Since the context was inflation and the only thing inflation affects is upkeep, I thought it was obvious. Had the context been producing units, I wouldn't have bothered specifying production cost; had the context been graphics, I wouldn't have bothered specifying vertex cost.
What purpose does inflation serve?
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Since the context was inflation and the only thing inflation affects is upkeep, I thought it was obvious. Had the context been producing units, I wouldn't have bothered specifying production cost; had the context been graphics, I wouldn't have bothered specifying vertex cost.
Jabie
Wanted in Monte Carlo...
Is it hidden just by another boolean setting? If so, any chance of unhiding it at the next patch. I was never a big fan of infaltion in the first place. Also, how does this effect the painting cows event?
MagisterCultuum
Great Sage
in CIV4GameOptionInfos.xml:
That is the option. If you change <bVisible>0 to <bVisible>1 then it will show up and can be selected. In my versions I tend to do this for every option.
I believe it would completely negate al inflation, so it would make choosing the option to reduce inflation stupid.
Code:
<GameOptionInfo>
<Type>GAMEOPTION_NO_INFLATION</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_GAME_OPTION_NO_INFLATION</Description>
<Help>TXT_KEY_GAME_OPTION_NO_INFLATION_HELP</Help>
<bDefault>0</bDefault>
<bVisible>0</bVisible>
</GameOptionInfo>That is the option. If you change <bVisible>0 to <bVisible>1 then it will show up and can be selected. In my versions I tend to do this for every option.
I believe it would completely negate al inflation, so it would make choosing the option to reduce inflation stupid.
VSPavlov
Wizard of the Toast
And what's the way to control inflation? If I lower my upkeep costs and spend all the money on research only, would I have 0 inflation?..
It wouldn't affect inflation as such, but yes. Inflation affects only upkeep so no upkeep means no inflation.
Luckmann
Esusian Epicure
Yeah, there's a couple of events. Some events are so horrendous that I'm starting to wonder if there's a reason they're in. There's an event that increases inflation by +10%. Who would pick that?
I'm starting to wonder if it could be something like the Library/Orb event. Take the worst choice, get a free tech. Secret bonuses. Pfah! Curse Kael for making me go paranoid.
I'm starting to wonder if it could be something like the Library/Orb event. Take the worst choice, get a free tech. Secret bonuses. Pfah! Curse Kael for making me go paranoid.
Yes and no. You'd still get inflation. It just wouldn't matter to you. Inflation is entirely tied to turns, and have nothing to do with how much money you spend, or wheter you spend any money at all.
That's what I was saying. Am I that cryptic?
The only way to fight Civ IV inflation is reducing costs.
It's not a winnable battle though. With 20 law mana and a pitiful army, you'll still have to pay civic costs. And in time, they will rise to the point where you can't support your civ even with every tile being a cottage on a goldmine.
Emptiness
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Maybe this is a situation that is hitting different people differently based on their play style. If one is running several high-upkeep civics and hasn't built any buildings that boost 
or add trade routes, then perhaps it could have a big impact on one's economy. Personally, I never even notice inflation. I build every economic building in every city, and it adds up. Inflation is increasing my costs over time, but over time I'm earning more thanks to cottage maturity and the boost provided by new buildings. As the game goes by my economy becomes stronger, by growing faster than inflation does.
If you adopt a full on combat strategy where you research only military techs and build only military units (and military buildings when absolutely necessary) then you run the risk of strangling yourself (because you can't keep up with inflation) before you can finish off all of your opponents. Your economy will stagnate, which will have a negative impact on your research or on the size of the army you can support (depending on how you respond to the negative income). Either situation can cost you the game if your momentum doesn't carry you through to a military victory first. Inflation acts as pressure to make you stop and build some economic buildings (and research some economic techs), which I think is why it exists.
or add trade routes, then perhaps it could have a big impact on one's economy. Personally, I never even notice inflation. I build every economic building in every city, and it adds up. Inflation is increasing my costs over time, but over time I'm earning more thanks to cottage maturity and the boost provided by new buildings. As the game goes by my economy becomes stronger, by growing faster than inflation does.If you adopt a full on combat strategy where you research only military techs and build only military units (and military buildings when absolutely necessary) then you run the risk of strangling yourself (because you can't keep up with inflation) before you can finish off all of your opponents. Your economy will stagnate, which will have a negative impact on your research or on the size of the army you can support (depending on how you respond to the negative income). Either situation can cost you the game if your momentum doesn't carry you through to a military victory first. Inflation acts as pressure to make you stop and build some economic buildings (and research some economic techs), which I think is why it exists.
Yeah, all that is true if you are playing games within what is conceived to be a reasonable timeframe to finish up. However if you are a turtling builder and like playing much longer games, there comes a time when you are simply out of possibilities to further advance your empire's economy, which is when inflation becomes a bigger issue, as you may actually have to scale down your costs in order to cope with it.
Given enough time, conquering new cities will actually make your economy worse, not only in the short term, but also in the long, because you have simply hit the economical growth cap, and your expenses/city is higher than your max. income/city.
Given enough time, conquering new cities will actually make your economy worse, not only in the short term, but also in the long, because you have simply hit the economical growth cap, and your expenses/city is higher than your max. income/city.
I'd think inflation could be removed entirely from FFH - it doesn't seem to have a point. This isn't an exact quote from one person but the general consensus is that inflation was originally part of civ4:
"So you don't have a ridiculous amount of money around in the late game."
In the first place I don't even think this should belong in regular civ4 either - what I would hope to do in a mod is simply increase upkeep costs for units as the game goes on, also discourages monstrous armies (which game design tries to discourage in regular civ too).
So I'd say there are even more reasons why inflation makes little sense to have in FFH. The first thing is that tech in FFH is relatively more expensive - in civ4 you do the "whole tech tree" pretty much in parellel. In FFH very often you head down a line for one very expensive uber-tech and unless you've worked up some very crazy trading schemes will never get all of the techs in any reasonable amount of time. So the first problem with inflation is that it slows down further teching - while in normal civ4 if you're already at future tech you don't care.
The other problem with FFH is that you most certainly do NOT get more economic benefit as the game goes in. In civ4 you get recycling centers, laboratories, industrial parks, supermarkets, corporations in BtS, you name it - a ton of new productive buildings into the very late game. It's not until late Renaissance/early Industrial that towns/workshops/etc... hit their peaks, and production later when you get factories and power plants. In FFH, no such boosts exist - all of your economic techs are in the middle of the tech tree, with the exception of maybe gunpowder. I suppose this is actually a reason why windmills/workshops and stuff were boosted but you still hit your max economy much earlier - say maxing farms at Sanitation and then they are the same for the rest of the game. All of the late game FFH stuff is military oriented, so there's really no need for inflation here either - IIRC inflation is not linear so it only builds up very fast the later the game goes. And bringing the game to a close is the whole point of the Armegeddon system anyway, not some lame holdover from regular civ that just cripples everyone's economies.
"So you don't have a ridiculous amount of money around in the late game."
In the first place I don't even think this should belong in regular civ4 either - what I would hope to do in a mod is simply increase upkeep costs for units as the game goes on, also discourages monstrous armies (which game design tries to discourage in regular civ too).
So I'd say there are even more reasons why inflation makes little sense to have in FFH. The first thing is that tech in FFH is relatively more expensive - in civ4 you do the "whole tech tree" pretty much in parellel. In FFH very often you head down a line for one very expensive uber-tech and unless you've worked up some very crazy trading schemes will never get all of the techs in any reasonable amount of time. So the first problem with inflation is that it slows down further teching - while in normal civ4 if you're already at future tech you don't care.
The other problem with FFH is that you most certainly do NOT get more economic benefit as the game goes in. In civ4 you get recycling centers, laboratories, industrial parks, supermarkets, corporations in BtS, you name it - a ton of new productive buildings into the very late game. It's not until late Renaissance/early Industrial that towns/workshops/etc... hit their peaks, and production later when you get factories and power plants. In FFH, no such boosts exist - all of your economic techs are in the middle of the tech tree, with the exception of maybe gunpowder. I suppose this is actually a reason why windmills/workshops and stuff were boosted but you still hit your max economy much earlier - say maxing farms at Sanitation and then they are the same for the rest of the game. All of the late game FFH stuff is military oriented, so there's really no need for inflation here either - IIRC inflation is not linear so it only builds up very fast the later the game goes. And bringing the game to a close is the whole point of the Armegeddon system anyway, not some lame holdover from regular civ that just cripples everyone's economies.
Inflation is indeed a silly mechanic that does nothing more than, as said, offset the fact that a warrior and a carrier has the same upkeep cost.
Late-game armies need to be expensive to maintain (and there is an XML for that under each unit in the vanilla game, but it's set to 0) to help offset the massive economies and counter the stack-of-doom. But I haven't seen anyone make use of it yet (except of course, my old mod that I haven't updated in a while).
On a related note, civs get free upkeep based on how much population they have: This should be removed and be a fixed amount, so large civs would pay more.
Late-game armies need to be expensive to maintain (and there is an XML for that under each unit in the vanilla game, but it's set to 0) to help offset the massive economies and counter the stack-of-doom. But I haven't seen anyone make use of it yet (except of course, my old mod that I haven't updated in a while).
On a related note, civs get free upkeep based on how much population they have: This should be removed and be a fixed amount, so large civs would pay more.
Revolutionist
Chieftain
I never liked inflation in either vanilla or any Civ4 mod myself. It seems like sort of lazy design to me.
Anything that's completely out of the player's ability to affect or repair is not a fun feature. I'm with Mylon on thinking that tweaking unit upkeep costs would definately had been better. I could easily see an Immortal demanding a lot of concessions from his host country for his valuable services, but the group of thugs with clubs gathered from a tribal village would settle for some food and a place to sleep.
It also lets you control how much your economy is being drained by letting you have some kind of voluntary action you can take or avoid. If you need more brawny superunits, pull that science slider back from 100%.
I suppose if it's too much of a change in FfH at this point, there's always the option of bugging people in the FF forum.
Anything that's completely out of the player's ability to affect or repair is not a fun feature. I'm with Mylon on thinking that tweaking unit upkeep costs would definately had been better. I could easily see an Immortal demanding a lot of concessions from his host country for his valuable services, but the group of thugs with clubs gathered from a tribal village would settle for some food and a place to sleep.
It also lets you control how much your economy is being drained by letting you have some kind of voluntary action you can take or avoid. If you need more brawny superunits, pull that science slider back from 100%.
I suppose if it's too much of a change in FfH at this point, there's always the option of bugging people in the FF forum.
I've been itching to get back into modding myself. I might take either FF and Orbis and run with it, adding a lot of the changes of my mod. However, I'd also heavily edit the tech tree and the "Flavor" so tech wouldn't be quite as important as measured expansion, diplomacy, and economic development.
Emptiness
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There are a lot of ways to counteract the effects of inflation. Indeed, just that fact that cities grow larger means that over time you have more people providing income - which counteracts inflation. Only an empire that has grown to maximum population will fail to benefit from this mostly passive counteraction to the effects of inflation.
Doesn't that method also work as a means of coping with inflation?
Although inflation does serve that purpose, I think that it serves another "more important" purpose. Inflation and city maintenance both exist to kill the viability of the Infinite City Sprawl strategy, which Sid Meier has been trying to get rid of ever since it first saw use. City maintenance strains your economy based on the number of cities you have, which penalizes you for increasing the number of cities you control without also increasing the economic output of your empire to match. Inflation demands that your economy continue to grow throughout the game, which is more of a penalty for a civ that has a lower "maximum" economy. Both of those factors cause stress for any civ as time goes by, but they are absolutely devastating for the Infinite City Sprawl strategy because it relies on massive numbers of closely-spaced cities, which because of their tight proximity have a lower maximum population.
ICS is already slightly more viable in FfH2 because of the ability of Law mana nodes to accumulate in countering city maintenance. Removing inflation might be enough to make ICS practical again. I suppose whether that is a good or a bad thing depends on your opinion of ICS. Personally, I'm glad it's dead and I'd rather not see it resurrected.
Revolutionist
Chieftain
My irritation with inflation is purely theoretical, mind. It's incredibly rare for one of my games to go long enough where it's a huge issue. I just don't like the idea of it in general. It seems like very inelegant design, to have some factor that devalues your gold in proportion to nothing but game length.
Your point about ICS is a very valid one, Emptiness. I just never had the patience necessary for micromanaging that many cities, so I never thought about it. Though if you go swimming in enough law mana to make your whole empire an efficient little group of drones, all walking through the streets in perfectly straight lines, you can do ICS regardless of inflation or not.
Admittedly, the kind of changes it would take to rebalance gold costs throughout a game is something best done at the beginning of mod development, not the end of it. It would be an interesting theoretical part of a modmod though, removing inflation but increasing upkeep costs of more powerful units, altering maintenance, and adding negative values to many buildings, so by creating a more capable city, some of the profit from said city is reduced. At least then it would feel like you're getting something from your gold, rather than it just vanishing into the ether.
Your point about ICS is a very valid one, Emptiness. I just never had the patience necessary for micromanaging that many cities, so I never thought about it. Though if you go swimming in enough law mana to make your whole empire an efficient little group of drones, all walking through the streets in perfectly straight lines, you can do ICS regardless of inflation or not.
Admittedly, the kind of changes it would take to rebalance gold costs throughout a game is something best done at the beginning of mod development, not the end of it. It would be an interesting theoretical part of a modmod though, removing inflation but increasing upkeep costs of more powerful units, altering maintenance, and adding negative
values to many buildings, so by creating a more capable city, some of the profit from said city is reduced. At least then it would feel like you're getting something from your gold, rather than it just vanishing into the ether.City maintenance already does a good job of countering ICS, because it increases as a quadratic function. That is, 16 cities would have 16x the maintenance of 4 cities. Roughly. Inflation is purposefully there to counter the growing economy. If you want to reduce ICS, increase maintenance. I also did this in my mod and it has the curious effect of increasing expansion well into mid-game so it's a bit more interesting.
Another factor that reduces ICS in Vanilla is that all of the buildings (except culture) are +%. Even if you build more of these buildings, there won't be any extra benefit.
ICS is encouraged by tiles though. Unless every city can hit size 20 (or more, if running a specialist economy) there's no penalty to overlapping cities. This is a fundamental flaw of the Civilization game design. If the city got the benefit of everything in it's radius and required a more moderate population to make full use of it and other benefits for having higher population (much like specialists currently).
Another factor that reduces ICS in Vanilla is that all of the buildings (except culture) are +%. Even if you build more of these buildings, there won't be any extra benefit.
ICS is encouraged by tiles though. Unless every city can hit size 20 (or more, if running a specialist economy) there's no penalty to overlapping cities. This is a fundamental flaw of the Civilization game design. If the city got the benefit of everything in it's radius and required a more moderate population to make full use of it and other benefits for having higher population (much like specialists currently).
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