Confusion With Inflation

unmerged(657981) · Feb 26, 2013

Hi Guys,

I have recently been playing EU 3, however there has been just one thing bothering me, inflation. I don't understand the inflation in the game at all. Could someone please explain it to me?

Also, how do I manage inflation? If I just lower the treasury slider, what are the disadvantages? Also, sometimes when a message pops up asking me for economic reform, the inflation is reduced by 2 and stability is reduced by 2. Is this basically the same as moving the treasury slider or is it something different?

Thanks so much,
DarkEddy

unmerged(136582) · Feb 26, 2013

Inflation is a kind of malus that increases the cost of research, stability, buildings, hiring and maintaining units or advisors, colonists, spies, missionaries, etc. A good rule of thumb is to keep it under 10%, however depending on the circumstances you may have to run it up higher.

The total level of inflation is displayed just below the balance on the Economy tab. Inflation is increased by minting using your treasury slider. If you hover your mouse over the slider, you'll see how much inflation changes at your current level of minting. Inflation can also occur if you own a gold-producing province. To control it, you can hire a Master of the Mint advisor, adopt the National Bank National Idea, or lower your level of minting. Inflation can sometimes be reduced by moving a slider toward Free Subjects or through an event, such as the one you mentioned. The effect of the event would be to lower your stability level by 2 and to lower TOTAL inflation by 2 and it does not affect your month-to-month accumulation of inflation.

The "disadvantage" of lowering the treasury slider is that you'll accumulate ducats more slowly, or even lose money. However, a monthly deficit isn't necessarily unsustainable: at the end of every year, you receive a Census Tax worth an entire year's worth of tax which can make up for small enough monthly deficits. Hover your mouse over the amount of ducats you have to see your expected year-to-year profit/loss. Once you are large enough, running large monthly deficits is pretty standard.

Dathon · Feb 26, 2013

Besides lowering your treasury-slider, you can also reduce maintenance on land and naval units, thus spending less money on that and reducing your monthly deficit, but be aware that lowering the maintenance also lowers morale of your armies and fleets, so don't do this during wartime unless your not really participating in actual fighting. (a good setup would be during peacetime to have maintenance on 25%, so that both your armies and fleets are still able to defeat rebels/pirates, and when you get into a war move the sliders back up to 100%)

In addition on what Frontovik said you can hire a Master of Mint (each lvl reduces inflation with 0.02, up to 0.12) and Adopt the national bank Idea (0.10 reduction), you can also have a more centralized goverment ((not free subjects) 0.05 reduction with Centralized at (-5)) and eventually build tax assessors( 0.05 reduction).

So if you got a lvl 6 Master of Mint, Have the National Bank Idea and got your policy slider on -5 for Centralized you will have a reduction of 0.27. You can then set the slider to mint more money, but keeping the overal inflation reduction on 0. The side effect of minting more money is while you get more in your treasury, your research will be lower (money towards reasearch + minting = monthly income).

Also when you are converting provinces towards your state religion or building colonies these actions will also require money to maintain, but you can also adjust these sliders if your running low on cash.

The reform-event is basically just a thing of the game to make good running countries do a bit less better for a short while.