On Mon, 24 Jun 2013, Charles Walker wrote: > I'm amazed the game could support many different currencies and the > secondary (never mind tertiary and quartenary) markets. I think that > modern day Agora isn't active enough for that, but maybe if you build it, > they will come.
In Feb 2001 Agora was Slashdotted (just via high-placed comment). I think it doubled in two weeks, and peaked a little while later in the 30+ players (IIRC, maybe I'm exaggerating). The new players (like me) as a cohort basically jumped into the economy rather than going straight for ruleset changes. > What were the currencies based on? Was it something like "you can spend X > to submit a proposal, Y to increase your votes", or "you get X for being an > officer and Y for being a judge"? Or something else? Ok, you asked for the long dissertation (maybe this should make a thesis). - Stems were a fixed currency for basic awards, similar scale to Yaks for all salaries but fixed and untradeable. Regular taxes. - Three different non-fixed currencies, Papyrus, VEs, and Indulgences. The only way to get these currencies into supply was (about monthly) the recordkeepor for the currency would decide to auction some off, the auctions were the only way to spend Stems. So three recordkeepors, 3 types of auctions. Each recordkeepor could decide within a range how many to auction and thus regulate the supply. - Papyrus were used to make proposals Distributable. Only way. This was sort of the bread-and-butter trading currency (high turnover, constant basic value). - Indulgences were used to expunge blots (blots were the measure of rules- breaking; having blots was a losing conditions, and too many blots lowered your Voting Power). These turned out to be highly speculative, and fluctuated a lot in value (especially as blots could happen in patches, like if a bunch of players try a scam). - VEs were basically permanent +1 to your VVLDP per VE (up to max VVLDP of 5). Control strictly limited to 1 per player; when a new player joined, e was given 0.5 of the resulting VE, and the remaining 0.5 was auctioned off. Rare, valuable auctions! Took people 2+ years to slowly build up to the max 5. - Each currency could be taxed by its recordkeepor every so often, but rates within a range at recordkeepor's discretion. Tax rates were major campaign issue a couple times. So, these three tradeable currencies with supply governed in part by discretion of multiple officers conducting active auctions and in part by players' activities (are there a flurry of competing proposals coming? sell your papyri high!). Not bad. Later built-up included formal Debt handling, Bonds, a private trading company with investors. The main reason it fell apart, though, was exactly what you'd expect. Typical attrition with no new slashdotting brought us down to a more typical player participation-and-interest level, and the weight of this machinery with far lower use kinda crashed inward/decayed until it was removed. This sort of three-fold action/house concept (Proposals, Voting, and Justice) with separate currencies was carried over into Cards, but I think over time, the paid systems have become more about buying general specific actions without organizing them into categories. -G.
