RFC How does it rate "Economy"?

ZeekLTK

Warlord
Joined
Oct 6, 2002
Messages
260
I'm playing RFC with Babylon and despite having been able to run 100% research with a positive income for the vast majority of the game (including right now), my economy rating has tanked down to 1 star and I'm now listed as "Collapsing" (even though all other ratings are 3 stars).

What's going on? How is my economy terrible and my empire about to collapse when I am able to run 100% research and have like 1600 gold?

I had been running a pretty small empire, just trying to survive against the Arabs but then the Turks showed up and that really helped me because I got them to declare on the Arabs, and I let both of them exhaust their armies against each other and then I got rifling and took out both of them.

But now that I have such a huge empire (went from 2-3 cities to 11) my economy rating has dropped off considerably. I don't understand why.

There were a few turns where I was running 100% and getting -20 per turn, but I didn't think it was a big deal since I had so much gold. I could easily drop to like 80% to have it be positive again, but even when I did that my rating was still terrible. However, now I'm back to running 100% and getting like +1 per turn but my economy rating is still 1 star with a down arrow...

The only other thing I can think of is that I'm running Mercantilism (to get the free specialist to use with representation) but that shouldn't completely ruin the economy rating, should it?

So, can someone help me and explain what I need to do to improve my rating so that I don't have a civil war or something? I've been doing really good in this game - Persia, India, Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, and Ethiopia have all been destroyed, and Greece is my best bud (defensive pact and all), so I basically have no hostile neighbors any more. I've been in the tech lead the whole game and am first place on the scoreboard now as well. Would suck to lose all of a sudden just because of this rating that I can't figure out.
 
Sometimes, I wonder who are those 110 viewers before me. Bots, lurkers, etc?

Now, up to the subject. Myself, I have tried to understand how to play RFC and I miserably failed. It's just too cryptic too me and the strait-jacket like play just annoys me as hell. Civ4 is a strategy game, no mario bros kind of game, which is linear. Simply because the concept of stability kills a lot of potential in term of strategy because you have to follow the agenda of the one who installed the system of stability, which is first Rhye or spin-off modmods of RFC.

Nevertheless, in theory, which is coming from people who had to play like 50 games (seriously 50 games to master a mod is ridiculous somehow....and strictly one map which is Earth...), the important to growing your stability in the economic sector is to be moderate, which is no economic swings at all and slow progression of economy. Note the two words: slow progression and no to and fro changes to the slider. Binary slider: forbidden. Playing like a god in the economic sector: forbidden too.

IIRC, the checks are done every three turns, which means in-between you can do everything you want, but at the third turn, your economy must have grown a certain amount, but not too much. Not grown, then it's a "deflation" and you lose economic stability. Growing too much, it is like bursting the market bubble or some BS like that.

In the end, it's very stringent and no surprise players who want to strategize (not just RPGing) don't like the concept. But, let's stop there, too much subjective of me. Probably because of all the mods, it's the only one I couldn't muster and for cause!
 
BTW, this subforum is dead. You should post in the respective Modding and Cuztomization subforums because there is much more activity there than here. For some reason, it died in activity these past years....
 
To my understanding, the economy in RFC is a reflection of real life, simplified macroeconomics. First you have your GNP, which is important. You have to have a currency to run an economy. However, GNP is as equally important as the second factor of RFC Econ, which is imports and exports. If you run an export deficit versus imports your economy will tank because that really isn't sustainable IRL. Your economy is healthy when you have more exports than imports, or an equal balance of trade goods flowing (i.e. gems for cotton instead of gpt for cotton). If you're the one collecting gold from exports it then you should be in the clear. Lastly, open border agreements factor into the overall economy score as well. The more open borders agreements signed, the more trade routes you have. The more trade routes you have, the healthier your economy is. All in all, it's a nice dynamic mechanic that separates RFC from a traditional CivIV game while remaining fun to a certain degree, especially when you understand it completely.
 
I think the economy is considered by the ammount of unkeep and maintance costs on the city. Not really sure but just a thought.

Spoiler :
I'm new here :D Your regular 14 years old CivIV Noble player.
 
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