In response to obervations made about inflation on the AND boards I have made some changes. These changes will have very little impact unless you play with 'Advanced Economy' turned on, but will have substantial impact if you do.
The inflation costs (that you see in your financial advisor screen) are calculated using an inflation rate which is based on the difficulty setting, and (if you have advanced economy on) other factors such as civic choices. Without advanced economy the inflation rate is basically constant the entire game (actually flexible difficulty means that's not quite true, but more or less it is). The code that calculated inflation assumed a constant rate in effect, and rather than storing a current cost increase (relative to base values) just calculated it each turn on the assumption that inflation had been constant.
The effect of this was that if you changed civics such that the new choices had a different inflation modifer to the old, then your costs would immediately jump by a large amount. Contrast this to what happens in reality - when the inflation rate goes up 10% (say) costs do not immediately rise as if the inflation rate had been 10% for years, but rather the rate of increase of costs changes, and so the cost will be 10% higher after a year of the new rate.
The change I have made reflects this, and means that switching civics in such a way as to change your inflation rate (or anything else that adjusts it) will not have an immediate large impact on your costs, but just impact how quickly they rise thereafter.
As a future option, note that this opens the door for civics with negative inflation modifiers (i.e. - deflationary choices), which will lower costs over time. Obviously deflationary civics need to have downsides (probably in the form of trade yield reduction or something, but that's a civic design choice, so just provided as an example). Personally I think that providing some deflationary options would be useful for gameplay purposes, as its another tool in the player's arsenal to address their cost-base.
I'll be pushing this change to SVN later this afternoon.
The inflation costs (that you see in your financial advisor screen) are calculated using an inflation rate which is based on the difficulty setting, and (if you have advanced economy on) other factors such as civic choices. Without advanced economy the inflation rate is basically constant the entire game (actually flexible difficulty means that's not quite true, but more or less it is). The code that calculated inflation assumed a constant rate in effect, and rather than storing a current cost increase (relative to base values) just calculated it each turn on the assumption that inflation had been constant.
The effect of this was that if you changed civics such that the new choices had a different inflation modifer to the old, then your costs would immediately jump by a large amount. Contrast this to what happens in reality - when the inflation rate goes up 10% (say) costs do not immediately rise as if the inflation rate had been 10% for years, but rather the rate of increase of costs changes, and so the cost will be 10% higher after a year of the new rate.
The change I have made reflects this, and means that switching civics in such a way as to change your inflation rate (or anything else that adjusts it) will not have an immediate large impact on your costs, but just impact how quickly they rise thereafter.
As a future option, note that this opens the door for civics with negative inflation modifiers (i.e. - deflationary choices), which will lower costs over time. Obviously deflationary civics need to have downsides (probably in the form of trade yield reduction or something, but that's a civic design choice, so just provided as an example). Personally I think that providing some deflationary options would be useful for gameplay purposes, as its another tool in the player's arsenal to address their cost-base.
I'll be pushing this change to SVN later this afternoon.
