Oh gosh, so many things I didn't even consider.
Some of your questions involve my rationale in creating the finished
version you see. So I'll have to explain my mindset. Here we go.
On 11/18/2017 9:05 PM, Aris Merchant wrote:
On Fri, Nov 17, 2017 at 3:28 PM, Reuben Staley <[email protected]> wrote:
Okay, so here's my plan:
I love this. A few suggestions.
1. Ditch shinies.
2. Three different production zmetah exist: Farm, Mine, Orchard.
When you say that they produce things, do you mean they do it
automatically or that you have to claim it each week? I tend to prefer
the later, because it prevents inactive players from accruing wealth.
Well, they produce a set amount each week, but they can only hold so
many. So you have to walk to the zmet to collect the assets which have
been accumulating.
3. Farms produce Corn and Cotton.
I'd prefer Grain instead of Corn. It matches better with things like
Fruit and Lumber. It also allows us to add flour and bread later
(something so expensive and complex to produce that we could even
allow limited teleportation with it), although I admit that it's a bit
weird to be directly eating Grain in the meantime (maybe we're feeding
it to our horses?).
That kinda undermines the whole "trying to make all the zmetah equal"
thing... although later in your message, you debunk that... I dunno. I
actually did think about making it more broad of a term, but I didn't go
with it mainly because I just liked the idea of a corn-based economy.
Not just agriculture based, but *corn* based. It makes me giggle a
little bit inside.
Additionally, I wanted two approaches to unrefined food. Besides, corn
can be ground into corn meal, which could be used to make corn bread.
Perhaps having a bakery zmet that converts grain into a more efficient
energy source in the long run would indeed be beneficial. Maybe bakeries
could bake corn meal into corn bread -- but for all that effort, corn
bread would have to be, like, a superfood.
4. Mines produce Stone and Ore.
5. Orchards produce Fruit and Lumber.
6. Some number of refinery zmetah exist.
Perhaps one for each resource? Looms, Refineries, and Mills?
I didn't want to do this because I thought the map would get a bit
crowded with a ton of different types of refinery zmetah. So I wanted to
make there be less types.
7. Cotton can be refined into cloth.
8. Ore can be refined into bars.
9. Lumber can be refined into paper.
10. Corn and Fruit can be consumed to allow you to move.
11. Stone and Lumber are used to build zmetah.
12. Proposals and reports and such are written on Paper and Cloth.
'kay, I'm gonna take this comment piece by piece.
Proposals sure, but reports should be free to write.
Probably, yeah. I wanted to include them in the metaphor because it fit
but I agree that it seems out of place.
What else are you
putting under "and such"?
Nothing, I just wanted to make myself sound smarter.
Also, how does one write on Cloth?
Okay, it would probably be more accurate if I wrote "textile" instead of
cloth. It's a broader term, and you can indeed make paper out of cotton.
Maybe cotton paper and cloth should be separate, and cloth can have more
uses later on.
An
alternate version might be Papyrus -> Scrolls if you want them to be
interchangeable, or Something -> Ink if you wanted to require both.
No, no, no. A thousand times no. Making it so that you need ink to write
things makes proposals waaay too expensive.
13. Bars are used as the new official currency of Agora.
First, lemme 'splain my rationale behind this:
I originally wanted there to be no standard currency, so auctions could
be held in whatever currency the Auctioneer needs most, or thinks is
more appropriate. Instead of one central currency, there would be nine
different currencies that you could choose from.
HOWEVER...
In order to keep all three of the production zmetah relatively equal,
ores had to have some purpose. Therefore, I chose refined ores -- aka
bars -- to be the new currency. Then bars have a lot more value.
ADDITIONALLY...
I couldn't think of much use for bars except as a building material.
Lumber and Stone are fine as building materials because you don't have
to refine them. But you do have to refine bars, so these bar-refineries
would be used only to build things or upkeep things.
To hold auctions in and such?
Yes, but holding auctions in other currencies is still possible.
It might be a good idea to have it be a
base currency, rather than a refined one, to ensure supply. Also,
because it's likely to prove most useful, it would be fair to give it
its own zmet.
So, maybe re-purpose mines to only produce ores and have stone come from
somewhere else?
The alternative, which would be more complex and more
interesting, but also more annoying, would be to have each type of
auction run on a different resource.
The beauty of this system is you could do either -- keep everything in
bars, or diversify the currencies.
If we aren't minting coins from
metal, I'd suggest representing currency as energy (something we've
done in the past).
It's not a bad idea in theory, but it seems out of place in this very
medieval-type system that I've built up.
The nice thing about energy is that it can be
produced many different ways. Potentially we could allow people to
burn wood and coal, to build solar panels and dams, and even to
exploit nuclear power. To start with though, I'd suggest something
like solar panels that can be built anywhere and doesn't require other
resources.
Maybe. Like I said, I'm not really a huge fan of the idea, but it could
definitely work -- you imply that it has before.
14. Agora can create any of the above assets and give it to entities -- for
reports and such.
No more running out of money, although it does force us to balance the
economy. Frankly, I would prefer runaway inflation to being broke,
however.
This way, each production zmet creates one refinable resource and one
unrefinable resource, thereby balancing them.
Don't expect that to last. People are likely to add complexity as time
goes on. I can already see grain -> flour -> bread, fruit ->
juice/wine, stone -> blocks, lumber -> beams, cloth -> clothes, and
bars -> just about anything. And that's assuming no one adds more
production zmetah, something that will happen sooner our later. Most
of these possibilities won't develop, but any system gradually gets
more complex until it breaks or someone gets bored and decides to do a
reform and shake things up.
Okay, that's a good point. New plan: the production zmetah cost more to
build and upkeep based on how much they'll get you in the economy. Then
I'm not even trying to equalize them.
-Aris
I'll comment on your other comments too. One minute.
--
Trigon
