Inflation

[Sashaddin]

Oops! I meant 1923 in my above post. From Wikipedia:

By late 1923, the Weimar Republic of Germany was issuing fifty-million-mark banknotes and postage stamps with a face value of fifty billion mark. The highest value banknote issued by the Weimar government's Reichsbank had a face value of 100 billion mark (100,000,000,000,000) {100 Trillion US/UK}. [1]. One of the firms printing these notes submitted an invoice for the work to the Reichsbank for 32,776,899,763,734,490,417.05 (3.28×1019, or 33 quintillion) mark.

Ouch!

 

[Endovior]

I do agree... the end result does depend on the society.

As such, I present my listing of Civics, as they relate to inflation. Each category will be rated from Best to Worst in terms of causing or encouraging inflation.

Governments
Republic
City States
Aristocracy
Theocracy
Despotism
God King

Cultural Values
Liberty
Consumption
Pacifism
Religion
Social Order
Nationhood
Crusade

Labor
Arete
Guilds
Caste System
Serfdom
Tribalism
Slavery
Military State

Economy
Foreign Trade
Decentralization
Mercantilism
Agriculture
Guardian of Nature
Conquest

Compassion
Fend for Themselves
Sacrifice the Weak
Basic Care
Protect the Meek
Public Healers

School System
No School System
Apprenticeship
Scholarship
Religious Discipline
Military Discipline

 

[iamjooish]

I actually decided to stop lurking just because of this.

I loaded up my most recent and played game,

it's the year 465, I'm playing on warlord and 'epic', with a slightly altered grigori civ with financial/phi/ind and all the religious units, buildings, functions enabled (but no other changes made to the mod).

I am ruling with aristocracy, consumption, serfdom, mercantilism, sacrifice, apprenticeship. very low mainenence stuff all around, and good for building-type play.

I have 36% inflation and pay 137/turn on maintenence. Setting culture and science to 0, I can net 860 in taxes a turn. This inflation stuff is little more than a nuisance and a curiosity. I like it just the way it is for now: a non-issue.

Btw...

Sash & Endo: overanalyse MUCH? Geek alert! Geek alert!

edit
oops...

looked this up in search and hit reply before checking the dates. Bump

 

[Blakmane]

lol

well, I find the concept of inflation totally unnecessary, but I don't really see how it impacts the game that much.

Of course, i've never tried playing a game without inflation so I don't know how much gold is lost because of it.

In general however I find that, in order to keep up technologically, I have to keep my gold rates very low, which means I never, ever have enough money for much upgrading. Kind of makes the doviello battlemaster totally useless

 

[Celeborn]

Ah, but that's just it. The more Dwarves produce gold, the less gold is worth, and thus the less incentive they have to get more of it.

And then... to paraphrase Terry Pratchett

Dwarves don't love gold, they just say that to get it into bed

The big issue I see is this... Your applying -real- world economic sense, to a -fantasy- race that is renowned in most mythologies for it's insatiable greed for gold, be it just the metal or jewelry made from it or big fat gold coins.


Otherwise... Very intresting discussion!

 

[wig]

Just one addition to this conversation. The Organzied trait becomes very powerful in long FFH games, as it gives a 50% post-inflation savings to upkeep costs (see more info here). Its by far my favorite late-game choice for adaptive trait choices, and one reason that Arturus is the best choice for the Khazad leader.

 

[iamjooish]

Blakmane:

Financial Screen.

Big US dollar sign in the upper right corner. Then look in the rightmost column.

 

[onedreamer]

Producing more wealth doesn't cause inflation though, at least not in the real world. What causes inflation is when the government produces more money.

To be more precise it should be "more money than those you need to buy all goods produced in your country". When you have more money in circulation than you need to buy stuff, then that money will of course be worth less (compared to manufacturing costs): that's the inflation.

Btw, I think we're forgetting this is just a game, and as someone pointed out, inflation is just a mechanism to keep the balances going. You could call it "balance tool" for what it's worth. Ultimately, is it really worth discussing of the realism of this system in a fantasy world, where btw you could turn metals into gold and vice-versa, or create items or even forests without any effort/cost ?

Just one addition to this conversation. The Organzied trait becomes very powerful in long FFH games, as it gives a 50% post-inflation savings to upkeep costs (see more info here). Its by far my favorite late-game choice for adaptive trait choices, and one reason that Arturus is the best choice for the Khazad leader.

It all depends from which victory you want to achieve. If you aim at culture victory, or altar, you don't need a wide territory, and the Organized trait becomes much less important (less than financial for sure).

 

[iamjooish]

Just one addition to this conversation. The Organzied trait becomes very powerful in long FFH games, as it gives a 50% post-inflation savings to upkeep costs (see more info here). Its by far my favorite late-game choice for adaptive trait choices, and one reason that Arturus is the best choice for the Khazad leader.

in addition, there is no cost for education civics with the philosophical trait, and no cost for compassion civics with the expansive trait.

 

[Artrix]

I do agree... the end result does depend on the society.

As such, I present my listing of Civics, as they relate to inflation. Each category will be rated from Best to Worst in terms of causing or encouraging inflation.

...

Economy
Foreign Trade
Decentralization
Mercantilism
Agriculture
Guardian of Nature
Conquest

I presume you're listing them in order of the extent to which they would cause inflation, rather than what they do. If so, why is Decentralization below Foreign Trade? The former implys no Government controls on trade, so any inflation would be the result of an increase in the suply of the medium of trade- not harmful to the economy at all. Whereas the latter does imply some amount of central messing around with the economy.

Unless for some reason decentralisation includes centralisation?

 

[onedreamer]

Inflation is a thing from Vanilla. Every X turns, the inflation rate goes up and is a multiplier times your current expenditures for civics, city maintenance, and unit maintenance.

The only way to get it to go down is to reduce your costs in one of the areas.

The theory is that the value of 1 gold goes down over time as more gold is produced in the game.

In a game I am playing with my wife I'm playing Basium while she plays Hyborem...
To the point: it is extremely hard to build up a running economy with these 2 civs because they do get a lot of units for free but they lack the infrastructure to support them or to build new ones, compared to existing civs. Both civs have a help: Infernals start with cities with several buildings for free, Mercurians have full support from their summoners. However, inflation remains a big problem, perhaps too big. Currently, I am running with 0% to science and culture and negative gold income. More than half the expenses are due to inflation which is 79% (!). The curious fact is that my wife has the exact same percentage of inflation, and pays the same amount of gold in inflation. For this reason I think that only the last sentence of the quote is true, in few words that inflation is worldwide and not civ-dependant. This would explain why we started with so high inflations and why we have the exact same rate. Does this sound realistic ?
Another theory is that inflation informations might have been carried over from our previous civs, but it's hard to believe we would have the exact same. I'll have to double check later this evening since I kept a save file before Hyborem's appearance.

 

[uberfish]

In civ4, inflation is just a fudge factor the developers used to try and slow down the late game tech rate a bit. It has nothing to do with the real world concept of inflation at all.

 

[Grey Fox]

The curious fact is that my wife has the exact same percentage of inflation, and pays the same amount of gold in inflation. For this reason I think that only the last sentence of the quote is true, in few words that inflation is worldwide and not civ-dependant. This would explain why we started with so high inflations and why we have the exact same rate. Does this sound realistic ?

Yes, I believe this is true.

 

[carn]

The big issue I see is this... Your applying -real- world economic sense, to a -fantasy- race that is renowned in most mythologies for it's insatiable greed for gold, be it just the metal or jewelry made from it or big fat gold coins.

And you misunderstand something, economics is only in our western civilization about getting wealthy, in all other societies and times it is about survival.
Simple,
first decade of overproducting our uneconomic dwarfs can buy with their gold houses, clothing, food, axes, hammers and chain mail(ok, thats double counting), gold production increases, not by more dwarfs taking up the trade(because they all do it anyway), but by number of dwarfs increasing and they all dig.
Second decade of overproducting gold price slowly drops, our uneconomic dwarf continue to dig, but cannot buy clothing anymore(doesn't matter to them, chain mail is enough), production increases with more dwarfs existing.
Third decade of overproduction gold price slowly drops, dwarf continue to dig, but cannot buy axes anymore(hammers are ok for war), gold produced still increases.
Third decade ... cannot buy houses anymore...
Fourth decade ... cannot, after hard discussions, buy chain mail anymore ... production levels, since higher infant and youth mortality due to more crowded living.
Fifth decade ... cannot buy food anymore, production drops due to quite some dwarves starving, but they continue to dig and overproduce.
Sixth decade ... cannot buy hammers anymore, production drops dramatically due to missing tools and lot of dwarves dying from wounds acquired by crushing stones with hands.
Seventh decade, dwarves nearly extinct(except for the economic ones), no longer gold overproduction.

So, the uneconomic dwarves might continue to overproduce, but in the end economy will still get them and the overproduction will lead to low prices, which then leads in the long haul to a lowering of production.

This is BTW not only joking, but serious, communist in various places tried to enforce production in spite of economics and starvation happened often as a result.

 

[onedreamer]

This is BTW not only joking, but serious, communist in various places tried to enforce production in spite of economics and starvation happened often as a result.

Uh ? I'm not Karl Marx or Lenin, but Communism and overproduction don't seem to cope well IMHO. It seems to me like it's exactly the contrary. Also... which "various places" experienced starvation because of communism ?

 

[[NWO]_Valis]

Also... which "various places" experienced starvation because of communism ?

China, Korea, Cambodia and many more.
Communism combined with economics had the effect of 'producing costs' [following the economic theory of communism the more costs you made the more profit your accountant could show]

 

[onedreamer]

?? bring serious arguments please... but we're going off topic, maybe in another area.

 

[carn]

Uh ? I'm not Karl Marx or Lenin, but Communism and overproduction don't seem to cope well IMHO.

Sorry, misworded, communism does off course not overproduce.
I meant that generally, drastically ignoring markets will lead to starvation, rather independent of exactly what is ignored.

But there is a slight similarity, the dwarves do not adapt to the fact, that others give less and less for what the dwarves offer. The communist in a sense ignored, that a large part of the working population gave less and less(of their workforce, productivity and creativity) for what the communist offered("worker's " paradise). Either they ignored this reduced "payment" for their product, this lead to starvation(e.g. kambodscha is most extreme case, most extreme communist, 20% of the population died in 4 years of starvation without any farming problems). Or the communist adjust their "product", so people are ready to offer more for it.

It seems to me like it's exactly the contrary. Also... which "various places" experienced starvation because of communism ?

Apart from the already mentioned China, Korea and Kambodscha one can name Russia and Ethopia. Currently Zaire(maybe i confuse, i mean the country were there where a lot of land reforms against white land owners), Chile was close in 1973 before Pinochet made a coup(300 % price increase for bread and milk in 4 months). Cuba was prior revolution in 1960 wealthier than half of western europe and the wealthiest country in America after US and Canada and would have faced starvation, if not for help first from the soviets and then from EU and others.

Generally those communists countries, that did rather well(=not hundred thoudsands dead of starvation) did so because they did not completely ignore marcket rules(East Germany and most of east Europa, Soviets after the millions of starved people 1925-1935, China after the millions of starved in 1950-60).

Sorry, but civilization completely misrepresents it - communism in pure form is total crap, it kills by millions.

 

[eerr]

Oops! I meant 1923 in my above post. From Wikipedia:



Ouch!

someone made them pay "huge" war reparations-and they printed the money without taking inflation into account

 

[onedreamer]

WARNING !!! Way off topic

Apart from the already mentioned China, Korea and Kambodscha one can name Russia and Ethopia. Currently Zaire(maybe i confuse, i mean the country were there where a lot of land reforms against white land owners), Chile was close in 1973 before Pinochet made a coup(300 % price increase for bread and milk in 4 months). Cuba was prior revolution in 1960 wealthier than half of western europe and the wealthiest country in America after US and Canada and would have faced starvation, if not for help first from the soviets and then from EU and others.

All the countries you named except Russia (USSR) were regimes, not real communist republics. They had the support from USSR in the world chessboard of cold war, that's it. A regime will 99% of the times lead to starvation. I don't know of starvation in Russia. I do know that people were missing food sometimes, but that has nothing to deal with inflation or the theory of communism in itself, but rather with organizational issues (too long queues at the shops) and with the implementation of the theory, which was based on -utopic- assumptions that revealed to be wrong, such as "all man want to be equal" or ingnoring the problem of corruption. In the USSR it was happening that some farmers would produce and sell goods (let's say for example milk) outside the statal production plannings. People would by from these small companies even if at higher prices because they didn't need to stand in queues for hours. Result: these smaller companies were becoming rich. When you become rich in a communist country the next step is corruption. If everything is of everyone, then there is little individual care for the "Res Publica", and if a few people have a lot of money it will be easy for them to "buy" the others. So these guys corrupted public officers and shop keepers, and bought everything from shops, so that people would go to buy from them even more.

Generally those communists countries, that did rather well(=not hundred thoudsands dead of starvation) did so because they did not completely ignore marcket rules(East Germany and most of east Europa, Soviets after the millions of starved people 1925-1935, China after the millions of starved in 1950-60).

The "market laws" that you speak about are those of free market and globalism promoted by the modern western society. They are the laws of free market, not the market rules in general. Personally I think that Middle Ages market system was much healthier. At least there weren't people playing with and burning other people's money at a game called "Stock Exchange". Companies that present false accounting reports to not be excluded by this game. Companies that form lobbies and buy people, govs and even mass media, bla bla bla the picture is not much better than communism. It is destiny that it will collapse one day too, as always happened in the past

Sorry, but civilization completely misrepresents it - communism in pure form is total crap, it kills by millions.

LOL... seems to hear western propaganda of years 60s / 70s