But, my dear Bruce, we can and do invest in Olympia. It's limited,
true, like it should be in any game, but it's there. For example, I
have a castle in a Civ-8 province. That's as far as I can go in that
province, and keeping there means I must keep an unused mine out of the
hands of savages, but I can do that. If I want to increase the size of
empire in an economically feasible manner, I want as few Civ-0 provinces
garrisoned as possible. So I go to a Civ-1 province three away from my
castle and build a temple, tower, inn, and mine in it, raising it to
Civ-4, and many of it's surroundings above Civ-0. This is investment,
it just is based on limited options. My ideas for farms (where one can
find oxen), villages, roads (which decrease movement and add to civ
level), etc. are just to increase the options, making for more variety.
As to your point about inflation, that was my initial worry way back at
the beginning of this concerning trade. I know of a certain faction
that has figured out how to do a two way trade in less than a month.
They are profiting in the neighborhood of 5,000 gold per turn. That's
inflation, way beyond what my little dream of a civ 12 or civ 16 castle
would bring. (Well, maybe not WAY beyond a fully developed Civ 16
castle, but that isn't going to happen, while the trade thing is real.)
Rob