How do you deal with inflation?

[DeepO]

BTW, if you want to break even at 100% tax, go for shrines, or lux for gpt deals.

DeepO

[Sartaq]

I also have no religious buildings anywhere in my lands. I guess that extra kickback from religion is sorely needed if you want to maximize your research or fill your coffers while maintaining 70-80% research.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Sartaq
I also have no religious buildings anywhere in my lands. I guess that extra kickback from religion is sorely needed if you want to maximize your research or fill your coffers while maintaining 70-80% research.

Missionary work is one of the best things there is to do something about your gold situation.

DeepO

[Sartaq]

I'm thinking about going for free religion for the research boost and then free speech for the +2g from towns. I only have a few towns at this point though.

[DeepO]

Aim at things that improve your gold situation faster: shrines, trade routes, specialists. Also, some wonders can help a lot (Spiral minaret for instance). And specialize cities so that you only build markets in those cities which have a lot of commerce or specialists.

DeepO

[calarrick]

I found the inflation thing in the game now, too. I think this is not like EUII, where the game simulated better and worse ways to run your nation's fiscal policy. Inflation is just a game scaler to abstract the higher cost of government functions when you have a highly developed nation/empire -- also, in terms of gameplay, my hunch would be that it helps prevent the player who gets any early lead from running away with the game. AIs are still (based on my limited experience so far, obviously) limited in their ability to play 'catch up' but not nearly so much as in all the earlier versions -- and inflation may be just one of the subtle mechanisms in the game to help with that.

I would be interested to know what causes it -- is it just empire size? Or, perhaps more realistically, is it actually based on empire *wealth* and development?

Very funny post, btw, duodecimal -- nice play on the techs in the game!

[duodecimal]

I'd be interested to find out too. There are three historical precedents for inflation that can be mirrored in the game based on features I've noted so far:

1) Currency importation: does exporting your goods in exchange for gold-per-turn or a lump sum affect your inflation rate?

2) Gold Mining: creating new money from the ground. Do civs with multiple Gold resources have higher inflation rates than those civs without? (Historically, gold production was difficult enough that the supply of goods available usually balanced the new supplies of gold. Local inflationary effects of gold rushes dissipated fairly quickly).

3) Currency debasement: don't think there's any way to do this in the game. Hurrying improvements with printed fiat currency would be short-term overpowered, and long term catastrophic. Probably too difficult to balance. Plus every historical civ that did that managed to ruin itself. We've made it three decades so far in the US...

Now, on a more scholarly note:

Originally posted by calarrick
I would be interested to know what causes it -- is it just empire size? Or, perhaps more realistically, is it actually based on empire *wealth* and development?

Wealth and development don't cause inflation. I don't want to get into an argument over semantics, but if we really think about it, wealth isn't money, but what you can get for your money. Actual goods and services. This might become more evident to our generation as we start noticing that it's costing more to get the same stuff, like food, fuel, health and education services, and so on. We might have more money, but we're not 'wealthier' for it.

Inflation would be an imbalance of currency in relation to goods and services. A growing, productive country would actually enjoy a mild deflation, as goods and services grow cheaper as they compete for a stable currency supply. On the other side, a sudden destruction of wealth would cause prices to rise as there's more money around than stuff to spend it on.

If more money was given to us, say, by employing our printing presses and then dropping it (er, the money) from helicopters, that won't actually help us since more money chasing the same real wealth just equals higher prices. But we're already finding this out here in the US. Fortunately, we're probably not so incredibly stupid to put in charge of our financial system anyone who would advocate printing money and throwing it from helicopters as a means to manage some arbitrary 'price level' and 'positive inflation rate'. That kind of nonsense is suitable for Law's France and Weimar Germany, but surely those lessons have been learned.

Back to the game -- they could just simply have decided to figure out a weakest civ vs. strongest civ ratio, and used that ratio as the basis of a punitive inflation rate to keep the stronger civs in check. A stealth Corruption. My bet's on that, especially since there's no good way to mirror the real world without fiat, fractional reserves, and credit.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by duodecimal
1) Currency importation: does exporting your goods in exchange for gold-per-turn or a lump sum affect your inflation rate?

nice one...

3) Currency debasement: don't think there's any way to do this in the game. Hurrying improvements with printed fiat currency would be short-term overpowered, and long term catastrophic. Probably too difficult to balance. Plus every historical civ that did that managed to ruin itself. We've made it three decades so far in the US...

And this one is nice too: just increasing inflation from rushing costs. I don't know if it's in, though. Porbably just a counter based on the number of improvements / buildings / trade routes in your empire

DeepO

[Simplicity]

Hmmm... I really like the idea of increased inflation due to hurrying of production. That seems like a very nice game mechanic to prevent players from just going full cash and hurrying everything.

[ZanThrax]

I don't think it has anything to do with rushing. I've yet to rush a single thing and have seen inflation.

[Jon Shafer]

Inflation is based mostly off of time.

As in real life - there's no way to control it.

[MattPilot]

Originally posted by Trip
Inflation is based mostly off of time.

As in real life - there's no way to control it.

Does the size of the empire affect it?

That be the most useful attribute of it.

[duodecimal]

Originally posted by Trip
Inflation is based mostly off of time.

As in real life - there's no way to control it.

Something to add to the mod list then.

[sophist]

Originally posted by Trip
As in real life - there's no way to control it.

Is that a joke?

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by MattPilot
Does the size of the empire affect it?

That be the most useful attribute of it.

Indirectly. Inflation goes up over time and affects all civ costs. The more cities you have the higher maintenance, and thus, higher costs 'due' to inflation.