Physical Currency

Currency in Eco acts like a digital currency, it is not a material that can be melted down nor does it take time and effort to produce outside the initial investment in the Mint + currency sacrifice.

What this mod does is move the Mint to the Electronics Table and allows a Blacksmith to divide metal Ingots into coins that can be melted back into ingots by a smith without loss except for calories and time. There is also paper money for the paper maker that takes printing supplies to produce without a meaningful recycling option that represents a middle between metal based currency and fully digital currency.

There are four different designs to choose from; Wheat, Elk, Redwood Seed and Pickaxe. Coins have a choice between four different metals to be made from; Iron, Copper, Gold and a Copper Gold Alloy (Billon). Paper money is made from Printing supplies and Copper Hydroxide (green color).

The inspiration of this mod comes from my facination with the history of money and how Eco skips all of the challange and history to go straight to a digital currency. You can think of this mod as Anti-Quality of Life for the normal Eco experiance as it delays the Mint from being produced until the end game and extends the chaos of the early-middle game trading. Coins have a stack size of 500 and a very small weight (gold being heaviest) with paper money having a stack size of 1k and the smallest possible weight.

Last tested with Eco version 13.0.4

Challenges and possible solutions:

• Any blacksmith can produce any coin and Paper Makers any Paper Money
  • Coins require a mold with a design on it for any of the metal variants so towns can work together to create mutual laws forbidding the creation of coin molds unless they have the appropriate title and it's their town's agreed apon design. For paper money the law will be for the individual recipes.
  • Historically counterfit coins were helpful in economies were money supply was scarce or when oversupplied melting coins helped balanced the system
  • Forming countries and federations will allow for proper currency control, much like the creation of the Federal Reserve in the United States and the numerous currencies that were replaced by the central currency.
• How do you tax physical money?
  • There are numerous historical examples of the struggle to collect tax, Eco being a game without violence can use more creative examples such as:
    
    • Use the Mayor's personal "digital" currency as the Law currency condition with a shop setup for players to pre-pay tax so they can preform actions you wish to tax
    • Monopolize resource(s) and fund the government through selling titles that allow the production of those resource(s) using the law system
  • Donations can be considered a form of tax
    • Beg rich players to donate towards public infrastructure
    • Host dinner parties and ask players to donate money and food
• What are ways to distribute physical currency?
  • You can create a UBI by giving out the Mayor's personal credit and have a store that buys the Mayor's credit and sells coins/paper money
  • The government/coin maker can make a store that buys research papers and sells coins. Then after researching skills, sell the scrolls in a coin only shop to make a full loop
  • The government/coin maker asks players to accept the coins in thier shop and goes on a buying spree, using the purchases for infrastructure, dinner parties, and helping players who are behind/"poor"
  • Ask players to add it to thier store buy as both a normal price and $0, with the government/coin maker selling to that $0 daily to simulate a UBI