Inflation Issues

[Dark.Star]

Hi,

I have been playing custom game for a while now. I am an aggressive player constantly waging wars and expanding rapidly. However, my economy is steadily being crippled by growing inflation.

Any ideas of how to reduce it?

Thanks a lot folks.

 

[CocoIsKing28]

I believe your problem is that you have too little commerce commerce and a too much expenses. As you expand, gaining cities, you have to pay maintenance for them. I would lower my research, build some cottages, improve the land around those new cities, and wait until your economy slowly grows.

 

[lymond]

It's hard to explain fully in a post, but inflation is just a fact/constant within the game. I would concern yourself more with what you can do to improve your overall game, especially in terms of economy and empire management.

One important thing to learn is that you do not always need to keep the research slider at 100% or even near it. In fact, often in my games I run 0% research, especially early game as I'm expanding and building libraries.

(By the way, to preface this, I'm not saying to not build cottages, I do; however, you can still maintain a strong economy in many games without building a single cottage).

Brush up on your skill, watch Let's Plays, join forum games, start a shadow game, etc. In short time, you will forget about inflation and watch your economy and your games prosper.

Edit: I'll also add that I've seen many a new player come to this forum either concern with inflation or their economy. Upon posting a game, I will quickly ascertain that their economy is not really at issue, but rather their "perception" of said economy.)

 

[Dark.Star]

Hmmm, both good advice, thanks. But consider this: I have about 40 cities, hundreds of cottages, my research is at 10%, culture at 60%, the remaining 30% is tax. Now, out of the 40 cities about 25 are producing wealth, 5 culture and the rest 10 are building army. Approximatelly 30 turns ago I was gaining 700 gold per turn. To the current date I have aquired around 800,000 gold of wealth. However my income recently reduced to 18 gold per turn. Even though I have not changed my cities production or civics for that matter. Oh and by the way I run State Property (reduced maintainance), Organised Religion (bonus gold per cities with state religion). I loose nearly 1000 gold from inflation and growing rapidly.

To be honest I am not too worried about loosing my wealth too soon, in fact most likely i will give up playing this scenario or qonquer the whole world before my treasury runs dry. But its just not right, you know what I mean?

What do you think folks?

 

[lymond]

I believe it is right, but I'd have to see you game to figure out what is wrong/not wrong. Not sure why you are building culture in 5 cities unless just temporarily to pop borders.

 

[Dark.Star]

I am building culture in most recently "liberated" cities. I wish I could provide a screenshot at this time of my map but I cant. Basically world consist of three more or less equal size continents. One of them is almost entirely ruled by me. There is only one other civ - Arabia. They occupy only about fifth of "My Continent" . Their are my next target. Maybe this time I shouldnt bother with taking over their cities? Maybe I should erase them, expand my cultural borders to occupy the remaining space and build more cottages instead? Would that increase my gold per turn?

 

[lymond]

^^^it all depends on how you want to win the game. Sounds like you should be very close to Domination or Conquest. At this point in your game, which I'm assuming is quite late, your GPT is likely of little concern. You can always build wealth in more cities. I assume by "liberated" that you mean "captured".

I generally worry more about razing/not razing cities earlier in the game when my economy is weaker. That is, not over-extending. Or later on, if I don't want to hit the Dom land limit quite yet for score milking (growing pop).

A game save is going to do much more for me than a screenshot, although those don't hurt.

 

[MrCynical]

Inflation increases steadily throughout the game - there's nothing you can really do except increase your income to balance the increasing maintenance costs. There's one random event which can reduce interest, but I think that's the only occasion you can directly affect it.

It's basically just a fudge factor to try and balance the greater availability of gold in the later stages of the game. It doesn't sound like you're exactly short of gold and this point - you could run a deficit for ages, and you're spending a huge percentage of your budget on culture.

 

[damerell]

Oh and by the way I run State Property (reduced maintainance), Organised Religion (bonus gold per cities with state religion). I loose nearly 1000 gold from inflation and growing rapidly. What do you think folks?

I think you should tell us what mod you're running where OR gives bonus gold to cities with the state religion.

I also think your woes are down to rapid expansion and the fact that you only have the gold slider at 30%, not the inflation mechanic; and that if you have 800,000 gold in the bank, you should just run a deficit and win the game.

 

[Antilogic]

The numbers in this thread are just incredible. You are running 60% culture and have 800k gold banked? 75% of the cities are building wealth or culture? I don't think I've ever had more than 5k gold in a standard game, and that was only because of the vassal resource trade bug they took out in BtS.

In any case, there are a couple events that reduce inflation (and I literally mean a couple, I think there are only 2 unless you added some). It's pretty much permanent. I would be more concerned with the efficient running of your government for a large empire (sounds like you made some of the right choices, make sure to avoid high upkeep civics if you can avoid them) and making sure you can generate enough science to keep up in the tech race (with your massive resource base, I think that won't be a problem).

 

[kochman]

Hmmm, both good advice, thanks. But consider this: I have about 40 cities, hundreds of cottages, my research is at 10%, culture at 60%, the remaining 30% is tax. Now, out of the 40 cities about 25 are producing wealth, 5 culture and the rest 10 are building army. Approximatelly 30 turns ago I was gaining 700 gold per turn. To the current date I have aquired around 800,000 gold of wealth. However my income recently reduced to 18 gold per turn. Even though I have not changed my cities production or civics for that matter. Oh and by the way I run State Property (reduced maintainance), Organised Religion (bonus gold per cities with state religion). I loose nearly 1000 gold from inflation and growing rapidly.

To be honest I am not too worried about loosing my wealth too soon, in fact most likely i will give up playing this scenario or qonquer the whole world before my treasury runs dry. But its just not right, you know what I mean?

What do you think folks?

You have entirely too much gold on hand, first of all... throw the slider to 100% science! I often hover between 0-3k gold... rarely more except late game when my corporations have enabled me to take over the world and enslave it.

 

[6K Man]

We need some more information here. To begin with, what year is it in your game? Inflation gets steadily worse as the turn count rises, and there’s not much you can do about that. It’s a mechanic built into the game, presumably to make it harder in the later going. The only reliable solution to late-game inflation is to win earlier.

If you have 30% of your slider at tax, inflation isn’t really bad. I’ll often run 70% science and 30% tax in the mid to late game.

Otherwise – consider where your money is going. State Property fixes city maintenance quite well, but you're already in that. Do you have a lot of units outside your borders? Could you spin some unproductive cities off as a colony?

And why, out of curiosity, is your culture at 60%? If you aren’t trying for a culture win, there’s no reason for it to be that high. If you’re trying to counter war weariness, switch to Police State, instead, and build Jails/Rushmore.