Inflation

[Cyrusfan]

The long term effect of the coarse inflation model, I think, is to cap your treasury. Like cities' crime rate, inflation of 10% caps (stabilizes) the treasury at 10x per turn income, at 1%, treasury is capped at 100x per turn income, etc.

 

[AIAndy]

I'd rather have a (uniform) late game gold proliferation problem (which can be tweaked in various well understood ways), than a terminal, but non-unifiorm (depends on your civic history and so on, and thus only effects some play styles) late game gold crunch.

Sounds good.

 

[Koshling]

After V25 is released I also want to give it a trade impact (high inflation devalues your currency relative to your trade partners), by applying the same modifier to gold in each direction (so at high inflation things will cost you more and you'll get less from any given trade). However, that's a relatively minor detail, and can wait until after V25.

 

[BlueGenie]

Am I getting this right if I presume that after the inflation fix I'll be able to have however much costs I want to as long as I have the income to support it and only leftover after all costs are paid will be subject to "inflation"?
Somehow what I am presuming seems to me like a bad thing to happen. No longer will inflation and thus increased costs be a hindrance to expansion or military units hoarding, I'll just have less left of the excess of my income.
Basically we'll be back at the runaway incomes with nothing to keep those incomes in check. Capping the Vault doesn't stop the income in the first place. Reduced Vault doesn't affect everyone anywhere near equally either.
Some don't really use it, like me. I upgrade my units but that's about it. A few times I might use a little to buy peace but that's it. That way I can run with high costs, just needing to be a little in the green. The new inflation won't bother me.
Some rely heavily on their Vault, using it to buy units, cities, trade for resources and other things, hurry production and whatever else one can use for. They need high incomes but can usually rely on a lower military and fewer cites (as with hurrying their cities are more developed). This strategy will be working like a charm with early low to none inflation but will be dead in the waters with reduced max Vault in the later game, which is when they really need that .
Most are somewhere in between and how it affects them will depend on how the game goes for them.

Then there's the question: How high is the maximum the new inflation will go? 100%? Above 100%? Lower than 100%?

I'm not sure I'm liking this development. For me it is not increasing costs of things as the game progresses at all. Considering that I believe inflation is a way to measure the increased costs of things and not a way to measure increased wages/income I'm also not really buying that income should be considered increased because inflation is rising. Higher inflation, or costs, means you have to have a higher income, not that you automatically get a higher income.
In the game income goes up all the time while getting new buildings to build, and more cities to build those buildings in. Thus we have the increased income, and thus we need those increased costs as well. Reducing Vault hoarding doesn't really do that.

Oh, and one more thing; if a long term effect will be to cap Vault at the inverted percent of your income of the inflation it will certainly affect nations very differently. Big nations with a high income (which they will get with nothing increasing their costs) will be able to have a lot. Smaller nations with lower income will not be able to have as much.

Oh, and once Inflation reaches high percentages everyone will benefit from having as many Military Units as they can afford on their income as any extra will be mostly gone anyway (I'm considering a 50% inflation). Having a surplus income of 10'000 will let me have 20'000 in the Vault at all times, or I can have 5'000 more units and 6'000 in the Vault at all times. 5'000 more units... that don't really cost me anything... (this is counted on Deity and considering the extra handicap cost for units).

Mmm. No, I'm not liking this development. Better to give us players more things we can spend our money on, and increase those costs depending on the inflation rate, than to reduce the value of leftover .
Speaking of which I just realized that an inflation of even 1% will have a much larger impact on some than others. If I've managed to save up 10 million 1% per turn will decrease it fast and after 11 turns it'll be more like 10% devaluation, not 1%. If I'm spending my cash all the time and have 1000 in Vault then 1% will be less than my surplus every turn so in effect no devaluation, just 10 more costs per turn.

/end rant

Cheers

 

[Koshling]

Am I getting this right if I presume that after the inflation fix I'll be able to have however much costs I want to as long as I have the income to support it and only leftover after all costs are paid will be subject to "inflation"?
Somehow what I am presuming seems to me like a bad thing to happen. No longer will inflation and thus increased costs be a hindrance to expansion or military units hoarding, I'll just have less left of the excess of my income.
Basically we'll be back at the runaway incomes with nothing to keep those incomes in check. Capping the Vault doesn't stop the income in the first place. Reduced Vault doesn't affect everyone anywhere near equally either.
Some don't really use it, like me. I upgrade my units but that's about it. A few times I might use a little to buy peace but that's it. That way I can run with high costs, just needing to be a little in the green. The new inflation won't bother me.
Some rely heavily on their Vault, using it to buy units, cities, trade for resources and other things, hurry production and whatever else one can use for. They need high incomes but can usually rely on a lower military and fewer cites (as with hurrying their cities are more developed). This strategy will be working like a charm with early low to none inflation but will be dead in the waters with reduced max Vault in the later game, which is when they really need that .
Most are somewhere in between and how it affects them will depend on how the game goes for them.

Then there's the question: How high is the maximum the new inflation will go? 100%? Above 100%? Lower than 100%?

I'm not sure I'm liking this development. For me it is not increasing costs of things as the game progresses at all. Considering that I believe inflation is a way to measure the increased costs of things and not a way to measure increased wages/income I'm also not really buying that income should be considered increased because inflation is rising. Higher inflation, or costs, means you have to have a higher income, not that you automatically get a higher income.
In the game income goes up all the time while getting new buildings to build, and more cities to build those buildings in. Thus we have the increased income, and thus we need those increased costs as well. Reducing Vault hoarding doesn't really do that.

Oh, and one more thing; if a long term effect will be to cap Vault at the inverted percent of your income of the inflation it will certainly affect nations very differently. Big nations with a high income (which they will get with nothing increasing their costs) will be able to have a lot. Smaller nations with lower income will not be able to have as much.

Oh, and once Inflation reaches high percentages everyone will benefit from having as many Military Units as they can afford on their income as any extra will be mostly gone anyway (I'm considering a 50% inflation). Having a surplus income of 10'000 will let me have 20'000 in the Vault at all times, or I can have 5'000 more units and 6'000 in the Vault at all times. 5'000 more units... that don't really cost me anything... (this is counted on Deity and considering the extra handicap cost for units).

Mmm. No, I'm not liking this development. Better to give us players more things we can spend our money on, and increase those costs depending on the inflation rate, than to reduce the value of leftover .
Speaking of which I just realized that an inflation of even 1% will have a much larger impact on some than others. If I've managed to save up 10 million 1% per turn will decrease it fast and after 11 turns it'll be more like 10% devaluation, not 1%. If I'm spending my cash all the time and have 1000 in Vault then 1% will be less than my surplus every turn so in effect no devaluation, just 10 more costs per turn.

/end rant

Cheers

There's an element of truth in this, and maybe it's an argument for leaving things for further debate rather than rushing in for V25 now.

To answer some of your points, and to raise counter-points in some areas:

• (real world) inflation really has little effect apart from eroding savings (and debts too actually), so ideally inflation would model that (which is not the same as saying we don't need a game mechanic to soak up late game gold, but it may be that this isn't the best one to use). Your argument that it increases costs only, and not automatically incomes, isn't really true (well the causality aspect is but not the correlation aspect) in the wider context because they are strongly coupled by cofactors in real economies (inflation tends to result from increased money supply, which devalues currency and pushes up numerical wages, but not real wages, and also supply side costs tend to decrease in real terms with time (scientific progress makes for more efficient use of materials and labour), so real costs of manufactured goods decrease over time.
• Currently it is utterly broken for anyone with a play style that uses high inflation civics or a lot of gold rushing early on - there is simply no way back once you've done that as your costs will explode later in the game WHATEVER you do
• We DO need a mechanism to soak up late game gold, but IMO maintenance costs are a better vehicle to tweak to achieve this - they are much more related to the size of civ/army etc. you are trying to maintain and are therefore a less blunt tool. They are (crucially) also addressable by taking remedial action (inflated costs are not)
• Acting as a mechanic on primarily treasury provides a negative feedback effect on over-hording. Negative feedback is generally a good thing in mechanic design.
• An inflation modifier of 15% doesn't have to mean 15% treasury reduction per turn. After all inlfation rates are normally spoken of as annual but because turn lengths are variable that makes no sense game-wise, but equally a scaling factor can be applied to turns (so 15% might mean 15% per 10 turns say)

I DO think this needs more debate though, so I am happy to leave it until after V25, though it does mean certain play styles are really quite broken in ways that are not obvious until MUCH later than when you have stabbed yourself. However, since this has been the case for 4 or 5 releases at least, there is a case for saying it can't be must-fix-now urgent.

I'll leave this for V25. Please continue to debate here, as my proposal after V25 is still to do what AIAndy suggested (plus the trade modifier effect), but I accept we WILL need to tweak other areas to compensate (maintenance costs or maintenance modifiers)

 

[ls612]

@Koshling:

Man this seems complicated, I'll let you guys figure this one out. I do think though that we should warn people that certain things will not work well, and bork you in the long run. Also, in the mean time I'll set the inflation rates down a couple notches to alleviate the issue until a good permanent fix is decided upon.

 

[BlueGenie]

First off Inflation values need to be tweaked before release of v25. I gave a bunch of numbers that should prove better than the really high ones that were in before. On top of that a Maximum Inflation per % of the game passed can reduce the damage on players running High Inflation Games. If we want 250% inflation to be the maximum you can incur then every % of a game that has passed can only see the inflation raised by 2.5%, regardless of what Civics you run or what else occurs in the game (250% is just an arbitrary number). Players running Low Inflation Games can/should still be able to keep themselves way under that number for most of their game.
It might be a good idea to make players more aware of the effect Inflation will have on the game in C2C. With more income early on than Vanilla BTS it's easy to spend more with later inflationary penalties. Having +500 per turn makes it easy to get more units, more cities, more everything, which when Inflation does rear up makes the inflation seem a lot higher than it might really be.

To counter some of your statements *wink*:
*(real world) inflation does a lot more than just erode savings. Sure, for those with a high income and good savings it does just that, deflates the value of your savings. For anyone living on or near minimum wages without much in the way of savings anyway inflation serves to increase your daily living costs and makes you unable to keep up with the same living standard as you had just a few years ago. In the same manner people with higher incomes are more likely to get a higher increase in wages every year so in that way incomes do rise with the inflation. For those on lower wages, especially minimum wage, wages do not rise as fast as the inflation so in that regard income does not rise with the inflation. All this is doubly true for anyone without a wage and living on dole or welfare.
*We can fix that. Maximum inflation values and your proposal of deflating Civics.
*This would work too. If inflation is removed, or lessened, maintenances can be increased. For units this is easy as basically you can just add a + cost per turn to later units. TW's already have this, and a bunch of other units, in the early game. Setting it for all units once "real" equipment is starting to be used and increasing this cost more with better and better units will mean less military units in the game in the long run. For City Maintenance though it will be more difficult. We don't want the eXpanders to suffer too much as every play style should be encouraged after all. Besides, increasing City Maintenance would be slightly counter productive considering that so many Civics and Buildings act to reduce this cost. Those effects would then be more about reducing the increase in costs than reducing the costs.
*I don't mind negative feedback on treasury/hoarding, I mind that it only affect treasury when it should affect the pure income, not just surplus after all costs are taken care of. That's like saying that of my wage of 100%; 80% will buy exactly the same things that it did 25 years ago but my saved 20% now only counts as 5% AND I can not save more than 20% or anything I save additionally will be lost.
*In Game I think of everything as turnually regardless of the real lengthy of the turn. Scaling it by how much time really passes will make it really hard for a lot (me included) to actually keep an eye on what will happen during the next turn as I'd need to check the XML files to see how long the turn really is every time. Though I don't think that is what you meant. *grin* I'd suggest not doing it 15% if it's over 10 turns then, rather 1.5% per turn instead. Game wise it's easier for players to reference.

Back to the topic:
If inflation is removed/reduced/changed then maintenance costs can be increased accordingly too, both city and unit costs. I suggest doing a twofer though, or even threefer for after v25;
1) Keeping inflation but having it act a little on the income (not just treasury) rather than the costs. This would act to increase the reduction in income more for high end empires with high incomes than low end empires with less income, but would not kill an empire off by increasing all costs by a ridiculous amount that has no bearing on income at all. Could even set up some Civics to benefit smaller empires and set them with an inflation reducing effect. That way smaller would mean less inflation, bigger more inflation.
2) Increase maintenance costs a little for cities and set extra costs on units per era, or per unit strength.
3) Set maximum inflation percentages by % of maximum turns into the game. 50% into the game inflation can not be higher than -25% (arbitrary number based on -0.5% per percent of game).

Cheers

 

[Koshling]

If inflation is removed/reduced/changed then maintenance costs can be increased accordingly too, both city and unit costs. I suggest doing a twofer though, or even threefer for after v25;
1) Keeping inflation but having it act a little on the income (not just treasury) rather than the costs. This would act to increase the reduction in income more for high end empires with high incomes than low end empires with less income, but would not kill an empire off by increasing all costs by a ridiculous amount that has no bearing on income at all. Could even set up some Civics to benefit smaller empires and set them with an inflation reducing effect. That way smaller would mean less inflation, bigger more inflation.
2) Increase maintenance costs a little for cities and set extra costs on units per era, or per unit strength.
3) Set maximum inflation percentages by % of maximum turns into the game. 50% into the game inflation can not be higher than -25% (arbitrary number based on -0.5% per percent of game).

Cheers

My main issue with the current system is that fact its a ratchet, where decsions you make early on that appear to have litle consequence have a major impact later, and in a way that CANNOT be undone whatever you do.

More than anything it's the cannot-address part that motivates me to change it. The rest is details. That's the main reason I think maintenance should be the major mechanism we use here (we have by-era maintenance modifiers right?? - those probably fit the bill well enough)

Just for the sake of having an alternative though (which is less work)- how about if the amplifying of costs (exactly as it operates now) from inflation used a rate NOT based on the FULL history of your inflation (which is what causes the unreversable ratchet effect), but just a sliding average of your inflation modifier for the last N turns (say 50 on standard speed, so 400 ish on eternity). That would be a very small code change (good for stability), have similar impacts to now apart from reflecing only recentish history, and give you a way out (change to low inflation civis and stay there for a while)...

 

[BlueGenie]

Maintenance by Era could work though it would be a sudden increase every time you entered a new Era. One would have to be ready for taking that hit every time one advanced in Era.
Can one set Technologies to increase maintenance costs? If so it's possible to set up smaller increases over a longer period of time rather than give a big hit every Era advance.

I agree with the cannot-address part but I'm wondering if using the past 50 turns (standard) as indication would only serve to get inflation to a certain point and then stay there until things changed that (hurrying, Civics, and so on). Meaning it wouldn't go up after those 50 turns so once there costs would not increase any more.
Could it be possible to set all extra effects on inflation other than turns passed as temporary (effects reduced/removed after those 50 turns)? If so early hurrying, and early high inflation Civics, would not play a role on inflation in the later game. I think those play a much larger and significant role in the massive inflation rates than turns passed in most games.

Cheers

 

[Daedwartin]

For some of the population - high inflation is seen as good by others; a minor group is retirees and others who live of interest.

Having said that inflation comes and goes. How do you model the affect of runaway inflation in Roman times on the modern times. What about the effect of governments that "revalue" or change their monetary system. Egs "One new dollar buys 1,000 old dollars" or the move to decimal currency.

Japan is another example of where high inflation is viewed as good. The Japanese do not have the resources needed to maintain their economy. They have to buy almost everything from somewhere else. They then turn that into finished goods sold to everywhere that will buy it. Normally high inflation is bad, but import/export economies are healthier when the currency it uses is highly inflated, because when the math works out, it's cheaper. Japan's economic issues right now mostly stem from the fact that the yen is currently worth a fifth of a US dollar. There are a lot of people in Japan giving the government flak about this, and their complaints is the yen is worth too much. But this is only because they are a export/import economy with no ability to supply a industrial economy with domestic resources. If you did things right in civ in general, this shouldn't be a problem.

Also, the gold standard was historically far more stable then the way currencies are valued today.

And even if some nations depend on high inflation, you can't have it too high. Weimar Republic is a prime example. Multimillion inflation rates per hour or so if a recall correctly.

It basically comes down to how your economy is structured. If callable of domestically meeting all or a respectable fraction of your resource needs, low inflation. E/I, high inflation. Hyperflation, avoid like the plague.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Acting as a mechanic on primarily treasury provides a negative feedback effect on over-hording. Negative feedback is generally a good thing in mechanic design.

Two minor points:-

• The Revolution mod punishes you for an insufficient treasury. I think it is 3,000 in ancient/Classical and 50,000 in modern.
• There needs to be something, non-infaltionary, to spend the money on.

 

[Koshling]

I agree with the cannot-address part but I'm wondering if using the past 50 turns (standard) as indication would only serve to get inflation to a certain point and then stay there until things changed that (hurrying, Civics, and so on). Meaning it wouldn't go up after those 50 turns so once there costs would not increase any more.
Could it be possible to set all extra effects on inflation other than turns passed as temporary (effects reduced/removed after those 50 turns)? If so early hurrying, and early high inflation Civics, would not play a role on inflation in the later game. I think those play a much larger and significant role in the massive inflation rates than turns passed in most games.

Cheers

Good point that it would stabilize for any given steady-state behaviour, but if we have inflation caps that is also true. I suspect just having the sliding average operate over a longer period, but with extra weight given to more recent history would give more or less what we want.

Crudely, suppose we maintain two sliding averages, one (A) over 50 turns, and another (B) over 250 turns (say). Then the modifier we apply is a weighted average of the two (say (2A + B)/3). If you stay with the same behaviour (bad civics, etc) for long period this tends towards the long run sliding averge (it keeps getting worse for the period that B is calculated over), but if you actively try to mitigate it (by changing civics) you see significant effects over the time period of A's calculation. Ideally you'd use a continuous function rather than a fix weighted average of two periods, but for simplicitly of calculation I'd just do something like the two period version (sliding averages are easy and fast to calculate).

 

[Cyrusfan]

Could the early civics be given deflationary values (with a floor at the level seen on turn 1)? In the real world when inflation gets to the point that no one wants to use the currency, folks tend to return to barter.

Is there a way to find your current inflation modifier in-game? Or would you just have to monitor upkeep costs from turn to turn?

 

[BlueGenie]

@Curysfan: In Function Key 2, your Financial Advisor, you can hover your cursor over the Inflation entry and see both how high your inflation is and what's contributed to it (apart from time passed). Also some of the early Civics have No Inflation, meaning that inflation does not rise as long as you are in that Civic.

@Inflation Discussion:
One concern Koshling; what would make the Inflation start to rise, and later fall, at all if using the slider option, either with one or two sliders? If the average of said slider(s) is 0 it would not matter if you had Civics giving you +100% inflation as 200% of 0 is still 0, or? So Hurrying would be the only thing increasing your Inflation.
On the other hand if your slider(s) stated 20% and you had nothing raising the inflation would it not always stay on 20% unless there's something directly deflating the inflation?
Because if you set up that time increases Inflation but sets itself as an average of the past 50(250) turns it will take forever to get Inflation up. First turn of +1% increased Inflation will be an average of 1 divided by 50, or no effect. So next turn it would be 1.05/50, third turn 1.71/50, and so on. Even Hurrying or other effects will hardly have any effect at all either.
Unless you envisioned it differently, in which case you should probably explain how. *smile*

I'm not convinced using sliders would solve it anyway, even if it had a background inflation value it used rather than the actual inflation for the average. Well, maybe, but like you said yourself it would be a crude way to do it. Either way it would more be an attempt to bandage over the symptoms rather than fixing the disease.

To cure the disease we might need to address several points rather than taking it as a whole.

*Does Vanilla BTS even have increased Inflation from Civics? (I don't even remember *laugh*) If not that could be one huge reason why inflation rises as much as it does in C2C (apart from that the base time values were off). Those Civic increases should perhaps then not themselves increase the base inflation but only act as a modifier on the inflation. Thus instead of every tick per time passage (if that's how it works) being +1.3% inflation with +30% Civic influences it would still be +1% but the end result would be a cost of 1.3%. 10 ticks in it would not be 13% Inflation but 10+30% modifier. If the ticks just come faster with increased Civic inflations then the timing would simply stay the same instead of being at an increased rate. That way when leaving said Civic(s) inflation would again be at 10% and not stay at those 13%.

*Hurrying inflation increases could be removed completely and instead incur a cost modifier on all hurrying during the next, say 10 turns, hurrying, which decreases every turn. Hurry something = +10% hurrying costs reduced by 1% per turn passing. Hurry while it's still in effect and you add 9 to the current modifier (5 turns later it would then be +14%). Hurry several times in the same turn only adds 10 minus #of hurryings affecting modifier for each additional hurrying. (+10 for first, 9 for second, 8 for third, until at +55% where it is capped).
This way you'd have a direct impact from hurrying but no lasting effect as well as only using your treasury and not imposing costs on everything due to that hurrying.

*Inflation itself could either stay as it is or be changed to affect only your income (please not the treasury only) but then we'd have to set up some way to increase Military, Civic, and City Maintenance costs. At least Civic upkeeps (so Organized Trait gets some more effect) and City Maintenance as Military could be solved by increasing pure cost for increasingly better units though the latter would be dependent on others, ehm, I say when everything here is already dependent on others, not me. *cough*

Sorry 'bout that Koshling, I am trying to help make C2C better if only by opinions, suggestions, and ideas.

Not fully certain anything else plays a role in the current inflation system but if it does that can be addressed then too.
Anyway, these are my current suggestions, all open to all and almost any kind of change.

Cheers

 

[Thunderbrd]

I've often thought that once banking was introduced, gold values should be allowed to go into the negative but compound interest on the debt every round OR once a Federal Reserve is built, bonds could be taken to fill the treasury and would need to be repaid with interest.

I'm not a financial genius... my point is simply that if we could replicate real world economics as closely as possible, it seems it would be the best solution. I'm wondering if anyone knows anyone with an economic masters degree that could advise us on how to set such a system up? (Then we'd have to consider how it would need to be adjusted to play into the rev system correctly...)

In lieu of an attempt to model RL Economies, I have to say most of the ideas floated by Koshling seem to be fairly functional answers to the balance problems we currently face. We have to keep in mind that the adjustments made have to address balance only with a slight head nod to reality in this case since we don't have a greatly accurate model of economics in play anyhow.

 

[AIAndy]

I've often thought that once banking was introduced, gold values should be allowed to go into the negative but compound interest on the debt every round OR once a Federal Reserve is built, bonds could be taken to fill the treasury and would need to be repaid with interest.

I'm not a financial genius... my point is simply that if we could replicate real world economics as closely as possible, it seems it would be the best solution. I'm wondering if anyone knows anyone with an economic masters degree that could advise us on how to set such a system up? (Then we'd have to consider how it would need to be adjusted to play into the rev system correctly...)

In lieu of an attempt to model RL Economies, I have to say most of the ideas floated by Koshling seem to be fairly functional answers to the balance problems we currently face. We have to keep in mind that the adjustments made have to address balance only with a slight head nod to reality in this case since we don't have a greatly accurate model of economics in play anyhow.

The Civ model in general is not a model of a real national economy.

Worst offender is gold and the treasury. Somehow an isolated civ on a remote island can do less research for 1000 years and that yields you something that allows you to maintain your cities 2000 years later?

But I'd say don't bother. It is not likely you can come up with any halfway realistic model that is also fun to play (look at all the ideologic wars between economists about how economies work).
The gameplay aspects are what matters most (and not the implementation of someone's perception what inflation is when it is not even clear what the gold is which it manipulates).

 

[Koshling]

But I'd say don't bother. It is not likely you can come up with any halfway realistic model that is also fun to play (look at all the ideologic wars between economists about how economies work).
The gameplay aspects are what matters most (and not the implementation of someone's perception what inflation is when it is not even clear what the gold is which it manipulates).

I'm inclined to agree with this, but IMO that means it needs changing so that you don't shoot yourself in the foot unredeamably early on.

One concern Koshling; what would make the Inflation start to rise, and later fall, at all if using the slider option, either with one or two sliders? If the average of said slider(s) is 0 it would not matter if you had Civics giving you +100% inflation as 200% of 0 is still 0, or? So Hurrying would be the only thing increasing your Inflation.
On the other hand if your slider(s) stated 20% and you had nothing raising the inflation would it not always stay on 20% unless there's something directly deflating the inflation?
Because if you set up that time increases Inflation but sets itself as an average of the past 50(250) turns it will take forever to get Inflation up. First turn of +1% increased Inflation will be an average of 1 divided by 50, or no effect. So next turn it would be 1.05/50, third turn 1.71/50, and so on. Even Hurrying or other effects will hardly have any effect at all either.

Huh? What sliders? I'm talking about using sliding averages internally (also known as moving averages - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_average), not some new UI control. The sliding average being measured is of your modifier aggregate, which comes directly from hurrying and from civic choices. All it does is smooth the curve of inflation out rather than directly following the modifier changes step-wise. A good analogy would be the gas pedal in your car. Imagine that the thuings that contribute to inflation (civic modifier, hurry actions) are like stepping on the gas a bit more, and your speed is the amount it modifies the turn-to-turn costs by. As you apply civics and hurries you gradually speed up (until you come to an equilibrium point with 'friction'). When you take your foot off the gas you coast slowly to a halt some time later.

 

[BlueGenie]

I know that you mean sliding average. What I mean is what numbers will you be using to reach said average over those 50 or 250 turns?

Cheers

 

[Koshling]

I know that you mean sliding average. What I mean is what numbers will you be using to reach said average over those 50 or 250 turns?

Cheers

Just the inflation modifier that is current (from civics and that turn's hurries) each turn

 

[anunknownman]

well to be honest i never understood inflation, does anyone have any idea what it does????