Inflated Coinage?

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I was thinking prices (troops, items, cattle etcetera) and income seem to be a bit inflated... as scillingas were made mostly of gold afterall (well until circa 680 AD). If I recall correctly, there are accounts of payments for things like Kentish cows being worth 1 sceat in and around this century, a sceat being made mostly of silver. Now since they used 'sceatta' to pay for said cow in the account, I assume it was after 680 and Britain had moved from a primarily gold-based currency to a silver one, I have no definitive source for how much a Kentish cow would cost before 680 and in scillingas, but if it remains roughly the same, 1 scilling could buy you roughly 166 Kentish cows!

Hence the apparent inflation, as cows in the game usually cost several tens or hundreds of scillingas. My character recently had 500,000 scillingas (that's a lot of cows worth). I use 'recently' because I decided to blow 80% of it on an army of Teulu and Hearthweru... which were promptly decimated in a siege to start my Kingdom, but I digress. I am unsure how rare it is to acquire that amount in other people's games, but I had a very advanced character with several enterprises and heaps of war-victories with plenty of trophies, loot and prisoners to sell for all of them. So others may have had a different experience, such as starting with a non-imported slave character.

There is also an account of an unusual wergild (unusual in that it was higher than usual) of 30,000 sceatta for a slain Anglo-Saxon King. Which would equal roughly 180 scillingas, as another example of their worth. Though there was some debate whether it meant Scillingas instead of Sceatta.

Now obviously it would probably be more trouble than it is worth to change these values to more 'historical standards'. An alternative would be to change the word 'Scillingas' to 'Sceatta' which was made mostly of silver and was worth far less, 166 were needed to equal one scilling. The only issue being it would basically be a lateral move for historicity, since sceatta were not overly common until around 680 AD.

So am I completely off-base here, with no idea or understanding of the currency of the time? It is kind of confusing, especially with Scillingas, which originally were gold coins, but were debased into silver ones, becoming the sceat/paening, but scillingas as a true gold coin still lived on. Scillingas eventually became the shilling, and lost their gold-coin status overall, while the sceat became the pence and was still valued at less than a shilling.
 
Idibil said:
Interesting information. I was looking some this theme to begin of mod, but is difficult to apply to warband system (game m.)

Have you table of possible prices?

Other than the Kentish Cow being worth 1 sceat (and a sheep elsewhere), and that King's unusually high (five times the normal rate) wergild payment of 30,000 sceatta, not really.

Tis a 'dark' age for a reason, I suppose.  :neutral:
 
Idibil said:
30,000 cows  :mrgreen:

Mm, I dont know if it will be good idea touch actual price balance
Maybe not a good idea, but you at least have a good reason if what the man tells you is
historically accurate.

Though, it would take lots of time to get it balanced and there are other price related things
in need to be balanced too. And few people know about the actual worth of schillings.

So my suggestion would be, if you want it. To have it as a side project next to all other things
that needs to be fixed, improved and added, and put some small extra spare time on it.
And release it in some future version, when it's done and well balanced.

This mod has taught people lots of things about Britain during these ages, lots
of historically accurate things and things from the tales.
I was lost when I started playing this mod, a lot of things I have never seen nor
heard about, but as time went by I started knowing the place, and the interest grew inside me.
(I bet I would write 9/10 in an exam about it just by playing this mod.  :mrgreen: )

But anyways, I don't think currency should be an exception.
Teach us that schillingas weren't a trash currency!  :twisted:

Cheers.
 
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