Why is the currency the Florin?

All things considered, CA are being very nice to the English community by having the currency an English Medieval coin which was in circulation for absolute maximum 18 months, a gold coin which was overvalued by the Crown who minted it.

Why not have it the Ducat? A far more succesful coin which was first minted in 1180 by a Sicilian King, then became the standard currency of Italy AND, check this, was accepted and in high demand all over Europe. Perfect for the Medieval 2 Total War currency.

I am also highly surprised to find out that the Ducat only was retracted from circulation before World War 1. It has got to be the longest standing currency ever.

P.S. This is not a whine! I don't really care I just wanted to know.

It's the ubiquitous Italian florin, not the obscure English florin. If you are going to whine about historical accuracy please make sure you know what you are talking about beforehand.

Hear hear,

It's this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_coin_florin

Before adopting the Euro in 2002, the Dutch (we) denominated amounts of guilders as 'hfl 100,-' in which the fl still stood for florin. (I think the 'h' stood for Holland, not sure). So the influence of this old Italian coin lasted that long. There are still a number of national currencies (like the Hungarian Forint) named after this coin. The name Florin was even a candidate for the common European currency, but lost out to the much more drab 'Euro'. So all in all a pretty accurate choice.

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Originally Posted by Furious Mental

It's the ubiquitous Italian florin, not the obscure English florin. If you are going to whine about historical accuracy please make sure you know what you are talking about beforehand.

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:sweatdrop:
Wow dude I wasn't trying to whine about anything!:no: I'm not the type to worry about historical accuracy I don't mind!

Didn't know there was an Italian florin... sorry my Medieval History is not as strong as my Renaissance history.

And the English florin was in circulation for a lot longer than 18 months. Dig through your father's drawers, find an old pre-decimal currency two-shilling piece, flip it over and take a close look at the name on the coin. You may be surprised by what you see.

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Originally Posted by Furious Mental

It's the ubiquitous Italian florin, not the obscure English florin. If you are going to whine about historical accuracy please make sure you know what you are talking about beforehand.

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Wow. You sure pwnd him! Thanks for your contribution. The Org is now a better place for it.

:applause:

Not.

To tell you the truth, the florin just sounds natural. I like the sound of the word and its a lot better than Mark or some other foreign name. I am glad they didn't change it nor does it change on the faction that you play.

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Originally Posted by Budwise

To tell you the truth, the florin just sounds natural. I like the sound of the word and its a lot better than Mark or some other foreign name. I am glad they didn't change it nor does it change on the faction that you play.

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I tend to agree with the first part at least, Florin just sounds like a good currency type to use. Plus as Diablo pointed out, it probably also has something to do with our devs being brits and ex-brits. :grin: And Budwise, I actually think that's a nifty idea there, having the currency name change depending on what faction you use. Just a thought.

@ Goofball: :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by Whacker

And Budwise, I actually think that's a nifty idea there, having the currency name change depending on what faction you use. Just a thought.

@ Goofball: :laugh4:

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Thanks, I didn't mean to imply that it was a bad idea. I just think of it more like we see the European Euro now. Even knowing that I am from the US, I still hear about that more than the British Pound or old style Marcs from Germany.

Personally, I would rather that they used something more creative such as scratch, g-notes, smackers, moola, smackaroos, buckaroos, pesos, denaro, shekels, greenbacks, cabbage, or my personal favorite--big-uns.

Just think how pleased one would be after sacking Milan and scoring 15,000 big-uns--I know it would certainly make my day.:2thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by Forward Observer

Personally, I would rather that they used something more creative such as scratch, g-notes, smackers, moola, smackaroos, buckaroos, pesos, denaro, shekels, greenbacks, cabbage, or my personal favorite--big-uns.

Just think how pleased one would be after sacking Milan and scoring 15,000 big-uns--I know it would certainly make my day.:2thumbsup:

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Scratch all that, this is teh winnar. Hands down. No contest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones

Edit:

I'd like to place all blame for this thread and any hilarity, insanity, etc squarely on diablodelmar's shoulders. That is all. Have a nice day. :grin:

Florins are the de facto standard in MTW/M2TW because they were the de facto standard among many nations in medieval europe.

They are not made up, and they are not being turned into something they weren't. Most of the centers of merchant exchange and more importantly banking were in Italy. Therefore most rulers had bank accounts in Italy and the accounts were denominated in Florins. This is also why so many nations ended up calling one or another of their own currencies florins.

I believe the medival currency was the Byzant for a good period of time. But then later.. thosse meddling Italians started minting the Florin, and around the same time the Byzantine empire really started to get ill it became the standard currency.

And of course other kingdoms did have coins and what not.. but Italy and the Byzantines were the only ones who could actually back their money. For a good amount of time anyhow.

(disclaimer. Czar Alexsandr really doesn't hate Italians. He's just a bit ticked they're not exactally helping his fellow bearded Orthodox friends. :furious3: )

what word did they use for currency in rtw and stw?

RTW was the denari, and STW was the koku.

PS: Greetings fellow RDU resident.

Sorry if that came off rather rude. But it's not that uncommon in computer games to get people actually whining about something supposedly being inaccurate only for it turn out that it's not inaccurate it's simply counter-intuitive, and after a while those sorts of complaints get tiresome.

Yeah I have seen it too often myself.

My main question actaully was simply "why did they choose the florin?" And not "stupid people chose the florin why didnt they choose the thing that I wanted?"

I am currently reading the famous "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley, and I was most surprised to see in Chapter 5 the mention of "florins."

Was the florin still in circulation around 1818, the time of the publication?

Just look it up in Wikipedia. It was based on the Bezant, and just about everyone copied it, and everyone had bank accounts in it. So as far as Western Europe is concerned, that was THE coin to trade in. Too bad we can't have multiple names for currencies in a game; Orthodox could have Bezants that were basically the same thing different name... just not sure what the Islamic factions would have.

There are STILL active currencies in the world the go by the name Florin. Aruba and Hungary at least.

Well, it REALLY shouldn't be hard to change that and make an appropriate one for each faction. It's just changing the name really... However, that's 99,9% certainly hard-coded....

Unfortunately as a change it would absolutely require programming code. Just a half dozen lines of if-then, but still, it would require code in the executables if there isn't already some in there to do it. Because the game has to recognize the faction and alter its text based on that.

It wouldn't be hard at all, anyone with a couple programming classes under their belt could do it easily, but it's not a change text files could make unless they already did it and haven't used it.

Though now I'm getting an odd desire to see a more robust economic engine... exchange rates and such... reflecting economics, influence, and merchant activity... But boy would that drive a lot of people crazy. Obviously whatever is in the bank would be at standard florins. But exchange rates would impact economic interactions on a smaller level.

as many foreign sentences and phrases go the words often times are switched around making it difficult for an english person to properly interpret some simple to understand words in a phrase.

the origin of the florin being something valuable, people would often times hide their precious money from the tax man by stashing it under the wood of the floor of their home.

after some time the said money was given a humerous nickname "in the floor" and by the time the nickname became a serious term it was corrupted to "florin":study: .

no need to thank me for the enlightenment.

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Originally Posted by Forward Observer

Personally, I would rather that they used something more creative such as scratch, g-notes, smackers, moola, smackaroos, buckaroos, pesos, denaro, shekels, greenbacks, cabbage, or my personal favorite--big-uns.

Just think how pleased one would be after sacking Milan and scoring 15,000 big-uns--I know it would certainly make my day.:2thumbsup:

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What, you mean like this? Weeeeird :inquisitive:
https://img150.imageshack.us/img150/...uns1vs5.th.jpg
https://img409.imageshack.us/img409/...uns0ia2.th.jpg

lol how did you change the currency to big-uns?

thats cool i wander if you could make it dollars. that way i only have to pay about 800 dollars to buy a crack unit of swiss guard and only 185 dollars every two years to keep them.:yes:

Searching through the spare change jar yesterday I came up with a New Zealand 1964 florin, so they were still in use until fairly recently.

Florin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Florin may refer to these modern currencies:

Aruban florin.
Hungarian forint.
Florin may also refer to any several obsolete coins:

Italian coin florin, minted in Florence in 1252 (origin of name "florin"), first gold coin minted in Western Europe (see also bezants).
Guilder, used in the Netherlands from 1279-2002.
Florin (English coin), a coin valued at six shillings, used only in 1344.
German florin, used from 1680-1790.
Florin (British coin), a two-shilling coin produced from 1849 to 1970.
Austrian florin, used from 1857-1892.
Australian florin, used from 1910-1966.
Irish florin coin, another two-shilling coin produced from 1928 to 1968.
Florin is also a name. People named Florin include:

Carl Rudolf Florin (1894-1965), Swedish botanist.
In fiction, Florin may refer to:

A currency unit in the computer game Medieval Total War.
A country in William Goldman's The Princess Bride.
Florin is also the name of a neighborhood in unincorporated Sacramento County, California, adjacent to the cities of Sacramento and Elk Grove.

Australian florins? There was nothing special about them. "Florin" was just a name for a two shillings coin.

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Originally Posted by alpaca

What, you mean like this? Weeeeird :inquisitive:
https://img150.imageshack.us/img150/...uns1vs5.th.jpg
https://img409.imageshack.us/img409/...uns0ia2.th.jpg

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Thanks, Alpaca. That made my day--lol!:2thumbsup:

why doesnt just each faction have different currencies?

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Originally Posted by God's Grace

why doesnt just each faction have different currencies?

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Wouldnt they all have different gold or silver values and just make things overly complicated?

AFAIK 1 currency tended to dominate like the Byzant which saw circulation far from the Byzantine empire.

They might just have called it silver or gold pieces, I guess there would be less debate about it then :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by God's Grace

why doesnt just each faction have different currencies?

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Presumably because you won't be able to find a reasonable currency for each country that:

1. Existed throughout the time spanned by the game
2. Was equal in value to those currencies chosen for all other factions

#2 is probably more important, because differently valued currencies would necessitate the game converting currencies from florin to whatever else on the fly (probably a conversion table). This would undoubtedly lead to the prices of things no longer being displayed as the nice numbers we currently have (only divisible by 100 generally, and the occasional 50) which would make economics much harder to decipher while you play. There's an undeniable niceness to neat-looking numbers...

As someone also pointed out earlier, different currencies would imply in-game exchange rates, since each country you do business with is undoubtedly paying you with its own currency. The result would be a whole lot more code to determine and handle the fluctuations of exchange rates, i.e. vast economic simulation to determine currency value. You'd need new interfaces to buy and sell currencies too in order to do business with other countries and possibly speculate on their currencies, which I suppose means the game would also need to track how much you have of every currency, not just your own. While I'm sure some players would love the currency sub-game, I'm equally sure that some players would despise it, and therefore the necessity of using it would surely upset part of the player base.

The last and biggest reason is again a rehash from earlier in the thread: that the florin really was a key currency in the vast majority of factions represented in-game, and the governments of all said factions would've had some accounts in florins. That being the case, it seems to make an awful lot of sense to avoid the unnecessary baggage of multiple currencies and instead adopt a historically accurate currency of the times, that a man would be guaranteed would be excepted wherever his travels took him.

Exactly. I think a lot of people get confused between the currencies in everyday transactions and the ones used by governments and banks. Historically, they are often different things. A slightly less divided example was in the banknotes used in the earlier part of the 20th century and before... bills in the $1000 or more range were printed, and were used almost exclusively between banks for their transactions... regular account holders were NOT given them, and sometimes were prohibited from having them.

Each government would have its own coinage, many being different than the florin. But that local coinage was only used inside the country, the government and banks used florins for most inhouse accounting and exchange with other governments and banks. It vastly simplified things for them... they liked it because they DIDN'T have to consider exchange rates for transactions between themselves. It started becoming more important later in the world of interest and investing... working on exchange rates with interest at the same time without decent calculating machines could quickly drive you nuts. So... governments used florins between each other.

Couldnt everyone have a different currency name but the same value? Simply to make thing a little different.

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Originally Posted by Mithradates

Couldnt everyone have a different currency name but the same value? Simply to make thing a little different.

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But why?

The only case I can see for that is the Muslim factions, all the others used florins/bezants, which were made to the same standards, had names used interchangeably, and in many cases accounts might have had a mix of the two. (After all, precious metal coinage can remain in circulation for literally thousands of years.)

Interestingly enough, clicking on a neutral Byzantine merchant yielded "Florins, Guilders, I care not, all coin is welcome"

So you want stock exchanges included too now? Or you just want different currencies included to confuse the game more? What is the point?
Damn what a daft question...

Please sir ..... I know..... I know.....


The developers are Australian so they used an Australian Florin of course, don't you guys know the usual map of the world is upside down. The south pole (and Australia close by) should be at the top of the map.

Its an aussie-centric issue.

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Originally Posted by Foz

Presumably because you won't be able to find a reasonable currency for each country that:

As someone also pointed out earlier, different currencies would imply in-game exchange rates, since each country you do business with is undoubtedly paying you with its own currency. The result would be a whole lot more code to determine and handle the fluctuations of exchange rates, i.e. vast economic simulation to determine currency value.

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The exchange rates didn't change at the time: it was the amount of gold and silver that determined their respective values. As long as that didn't change, the exchange rates remained fixed.
Nevertheless, I agree that there is not much point in complicating the game with more micro management that has no added value whatsoever.
I kinda like the Florin because that is what we call our currency here in our language, so my 8 year old son understands perfectly well what '500 Florins' means. :2thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by heroic hungarian

lol how did you change the currency to big-uns?

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Ah sorry didn't check in here for a few days.
I simply replaced all mentions of "florin" with "big-un" while preserving case in all the text files (i.e. everything in data/text). It's a playable mod if you want it :gathering: