Recently, we are noticing a deflation in the game economy. The total gold in circulation keeps dropping. Right now it sits at 27.4B and keeps dropping daily. Some time ago, this figure was going up. Of course, this is still a huge number to be sitting idle.

Some might think that this is due to the new feature, the academy. This is only partially truth. The new feature just makes the large players more conservative as they save up for the technology costs. The actual truth is that deflation has started long before the new feature. It is now only becoming visible now as we suddenly moved from an era of high inflation to an era of small deflation.

There are many reasons for the deflation. One of them is that we have had a fair share of new players coming into the game lately. These players are not storing gold yet; everything they make are directly invested at their infrastructure. Larger players are directly helping them with funding, either through loans or through gifts. Some of them are also using the credits exchange (fair and wise I must add) which means that larger players also help indirectly. Investment however brings more daily profit so this is never an issue.

Another reason is a series of wars that took place recently. These were many. Wars destroy player infrastructure (ships mainky) and also cost in influence. Population might have suffered too (we are at 3.2B now, I do not really remember the highest peak - we need a chart for it, we will make it happen).

This is generally a good article for the Avonmora Herald but I want opinions on this so I thought to post it in game discussion instead. Discussing about game economy can be beneficial for everyone.

I thought it was the server crash the other day, and also the war.

i think that the ongoing war in the usa that has been going on pretty much since i joined the game has been draining a lot of gold i know you mentioned the wars but this one has been going on for a few weeks now and i think its getting out of hand.

Aye, times are hard, I have had to cut the servants gruel ration to one bowl a week! War is hell.....

Captain Jack wrote: Wars destroy player infrastructure (ships mainky)

Off to the typo forum

It is important for us to see whether or not, as player, you pay attention to the demographics page. We have been improving it lately. If you got anything in mind you would like to see there, let us know.

The deflation can be monitored easier from now on thanks to the chart we implemented today.

I can see a population chart but nothing else regarding commerce or deflation. Am I misunderstanding you captain J?

Wars bring about sinking gold into influence (excluding the impact of voodoo cards). my assumption would be the USA-Spanish wars sucked quite a bit of gold out of circulation and into influence wars!

War cost value in many ways : dumping trade fleets to reduce targets reduces economic activity : fleets under attack from HN's, etc stop trading too until DR falls and they can be re-started : plunder hits costing ship levels : total ship loss : port influence wars : population reduction and consequent tax loss : all take 'treasure' out of the game. But thats how it works when you have a game devoted to battle : encouraging more wars will 'waste' more coin, more 'treasure' and more credits ; so, be careful what you wish for.

The academy will most likely have a long term effect on the economy. It might have not made a huge dent at the moment, it will for sure be a constant cause of slow gc decrease.

The only down side might be that all this lowered the value of the credit. Which i personally bought a lot of, but now hold off from buying more as the values/$ went down 50%

Over all one thing that i see as maybe a negative, is how much one, or few people can change the over all market and value of things.
That shows how unstable the economy(actually the right work might be "fragile") over all is. Which i believe needs some form or NPC interaction to assist some form of balance. Maybe NPC players with fleets and potential NPC market?

Example: Ive been on a LMM buying spree for the past 2 weeks. Some days i had bidding wars with probably another crediteer and we managed to raise the value of LMM to up to 7 credits. Averaging at 3-4 credits the past 2 weeks.
Now that i am done buying LMM the market got back to 1-2 credits. But some permanent/long term effects have already been done, which will take some time to recover.