why don't coins get used in trade?

[jock]

as subject states

[Saxony4]

I would guess because materials used to barter would be worth more than a coin that you can't really do anything with?

[Phaen]

Because pearls are more saleable than metal.

If there was a pearl coinpress I bet people would use it

[Aracos]

Because pearls are more saleable than metal.

If there was a pearl coinpress I bet people would use it

Pearls and Gold coins, and we would have an ingame coin system.

[Zou]

Quality is a big issue. No body wants 100 q1 copper coins for 1 q100 gold coin.

[Squatthrust]

q100 gold coin.

[SacreDoom]

Metal does however have a rarity/value issue.

Noone wants 1000 copper coins for 10 gold coins, because the gold is much more valuable and harder to get.

(also Zou gold has no quality.)

[MagicManICT]

One word:

M-A-N-A-G-E-M-E-N-T

It's bad enough when you have cabinets full of bars. I can't even recall if you can stack partial stacks of different qualities without smelting them back together in the finery forge.

It's been mentioned multiple times before. What's the standard value? How much more is a q40 iron coin worth than a q10? How does it compare to a q90 copper coin? Granted, most of the major trade threads are on a points basis which could easily be turned into a coin value, but it's much easier to manage what you need (via a barter system) than massive numbers of coin piles (via a monetary system).

Seems I recall history of a village in w3 being successful with a coin system for trade, but then things worked a bit differently then.

[kralmir]

that was worlds edge(end? i could never remember), at peak it had about 40members. i led it and goddamn was it a pain in the ass. it kinda-barely-sort of worked only through great effort.

in the end we abandoned the project because seriously fuck that shit.

[_Gunnar]

Silver and gold are not that rare, this Disranian trade center could have vending stands not barter stands, and currency could be in gold coins, which would be around 12-15 points each in the "standard" trade thread points system. Maybe have silver coins as well, but silver is so common :p. Perhaps q1 steel/silver coin ~ 0.2 points .

BTW this is coming from discussion with Tonky, who said that in W3 coin system was quite nice for the BN trade center, since [trusted] newbies can come, sell all their forageables, and buy something nice with their iron coins. I think gold and lowq steel/silver coin system would be better and quite nice if you really want it to work.

However the real problem is that there is no need for currency since all villages are capable of producing all goods (very few specialist villages), and so all trades are really just trading hq crafted products/hq resources to "peasants". You're either a developed village, in which case you want curios (and perhaps food), or more of a newbie/raider, in which case you want hq crafted stuff to either improve your hunter-gatherer(/murderer) life, or try improve your industrial base. So all trades are exchanging the same stuff, curios/food for hq crafted stuff, so no need for currency.