Mystery inflation w/ Jonas!

[KingOfLands]

So I've been trying to get a Clan game going, but my economy keeps running itself into the floor around turn 200. As I'm not doing anything terribly different than usual, and can manage just fine as Charadon, I'm a little confused about this. Today I took the drastic step of actually opening the economic adviser and:

Spoiler :

I am a little perplexed as to how I ended up with that high an inflation rate, and it's pretty much crippling that early in the game. Anyone have any insights? I've got a save, too, if someone wants a look at that - I didn't have a particularly large army going and my city maintenance, as you can see, wasn't too bad either.

 

[smusebaer]

I think you got the wrong civics...try city states

 

[Senethro]

I had an inflation of 100 on seven cities playing Lord of the Balors as Basium. I put it down to only having medium sized cities, spending too long in God-King driving up my expenses and increasing inflation, and also having expenses such as 70 unit cost and 40 unit supply for an extended period of time.

 

[Grimz101]

I thought inflation, increased gradually turn by turn, to stop big empires steamrolling everyone? Or does it have a different mechanic in FFH?

 

[KingOfLands]

I think you got the wrong civics...try city states

I'm not sure how that would help. Looking at the save mentioned, I was still running despotism several turns before that screenshot, and I doubt I changed civics because my vain efforts to research education were still ongoing. At that point I was at 40% inflation with 4 cities and around 25 units.

It does appear to have been increasing over time, as a slightly earlier save had me with a mere 37% inflation and the same number of cities. I really think something odd is going on here; my economy went south much too quickly, and it only seems to do it when I try to play a game with Jonas.

Shortly after taking the screenshot I started a game with Auric and am experiencing nothing nearly as drastic, despite actually succeeding in running God-King.

 

[Senethro]

What difficulty and speed are you playing on anyway?

Or you could try and use a different tech route. Mine goes something like this.
1. Agriculture, make sure and settle beside Fresh Water, build a worker first.
2. Calendar, adopt Agrarianism.
3. Crafting
4. Mining, locate Copper and place a city nearby.
5. Ancient Chants
6. Education or Mysticism if you're Philo and desperately want early GP.
7. Code of Laws ideally, but if you have Gold, Incense, or Dye tiles to work you can get away with not going for CoL immediately. Adopt Aristocracy.

Your Settling/Improvments scheme should ensure there is freshwater at all city sites prior to Construction unless for good reason. Farm grasslands, mine hills, cottage plains river tiles, workshop at your discretion.

 

[KingOfLands]

Normal speed, Emperor difficulty.

Though I appreciate the startup suggestion I suspect that's not the problem in this particular case. It's specifically the inflation overload that's bugging me.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

19 inflation at turn 251

That doesn't look so bad...

50 income and no education at 0 science slider at turn 251

Uhhhhhhhhh. Dude, inflation's not your problem here.

 

[KingOfLands]

That doesn't look so bad...



Uhhhhhhhhh. Dude, inflation's not your problem here.

Yeah, by that screenshot the game is almost completely beyond redemption unless faeries descend from the sky and bestow education, several towns, and probably RoK and astronomy on me, since I still managed to kill Alexis and get a continent to myself. I've got a vile start going, commerce and happiness-wise, and have been buried under an accumulation of slow research. Plus, as you can see, I put off education, which is ordinarily not quite so big a deal, particularly since before my research went to hell I managed to get Festivals.

Looking at the numbers as far as inflation goes on some other saves, though, you guys are right: It's got to be something else I'm doing wrong. The economic hill I'm stuck climbing still seems much steeper with Jonas, and this isn't the first game I've noticed it.

Maybe I'm just shooting myself in the butt with For the Horde. I'll take another crack at it instead of holding inflation to blame.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Might I recommend turning inflation off? There is a game option that does that, but it is a hidden one for use in scenarios.

 

[WarKirby]

I don't think the game is beyond redemption.

Start by killing off the nearby bears and skeletons. Get rid of threats.
Then scale down your military. Disband troops and try to get out of the rut. Hell,they'll start disbanding themselves when you go into debt anyway.

restructure tile working in every city, to focus exclusively on commerce where possible. Riverside squares are most important

Look at your civic options, and change to anything that lowers maintenance.

What techs do you have?

 

[ChinaBlue]

@MagisterC
Would you mind explaining to me how to do this please? the easy to apply version..

 

[zup]

Go to CIV4HandicapInfo.xml and change it. Pretty much the only way I can think of how to add it to a game that's already going.

<iInflationPercent>0</iInflationPercent>

The number is by default something else, change it to 0 for any difficulty level you wish. That takes care of inflation, provided the game understands it.

Remember that as AI suffers significantly reduced inflation on higher levels, it gives you an advantage.

 

[Neomega]

That doesn't look so bad...

seconded. turn 251, 19 inflation, not bad.

 

[ChinaBlue]

Thanks Zup. What I actually want to know is how to choose from all the settings normally available and the hidden ones (in scenario's).

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Open C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Fall from Heaven 2\Assets\XML\Gameinfo\CIV4GameOptionInfos.xml, go down to GAMEOPTION_NO_MAINTENANCE, and change <bVisible>0 to <bVisible>1 if you want to be able to turn the option on and off in a normal custom game or change <bDefault>0 to <bDefault>1 is you just want it always on.


This wouldn't work in an ongoing game, unless you go into worldbuilder, save it as a scenario, edit the scenario is Notepad/Notepad2/Nodepad++ to turn the option on, and then load that scenario to continue.

 

[Zechnophobe]

So I've been trying to get a Clan game going, but my economy keeps running itself into the floor around turn 200. As I'm not doing anything terribly different than usual, and can manage just fine as Charadon, I'm a little confused about this. Today I took the drastic step of actually opening the economic adviser and:

I am a little perplexed as to how I ended up with that high an inflation rate, and it's pretty much crippling that early in the game. Anyone have any insights? I've got a save, too, if someone wants a look at that - I didn't have a particularly large army going and my city maintenance, as you can see, wasn't too bad either.

As far as I can tell, it isn't a situation where the costs are too high, but rather one where your income is too low. Educationless at 251, and with 10 unit cost is pretty bad on normal speed. Actually, it's about as bad as I can think of. Remember that just having bigger cities doesn't get you more economy unless those cities are working tiles that produce it. Looks like you just out expanded yourself critically, and teched in the wrong direction.

 

[Neomega]

the danger of embers is for the hoard can overweight you in unit costs.

 

[megamanx06]

what exactly is inflation?

 

[KingOfLands]

As far as I can tell, it isn't a situation where the costs are too high, but rather one where your income is too low. Educationless at 251, and with 10 unit cost is pretty bad on normal speed. Actually, it's about as bad as I can think of. Remember that just having bigger cities doesn't get you more economy unless those cities are working tiles that produce it. Looks like you just out expanded yourself critically, and teched in the wrong direction.

Yeah, I played a flat-out terrible game there. That was an ugly little slice of land commerce-wise to begin with, but I didn't make terribly good use of it. I was just astonished when an economy, bad as it was, which had been limping along without that inflation fell apart on me. Then I opened my mouth, metaphorically-speaking, without thinking about it and started this thread.

Further play and looking at other saves suggests that, as people have been saying, that's not all that unusual an amount of inflation for that point in the game. I remain a little perplexed about where it came from but watching it in other games suggests that it just sort of builds up over time. I'm paying an appalling amount of money for it in another game, around Turn 300 - it's 1/2 to 2/3rds of my economic costs - but I can afford it there since my economy's running along more correct lines.

I have a new game going with Jonas where I still managed to put education off almost 'til the end of my first war, but in this one I survived the inflation-over-time death spiral which ate me alive in the game above and I've got cottages / people I can trade with going, so I'm climbing out of the hole.

Dumb as this thread has made me look it's broken the seductive power of axemen + warrens and I'll be a good boy and build an economy before my army in the future. I've been used to a much more building-oriented style of play except during my occasional forays into the Doviello so I never really watched a bad (or, really, nonexistent) economy crash and burn before. I blame the jump up from Monarch, which for me has coincided with FFH going final pretty neatly.