Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Entry 2: Shiny Metal Discs

Date: 1st September 1901 Population: 106

Since the foundation of Oak River the farming inhabitants have been exchanging goods by the method of bartering. They exchanged produce with each other so that everyone had enough to eat and drink.

However, they soon found that exchanging goods was not sufficient. Arguments broke out about the value of each type of produce. There were other services that were needed as well. Farm machinery needed repairing for one. Around this time a new settler arrived from over the sea bearing a number of small metallic discs. His name was Rob Bryden and he set up a small shop buying and selling produce from the farmers in exchange for the small discs. After a while the system was fully established and people were buying and selling goods and services from each other. Mr. Bryden brought a large number of these discs with him, but there was still only a limited number of discs, so growth would still be limited.



In addition to Rob's shop, a mechanic set up a practice. The mechanic carries out all repairs on farm machinery. Finally, money became master as the Sims try to get the best prices for their goods. With the new services came new residents who built mainly around the crossroads.

5 comments:

  1. When I saw your topic title, for a second I thought you were going to introduce aliens, lol.
    Good to see the introduction of money, I guiess it will do a lot of talking in the future ;)

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  2. I'm not yet desperate enough for aliens. I realise that this entry was a bit silly, but I've always wondered where the money came from in Sim City.

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  3. Haha I was totally expecting UFOs as well.
    Interesting that an individual brought the concept of currency rather than it was decreed by a government or royalty.
    I think in RW it was generally considered a "promise of payment" by the royal house or by government, and in fact on Australian and British notes it still says "I promise to pay the bearer of this note $xxx".

    I really like how cozy this community is at this point - I've completely lost touch with community in Boston v2, even in the small townships where it exists... one of the reasons behind my recent entry "Where Me and Daddy Live" was to get back in touch with it a bit...

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  4. I suppose losing touch with the community is a symptom of having a large city, just as in real life. Even in 1908 (where I am now, the entries are lagging behind the gameplay) I know what each of my 8 villages is all about, but I'm sure that'll change when they eventually merge.

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  5. It gets to a point where if you try to keep up with the 200 sims in this town, the 50 sims in that one, old Farnham's Orchard up on the hill, and the little river community next door, your city grows sooooo slowly that to get to a point I'm at now would take like 40 or 50 YEARS of real-time game play.
    At some point I decided I needed to skip over the details and only tell one or two stories in every thousand... and the rest was just zoning like mad.
    I still role-play every development, but in a much more generalised way... I use the detailed role-playing to create the journal stories, and also to guide the general direction of the other development (for example how strong the resistance to knocking down forests in this area to develop is at the moment, that sort of thing)... it seems to work, but I'm getting to a point now where I want to speed it up again - it used to take me only a week or so to progress one game year - now it takes around 4 weeks. Considering that I want to get to the "future" and tell stories about new technologies, political ideals, building types, etc... it's gonna take me way too long at this pace so I need to pick it up a bit.

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