Let's say that country A found a gold strike that will yield 10,000,000 units of gold. Let us further say that each gold wheel has the nominal value of one unit of gold, but only requires one half a unit of gold to manufacture. This is the traditional ratio of gold to coin value that mints follow. This allows the government that issues gold coins to make a nice profit, which will help it stay in business long enough that the people who use the gold coin in their daily life (merchants, soldiers, etc) will trust and use the coin.
What costs are required to mine, transport, and mint this much gold? In most Glorantha settings daily income for ordinary laborers is about one silver penny per day. If it takes 1000 days of labor by 200 laborers to extract this much gold then it would cost 2,000,000 silver pennies, or 100,000 gold coins (at 20:1 gold:silver ratio), or 50,000 units of raw gold. If you use slaves then salaries may be lower, but other costs (overseers, prison guards, transportation) would increase.
That's your only sunk cost. Now, the government may have to pay money to someone for the right to mine, but in general when a government finds a large gold strike and decides to mine it, then they claim it by right of eminent domain. Nobody gets the money unless it's the king. So far we have 20,000,000 gold pieces of value, with the only expenditure being 50,000 gold pieces for labor. That's only 1/4 of one percent of the value of the gold. Let's further guess that minting costs will be about 10% of the cost. Cost of distribution is another 5%. Net profit to the government so far, is 16,950,000 gold pieces.
So if any government decided to send a military force to sieze the mine or steal the gold, then they could spend up to 8,475,000 gold pieces on armies to do this and still have a 50% profit.
Mercenary Soldiers will receive, on average, about twice the daily wage of a normal laborer. Double this for hazard pay. Let's guess that approximately 100 days out of the 1000 merit hazard pay. Thus, each soldier will cost 2200 silver pennies, or 110 gold pieces.
So if another government wanted to sieze the mine and 8,475,000 gold pieces worth of profits for itself and was willing to hire soldiers for the full 1000 days of mining to secure the mine, and let's say they even consented to pay the miners who are already at the mine their full wages, then they could hire 8,475,000 gold pieces worth of soldiers to do it. At 110 gold pieces per soldier this works out to 77,045 soldiers.
That's more soldiers than any Gloranthan country except perhaps for Kralorela or the Lunar Empire could muster, so the size of the invading army would be much lower than 77 thousand. However, almost any country would be justified, by the enormous profits, to mount a large invasion to sieze the mine.
Now, how do countries normally protect their mines if it's so lucrative to steal them? Well, usually mines are located in mountains, and mountains are much easier to defend then they are to invade. So, you only need 100 defenders to fight off 200 invaders. If country B invades with 20,000 troops then country A only needs 10,000 troops to fight them off. Now we have a little guessing game. Country A has to figure out how many troops their neighbors can muster, and they need to muster half as many to protect the mine. This takes troops away from normal duties, or it requires them to hire mercenaries. Mercenaries are probably the best answer. If there is a shortage of mercenaries then the whole region will be in a bidding war for them. The cost of mercenaries approximately doubles. Country A should devote one third to one half of the average country's troops, and hire one third of all the mercenaries in the region in order to ensure that no other country can take their mines away. You'll have to work out how many mercenaries are available. The more mercenaries in the local talent pool the more likely that another country is going to engage in some crazy stunt like an invasion to sieze a gold mine.
Let's say that country A decides to hire 10,000 mercenaries (out of an available pool of 30,000) and post 20,000 of its own troops (to keep the mercenaries from stealing the gold for themselves) in the mountains and along the transportation route for the gold. This will cost them about 4,400,000 gold pieces at the inflated/doubled mercenary costs posited above. This still gives them 12,550,000 gold pieces of profit on the deal.
Now for my comment on what Ed's characters did. I think they got snookered. 1/2 of one percent of the gold is too little to hire any good help. It's barely enough to hire manual laborers to get the gold out of the mine, and not nearly enough to defend the gold against a concerted attack. If the mines haven't been attacked yet then nobody must know where they are. If the PCs want to make some money and become national heroes (for some other country) then the thing to do is to make a deal with a neighboring king and lead an overwhelmingly large attacking force into the mountains and take the gold for the other country, with half the gold going to the (leaders of the) invading force and half for the government. The PCs would then be faced with the task of selling 5,000,000 units of gold for 5,000,000 gold pieces to some country (standard price). This gives them enough money to pay 20,000 mercenaries at double cost and still take 600,000 gold pieces for themselves. That's a 12% profit. Not terrible, but not all that great either. Or they can split it up any other way they like.
Cheers,
Loren
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