Research efficiency cost spiralling

[Storm_Chasee]

With the US game I've had going for some time my research efficiency cost went up about 25% in the last game year(~207 to 265K Million a day). The research efficiency is about 111% and I have the same number of research programs going on in both years.

Research efficiency
Jul of year // Cost in Millions a day // efficiency
2030 // ~25K // 100%
2032 // ~87K // 90%
2035 // ~207K // 112%
2036 // ~265K // 111%

I have no idea why this editor is ignoring spaces in the table so I'm using // to seperate entries.

10 research projects potential or ongoing each time. Extra research sites were decommisioned. I scrapped 5 decommissioned sites in the last couple years.

I see no reason why the costs should be going up so fast. My inflation rate (which is too high as it is) has average about 8-9% so that can't explain the rising cost.

These costs are now well over 1000X the daily program research costs and the ratio continues to grow fast.

There is a major problem here that needs to be fixed ASAP. At this rate the cost will double before I finish the techs to build the ark to Mars and based on the techs left I have about 5 years.

[Chris-BattleGoat]

Has your GDP/c been climbing also?

[Storm_Chasee]

Not anywhere as fast.

GDP/c in 2030 ~166k
in 2036 ~287K
Most of that increase is due to inflation which was 8-9%.

I've seen a 10X increase in cost when GDP/c didn't double. Overall GDP might have doubled with the increase in population.

Frankly GDP/c shouldn't be a big factor in this cost. Number of active research sites should. Inflation yes. Maybe era though I'm not sure how quantifiable that is independent of inflation.
My research efficiency cost should have gone down dramatically when I decommissioned 15 sites over time, but that was well before 2030. I don't recall seeing that happen.

[Chris-BattleGoat]

Okay, I've asked our programmer to look into it. If you'd like to send over a savegame, it might make it easier for us to do the analysis. Please zip the file and include ticket 21045 in the subject line.

[e-mail]

[Storm_Chasee]

On its way.

[Asdred]

personally i like to control reseach myself sometimes, going for upgrades that reduce useage and demand.

[Chris-BattleGoat]

I looked at your savegame. Your GDP/c as the US is over 280,000. That's about four times higher than IRL. It's going to be driving up labour and development costs in your region. Your inflation is up to 10%.

I'll pass along the savegame to our programmer for further analysis.

[Storm_Chasee]

IRL?I'm not sure what abbreviation is for.

WRT Inflation,it shouldn't be that high. I reject the economic thinking that low unemployment equals high inflation. It totally ignores the fact that employed people are going to produce more goods and services.

I've increased taxes steadily over the last few game years which has held demand down. That should have 'cooled' the economy. I haven't built too many things. I've scrapped about as many power plants as I have built. The units I've built don't have enough personnel to impact the unemployment rate. Yet my unemployment goes down and inflation creeps up. It doesn't make any sense.

I had brought it (inflation) down to about 6.5% and it has increased since then for frankly no apparent reason since what I did was to reduce demand or atleast slow its growth. My production rates versus capacity have been relatively steady.

The increase in GDP/c during the period I saw the 10X increase cost in research efficiency costs are essentially due to inflation. That would account for about a doubling the research efficiency costs, not a 10X increase. Given the inflation rate, a doubling of those costs would have been reasonable in 6 years.

TO me there is such a fundamental problem with the design (or somewhere) that this is a game-stopper. I wanted to research the techs to do the ark to Mars to finish the game I have going.

[DirtyClaw]

IRL=in real life. he's just noting that your GDP/c is almsot 4x the size it is currently in real life. Not saying it is a fact as arguing economics is not my thing but traditionally very low unemployment levels will cause wages to rise as both the private sector and state must compete to fill their rosters causing the employees to have more cash than is the norm to spend on goods and services. Also raising taxes may indeed reduce demand but at the same time you are paying more for those goods and services (businesses do not operate with losses when you tax them they have to pass that onto the consumer), this can become another way for inflation to creep up. Again i'd say i'm not an economics expert this is just my uneducated 2 cents.

[DirtyClaw]

Just to show a real life example of employment and taxes as it relates to inflation here are some references. Norway has to be the best exammple in the world of my point they have the highest % tax in the world (estimated to be at 45% of their GDP) Their unemployment levels have consistently remained below 4% for many many years. Yet consistently every single year they still suffer inflation causing them to pay more for everything.

Norways tax rate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Norway

Norways unemployment rate
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/norway/unemployment-rate

Norways inflation rate
http://www.inflation.eu/inflation-rates/norway/historic-inflation/cpi-inflation-norway.aspx

[Chris-BattleGoat]

As mentioned, I'm passing it along for further analysis. I suspect it will offer insight that allows us to improve the economic model.

[Storm_Chasee]

It would be nice to have a clearer understanding what factors go into determining research efficiency costs. My gut feeling based on the game's behavior is that inflation is being factored in way too many times.

My primary factor would be number of active research sites. A country with 10 such sites should have double the research efficiency costs as one with 5 such sites (other things being equal).

Next factor the era, but don't assume the most modern is automatically more expensive. Just consider the cost of computer power.

Then factor in inflation. Don't worry about wages, GDP/c and other factors that are already impacted by inflation. That way you factor it in once and only once. If you use GDP/c, wages and inflation, you've factored inflation 3 times.

----------------------------

If you look at history you will find the primary driver of inflation, particularly high inflation, is government monetary policy. The player does not have control over that in this game.

I tried a sound economic approach with low taxes and building facilities so the unemployment rate would be low. I wanted a strong economy. People would be producing goods and services and meeting the demands for such in the country. That should keep costs in line. I was punished by high inflation. Yes, wages can certainly go up and that is the best way for wages to go up (via market forces). As long as the higher wages manifests itself in higher demand that's met or in greater savings and investments, higher wages does not equate to higher inflation. The critical thing to me that is modelled in the game is, is demand being met. If it is you don't have the pressure for inflation. If it isn't then you have inflationary pressure.

I cannot think of a period in US history when you had a strong economy(i.e.strong growth in per capita GDP), low unemployment and double digit inflation. I can think of a period when the economy was struggling, we had high unemployment and double digit inflation.

The developers need to junk the notion of low unemployment equals high inflation.

[DirtyClaw]

This idea is not altogether garbage from 1861 until the 1970s this theory held until the 70s stagflation. Stagflation came and went, economists still argue about this anomoly. Most agree with your point about monetary policies. i.e. the fed reserve printing cash and lending to banks for next to no interest rates (a practice so often continued to this day) . Now days most economists are just agreeing to disagree. neither side is completly wrong or right.

https://www.boundless.com/economics/textbooks/boundless-economics-textbook/inflation-and-unemployment-23/the-relationship-between-inflation-and-unemployment-105/the-phillips-curve-399-12496/

Also respectfully 3.0% GDP growth is not strong growth as poloticians might have you believe. (these days that 3% barely accounts for the population growth, and they consider that an economic victory)There are many examples of double digit inflation in american history when there was truely strong growth.

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/historical-inflation-rates/

[Stitxch]

There are methods of managing inflation when you've got a white hot economy. I'd need to look at your game closely to give specific recommendations, but make sure the domestic prices on goods are somewhat high, and that you're reinvesting as much money as you can stomach into domestic spending. This should help significantly with inflation.

Also, those are fairly absurdly high GDP/c ratings. I get nervous when I break 80k.

[Stitxch]

!!!

I just realized, I know what it could be. Have you managed to increase your research efficiency by a large amount? Part of the drawback of doing so is that it also causes you to spend more money per day on research projects, this has a pronounced effect on expensive, institutional techs.

I have ran into this issue many times,

[Storm_Chasee]

Originally posted by Szat:

!!!

I just realized, I know what it could be. Have you managed to increase your research efficiency by a large amount? Part of the drawback of doing so is that it also causes you to spend more money per day on research projects, this has a pronounced effect on expensive, institutional techs.

I have ran into this issue many times,

Not really. I was trying to hold it around 110% during the last couple years. Notice the cost more than tripled in 2 years when it dropped from100 to 90%.It jumped again by nearly a third when the efficiency percent held steady. The costs of the programs are miniscule by comparison. I have 10 programs going at once and am late in the game when I would expect the programs to be expensive.