How does Inflation Work?

[sprudl]

Originally posted by TriMiro
IMHO one of the most important aspects of the military is the production and the number of units one can build per turn.

Indeed. But you need to find a balance between the number of production slots (cities) and performance of each slot. At some point it's easier to create a big army with more "medium" cities than with a few super productive cities.

Since pollution actually matters, I stopped perfecting every city. I only keep a few excellent production sites for the big stuff like wonders or spaceship parts.

[TriMiro]

Inflation increases at a constant rate with time, and also increases depending on the size of your empire, I believe that's cities + units.

Thanks, that is what I needed. I have way too many units for my empire size.

[joncnunn]

My own observations are:

1. Don't try to make all cities identical. Strong commerence - weak hammer cities need Libaries, etc but not forges, and probably aren't the best place to build expensive military units either.
Strong hammer - weak commerce cities don't really need the Market Places, etc. What they need are Forges and are also should be the cities that build your armies.

2. Watch the various costs. As a rule of thumb, if your not planning on conquering, you shouldn't have such a large army that your paying too much in unit costs. As a rule of thumb, I'd place too much as more than 10% of your taxes going towards it.
The others are you can have too big an empire for Organized Religion and even too big an empire for Bur. once other civics are adviable.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Inflation is a percent multiplier times your total costs for units, units out of city, civic upkeep, and city upkeep. The way to control it ...

... is to lower those four numbers

If you have trouble with inflation:
1. Increase the gold you generate - build more cottages, get a Wall Street Supercity (maximum commerce focus, wall street, market, grocer, bank, for 300% gold output), etc.
2. Play as Organized civs. That really helps when the inflation hits 200%.
3. Make sure you have courthouses everywhere, and a FP in a logical place for maximum reduction in costs. It helps if your empire has two centers with radius out from them.
4. Fix your civics to either reduce upkeep or reduce military costs.

If none of those work, you can change the inflation amount in the XML; but you probably shouldn't be doing that, because it's not an unreasonable thing (unless you're playing with corporations and aren't using solver's patch; if you are, then get solver's patch).

This is the best post on inflation on the forums , so to follow up (and to ressurect an old post )

but one more part missing - does inflation expand together with 4 factors you have outlined above, so once it expands it continues to grow linerarly or exponentially, plus will a large army early on (despite of losing half of it in a big war over a millenium let's say) continue to cost you in increased inflation by the end of the game or not?

I won my last game with relatively large inflation ~150%, but seeing that it was even as big as 350%!!! for some here, it would be interesting to know how can you get this number to go so high up, as when it's so big it's bound to ruin your game on its own.

[Jaybe]

Inflation is supposedly reduced with BtS 3.13.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

on 3.13 - are Firazis planning on issuing a hotfix for the patch/ or 3.14 patch with broken things in order, or what is the state of "play" on that one...

Did Solvers 3.02 ever get an official overhaul, so we need to patch up for ourselves from fan based workarounds?

Ok perhaps a wrong thread... but it is linked to "fixing inflation" issue...

Even now with pre 3.13 inflation, as long as I know what are its effects, I am more than happy, as even large inflation can be managed through good develpoment.

The main problem is that it is not fully clear how is it generated/ie effects of early overexpansion and whether it's linear or some sort of non-linear growth?

[joncnunn]

Actually, I think that's mostly corporation upkeep cost no longer subject to inflation in 3.13. (Compined with headquarters gets 4 gold instead of 5).

Originally posted by Jaybe
Inflation is supposedly reduced with BtS 3.13.

[TriMiro]

I tried several things and inflation seems independent from the number of cities size of the empire and number of units. The only thing that may influence inflation (and I am not sure about that) is the number of buildings you have in your cities.

They have fixed the issue in 3.13. Inflation is a number that starts at 0 and grows slowly with time, but it not as crippling as it used to be. (I have never seen another game with inflation in the 200% zone)

Also, corporations are immune to inflation which make them more efficient.

[jkp1187]

Also -- the "Federal Reserve" random event gives a player the opportunity to reduce the level of inflation in his civ....