Inflation

[blackflame77]

As Im still really in 'old civ' mode, and find it hard to resist building new cities, my greatest problem is maintenance costs. While I understand that having lots of cities results in costs for numbers of cities, Im not sure why inflation hammers me as well.

In my current game, I have 15 cities in 1495AD, and have just crept into the medieval era (this may be rubbish, but I am on game 4....). This has resulted in a distance cost of 11, number cost of 16, and hereditary rule is costing me 12 compared to 6 for the other start civics.

While thats not a problem, the inflation is running at 27%, and thats another 17 that I really cant afford. I am trying to watch as things change this game to get a better feel for how my choices affect things, but I have no idea why I have this, or how I can do anything about it, now or in future games, as the rate has been steadily climbing all game.

So what I'd really like to know is what causes inflation rates to vary, as I cant even see it mentioned in the manual or game help.

Thanks

[Bogdanovist]

As far as I can see from the description of inflation given in the Civilopedia and from watching it in game, there is nothing you can do about inflation. It is simply increases over time at a rate determined by difficulty level. So on a given difficulty level, the inflation rate will always be the same at a given date in the game.

If anyone has seen that this is NOT the case, please let me know as I havn't rigourously tested this....

I think (guessing here) that inflation was put in to make gold a little more scarce throughout the game, so instead of bathing in oddles of gold in the late game, you have to keep your income going up to counter inflation, so you never get the enormous late game treasuries that occured in Civ3 and SMAC.

[trev]

The increase in inflation is related to time and also I believe it is related to civ size, the larger civs get hit harder by inflation. The reason for saying this is that in MP games there are minor differences in the inflation rate between players (ie at 1 sae ranged between 20 and 24%), with the largest player having the highest rate.

[djpsychonaut]

It seems to me that you're generally punished for having a larger civilization... What strategies can anyone recommend for alleviating the costs of having a large empire?

[Skanky Burns]

Courthouses reduce the costs slightly. Thats pretty much all you can do AFAIK.

[Jaybe]

It helps to be Organized (as in the civ trait). Also, the expenses involved in running your civilization is GREATLY dependent on your civics (and sometimes the size of your army).

In fact, by now you have probably changed them and found them to be very different!

[The keeper]

You can also change civics . . . state property (I believe).


I am at work now, so I cannot check to be sure of this. In my game that I won by domination, my empire was huge. Just by making this small change in civics, my gold went from about 100/turn to 250/turn.

[trev]

State property which I think is available once communism is learnt certainly is useful in reducing maintainance cost, and I have used it for that purpose particularly during a conquest phase of a game. For a civ that is rapidly expanding, it is a good civ, but others may be more appropiate at other times

[djpsychonaut]

I always pick Free Market in order to maximize my trade network. Are you finding that State Property outweighs Free Market in savings on maintenance costs? I'll have to check it out!