Solving an Economic Crisis

[Gen. Monkey-Bear]

In my current game as Belgium, my economy was strong and my people happy and my country at peace when suddenly an economic crisis occurred in Austria. The crisis began with an over-accumulation of Private Capital (I think). It soon spread like a virus to the rest of the world, and recently it hit poor little Belgium. My Private Capital dropped from just under 1000 to barely above 300 in one turn. Those damn Austrians!

Global trade is slow now and it is difficult to regain our prior wealth. Each turn, I can barely move our Private Capital stocks up by two or three points. Does anyone have an idea how to solve this crisis?

My first thought is to really play the Colonial Merchants card - I think it generates five Private Capital per turn. Is this a good idea? And how many times can I play this option?

[loki100]

in truth you can just ride it out. They rarely last long and as long as you have underlying militancy under control then you can ride them out. Perhaps close down a few economic units where you already have a decent stockplie and let that run down. The savings in Private Capital will tide you over. As you have a short term inflation boost, if you can, its best to delay investments till the crisis has passed

[Jim-NC]

An economic crisis can happen when one of the majors has too much private capital (over 2,000) with inflation. There is a minimum of 2 years between each crisis. There's nothing you can do about it, but just hold on. It will work it's way through the system, and then things will return to normal. The colonial merchants do in fact give you private capital (after you spend some). They also help your colonization efforts.

[Albert Herring]

Just went through one of these (the Americans started it this time), and interestingly my pre-crisis inflation was 4%, but after a few turns where it went up to 9%, it dropped back all the way to zero. Which was nice.

[Gen. Monkey-Bear]

Well, now my inflation is back down to zero and private capital is back over four hundred (though rising very slowly) but I'm still getting messages telling me how the crisis is hitting us hard. I know that growth has slowed, but other than this everything looks normal.

[Jim-NC]

It appears that every time there is a crisis, you get +5% inflation to your country, which may or may not be erased through events (most of the time the extra inflation is reduced near the end of the crisis, but not every time). Also, the crisis takes a while to have all events fire, even though you may have had your inflation reduced.

[Tach]

On the subject of economic crises, I haven't played my game for a couple of weeks so can't remember if my nation had recovered or not. Is there any way to tell if I am still subject to it or not?

[Jim-NC]

If you have recovered, there will be no more messages about the crisis. That is the only way to know it is really over.

[Sherman]

The game sticks close to the idea that inflation is too much money chasing too few goods. Some things that will have an effect are raising your taxes and turning off the money creating collection centers. I suspect that buying gold would help, but I haven't tried that. Maybe my next outing as S-P.

If you are a large power like the US . . . stop monetizing gold. Stop selling gold. And, to the extent that you are able, flood the international market with items in short supply. I was really amazed at how well the last trick worked, but I don't think it would be easy to pull off till after Grant or later. The nice thing about this is that you will not suffer much degradation in contentment.

What this game really needs is a good deflationary jolt from time to time. Those were the more usual event.