What purpose does inflation serve?

[Honor]

Anyone know what the inflation mechanic achieves gameplay-wise? I mean, other than crippling your economy and ultimately making it impossible to play epic, 3000-turn games?

I have been turning it off for quite some time now. Thoughts?

 

[loffenx]

I think that its intended function is exactly what bothers you, so to speak.

 

[Thunder_Gr]

Yes, Honor, this is the purpose. And to make the 2000+ per turn income you can get late game, less game-breaking.

 

[Turinturambar]

It's a mechanic to keep small empires competitive with large ones. Since the bulk of your costs are civics and city upkeep, which grow exponentially with the number of cities, large empires get penalized more with higher inflation.

 

[JonathanStrange]

A question Civ players have long been irritated by and answered as above. I regard inflation as an irritating but probably necessary way of keeping some extra strategy in the game (esp. in the late game): we can't build everything, can't maintain hundreds of cities and thousand of units.

Probably an ingenious and elegant solution, but I've often wondered if there's some "revolutionary" Civ-style game yet to be thought of by some future Great Gamer in which ad-hoc solutions, like this one seems to be, are either unnecessary or more intuitive. (Not criticizing, mind you, but when and if some new Civ game comes along that shakes up the whole concept, we're going to say "Aha! That's how it should have been done all along!")

Unfortunately, our Great Gamer we probably used to research the Wii or assigned as a specialist at EA Games, rather than creating the Great Work of Civ V.

 

[Jabie]

Unfortunately, our Great Gamer we probably used to research the Wii or assigned as a specialist at EA Games, rather than creating the Great Work of Civ V.

Sepak for yourself, I used mine to build FfH.

 

[Kainkenny]

If you want to see a well-done mechanism for inflation, have a look to Europa Universalis 3, a semi real time strategy game, my second chronophageous("time-eater") hobby after FFH2.

 

[odalrick]

It's a mechanic to keep small empires competitive with large ones. Since the bulk of your costs are civics and city upkeep, which grow exponentially with the number of cities, large empires get penalized more with higher inflation.

Unless inflation grows faster for large civs this doesn't work.


As far as I can tell, inflation is there so that the designers wouldn't have to go through late game techs and raise their costs individually. And so that they wouldn't have deliberately cause a carrier to cost more than a warrior.

Civilization IV is riddled with this kind of design mistakes.

 

[Turinturambar]

Unless inflation grows faster for large civs this doesn't work.


As far as I can tell, inflation is there so that the designers wouldn't have to go through late game techs and raise their costs individually. And so that they wouldn't have deliberately cause a carrier to cost more than a warrior.

Civilization IV is riddled with this kind of design mistakes.

Think of it this way (not the real numbers of course):
Civ A has 4 cities, with an upkeep cost of 4 gold/turn (1 gold per city)
Civ B has 8 cities, with an upkeep cost of 16 gold/turn (2 gold per city, since each additional city increases upkeep cost for all cities)

Now if inflation is at zero percent Civ A pays 12 gold less. If inflation is at 100%
Civ A pays 24 gold less than Civ B. Clearly higher inflation is worse for the bigger civ.
This somewhat counteracts the higher late-game potential of a larger empire (more cottages worked etc).

 

[Emptiness]

inflation is there so that the designers wouldn't have to go through late game techs and raise their costs individually. And so that they wouldn't have deliberately cause a carrier to cost more than a warrior.

What? filler

 

[WarKirby]

carriers DO cost more than warriors

 

[odalrick]

Think of it this way (not the real numbers of course):
Civ A has 4 cities, with an upkeep cost of 4 gold/turn (1 gold per city)
Civ B has 8 cities, with an upkeep cost of 16 gold/turn (2 gold per city, since each additional city increases upkeep cost for all cities)

Now if inflation is at zero percent Civ A pays 12 gold less. If inflation is at 100%
Civ A pays 24 gold less than Civ B. Clearly higher inflation is worse for the bigger civ.
This somewhat counteracts the higher late-game potential of a larger empire (more cottages worked etc).

I thought intuitively that doubling costs for both small and large civs should keep the same ratio. I was wrong, but it's quite tricky.

Inflation hits the civs that have a large portion of their budget allocated to upkeep. So a small civ that pays 20% of their total commerce in upkeep will be hit harder than a large civ that pays 10% of total commerce.

As far as I recall, in standard civ upkeep costs tend to be dominated by city and civic upkeep, so larger civs tend to be hit harder.

In Fall from Heaven, there are more ways to mitigate city and civic upkeep and armies tend to be larger. Thus the difference between large and small civs is less.

Speaking of army costs, small civs need proportionately larger armies. The garrisons can be roughly the same size, but a small civ has more border cities and the requirements for an offensive force is about the same. A large civ can also produce units faster and so needs a smaller buffer.

Short version; size is only part of what makes inflation hit harder.

In any case, Civilization IV inflation has very little to do with real world inflation.

carriers DO cost more than warriors

No. A warrior has the exact same upkeep cost as a carrier (not considering inflation). Granted a carrier is quite useless without some fighters, but say a battleship or a tank division.

There is a slight difference in production cost. Warriors are clearly more expensive. When they are relevant, warriors cost about 10ish city-turns. A carrier costs about 4 city-turns. And the carrier will probably be more experienced too.

I'm a bit unsure about the exact costs, but I think my point comes across.

 

[Tacgnol]

Inflation literally acts as inflation. It comes in as the game advances, as your empire and your people become richer, more money circulates in the economy, and therefore your expenses become greater. It is the only thing that increases through just time, which makes it an inevitable force throughout the game, and it certainly is better than just increasing all expenses with city size or with techs, which would just end up slowing advancement. I think it's a perfectly well balanced mechanic, it is definitely not an overwhelming challenge, and while the rate is absolutely ridiculous (75% inflation per year makes more sense than 75% over 500 years) it does have some realism. I do wish there were some ways to affect the inflation rate, both up and down, but the way it is now is not that bad.

 

[Setsuna]

There's an obnoxious mechanic that's turned on by default? Dagnabbit.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Note that you can turn inflation off, its just that it is a hidden option that you can't see without editing CIV4GameOptionInfos.xml

 

[Setsuna]

Wait, now I'm confused. Is this a CivIV basic mechanic or something added by FfH?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

It is a CivIV basic mechanic, but Kael added an option to turn it off in FfH so he could deactivate it in some of the scenarios.

 

[Setsuna]

It is a CivIV basic mechanic, but Kael added an option to turn it off in FfH so he could deactivate it in some of the scenarios.

Ah, the fact that the op chose to complain here completely threw me.

 

[Emptiness]

A warrior has the exact same upkeep cost as a carrier

Ah, now I see what you meant. When you mean upkeep cost and you say cost, confusion ensues.

 

[Ribusprissin]

I would think Kilmorph, of all people, would understand inflation better than anyone (except perhaps Mammon).