40d:Dwarven economy

Requirements

According to the game designer* [1], the dwarven economy is unlocked when a Baron (or any upgraded version) arrives. In order for a baron to show up, you need 80 dwarves, 10,000 exported wealth, and you must perform 4 of the following in a single year ...

• 25 crafting jobs
• 25 metal-related jobs
• 25 wood-related jobs
• 10 gem jobs
• 25 stone jobs

or

• 25 food jobs.

(This was accurate before the current version, and the details do not appear to have changed significantly. However, to be on the safe side, these numbers should be taken as approximate.)

You may turn off the economy by editing data/init/init.txt; line "[ECONOMY:NO]". If this setting is disabled when your Baron normally arrives, turning it on will not have an effect until you kill him (or her) and a replacement arrives.

Effects

• All non-legendary and non-noble dwarves are granted personal accounts, initialized at 200 money. They earn wages for performing most kinds of work and spend it on bedroom rent and food. Whatever's left over can be spent at shops, which it now becomes possible to build. Dwarves can purchase useful or desirable goods at shops and get happy thoughts from doing so. Current wages can be viewed through the Job List screen: j-m-w. Legendary dwarves and nobles have no account and don't require money to acquire rooms, items, or food.
• Children have access to the wealth of both parents. Children of only legendary or noble parents have no wealth, and therefore tend to be deeply in debt. Children of only non-noble non-legendary dwarves have access to two dwarves worth of income, and tend to be among the richest dwarves in the fortress.
• The economy can be run with coins, a locked vault of coins, or no coins at all. Coins are minted at a forge out of copper, silver, gold, and (depending on game version) other metals. In the current version ^{v0.28.181.40d}, it is strongly recommended that you either not make any coins at all, or at least not let your dwarves have access to those you do make. The reason for this is that coins are physical objects that need to be acquired, hauled, stored, and tidied up. Because individual accounts fluctuate, your dwarves may spend more and more of their work time strewing tiny coin piles all over the fortress! You can inspect each dwarf's bank balance by looking at their profile: v-p-z.
• Bedrooms may only be explicitly assigned to nobles and legendary dwarves - all others are put up for rent. Dwarves will pay rent on their current room and, if they cannot pay, will be evicted and must find a cheaper place to sleep. Make sure you have enough low-price rooms available (or at least beds in the barracks). The rental price can be seen when selecting the room with q; this figure is based on the total worth of furniture, smoothing and decoration, etc. in that room.

  You may cause all rooms' rent to become 0 by editing \data\init\init.txt; line "[ZERO_RENT:YES]". Rooms can become far too expensive otherwise, what with exclusively high quality furniture being produced by skilled workers. Note that even with this option enabled, dwarves will still be evicted if their accounts go negative.

• Food must also be purchased. Dwarves that cannot afford quality meals must eat something of lower value (plump helmets or meat are common choices). Dwarves will not starve because they cannot buy food; they just choose whatever is cheapest. In doing so, however, their account will go negative (displayed in red on their profile screen), and soon they will likely be evicted or have some of their possessions taken away.
• Whether it has any effect on the arrival of megabeasts, siege size, or other game features or challenges is unknown.
• Dwarves who have not yet reached legendary status may get an "attend meeting" job if they are not given enough work to do. They will then follow around your mayor (or manager) until he/she is free and gets a "conduct meeting" job. After they meet, a message will appear similar to "<name>, the mayor, has taken a request from the <type> Guild." Masons guild, Miners guild are two examples of <type>. Usually, the request is for X number of things to be built or X number of jobs to be done.
• Regardless of legendary status, the manager may get an "attend meeting" job if she is not also the mayor. Afterwards, she'll get a happy thought "... was able to make suggestions about job allocations."
• Dwarves will no longer randomly perform "Check Chest" jobs on containers built in unassigned rooms.

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