Inflation? How to battle?

[Da Swede]

Ok, I'm playing as Sweden from 1419.
I have manged pretty well, but i'm annoyed at the inflation meter. It's rising and currently stand on 17.8%. And it's only 1460 - 70.

How can I lower the inflation without appointing Govenours?

//Simon

 

[unmerged(15337)]

How can I lower the inflation without appointing Govenours?

You can't. So the way to solve the early game inflation problem is don't get into one in the first place. Avoid taking cash to treasury except for relatively rare critical times. You can afford a few points of inflation, especially playing a European major, but inflation in the double digits will hurt. Until you can appoint governors you are stuck with the inflation you have, unless you get a nice lucky streak of exceptional years. Good luck.

 

[DSYoungEsq]

To reduce inflation, there are only two things you can do:

1. Wait for Infrastructure 5, then promote Mayors to Governors.

2. Hold your "minting" of money to an absolute minimum, so that you gain little to no inflation each year, then wait for random events that give you deflation (Exceptional Year, for example).

To avoid inflation in the first place,

1. Make certain you have promoted Bailiffs to Tax Collectors in all your provinces (accept inflation to do this),

2. Turn your military maintenance spending down to 50% when not at war,

3. Reduce your army size to the limit that can be supported without paying a penalty (click on the helmet to see this limit),

4. Further reduce your army size, if needed, to reduce yearly maintenance costs to the amount you get in census taxes each year,

5. Do not send monthly income to the Treasury unless absolutely necessary, or unless you use it to purchase something really important for your economy, like a manufactory, or troops with which to beat up another country, thus allowing you to take provinces, etc.

 

[unmerged(25936)]

Ok, I'm playing as Sweden from 1419.
I have manged pretty well, but i'm annoyed at the inflation meter. It's rising and currently stand on 17.8%. And it's only 1460 - 70.

How can I lower the inflation without appointing Govenours?

//Simon

18% inflation in 1460 isn't managing pretty well =P

Set your "minting" slider to 0 (bottom slider where your tech sliders are). If you have 0 money in the bank and you're losing money monthly it won't force you to take out a loan (it'll just cut into your research). This is preferable though. The amount you lose in research each month to cover monthly cost is probably lower then the added cost to research caused by inflation (yes, inflation makes research cost more). This in addition to all of the other negatives inflation provides (troops cost more to build maintan, refinaries and improvements cost more, etc) means it's important to keep inflation low.

Try to keep inflation as low as possible. I recommend having the discipline to keep it at zero initially until you get better, but later on you'll find yourself letting it rise to 5% or so at times so you can build Refinaries and such early on. Either way though, keep it low-low (5% would be the max you should allow) until you get Infrastructure 5 for Mayors.