HG, you keep saying that a 10 percent reduction across the board is the only fair method of fixing what needs to be fixed, but if it is effective at all, how can it also be fair to everyone? For it to have the desired effect of getting the battered, backward and behind nations back on board, it must cause them an advantage relative to others, as you have been claiming that it will(and in some ways, I agree. In some, disagree. I believe the net effect is roughly zero). For them to gain such a relative advantage, all other nations must lose some of their current edge. How then, if it is effective at all, is it a "fair" edit? It is a hidden edit maybe, with indirect effects, but the point, apparently, is to help Sweden, Russia, Poland, Persia, in which case it makes imminitely more sense to make an arbitrary edit in their favor.
This, as so much else, has already been addressed.
In one sense, the edit is entirely fair. It's 10% across the board. In another sense, though, it will be to the detriment of two classes: (1) The tech leaders (I will address this below) and (2) the competitors of Russia, Poland, Sweden and Persia who would benefit, in a sense, if they did fall out of the game. However, if people oppose the edit on the grounds that they would benefit from those countries dying, no edit that gives them better odds would be acceptable. I therefore assume that, apart from Mats, nobody objects on those grounds.
It will be effective, but in a limited way. It allows those countries to be militarily competitive, or gives them a much longer window to be, in the hopes that the economic component evens out a bit. The beauty of it is that it does not touch any of the harm the countries have done themselves, or other circumstances have done them, merely corrects the regressive tax.
I mean, lets consider how randomly lopsided a 10 percent reduction will actually be. Every nation that is near to achieving another tech will gain tremendously in the short term by it. Spain, for example, with the 2nd largest investment in any single tech, will be one of the major beneficiaries, at least in the short term, as it more quickly reaches trade 6.
Sneakily accusing me of bias won't work here. No country (apart from the (2) countries addressed above in the sense addressed above) loses more on the deflation than Spain. You want to look at what I have invested (which is irrelevant-yes, I will get the techs a little faster; on the other hand, so will everybody else, and Spain is already hitting the ATP at the next economic tech level). Look at what I've already spent, and what Aladar and one or two others have already spent.
Your techs will be discounted, allowing you to catch up in a shorter period than before. I've also spent more than anybody on longrange investments such as missionaries, forts and ships.
Let's also consider the effect previous inflation will have on the benefits to this edit. I hypothesis that nations with lower inflation will profit more than nations with higher inflation by a general ten percent reduction. It follows this logic: 10 percent off 90 is a greater effect than 10 percent off 100. Nations like England and Spain will experience a better percentage of tech cost reduction than nations like Russia and France. In fact, England doesn't even have room to lower inflation by 10 percent.
So, if your income is 1000, the next guys income is 500, and your base tech cost modifiers are the same, we'll say 1.0 for convenience sake, and you have 10 inflation and he has 50(a higher disparity for the sake of better illuminating the effect), and such and such tech costs 10k, it'll currently take you 11 years to reach the tech, and he 30 years. But if you subtract 10 percent from both, you now take 10 years to get it. He takes 28 years. You're getting your tech about 9 percent more quickly. He is getting his about six percent quicker. You see the difference? Subtle, I know, but if your marginal numbers count for something, so too must this.
My numbers aren't marginal. Calling them marginal over and over doesn't make them so.
Your numbers, however, are magical. If a tech costs 10K and countries B and A are at 500/50% inflation and 1000/10% inflation respectively, their respective inflated costs are now 15K and 1100. It will take Country A 11 years and Country B 30 years. Now introduce the deflation. It will take Country A 10 years and Country B 28 years. Your conclusion from this is that Country A gains more than Country B because, afterall, 9% is more than 6.6%. First of all, to get this difference you had to widen the largest existing inflation disparity by ten points. This isn't "illuminating" the issue. It's "inventing" the issue. Take the 40-8 split of Russia and England. Their incomes are actually 1288 and 1407 respectively, but I'll even grant you the 2-1 ratio. Assuming England makes 1000 and Russia makes 500. A 10K tech will cost England 10800 (10.8 years) and Russia 14000 (28 years). Introduce a 10% deflation and those costs will be 10000 (10 years) and 13000 (26 years). That is a 7.4% for England and 7.1% for Russia. And that's the completely theoretical
worst it could be.
Which might mean something were it not for the fact that the percentage is irrelevant. By that logic, the 20% inflation can't possibly have a disparate impact on Country A and Country B because it increases their costs by precisely the same ratio. Country A needs 10 years without the inflation and 12 years with it; Country B needs 20 years without the inflation and 24 years with it. Same difference, no?
In your example, Country B gains twice as much as Country A from the deflation. Why? Before the deflation, Country A required 11 years and Country B required 30 years to gain the tech. After the deflation, Country A gained
one year, but Country B gained
two. Put it this way, Country A gets one extra year of the tech versus Country B, but Country B gains two extra years of the tech versus Country A. Therefore, Country A loses one year it would have had ahead of Country B. This is significant enough, but when factoring in Ahead of Time and the fact that the next tier of countries have to compete with the highest tier of countries, and that those countries, in addition to ATP, have to invest in all techs, our hope is that the deflation will be sufficient to allow the Country Bs of the world to keep up in LT, at least.
You really have to come to grips with the regressive nature of inflation. What things actually cost, and the time technology actually takes, matters much more than abstract percentages.
You are also, still, not properly taking into account the wealth difference between the two maps, and the need to balance it out with higher costs. You pay lip service to this, and then completely ignore it on account of "some nations being poorer than in vanilla", which is not actually true. Poorer relative to their neighbors than in vanilla, yes, but I don't think any of them are poorer in terms of basic tax and production.
This is what provoked our conversation last night, in which I lost my temper. I apologize for that, but come on.
1. I have taken it into account. It's why I've always argued against playing on these maps without a custom MP scenario that properly reduces and balances wealth and manpower. It's why I was disappointed that we were using yet another untested scenario, let alone one designed for MP. It's another reason I oppose the inflation, because while you're desperately clinging to it as a perfect, simple cure-all to the wealth problem, the wealth problem makes it worse (see 2).
2. No, I haven't said that some countries are poorer than they are in vanilla. I've said that they are poorer
relative to other countries. That's the whole problem we've been discussing this week and the problem I spent two hours trying to explain to you before we started, and this is why I get the impression you're not genuinely debating the issue.
Inflation is regressive. It hurts poor countries more than rich. Consequently, I oppose this inflation rule even in vanilla, where it would already have distortionary effects. In MyMap, where some countries clearly gain much more than others (and traders gain the most), the distortionary effects are exaggerated. And because the disparity is compounding (each gain in opportunity for the wealthy increases the wealth disparity, which in turn provides more opportunity, etc.), and because the countries that benefit here are already the wealthiest countries in vanilla, it's beyond un-balancing and may actually be fatal to some of the poor countries. At the least, it greatly reduces their margin for error.
Allow me to share more math. In your example, you have a nation making 1200 and one with 2400 income, equal base tech costs.... Now, lets say we take these two nations and build them onto another map, and on this map, they end up having 1800 and 3600 as incomes, with equal base tech costs. Now, lets think back to the illustration you posted before, that depicted the way inflation spikes allow the wealthier to appreciate longer periods of tech superiority, allowing them to capitalize on special tech advantages more than they would normally. I won't repeat it verbatum, but now, lets consider the reverse.
Incomes go from 1200 and 2400 to 1800 and 3600. Say the tech costs 10k. Now, instead of it taking 8.3 and 4.15 years, it will take 5.5 and 2.75 years. The amount of time the wealthier nation has to enjoy a tech lead gets cut from 4.15 years to 2.75. What is the appropriate way to counter this trend? Not to completely re-do tax allocation across the map, because it is impractical time-wise and messes with tactical things like supply. However, inflation targets wealth everywhere it rears its head, thus plugging in a number is a very quick and accurate way to scale back the amount of wealth on the new map to about where you would expect it to be on the old map.
One, you again read the disparity in map benefits completely out of the equation. Both incomes double here. But what if one income doubles (or triples) while the other is increased by, say, 40%? This is a GC halfway through the 16th century. Spain, Holland, the OE and Brandenburg are jumping way out, but everybody else is not excessively ahead of vanilla. Will they be? Some of them, certainly, there's far too much money on this map and colonization has just started. But others? Poland? Sweden? Persia? Russia? It seems rather unlikely, and now is our best chance to fix at least half the inflation-caused portion of the problem without targeted edits.
Two, even if the wealth problem were equally distributed, your example uses incomes that are too high for the tech cost. If I said Country A makes 9K and Country B makes 5K and a tech costs 10K, well, no, that doesn't look terribly significant. However, the whole point is that there is a
time disparity. You can't measure that disparity in fewer than ten years. However, ease of illustration aside, even at higher incomes the regressive effect of inflation is undisturbed because there isn't just one tech-there is the next tech and then the next and then the next. So yes, the raw number of years the wealthy country has a lead is decreased for this tech, but not across the broad range of techs. It still has a 2:1 advantage. I don't think the rich countries need help in that respect, if your argument is that the inflation merely corrects this "imbalance."
Three, it does perfectly illustrate the inverse of a regressive tax, and it is heartbreaking that you're now focusing on the raw numbers rather than the percentages. How are you able to look at the time disparity here (the ratio is identical-8.3 is twice 4.15 and 5.5 is twice 2.75) but not above, when discussing the impact of deflation?
Four, but let's use your example anyway, damn all, and apply 20% inflation to Country A and Country B. Let's switch to an economic tech, which, at those incomes, likely costs ~30K. Your math is wrong anyway (I'm not quite sure what you did, but the division is off-it won't be 2:1 but 1.5:1). At 1200 and 1800, they will hit the techs at 25 and 16.6 years respectively. At 2400 and 3600, they will hit the techs at 12.5 and 8.3 years respectively. This is still a 1.5:1 ratio and, as I said, the difference between 8.4 and 4.2 does not impact much (save a reduction in the opportunities of the rich, which I would say is a good thing that needn't be corrected) until Country A hits the ATP. But at any rate, overlay 20% inflation now. The tech will now cost 36K. Country A will reach it in 10 years and Country B will reach it in 15 years.
So let's grant that there is some vanilla time advantage for Country A that we lose in MyMap and partly restore through your inflation rule, even though that's wrong, as one possibility. Now, what if the incomes don't double? What if the incomes of some countries naturally double and others increase by 50% and most increase by 20-25%? What if some countries hardly gain anything? What if it's the wealthiest countries that get the doubling? And the next wealthiest that get the 50%. And the next wealthiest that get 20%? And the poorest that get somewhere from 0-15%?
Let's say Country A is one of those rich countries. Its income at x stage in the game is double what it would be in vanilla-3600 from 1800. And let's say Country B is one of those poor countries-1500 from 1200. This isn't even touching the disparity between Spain, or the OE, and Sweden and Poland, and the problem we've identified will really start to show up next session and the one after (and before you ask, we're talking about it now so that something like the deflation has a chance of working; after it happens, only targeted edits will do) when the other traders break out. But we'll go with this.
The 30K tech will now take 8.3 years for Country A and 20 years for Country B. The disparity in vanilla has not
narrowed. It has widened from 8.4 years to 11.7 years. Now overlay inflation. It will take Country A 10 years and Country B 24 years. This widens the disparity by an additional 2.3 years.
So through your own math, we've arrived at the same place. Is it possible that the ratios are different from what I describe? Perhaps. Could they possibly be equal for all twelve countries? No, and I think you know that.
Taking the inflation allocation by itself, you might find a formula to make it appear that the poor are being disadvantaged, though at best I still find this to be marginal. However, when you are mindful of the need counter the increased wealth of the map, it does not. It may sound patronizing for me to mention this again, but you've been rather thick on this subject, so it seems to be necessary.
I didn't "find" a formula. This is descriptive, not normative. This is what is actually happening, like it or not. It's just a mathematical representation of a basic economic principle-flat taxes are regressive.
Yes, there is increased wealth in the map. Yes, you badly, badly want to believe that this simple, across-the-board edit is a solution because it seems so elegant. Even if it were a solution (it's not, clearly), it would be worse than the problem. The blessings of this map are unevenly distributed. They are distributed
to those countries that are already wealthy. Overlaying inflation exacerbates this disparity.
Because some countries, like Sweden, are poorer on this map than in vanilla, they deserve special consideration of some sort, but when you have a weed, you pull the weed out. You don't dig up the entire flower bed. You go where the problem is and you fix it. Going after the inflation is just looking for scapegoats and disrupting the game without positively affecting balance.
Perhaps this was something we should and could have done before the game started.
Since you ignored all of this before the game started because you "just wanted to play and go with the flow," despite introducing a revolutionary rule to an already revolutionary map, we don't have that option. Again, find out if anybody objects to a targeted rescue package for the Four Sick Men. If nobody does, by all means, do that instead.
The deflation is our way of trying to do this easily and fairly.
This idea of removing inflation across the board is at best a blanket solution. At worst, it will help various nations at random, creating minor balance disruptions the whole way up. The only true relief for the poor will arrive when the top techers reach the ahead of time penaltry(which is something we should be trying to avoid, not race toward).
That you do not take the time to understand something does not mean it's random.
The impact of the deflation is perfectly predictable. What people do with the deflation is what's unpredictable, but that's not our concern.
We could roll back inflation, and then roll back all by one tech group as well, and in some ways this would be acceptable, but this is not a superior solution. It rewards all those who have the fewest establishments- most especialy manufacturies, and while this demographic is most prominently the poor, it's also populated by middling countries. The Netherlands, for example, have three manufacturies. They could save a lot of money by having a massive construction immediately after, while those who have just recently built a lot of them, like England, are unable to take advantage. These aren't major issues, but you have to again be mindful of the greater amount of wealth on the map, which makes an increase in costs across the board appropriate, not just in tech, but in everything else... if you want the cost to income balance to somewhat reflect vanilla.
See, this tells me again that you don't understand the issue. A 10% deflation coupled with a reduction in tech group for all nations would help with the other cost-raising components of the inflation rule, but sacrifices the biggest component-which is
reducing the cost of technology by 10%.
And how about you take it easy, eh? I'm trying to follow your essays as best I can, but frankly they are very wordy. If I make a mistake in understanding something you mean at this or that place, that'll happen, but you're hardly guiltless of this. I have had to repeat a number of my arguments over and over again, trying to do it in fresh and interesting ways, because of your apparent lack of comprehension.
No, you haven't "had" to repeat them over and over again. You've just repeated them over and over again, heedless of reason.
We didn't have to have this debate in the first place, and certainly you haven't needed to become militant about it. To put it back in perspective, you want to change something about the game, with this ten percent reduction thing. It's not something anybody is entitled to, and is certainly not appropriate to this map, as I have hopefully explained adequately by now. And it is certainly not the ideal way to fix the current balance issues. Other proposals have been put forth that accomplish this much more effectively. It appears to be tied to your romantic love for vanilla, which is ironic when to roll this back would in fact move the map further away from a vanillaesque balance.
I think it's humorous that, when it comes to all of the other suggestions proposed to fix our balance quandary, you have insisted that if any one person objects, it should be set aside. But on this ten percent thing, you feel that a majority vote is appropriate. Because this edit affects countries evenly, right? But like I've said, if it affects all evenly, then it's a pointless edit. If it doesn't, then it is unfair to somebody.
Do you find it terribly humorous? Because I've explained the difference, and I've also said, over and over and over and over and over, that if no one objects to targeted edits for the Four Sick Men, I don't either. That might well be better, but it is not as fair, certainly, and so you'd better have unanimous approval.
As for your other "much more effective" ideas, they do nothing to help the Four Sick Men, which is what the rest of us have been talking about all week. If you want to "fix" the balance in other ways, that's a separate issue that should be discussed... Separately.
