Inflation

[lizardo]

Inflation's sole purpose seems to be to punish the player for success. A personal rebuke from the gods.

Punishing useful actions is as old as D&D, but it's sad to see it continue.

For the record, inflation is when there is more currency than available goods & services. Deflation is the opposite.

These are conditions that should be measured for the trade area or globally, not as a punitive measure for particular actions.

 

[josh127]

Not a big fan of the inflation system, but not sure why you say it punishes the player for success. Loan inflation punishes you for being short on monetary resources (although it also offsets a player in a strong position abusing it as free money). Random event inflation punishes you for existing. Gold inflation somewhat fits, but it punishes a weak nation that's trying to reach success a lot more than a strong nation with a strong economy (although it also offsets strong nations cherry picking all the gold provinces in the world).

What makes you say it's punishing players for success though? Am I forgetting an instance that can cause it maybe?

 

[Viperswhip]

Not a big fan of the inflation system, but not sure why you say it punishes the player for success. Loan inflation punishes you for being short on monetary resources (although it also offsets a player in a strong position abusing it as free money). Random event inflation punishes you for existing. Gold inflation somewhat fits, but it punishes a weak nation that's trying to reach success a lot more than a strong nation with a strong economy (although it also offsets strong nations cherry picking all the gold provinces in the world).

What makes you say it's punishing players for success though? Am I forgetting an instance that can cause it maybe?

Well, you get a few gold provinces and you have to take the - inflation idea and keep a master of the mint on hire or bleed major admin points. Added to that, taking money from other nations causes inflation, no matter what you use it for. This is not how inflation works in the real world.

 

[Santoes]

Inflation is pretty tame if you ask me. Whenever I rack up the inflation I am usually taking money in wars, and getting power projection while I'm doing it. I then have no reason to not drop my inflation by spending adm points. Even if you are to stingy to do that, the inflation is no big deal. Event inflation is annoying, but I usually see it as lose adm reducing inflation, or some other negative even that makes me lose MP. Gold mine inflation doesn't matter. You are raking in tons of ducats for a little bit of inflation a year.

 

[Kirikano]

I think there's a ton of negative events though if you let your inflation get even a little high.

 

[Santoes]

I think there's a ton of negative events though if you let your inflation get even a little high.

Actually there are hardly any events for having a high inflation. The only one I can think of is Bankruptcy, which requires around 20 inflation. If you reach 20 inflation you did something wrong.

There are a few events that are triggered for not having enough inflation, those are annoying as they usually increase inflation.

 

[Maerd]

If you reach 20 inflation you did something wrong.

Why wrong? I had once inflation about 80% due to heavy loaning for merc by the end of the game. It didn't matter, because I had more than enough money anyway. Partially because inflation is not modeled as how real inflation works. 80% inflation is not just 80% more expensive but should have been 80% more expensive every year if it were a real inflation.

 

[Camtheman]

Gifts don't give inflation iirc

 

[Santoes]

It's wrong because it just brings more inflation your way, and could cause your country to go bankrupt. i.e. causing someone to complain about inflation when it doesn't matter.

Sure it's not modeled off of real life. That would be more annoying then finding out peanut butter is costing more next year.

 

[Squirrelloid]

Inflation in game has nothing to do with actual inflation. It's completely arbitrary and has no basis in anything in reality.

Real inflation doesn't hurt governments, it hurts *savings*. Real governments don't save money. And the taxes they collect in the future will be higher because of inflation, so governments are never the ones who suffer the effects. Trade good prices increase with inflation. Basically, any money 'made' "now" is generally on-parity with current costs - inflation kicks you in the ass when you *don't* spend money, because that money becomes worth less later. (Now, governments who are responsive to their citizens care about inflation, because their *citizens* care. But its not because it hurts *the government* directly.) (And investments are a way of saving money that maintains the value of money, by leveraging the higher value of money now vs. money in the future and lending it to people who want to spend it now in return for giving you more money later).

(There is of course some lag-time in responsiveness of wages to inflation and yada yada, but generally spending money you make today isn't affected by inflation).

 

[Maerd]

It's wrong because it just brings more inflation your way, and could cause your country to go bankrupt. i.e. causing someone to complain about inflation when it doesn't matter.

If you're consistently expanding then no, you won't go bankrupt ever because you'll be able to get new loans that can pay off several previous loans. The problem will be if you loose and shrink then you'll get your bankruptcy. And bankruptcy is not that bad unless you go for WC and have no time to waste.

 

[Santoes]

If you're consistently expanding then no, you won't go bankrupt ever because you'll be able to get new loans that can pay off several previous loans. The problem will be if you loose and shrink then you'll get your bankruptcy. And bankruptcy is not that bad unless you go for WC and have no time to waste.

I hate to be that guy, but I want to stop you people from getting what I said out of context. I was referring to a person triggering events that require an inflation of 20 or higher. It has nothing to do with any situation where you take loans, expand, and everything is peachy because you know the risk. Sorry for coming off like an ass, but I am not saying "you are wrong for having a 20 inflation", but "the reason you are getting these horrible event is because you did some unsuitable management of your resources."

I think there's a ton of negative events though if you let your inflation get even a little high.

Actually there are hardly any events for having a high inflation. The only one I can think of is Bankruptcy, which requires around 20 inflation. If you reach 20 inflation you did something wrong.

There are a few events that are triggered for not having enough inflation, those are annoying as they usually increase inflation.

 

[lizardo]

Inflation has nothing to do with a loan. I suppose getting a loan isn't much of a sign of success, but it's completely unrelated to inflation except as a punitive measure. The cost of a loan is intrinsic in the interest charged. No other penalty is necessary.

Speaking of loans, states with religious or cultural prohibitions on interest need another method of finance. Usually this is a fixed amount added to the amount borrowed.

Again, inflation needs be an economic concept, not a player punishment method. It makes the game better if these concepts are used to create more depth instead of being an arbitrary complication, and a punitive one at that.

Inflation/deflation should apply to the trade area, or globally if that's too difficult, based upon the value of goods in the market vs the money in circulation.

But this means having goods and having money circulating. I don't know what the game concept of goods is and it's hard to have money circulating if all you have are standard game money fountains and money sinks.

Speaking of loans, there should be a concept of money lenders that asses risk and rates. If money is in short supply or the borrower is risky, rates go up. This would bring an element of drama to an otherwise mundane feature.

What it does is make conditions in the world more deterministic in stead of random or infinite. The player could learn something in the course of play, or at least be able to understand conditions and events as being rational instead of punitive or random, i.e., magical.

 

[wergy]

Inflation is very easy to handle, except of the early years. You just grab a MoM, then you will have buildings which reduce it, or you take the Economy idea which is always useful and it comes a -0.1 inflation modifier. So basically after 1550 inflation is not a problem any more.

 

[lizardo]

True enough, I rarely have more than zero inflation for very long. But my complaint is about the use of it as a magical punitive measure. Well, almost all of EU is based upon random magical effects, but I'd like to eliminate as much of it as I can.

 

[SignedName]

Well, you get a few gold provinces and you have to take the - inflation idea and keep a master of the mint on hire or bleed major admin points. Added to that, taking money from other nations causes inflation, no matter what you use it for. This is not how inflation works in the real world.

There are actually buildings that reduce inflation. But for pagans, gold provinces are actually very bad- they give inflation from gold while the gold produced in the province gives less income than freaking fish.

 

[josh127]

There are actually buildings that reduce inflation. But for pagans, gold provinces are actually very bad- they give inflation from gold while the gold produced in the province gives less income than freaking fish.

Inflation from gold is based on the percent of your total income made up of gold, so the inflation is a whole lot less for a pagan who makes no money off it. You can see this easy enough if you pull up Mutapa's start and Mali's and compare their starting monthly inflation.

In my Sofala game I had about 95% inflation at one point. Basically there was a ton of gold around and not much other income to offset it. I finally started buying it down and by the time I finished I was down to around 30%, but that of course completely eliminated my ability to do almost anything else.

The other point where you're going to get a lot of inflation was more obvious in 1.6/1.7. If you run out of manpower and are reinforcing armies the costs start skyrocketing for some reason. If you get stuck in a few tough wars where you're having to loan up and merc up for survival it can start getting out of hand. This causes a downward spiral where you're trying to recover from so many things (loans, manpower, stability, war exhaustion, etc) that something has to give and inflation is usually low on the priority list since paying off the loans can take time and will keep increasing it anyway. Once you hit a certain point it's hard to recover from. In 1.6/1.7 the economy was worse off and this was more obvious. Now you really have to get in bad shape for this to happen. Of course, you can continue the game and have success. I had a successful Jihad run in 1.5 with huge inflation all game thanks to the Ottomans trying to overrun me multiple times early on.

 

[gall]

Inflation is not magical punitive value. When you have inflation your peasants pay taxes mostly in say November, it reaches your court in let say March (collecting taxes is complicated process). There will be no more money since next March. As banking technique, infrastructure and method of transport progress situation changed, which is not fully reflected in game, this period of times will shrunk (e.g. more taxes not connected with agriculture, tax collecting system is so efficient, that we can transfer money to court more often). If there is inflation after paying taxes, king pay more money for same things in comparison to situation, where there is no inflation. Also inflation often leads to bankrupt of your merchants and artisans, which should affect your tax, production and (especially) trade income.
One thing may use some change - inflation should not be cumulative as it is now. Yes, if something caused inflation at one moment (giant transport of gold, spoils of war, loans), prices rise for years, but not forever even if court didn't react. If you earn 1 point of inflation in 1444, it should fade away in 1454 or something like that. You pay ADM points to calm dawn your angry citizen and not let inflation destroy your entire economy.
Sources of inflation:
gold - that is fine,
spoils of war - it may have smaller effect, as it does not influence currency itself. In theory it could effect in deflation if it consist from goods only (not likely)
loans - represent huge amounts of cash appear in economy forcing shift in prices, this loans comes from family treasures, which normally are waiting for other times, invested in international trade or used to buy exotic goods. Should disappear if you paid all your debts. one more problem would be interest rate, which was much higher IRL. It was always so high, that it compensate lender for said inflation.

 

[nalfz]

Inflation's sole purpose seems to be to punish the player for success. A personal rebuke from the gods.

 

[hitchens]

I thought minting in EU3 was pretty good, inflation in EU4 is just a neusance.