Controlled Gold Mining and Control over Monetary Policy too expensive

[Wertilq]

I think the Burgher priviledges "Controlled Gold Mining" and "Control over Monetary Policy" are just not worth it... like ever, their downsides should be changed to something to make them viable.

Controlled Gold mining lowers the value of all your gold mines by 15%, that already is a huge cost for a Nation like Mali or Kilwa that can be extremely Gold heavy in the mid game, you can reach 50-60 ducats from Gold mines. It has a cost of 7-9ducats per month alone then, this is a major cost already.
That you ON TOP of that get All powers cost -5%, is such a huge slap in the face. Especially all the African nations that struggle with Monarch points due to institutions and tech, there is just no way you ever want to lose 5% of your monarch points for pretty much anything.
There exist a better modifier then for "Controlled Gold mining" that exist in the game and is barely used "cost to reduce inflation". Slap the full +50% cost to reduce inflation and suddenly controlled gold mining makes sense for the super gold hungry nations. It lowers production for them, putting a serious dent in their economy, makes it so they can't reduce inflation manually as easily unless they revoke priviledge but still can handle their inflation from gold mining somewhat, make it feel like a reward to unluck "Controlled Gold mining" instead of being meaningless.

Idea behind "Control over Monetary Policy" seems to be that you let the burgers be responsible for your countries economic policy, so they handle inflation, loans and whatnot in a manner that ensures your inflation doesn't spiral away. All power cost malus is massive, so it pretty much never feels worth it to take it. You could micromanage it and use it while you recover, then remove it when you spend your monarch points, but it is just not a great thing to give out. Instead make it exclusive with Burgher Loans, and give it another cost. Purpose should be that it is used to recover from lots of loans and high inflation. Monetary policy tend to be related to things like loans and control over amount of money in flow to change the inflation. So target the economy in that manner, give less value from gold mines, give less money from ducats gifted/taken from wars, lower loansizes while it is active. Make it something that you use to combat your inflation with at the cost of income now and ability to take lots of loans for the moment. All power cost just turns it into "never worth it".

 

[FishieFan]

Control over monetary policy is great which is why most people pick it, you just need a bit of innovation to ignore the all power cost increase. Not having to manually lower inflation is definitely worth it.
Controlled gold mining is designed for when you make your gold mines really high dev, as you never want it to beyond 10 production normally

 

[Wertilq]

Control over monetary policy is great which is why most people pick it, you just need a bit of innovation to ignore the all power cost increase. Not having to manually lower inflation is definitely worth it.
Controlled gold mining is designed for when you make your gold mines really high dev, as you never want it to beyond 10 production normally

Thing is, getting all power reduction is one of the strongest buffs you can get, you don't want to take a malus that negates it. Manually lower inflation is costly, but 5% loss of all monarch points and that diff is not massive. It's roughly 1-2 monarch point per month, depending on how much you have, for something that for direct lowering is around 4 monarch points worth of inflation reduction, unless you have a bunch of all power cost reduction (like golden age, innovativeness etc) then it's worth less.

Is it giving more than it cost? Yes, but it's not the only source of lowering inflation and it's very expensive. Monarch points are the most valuable commodity in the game.

 

[apcio]

Control over monetary policy is great which is why most people pick it, you just need a bit of innovation to ignore the all power cost increase. Not having to manually lower inflation is definitely worth it.
Controlled gold mining is designed for when you make your gold mines really high dev, as you never want it to beyond 10 production normally

Control over monetary policy is not great since there is a lot ways to lower inflation, for example as catholic nation you can easly get -0.2 inflation monthly just by picking advisor and papal bonus so automatic inflation reductions is meh, while other bonuses are not worth +5% all power cost since you always want to lower mana cost for all things, not increase it

 

[Secuter]

Control over monetary policy is not great since there is a lot ways to lower inflation, for example as catholic nation you can easly get -0.2 inflation monthly just by picking advisor and papal bonus so automatic inflation reductions is meh, while other bonuses are not worth +5% all power cost since you always want to lower mana cost for all things, not increase it

It depends on the situation. Control over monetary policy can be great none-catholic powers or powers that has few cardinals and therefore low papal influence. Regardless, it is cheaper for them to have it than having to spend monarch points reducing inflation. I always pick it, as it allows me to keep inflation low and it effectively allows me to make use of Indebted to Burghers for free when I need to.

 

[apcio]

It depends on the situation. Control over monetary policy can be great none-catholic powers or powers that has few cardinals and therefore low papal influence. Regardless, it is cheaper for them to have it than having to spend monarch points reducing inflation. I always pick it, as it allows me to keep inflation low and it effectively allows me to make use of Indebted to Burghers for free when I need to.

advisor will be enough most of the, unless you got a lot of gold mines or take a lot of loans, but there is only few nations that got problems like that, and there are still economic ideas that you can pick

 

[Haresus]

Control over monetary policy is great which is why most people pick it

Most people pick it? I can't exactly ask you for a source on what most EU4 players do, but can you at least point me towards a guide or person of note who uses the privilege a lot? As far as I know this is one of the more unpopular privileges, but I might be entirely wrong.

Not having to manually lower inflation is definitely worth it.

Why? Are you saying this because you like the quality of life feature of not having to click "Reduce Inflation", or because you think that you use less mana with the privilege?

 

[FishieFan]

Control over monetary policy is not great since there is a lot ways to lower inflation, for example as catholic nation you can easly get -0.2 inflation monthly just by picking advisor and papal bonus so automatic inflation reductions is meh, while other bonuses are not worth +5% all power cost since you always want to lower mana cost for all things, not increase it

As a Catholic you need to stock up 50 papal influence for that, you might want it to go into other curia powers. Meanwhile burghers have few privileges early game so its easy to slap it on. As said innovation can quickly counter that +5% power cost. 5% more MIL is worth alot less than 5% ADM, and saving 200 ADM means getting admin techs quicker and have more free admin to core

 

[FishieFan]

Most people pick it? I can't exactly ask you for a source on what most EU4 players do, but can you at least point me towards a guide or person of note who uses the privilege a lot? As far as I know this is one of the more unpopular privileges, but I might be entirely wrong.

Many guides have it

Why? Are you saying this because you like the quality of life feature of not having to click "Reduce Inflation", or because you think that you use less mana with the privilege?

Not quality of life but that its always ticking down. With its two other bonuses you probably are saving more mana as well

 

[apcio]

As a Catholic you need to stock up 50 papal influence for that, you might want it to go into other curia powers. Meanwhile burghers have few privileges early game so its easy to slap it on. As said innovation can quickly counter that +5% power cost. 5% more MIL is worth alot less than 5% ADM, and saving 200 ADM means getting admin techs quicker and have more free admin to core

50 papal influence is very easy to get and other curia powers are not that powerful or are just situational so it's still good to spend it for lower inflation, so it's still not worth to go for it as Catholic. to counter +5% power cost with innovativeness you need to get to 50%, and that's harder to do with +5% all power cost. Saving mana points is good except you won't save it by making everything more expensive just to lower your inflation which you can do in few different ways so. Also if you are woried about inflation - just avoid taking loans and gold mining

 

[Wertilq]

Many guides have it

I have not seen it in any guides or any of the content creators use it, any time I have seen it mentioned they say it's trash.

 

[jonjowett]

I used to think "control over monetary policy" was worthwhile, until someone prompted me to check it mathematically.

• Benefit: -0.15 yearly inflation reduction
  • It costs 75 admin mana to reduce inflation by 2
  • So this benefit is equivalent to giving you... 5.625 admin mana per year
• Cost: All power costs + 5%
  • An income of 24 mana/month (ie. 8/month of each type) is fairly attainable in the early game
  • You generally spend all of the mana you make (on something or other). So, we can assume that the amount of mana you spend is the same as the amount of mana you generate. (IE: There's no need to try to total up tech costs, idea costs, development, peace deals, coring, etc etc etc.)
  • So, you spend ~288 mana/year (of each type)
  • Because of the estate privilege, this spending is 5% less effective, so you only get the benefit of 288*100/105=274.3 mana/year
  • So the cost in mana/year in the early game is ~14 mana/year (ie. 4.7/year of each type)
  • As your mana generation capability increases, the cost of this privilege will increase accordingly.

The benefit of 5.6/year is significantly less than the cost of 14/year.

Even if you consider admin mana on its own, the benefit of 5.6/year is not that great compared with the cost of 4.7/year. (You gain 1.1 admin mana per year - wow!)

So, if you are ONLY looking to control inflation (ie. you don't particularly need the tiny reduction in interest or the tiny increase in prod eff) then it's not a good idea to grant this privilege - it's better to decrease inflation manually.

---

EDIT: On the other hand, "controlled gold mining" can be very worthwhile if your economy is extremely heavily reliant on gold income, because rebuilding a gold mine after depletion costs a LOT of diplo mana, and this is one of the very few ways (in vanilla) to reduce depletion chance. Also, the lower inflation from gold is effectively a gift of admin points. So, +5% all power costs is a reasonable tradeoff IMO.

---

EDIT2: Since the title of this thread is that "control over monetary policy" is "too expensive", I think you could make it fair by changing either the primary benefit (inflation) or the cost by a factor of 3. (IE: +1.66667% all power costs, or -0.45 yearly inflation reduction.)

 

[Haresus]

Many guides have it

Can you link one? I would love to learn more about this.

 

[Diskianterezh]

I started to think that everything that adds 5% mana cost was awful, but then I looked at the incredibly huge sum of bonuses maluses you have for techs (for instance) : +100% in advance, +55% with time, -10% innovation, -20% with various events and bonuses, ideas ect... And finally its not that much.

But you have to, indeed, use it wisely : early Mali can get almost free gold with that privilege, and God it helps ! Later, when you get 500g from trade, you can revoke it.

 

[KRBLACK]

I used to think "control over monetary policy" was worthwhile, until someone prompted me to check it mathematically.

• Benefit: -0.15 yearly inflation reduction
  • It costs 75 admin mana to reduce inflation by 2
  • So this benefit is equivalent to giving you... 5.625 admin mana per year
• Cost: All power costs + 5%
  • An income of 24 mana/month (ie. 8/month of each type) is fairly attainable in the early game
  • You generally spend all of the mana you make (on something or other). So, we can assume that the amount of mana you spend is the same as the amount of mana you generate. (IE: There's no need to try to total up tech costs, idea costs, development, peace deals, coring, etc etc etc.)
  • So, you spend ~288 mana/year (of each type)
  • Because of the estate privilege, this spending is 5% less effective, so you only get the benefit of 288*100/105=274.3 mana/year
  • So the cost in mana/year in the early game is ~14 mana/year (ie. 4.7/year of each type)
  • As your mana generation capability increases, the cost of this privilege will increase accordingly.

The benefit of 5.6/year is significantly less than the cost of 14/year.

Even if you consider admin mana on its own, the benefit of 5.6/year is not that great compared with the cost of 4.7/year. (You gain 1.1 admin mana per year - wow!)

So, if you are ONLY looking to control inflation (ie. you don't particularly need the tiny reduction in interest or the tiny increase in prod eff) then it's not a good idea to grant this privilege - it's better to decrease inflation manually.

---

EDIT: On the other hand, "controlled gold mining" can be very worthwhile if your economy is extremely heavily reliant on gold income, because rebuilding a gold mine after depletion costs a LOT of diplo mana, and this is one of the very few ways (in vanilla) to reduce depletion chance. Also, the lower inflation from gold is effectively a gift of admin points. So, +5% all power costs is a reasonable tradeoff IMO.

---

EDIT2: Since the title of this thread is that "control over monetary policy" is "too expensive", I think you could make it fair by changing either the primary benefit (inflation) or the cost by a factor of 3. (IE: +1.66667% all power costs, or -0.45 yearly inflation reduction.)

I use control over monetary policy for its interest reduction. The rest is just fluff.
If stacked, you can get interest rates of 1%

This allows you to have such an obscene amount of loans before bankrupting that you can just spam manufactories everywhere way way before you otherwise would be able to.
500 * 0,01 = 5 ducats in interest per year (per manufactory)
5 / 12 = 0,417 ducats per month

You can make more than 0,417 ducats per month per manufactory. This allows insane snowballing.
Also, if you pair it with diplomatic annexation, the +5% all power cost is not really impactful.
Vassal feeding and then stacking 100% diplomatic annexation will still allow you to annex for next to nothing.

 

[jonjowett]

If stacked, you can get interest rates of 1%

Can you elaborate? From the loan int rate reduction sources on the wiki, I don't see how it's possible for a generic mid-sized early-game nation to get less than 2.5% interest (ie. without "various events and decisions" or specific national ideas).

(You only get 3 idea groups before manufactories unlock at tech 10, so you can't have the full -1.25% from admin-inno-eco-trade; you probably have at most -1% from admin-eco and -0.5% from burgher priv, for -1.5% in total. Maybe another -0.25% from some religion or location feature. Maybe another -0.5% from the national bank event. But I'm struggling to find a realistic way to get from -2.25% to -3% as an arbitrary mid-sized nation. Also, taking admin-eco as 2 out of your first 3 idea groups sounds rather challenging.)

Overall, yes, it might be possible to get loans this cheap if you make that the whole focus of your run. (Similarly, -100% diplo annex cost is possible if you do some very specific missions and tag switches - I think it's a Sardegna-Piemonte mission reward that's the key, right? - but it's probably not possible to get the full -100% until the late-game.)

Can this estate privilege be used as part of a specific min-max strategy to drive one particular stat into the stratosphere? Sure! But that doesn't mean it's valid as general advice. It's like saying you don't need to worry about money because you can beat up Ming for 3000 ducats every 10 years before they eventually explode in 1500.

 

[Namepending4]

I use control over monetary policy for its interest reduction. The rest is just fluff.
If stacked, you can get interest rates of 1%

This allows you to have such an obscene amount of loans before bankrupting that you can just spam manufactories everywhere way way before you otherwise would be able to.
500 * 0,01 = 5 ducats in interest per year (per manufactory)
5 / 12 = 0,417 ducats per month

You can make more than 0,417 ducats per month per manufactory. This allows insane snowballing.
Also, if you pair it with diplomatic annexation, the +5% all power cost is not really impactful.
Vassal feeding and then stacking 100% diplomatic annexation will still allow you to annex for next to nothing.

Just wanted to mention if your inflation is at 1% without the privilege
than why not just keep it at 1.5%.
Like using you own math if:
1% gives 500 * .01 = 5 ducats a year
1.5% gives 500 * .015 = 7.5 ducats a year
So your taking a 5% power cost malus which for most of us is a pretty big malus, and saving an extra 2.5 ducats a year per manufactory.
I mean to be fair I don't usually take loans to make manufactories, but I thought most people went Bankrupt on purpose to not pay the interest at all. If you don't wanna go bankrupt I get it, but it seems like it's a lot of investment just to get 1% loans imo.

Side note stacking cost reduction doesn't really change any of the math, your still spending 5% more than you would either way. It's additive so if you have like 60% CCR, with the privilege it only counts for 55%. Stacking modifiers doesn't change the amount of mana that the privilege is going to cost you. Let's not even talk about when you wanna spawn institutions outside of Europe, cause that already cost a couple thousand monarch points before you slap +5%.

 

[FishieFan]

Just wanted to mention if your inflation is at 1% without the privilege
than why not just keep it at 1.5%.
Like using you own math if:
1% gives 500 * .01 = 5 ducats a year
1.5% gives 500 * .015 = 7.5 ducats a year
So your taking a 5% power cost malus which for most of us is a pretty big malus, and saving an extra 2.5 ducats a year per manufactory.
I mean to be fair I don't usually take loans to make manufactories, but I thought most people went Bankrupt on purpose to not pay the interest at all. If you don't wanna go bankrupt I get it, but it seems like it's a lot of investment just to get 1% loans imo.

Side note stacking cost reduction doesn't really change any of the math, your still spending 5% more than you would either way. It's additive so if you have like 60% CCR, with the privilege it only counts for 55%. Stacking modifiers doesn't change the amount of mana that the privilege is going to cost you. Let's not even talk about when you wanna spawn institutions outside of Europe, cause that already cost a couple thousand monarch points before you slap +5%.

You get inflation everytime you take ducats in a peacedeal, the constant tick down for that makes it useful

 

[Namepending4]

You get inflation everytime you take ducats in a peacedeal, the constant tick down for that makes it useful

In the original post I was responding to they mentioned getting interest down to 1% which almost certainly requires economic ideas which comes with a built in .1 inflation reduction. Which imo is more than enough to offset the inflation you get from peace deals. I didn't mention inflation because the jonjowett already broke down a lot of the math behind inflation reduction and pressing the inflation decrease button.

I think the core issue here is that everyone arguing that the privilege is rather weak values monarch points more than money, while everyone arguing that they use the privilege a lot or every game value to some extent money more than monarch points. The small amount of inflation you get from peace deals or having like a single gold mine early game IMO isn't a big deal and having something crazy like 5 or 6% inflation, is way better than +5% power costs. Since inflation is just less ducats.

Also .15 yearly inflation means that it takes 13.3 years repeating to get the 2 inflation you get from the button. You take a new tech every 13 years, so even if you just take one this has already cost you 90 monarch points (30 of each) not including everything else that costs points. So baseline you only save 45 admin, ignoring that your wasting 30 diplo/mil. After you factor in coring cost, your just not saving that much admin over 13 years, and spending diplo/mil on nothing. I know you value admin more than the other two, but it's still not a good conversion rate.

 

[Less2]

Control over monetary policy is great which is why most people pick it

I can die now knowing that I've read the most hilarious statement possible about EU4.

-15% goods produced is bad enough on the other one but +APC is the worst modifier in the game.