Tridus and Shurdus, on the gold discussion: I came up with this constructive solution, a try to be inventive!: when the game starts, the economy of all civs and all trade is based on barters. (value can still be numerically expressed for the player, but in brackets, or cows! or whatever) The first civ that researches Minting as technology get to name their currency which is then automatically also used as currency name for everyone for the rest of the game. This would reflect the high development level of this civ compared to the others, meaning their coins spread and get accepted as the general currency. The player would get a few basic suggestions for names, e.g. based on the name of his civ, sovereign, or just plain "gold coins", but could enter any name he wants.
Just a few comments on the earlier arguments given:
As for using a completely new, campaign (= novel/book) specific name, for me the killing argument against is that no such name would work in the sand box modes. It works perfectly in Morrowwind because it's just one campaign. There have been loads of very good suggestions of names in this thread, but for me I don't like to have them forced into sand box. Gold might not be as "realistic" (for whatever that is worth in this game) but it fits with any game since it is pretty "invisible". SD can publish as many books as they want - that shouldn't ruin our sand box experience.
It makes perfect sense. If we both mint gold coins, are they worth the same? Probably not. Mine are smaller and have less gold in them. Nobody is going to refer to both coins as "gold", they aren't the same thing, and neither is the same as a bar of pure gold.
This argument is just based on you deciding that when you give your currency a fancy name everyone automatically agrees on it's value and "content" and follow that. But people in our fantasy world could just as well decide to cut their gold assets into defined units (coins) which are then called simply and conveniently "gold" or "Gold" with capital G or "gold coins". Both are possible currency systems, it's just about imagining a world where people say "gold" to denominate a well defined coin. Why not?
In any case, in earlier times, and actually even today in some countries, you have a huge part of the economy done by barters, just because any currency in the end is just a system made up by man, and you can't exactly eat gold or your dollar bills. If you need food, you are willing to give someone something of value in order to get food. Now, if you call your currency "sovereign" or "gold" and wether this currency is made out of 80 percent gold or 80 percent wood or whatever are details. We shouldn't worry about details such as the real weight of a gold coin, its purity etc when we play a PC game for fun. In reality people would just throw a hen up the counter and exchange it against a chicken or whatever. But we don't need this reflected in Elemental IMHPOV.
