Inflation - the unnecessary fudge factor

[opkoad]

I agree that there should be some control over it, but since it affects all Civs equally (AFAIK) is it really such a big deal?

 

[Conroe]

In Civ IV, inflation is without a real cause - totally beyond the control of the player.

Yes, but inflation is definitely a real life issue that is totally beyond the control of the consumer. I know, because I can't buy milk for $2 a gallon any more. Inflation is a fact of life that is totally beyond your control. Forty years ago, $10K would buy a nice house. Nowadays, $100K will buy a small shack. And there is nothing you can do about it.

There's no line item in the federal budget of the U.S, and I doubt for any country, for "inflation".

Your post sounds like you are a student of economics. It is a difficult subject to master. I have no idea if there is a line item for inflation in the federal budget. I've never read the federal budget. But let me say, I will never forget that year that Ronald Reagan brought a copy of the federal budget to the State of the Union Address. The printed copy of the federal budget was easily four-foot tall! I can tell you this, though: inflation is definitely a consideration in the creation of the federal budget. And, inflation is such a concern to the federal government, that they have a group of people that monitor inflation. They are called the FOMC.

What it boils down to is this: Civ IV is a game. The designers of that game chose to include a line item that they arbitrarily named inflation. To quote Ainwood:

Sounds like a game-balance issue to me. Have a look at how much inflation varuies throughout the game - late game, with a strong economy you can be researching at 100% and still be rolling in the money. Take away inflation, and the gold would be embarrasing.

My guess is that he is 100% correct: a game balance issue. Does inflation really break the game? I doubt it! Maybe you should be focusing on how to use the tools the game gives you to increase your economy such that inflation is not a concern.

Just my two cents and I'll end my rant here!

 

[Dominico]

I think its fun and adds a sort of realistic aspect to the game. Money would be "lost" through inflation.

Though i can understand how control freaks can dislike it a bit. I find it good to have some things beyond control though or it would be too easy.

 

[ritterpa]

It's semantics. The game developer decided to find a way to reduce resources behind the scenes instead of actively--to avoid micromanagment or an obtrusive "not fun" element.

The core problem is that, as the modern era blooms and buildings are built, commerce booms so much that research flies and so does the treasury. I would think that inflation could have been eliminated with a more balanced research/commerce/culture slider, but I'm sure that was option one and found unfeasible.

 

[Sparrowhawk]

It's semantics. The game developer decided to find a way to reduce resources behind the scenes instead of actively--to avoid micromanagment or an obtrusive "not fun" element.

The core problem is that, as the modern era blooms and buildings are built, commerce booms so much that research flies and so does the treasury. I would think that inflation could have been eliminated with a more balanced research/commerce/culture slider, but I'm sure that was option one and found unfeasible.

That's my point exactly. This has nothing to do with economics at all - it's simply a comment on a new factor that affects gameplay that I find to be annoying. They can call it "Inflation" or "Upkeep" or "Money for the Martians" for all I care. It's the game mechanic (or lack thereof) that concerns me.

All I am asking is to have this factor (that is currently called inflation) tied to the playable game mechanics. Currently the best suggestion I have heard to replace it with a similar balancing factor is to use the same process as used in "Knights of Honor". In that game, inflation starts at zero when you have little money in the bank, but the more you have saved the greater the penalty to your income, until eventually you are capped at a maximum.

To reiterate, I fully understand that this is a factor included in the game for balance, and not in order to attempt to model real-world economics.

 

[opkoad]

Sparrowhawk, I understand where you're coming from in terms of game mechanics, and control over every factor that comes into play. Traditional board games always give total control, and Civ IV is basically a board game, just so complex that it requires a computer to assist.
But if it helps, think of inflation (as it is currently implemented) as a factor based on the passage of time. Just like you can't prevent the passage of time in Civ, you can't prevent inflation either. It's just this factor that grows larger and larger as you approach the end game, something to constantly stay ahead of lest it empty your treasury.

But you're right, there is something 'off' about it, in the sense that there aren't really any other rules in the game (someone correct me if I'm wrong) which you do not have direct control over (and no, the randomness of the die roll doesn't count).

 

[sturmtrupp]

Perhaps part of the problem with not being able to control the inflation is the designers wish not to have too much micromanagement. In EU2 unfortunately, inflation is at the heart of the game, and in some ways makes that game a lot less fun then most empire building games. Finally as a poster pointed out with their link to Wikipedia's theories on inflation, if one were to actually implement an inflation algorithm, it would not only add more micromanagement, but it could potentially eliminate a lot of the balance the game has.

Furthermore, its sort of ironic how an expense is being called inflation. When inflation is not necessarily an expense, but rather the phenomena of your money having less ability to purchase things. In other words, your money is worth less. I think a flat expense, that varies temporily, is not a good representation of inflation. Rather the fact that units and technologies all cost more regardless of the, so called fudge factor, is a better representation.

 

[Abacus]

And, inflation is such a concern to the federal government, that they have a group of people that monitor inflation. They are called the FOMC.

What it boils down to is this: Civ IV is a game. The designers of that game chose to include a line item that they arbitrarily named inflation. To quote Ainwood:My guess is that he is 100% correct: a game balance issue. Does inflation really break the game? I doubt it! Maybe you should be focusing on how to use the tools the game gives you to increase your economy such that inflation is not a concern.

The government tries very hard to control inflation, for many reasons, but not because inflation reduces the government's budget.

But you're right of course. It's a game balance thing, not an attempt to model the effects of fiscal and monetary policy. Strangely, "inflation" has almost no effect on the game - I just tested it and it doesn't increase the cost of gold rushing buildings. Rushing a barracks costs 270 gold in 4000BC, and 270 gold in 1805AD. (My saved games didn't have the same unit or wonder available at those times). So "inflation" is a mysterious effect that costs no more than 50 or 100 gold per turn at the end of the game.

Seems like something to mod out.

Edit: In another thread I argued against additional complexity, now I'm arguing for it. I'm schizoid. Guess everyone has their favorite concept they'd like to see modeled in Civilization.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

It's semantics. The game developer decided to find a way to reduce resources behind the scenes instead of actively--to avoid micromanagment or an obtrusive "not fun" element.

The core problem is that, as the modern era blooms and buildings are built, commerce booms so much that research flies and so does the treasury. I would think that inflation could have been eliminated with a more balanced research/commerce/culture slider, but I'm sure that was option one and found unfeasible.

To balance that all that is needed are more expensive modern techs, for the treasury, an increase in unit support/city maintenance could be put in. If the Inflation is actually based only on game turn....that creates a Very bad concept for the 'sandbox' part of the game. (playing to the year 2500, etc.)

If they wanted to balance treasury sizes, then having something like the "Knights of Honor" suggestion (Inflation= negative Civ 3 Wall Street, ie you lose X % of your treasury each turn) that would work.

 

[Guagle]

To balance that all that is needed are more expensive modern techs, for the treasury, an increase in unit support/city maintenance could be put in. If the Inflation is actually based only on game turn....that creates a Very bad concept for the 'sandbox' part of the game. (playing to the year 2500, etc.)

What I find strange is that they removed a very effective and logical check to swelling treasuries - city improvement maintenance - and replaced it by an arbitrary one - inflation. It really makes no sense to me.

 

[Breunor]

EU2 had a good inflation system- it lets you mint as much money as you wanted, but the more you did the most things began to cost.

It certainly does -- but remember, probably the biggest change between EU2 and EU1 was the fixes to the inflation system. They also changed it in the patches. Its good, real good, but its complex.

Breunor

 

[yoshi74]

I think inflation was some kind of hot fix for the situation that later in the game there was too much money. I would prefer that empire/civic maintaince would be properly scaled instead of such a thing, but this probably required much more fine tuning and testing than was allowed by time.
Since i wouldn't get the money anyway (otherwise it would break the game somewhat), i don't care that much about how its called.

 

[Psyringe]

I agree. If inflation can neither be controlled nor influenced by your actions, then it's just an unnecessarily complicated way of reducing income in later game stages.

However I'm currently unsure what would have been the best alternative. Raising the costs of certain civics which you are more likely to have in the endgame is one possibility, but then you might be less free in choosing them earlier. You could also raise upgrade costs, but there's a natural ceiling for that (at some point it becomes more efficient to just build new units instead of paying for upgrades).

Also, inflation may be necessary to control the money flow wih regards to the different game speeds.

I'd like to see my actions influencing inflation ... perhaps as a long-time penalty for having too much money production. this would reward players who plan their economies so that they don't have to convert everything into gold sometimes.

 

[lomendil]

I agree that inflation is used to balance the money flow (not the size of the treasury). But I don't get this: what exactly would make the end-game unbalanced without inflation?

It's not the end-game techs, cuz it would be easier to balance them by scaling down their gold-making effects.

It's not the large number of cities, cuz adjusting city maintenance would then be a perfect solution.

I doubt it's the large size of endgame cities, cuz there's a million much more elegant ways to balance that (e.g., create a new expense that's based on total civ's population; or reduce the benefits from cottages; etc.).

Anyone knows?

On a separate note, I know that Civ4 is not a simulator. But of all real-world concepts used in the game, inflation is the most inappropriate choice by far. It is basically used here as (a) a reduction in your income (b) that is out of your control (c) and that grows over the ages. Many people already said it, but I'll repeat anyway: on all of these three points, real-world inflation is exactly the opposite.

(a) inflation never destroys a fraction of your income

(b) inflation is very very easily influenced by the government

(c) inflation does not grow over centuries

Why why use this concept?! For god's sake, call this thing "corruption" or "social engineering expense" or "welfare expense" or even just meaningless "commerce efficiency". Anything but inflation

 

[Mazruk]

(a) inflation never destroys a fraction of your income

(b) inflation is very very easily influenced by the government

(c) inflation does not grow over centuries

(a) true, it doesn't, but it does reduce the buying power of that income and its a hell of a lot easier to code the EFFECT of that as a reduction in income rather than by increasing the prices of everything as time goes by. They are equivalent in terms of what you can buy with a turns worth of income.

(b) inflation is easily caused by governments, but not easily controlled. Too much meddling by governments can have many unforseen side-effects. Thats why governments strive for a target level of inflation.

(c) the compounding effect of inflation does grow over centuries

 

[Gargoyle]

Too me it is quite simple. Inflation can be controlled. Just stop making so much money!!

That's the point. The civs that have a blooming economy do get richer, but have some of that income eroded by inflation. A civ with an immature economy would be poor, but does not suffer from inflation as much.

So if you don't want inflation, stop making money (sure, thats the ticket, rrright....)

 

[Piemaster]

a deliberate policy encouraged by governments because it makes workers feel better (getting raises is nice), encourages consumption, and prevents people from hoarding money in anticipation of lower prices tomorrow.

As someone with an economics degree, that made my eyes bleed.

 

[Plume]

What I find strange is that they removed a very effective and logical check to swelling treasuries - city improvement maintenance - and replaced it by an arbitrary one - inflation. It really makes no sense to me.

Exactly. Inflation isn't something that governments pay for anyway. It's simply an increase in value of stuff. That stuff can be the interest the government pays on its debt or salaries people have, thus increasing the government's revenue. In other words, governments don't pay for the inflation (although they have to watch it carefully but that's another story).

Anyway, I also don't understand why they put inflation in, especially with no way to control it and even more importantly, no information on how it's calculated! The old improvement maintenance cost was fine. It was simple, it kept builders in check (a little at least) and required no micro-management.

 

[BeefontheBone]

No micromanagement? Perhaps, but it left you with a number of tiny, crippled cities which were completely useless building courthouses for 80 turns at 1 shield/turn. I don't understand the fuss about inflation - I hadn't even noticed it was there until I saw people moaning about it on here. It may be slightly misnamed, but it's merely a factor that was added to balance the gameplay - would you rather it was removed but gold was stupidly abundant in the late game?

 

[P-51]

Too me it is quite simple. Inflation can be controlled. Just stop making so much money!!

That's the point. The civs that have a blooming economy do get richer, but have some of that income eroded by inflation. A civ with an immature economy would be poor, but does not suffer from inflation as much.

So if you don't want inflation, stop making money (sure, thats the ticket, rrright....)

I think you missed the point of all of this discussion.

Inflation in Civ4 is a cost that is ONLY determined by time, not by the size of your treasury, or the amount of your income.

I'm currently playing a game where I spend too much effort trying to "land grab" by building as many settlers and cities as I could, at the detriment of everything else.

As such, none of my cities are very big, because they've been cranking out so many settlers.

Yet, the inflation charge has been going up, and I got way behind the curve. I'm left with 14 cities, most of them size 1-3. I don't have many units to support.

Inflation got so large, that I have 0% research, and all the basic civics with low costs, and I'm broke. 0% research, and I had a negative income.

I got behind the curve, so to speak.

While I understand something was necessary to balance gameplay, this doesn't seem like a great way of doing it.

If I want to sacrifice production, etc... to land grab, and risk having my weak cities swept over by another Civ... well that's my game to play.

But I basically got crippled by this "inflation", which doesn't make any sense.