Bimetallism

[LienRag]

This thread from the Orc logistics guy clearly explains why "a gold coin of almost any size was such an absurdly large unit of currency as to be basically useless" and as such ancient and medieval society didn't use them for wages or expenses (except absurdly high ones), but rather used silver.

I know that Wesnoth is not a manual of high fantasy economics nor finance, but bimetallism (gold for value storage, silver for day to day expanses) could solve one problem for campaign balance, notably the carry-over associated with early finish bonus.

If I understand correctly, the reason for early finish bonus is double : avoid boring XP farming at the end of a scenario by giving an incentive to end the scenario sooner, and reward aggressive and well-executed play.

The reason for carry-over gold is also double, first one being to help make the campaign an actual campaign and not just a succession of unrelated scenarios, the second to reward strategic recruitment rather than just inciting over-recruiting.

And of course without carry-over, early finish bonus is meaningless. But with carry-over, the huge early finish bonus is in most scenarios way more rewarding than anything that could be saved by limited recruitment, so it's generally the case that over-recruiting in order to finish a few turns earlier is the best strategy.

To avoid the balance problem, carry-over has been greatly reduced, to the extent than saving on recruitment is very often not a real gain.

There's where bimetallism could be useful : let's have gold used for recruitment/recalls, and silver for upkeep. Villages would only provide silver, not gold.
Conversion from gold to silver and from silver to gold would be possible, but at a cost (the moneychanger has to take his margin !).
Carry-over would be 100 % for gold, but 0 % for silver ("we distributed the small coins to the wounded for boosting their morale"). Of course conversion of silver to gold would be done at the end of the scenario.

Each scenario would fix its own rates for conversion from silver to gold and from gold to silver (remember, they're not symmetrical !), allowing the scenario designer to emphasize at will careful recruitment strategy, good village management, or on the opposite quick and violent attacks.
It's even possible to change the rate during the scenario (specifically, it's possible to have a very low rate at the end of the scenario, to limit the carry-over from early finish bonus), which can have interesting effect on the strategy needed to win.

Another advantage would be that Loyals would still be useful, but not free anymore : you still need the gold pieces to recall them, and they would now only save you the silver needed for their upkeep.
So unlike now where there's very few scenarios were recalling your loyals is not the mandatory strategy (considering that they'll repay their recall cost in seven turns when they're high-level), you'll have a lot more scenarios where the player has to carefully examine the utility of each Loyal unit versus its cost.

[IceSandslash]

Interesting ideas.

I can only complement that games with economies based on 2+ types of resources generally use at least one of them as some sort of tech barrier. For example, wood in Warcraft 3 or gas in the Starcraft series limit how early and how many of the most powerful units you may produce. Similarly, the Age of Empires series use gold for limiting powerful offensive units, while stone is used to limit defensive play (fortifications).

Note that it's currently possible to multiply the early finish bonus by a given factor:

Code: Select all

[endlevel]
bonus=2
[/endlevel]

This counterbalances the nerf of carryover down to 40%.

[egallager]

This seems as though it would violate the KISS principle.

[Adeptus]

"There's where bimetallism could be useful : let's have gold used for recruitment/recalls, and silver for upkeep. Villages would only provide silver, not gold"
So... how do You get new gold for recrutiment, except of early finish bonus (and what about single scenarios)?

[LienRag]

Conversion from gold to silver and from silver to gold would be possible, but at a cost (the moneychanger has to take his margin !).