Inflation for EB 2 economies

[gamerdude873]

Hey I was wondering if some basic "Inflation" would be included in EB2 to simulate some of the trouble of running an empire. As I understand it, the Romans had some terrible trouble with it at intervals, forcing people to even revert to bartering. I was thinking that this might be useful in helping control runaway treasuries with almost limitless supplies of money. Inflation could help keep the real buying power of said money down by either 1) raising the costs of unit recruitment (unlikely and probably not possible) or 2) simply taking a big chunk out of tax income as one's empire expands.

Personally, it gets kinda dumb when i can buy virtually all the soldiers I want.

[WinsingtonIII]

You can definitely accomplish simulating inflation, as I know that the M2TW mod Deus Lo Vult includes a feature like this. However, I obviously have no idea whether it will be included in EB2.

Edit: Here's how the DLV feature works (In spoilers):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

1.7.4. Economic Status Screen + Inflation

An economic status screen is shown in the financial overview popups: it is calculated by the stochastic economic +- events:
Interest Rates of your savings account are although calculated dependent on the actual economic stratus:
+5 Overheated Boom (all economic events are positive) …….20% interest
……………….
0 normal....
………
-5 Depression (all economic events are negative)... 0% interest

Subscreen Inflation:
Fieldcosts and settlement costs will double\triple if higher inflationlevels are reached, new inflation popups in financial overview screen:
- normal inflation: player treasury < 50000
- high inflation: 50000 < player treasury < 100000
- extreme inflation : player treasury > 100000

The info is from this link

[Ibrahim]

You can definitely accomplish simulating inflation, as I know that the M2TW mod Deus Lo Vult includes a feature like this. However, I obviously have no idea whether it will be included in EB2.

Edit: Here's how the DLV feature works (In spoilers):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

1.7.4. Economic Status Screen + Inflation

An economic status screen is shown in the financial overview popups: it is calculated by the stochastic economic +- events:
Interest Rates of your savings account are although calculated dependent on the actual economic stratus:
+5 Overheated Boom (all economic events are positive) …….20% interest
……………….
0 normal....
………
-5 Depression (all economic events are negative)... 0% interest

Subscreen Inflation:
Fieldcosts and settlement costs will double\triple if higher inflationlevels are reached, new inflation popups in financial overview screen:
- normal inflation: player treasury < 50000
- high inflation: 50000 < player treasury < 100000
- extreme inflation : player treasury > 100000

The info is from this link

can deflation be simulated alongside inflation? because any steady decrease in revenue, but increase in demand for that revenue, willl doubtless cause an increase in the price (buying power) of currency; in other words, deflation of currency.

one must also have a certain level of control for inflation, not just get a serious inflation on reaching a certain level, if they wish to add to realism. however, I doubt if this can be done, though I may be mistaken.

[ARCHIPPOS]

This is really interesting. I love such economic aspects of the game. Here's some ideas.
-Corruption could drasticaly decrease income.
-Mines could be engineered to dry out after some decades.Especially if the player chooses to upgrade them.
-High fertility rates could be perhaps linked to the rise in the cost of training and building??? (remember more people>food prices up>everything becomes more expensive).
-farm improvements and long range sea/land trade (ports/roads) diminish inflation (thus reducing costs).

i dunno if such stuff are hardcoded or can be changed by the EB team.

[vpapako]

This is really interesting. I love such economic aspects of the game. Here's some ideas.
-Corruption could drasticaly decrease income.
-Mines could be engineered to dry out after some decades.Especially if the player chooses to upgrade them.
-High fertility rates could be perhaps linked to the rise in the cost of training and building??? (remember more people>food prices up>everything becomes more expensive).
-farm improvements and long range sea/land trade (ports/roads) diminish inflation (thus reducing costs).

i dunno if such stuff are hardcoded or can be changed by the EB team.

Also resources shouldn't be equally distributed across the map. There were countries whose resources made them unique in economic value and gave a motive to an empire to conquer them. For example, the mines in spain, the grain of egypt, the farms in greece and others. Mines in spain could for example produse significally more than other mines

[Bucefalo]

I really don´t like how "corruption" is represented in M2TW, i mean, the further you are from the capital the more corruption there is, a big nonsense. Instead i would suggest to represent corruption in larger empires by increasing the chances of characters getting bad traits (like: corrupt, disloyal) the more settlements the faction owns. So a small faction would have good characters, but arche seleukeia for example might start to get bad traits from some of their governors, as they become corrupt or disloyal. Corrupt is simply just a trait which decreases a % of money in the settlement, while disloyal would be a trait that reduces loyalty. I think that would give larger empires more headaches and increase fun playing as them as well. If you make it so that each settlement needs a governor to be run (for example not being able to do manual recruitment/construction without one) then it would affect practically all the settlements.

[Subotan]

Government revenue is not the economy. What is being proposed for methods to model inflation is entirely the opposite to what has been observed in practice. Inflation is generally caused when demand for goods outstrips supply, leading to suppliers upping their prices, which in turn leads to a decline in the value of currency.

I think we would all agree that higher taxes lead to more government revenue, and are the primary instrument of increasing government revenue in R:TW. However, Higher taxes leads to lower demand (As people have less money to spend on togas, olive oil etc.), which would lower inflation. In the simulation proposed, inflation would be weakened by lowering taxes and increasing government spending; the exact opposite of what happens in reality!

[ziegenpeter]

-Mines could be engineered to dry out after some decades.Especially if the player chooses to upgrade them.
.

Definatly NOT! MInes do represent an improved minig all over a whole region and mines can only be build in very resourceful regions. so it would be unrealistic that they dry out. I think in ancient times they didn't have the means to drain this much resources. This ain't modern industry.

[WinsingtonIII]

can deflation be simulated alongside inflation? because any steady decrease in revenue, but increase in demand for that revenue, willl doubtless cause an increase in the price (buying power) of currency; in other words, deflation of currency.

one must also have a certain level of control for inflation, not just get a serious inflation on reaching a certain level, if they wish to add to realism. however, I doubt if this can be done, though I may be mistaken.

I really couldn't tell you. I don't think DLV has it as a feature though. Like you say, it may not be possible within the limitations of the engine.

I'd also like to point out that I don't even really like the economics system of DLV all that much, with its random events and boom and bust cycles. I think it doesn't do a very good job of actually emulating how most medieval economies would have worked (particularly those that were almost entirely agricultural) and rather is simply there to make the game more challenging for the player. Of course, for most of the kingdoms/empires present at the start of any M2TW game in 1080, having a centralized tax revenue system is hardly realistic in the first place, so I guess a lot of the problem is with the limitations of the engine. But I'm getting off topic. My point is, I'm not sure whether these measures are really an effective way of simulating a medieval or classical economy in the first place, particularly in the parts of the world where the economy was almost entirely agricultural at the time.

[bobbin]

Personally, it gets kinda dumb when i can buy virtually all the soldiers I want.

I don't know about the other stuff but the recruitment replenishment rates will be adjusted to prevent armies full of elites, which would go someway to solving your problem.

[Tenebrous]

Then yours stuck with huge amounts and money and unable to train any solidiers...

[bobbin]

I did say it only went part of the way to solving the problem.

[vpapako]

I don't know about the other stuff but the recruitment replenishment rates will be adjusted to prevent armies full of elites, which would go someway to solving your problem.

That prevents you from recruiting only elites but it doesn't prevent you from recruiting endlessly. In this game you can constantly be at war. Constantly. That is not realistic. When an empire loses a big amount of men in war the are willing to offer terms to the enemy because their population isn't suficcient for endless warfare. Little boys need to grow up in order to be recruited as soldiers. Unless the romans had cloning facilities

[Cyclops]

Look the EB period economy was IIRC a hotchpotch of systems, which the ancients themsleves ahd a pretty shaky grasp of. I studied the Oeconimica of psuedo Aristotle briefly at Uni and it seemed like a bunch of dirty tricks, the sort of stuff that people get gaoled for, and this was supposed to be government policy.

Econmic mini-games would be very cool, but the simple blocky system (set tax levels for varying consequences) works in a rough'n'ready way. Was inflation a problem in the EB period? Niot that I recall, although our knowledge of the classical economy isn't strong.

Introducing an extra variable like inflation would be good if you could also introduce other features like currency debasement (a typical dirty trick in the EB period) guilds and monopolies (like inflation, more of an Imperial thing) etc.

...Unless the romans had cloning facilities

refragatio est vacuus!

[ok I realise that isn't the borg smilie but I couldn't find one, and at least that has the eye-thingy]

[B-Wing]

I've got a bachelor's degree in economics, so I'm definitely fascinated by such topics, but I'm afraid that any economic system that could be incorporated into a game set over two millennia ago that covers the entire Middle East, Europe, North Africa, and most of Central Asia is going to have to be very, very limited. I love the fact that mods like EB and DLV (and their fans) have such lofty goals, but... inflation? Really?

Quoting the original poster:

I was thinking that this might be useful in helping control runaway treasuries with almost limitless supplies of money.
...
Personally, it gets kinda dumb when i can buy virtually all the soldiers I want.

The real issue is what to do (if indeed anything needs to be done) about factions having incomes that allow them to field as many armies as they want. I haven't really seen this happen to myself in EB, as I tend to quit campaigns as soon as I feel like victory is inevitable, but it definitely happened with vanilla M2TW and I understand the problem. I'm actually kind of surprised to hear that this happens in EB, since those high-end, elite units are so dang expensive. I would have thought the unit prices themselves would be have served as a sufficient sort of "inflation" to counter rising revenues. Perhaps they need their upkeep increased?

[TancredTheNorman]

Script assistance could save the AI, and doesn't medieval total war 2 have ways to keep you from being able to recruit for a number of turns (allowing the ai to recapture lost lands?).