Upkeep costs : inflation - what the ... ?

[wodan11]

It's not what your science slider is at, It's how many beakers you're cranking.
If I have pyramids and running rep, my slider could be at 40 but I'll still be twice the beakers as my neighbor.
And it's 10 turns after he accepts peace before he can attack again. Use the money he'll give you to accept peace, upgrade the experienced units that survived his last attack and after he declares again, take out the mobile army he sends into your territory and then take his cities. Problem solved. Only keep a few of his cities and destroy the rest.

In other words:

Step 1: Steal underpants
Step 2: ...
Step 3: Profit!

[sorinache]

It's not what your science slider is at, It's how many beakers you're cranking. If I have pyramids and running rep, my slider could be at 40 but I'll still be twice the beakers as my neighbor.

Certainly. But I'd be doing twice as many beakers if my slider was at 100% instead of 50%. The thing is, I do not get any particular advantage compared to my neighbors. On the contrary, they have it easier (Noble vs. Emperor). They are already decent opponents as it is, before the extra advantage from the difficulty level. I do not have any such obvious trick up my sleeve such as the one you exemplifies (no stone means somebody built the pyramids before I could get shot at it). It's a close call, I have to steer it very carefully and I'm certainly not going to by cranking more beakers than the best AI player on the map (in my current game the Incas and the Khmers are quite ahead of me), especially if I need to keep my slider at 40.

The short of it is : with no special advantage, there is no reason why anyone would be doing more beakers at 40 than even its best opponent, especially when that opponent can afford to have its slider at, say 80.

And it's 10 turns after he accepts peace before he can attack again.

It has to be, but boy those turns go by fast, there seem to be only 4 or 5 of them !

Use the money he'll give you to accept peace, upgrade the experienced units that survived his last attack and after he declares again, take out the mobile army he sends into your territory and then take his cities. Problem solved. Only keep a few of his cities and destroy the rest.

If only it was that simple. First, I was unable to make serious inroads into his territory : I managed to take and hold a city during the first (long) war. I entered his territory with a stack of about 20 units the second time around and he was passing me by with small stacks (6-7 units each: catapults, horse archers, war elephants, macemen, arbaletriers, longbowmen ...). He was heading toward my border cities. since I didn't have a clear tech advantage, despite not losing units, I was still having "wounded" troops that needed a turn or two to get back to full health. Which meant any given turn I was only having 7 - 8 battle-ready, full health attack units. I spent my time killing off his stacks until I realized it was self defeating : I was paying a high maintenance cost for my army and got no benefit from the war, because the arabian units never seemed to end : he appeared to be making 6-7 units every turn and basically managed to pin down my offensive stack. Meanwhile, the incans and the Khmers whizzed ahead ...

Since basically "nothing happened" (except that I wasted a number of turns killing lots of units) there was no reason for him to pay reparations. I offered peace and he gladly agreed but of course I got no money. Even if I was getting money, the sums never add up : I could have gotten maybe 400 gold which is, what, upgrading 3 axemen to macemen ? Hardly decisive

[wodan11]

Inflation cost = Infltion % (a percentage that increases with time) * Difficulty * (city maintenance + civic upkeep). That means you can lower the effects of inflation by building courthouses / Forbidden Palace / Versailles, and using State Property to lower city maintenance costs, and by switching to civics with lower upkeep.

If you want to reduce the effect of inflation in all your games, here's how to edit it.

C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Assets\XML\GameInfo
You can edit it with any plain text editor such as Notepad.
The rate at which inflation increases.
How long before inflation increases.

As always, make backups of any XML files before you muck around in them.

[wodan11]

Aside: sorinache, you keep saying "it's a boomer". Do you mean "it's a bummer"? Confuses the heck out of me.

[joncnunn]

Also, there's two lines dealing with inflation in Handicap.xml.

On Nobel, the default values are: Human: 90%, AI: 70%.
On higher difficulty levels, both human inflation increases and AI inflation reduces.

[Unimatrix11]

So, noble is not entirely balanced ?- i always thought it was...

[Blaupanzer]

The only "balanced level" is that on which you lose slightly over 1/2 the time. The "over 1/2" comes from those times when you get lazy or distracted or get a really sucky start versus the times when your start takes your breath away. If your game improves at that level, move up. The higher the level, the faster you must place cities, exploit resources, build large armies, and keep your science under control.

[joncnunn]

Nobel level is the closest to equal handicaps between AI and human. It's slightly more so in BTS than it was in Warlords & Vanilla.

So, noble is not entirely balanced ?- i always thought it was...

[sorinache]

Aside: sorinache, you keep saying "it's a boomer". Do you mean "it's a bummer"? Confuses the heck out of me.

Oh, sorry, yes, I was misspelling. I should stick to "it sucks", I think I can write that correctly

[wodan11]

No worries. I get confused when I don't take my medicine.

[Blaupanzer]

No problem on the spelling or usage. We understood what you were driving at.

English isn't all that well spoken or spelled by those for whom it is their primary language. A "boomer" is a person who is part of the "baby boom" generation (born between 1946 and 1964 inclusive). A "bummer" evolved from the 1960's phrase "a bum trip," a drug reference. Both words have evolved from well-defined nouns to nebulously defined adverb/adjective/noun. The Bummer word family also includes "bummed," a verb.

[rah]

Then you're on the wrong medicines since I get confused when I take mine.

[wodan11]

Just watched Sin City on blu-ray again.

[rah]

BLU-RAY + 55 inch widescreen =1080i heaven. Droooowl.

[wodan11]

BLU-RAY + 55 inch widescreen =1080i heaven. Droooowl.

63.

I think. Or is it 64?