, and the salary of the clerks plus profit when you buy a bread? No, you just count how much money in your pocket, and how much you are willing to spend it. Although since we are so used to the idea of money, hence programmers without the knowledge of economy build the idea of "absolute value" in almost all games in the past (with game that need a system of exchange), rather then mimic how real life economy works.

Current "worth" (base value) of goods system is just not compatible if we want to add monetary system in DF. Maybe it is a good analog of a stagnate world in ancient history with pure bargaining economy. (which already reach an equilibrium). But it is pron to disasters and complete economic melt down if forced a monetary system on it. Not that I am against more FUN in DF, just it works for simple economy environment in DF now, doesn't mean we shouldn't modified it in order to go further. And if price mechanism is eventually emulated, then it will not be difficult to add financial mechanism on top that, since financial system are in fact invented/evolved to enhance and stabilized the growing size of economy. (Like banks are functioned as stabilizers to control the flowing speed of money - velocity)

Of course we can always dump all that, and be satisfied with just the elementary markets system and bargaining economy. It may not be bad choice if there are no more than 100+ dwarfs. But in some studies, it is suggested at a level of thousands transactors, the economy will benefit from a banking/financial system which helps overcome the shake-up and instability from the environment.

[1] P. Howiit, R. Clower, "The emergence of economic organization", Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Vol. 41, pp. 55–84, 2000.