EcoEEco
Jun 9

Early coins/mediums of exchange

Currently the game goes straight from Barter and I owe you (credits) based trading to weightless, instantly transferable bank account money. All the intermediary steps, paper money, coinage and pre coinage mediums of exchange. shells, pearls, precious stones, livestock, grains and similar, are completely skipped. This makes for a very disjointed experience, going from Bartering to minted currency in an instant and also highly risky because you need to trust strangers that until this point didnt have any chance to prove they can be trusted with currency in the cycle now give out currencies on which the whole server should trade. The intended progression is also often circumvented by experienced players that make their Credits a stand in for Minted currency until the first Mints have been produced. My suggestion to tackle this: Early coinage. the first researchable professions should be able to produce coins out of stone, wood and bone, which then need to be "certified" by a town in a town table (or just a player as a setting) to then be used as a ressource. They should still be physical items which have a weight (0,01), and be listable in a store. This would make it possible to use multiple currencies in a shop and give the Barter store option a use outside of Autoshops and an advantage over Credits, while still not overshadowing Minted currencies. As written earlier it would also make towns/players able to prove they can be trusted to give out currencies before the Mint is available. I hope with this the game can be a better experience for both groups of players, those that enjoy the Barter economy and those that wish for a earlier currencies.
PendingPending
Aug 25, 2025

I wrote a mini essay providing my thoughts in a much clearer and in depth manner, with more evidence and explanations. Better formatting and grammer. please see google drive doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mtZ43mO9bN3x4dQCVUQnwcvD… Summary: What is Commodity Currency, Commodity-Backed Currency and Representative Currency. My Proposed Additions/Changes Challenges that Eco gameplay has that could be resolved by currency improvements. How Commodity Currency and Commodity-Backed Currency would fit into Eco Historical Examples of Commodity Currency and Commodity-Backed Currency

Aug 25, 2025

Hello legril, the mint is representing the mechanic of creating coins out of a material, the wording used for that type of currency is unfortunately somewhat poor in the game. An actual backing for the currency would need to be provided by the owner of the currency and set up manually with an exchange. We currently do not have any plans to add an additional mechanic that basically would be the same, but there is already a similar suggestion to yours, hence I'm going to merge the two. If your main intention was to move the mint earlier into the progression, please feel free to create a separate suggestion for that - try to make it easy to discern what the exact point of your suggestion is so that people can easily vote on it. Administrators also can already optionally set up a currency at server start - our player base however is pretty split when it comes to if they like bartering or prefer the direct availability of a general or even universal currency. From a design standpoint, it is intended that only bartering and the credit mechanic are available until better options are unlocked. You may also want to look into this suggestion, which would make setting up a global currency easier for administrators than it is currently: https://eco.canny.io/feature-suggestions/p/global-currency