I am concerned that the CSA printing option is overpowered. I haven't seen it discussed in a while, so I'm wondering if people still regard this as a problem. For the US it's less of an issue because the 2 NM hit is pretty significant, especially in the early game, and because the US is not so strapped for cash.
First from a game perspective, printing should create an immediate benefit at a significant long term price. Ideally, the wisdom of printing should depend heavily on the situation and large scale printing should be a desperate act that dooms the economy if the war goes on much longer. Instead, it seems that printing can produce a very large amount of money (easily double the amount available without printing) and has only a modest effect on long term spending power.
The 1 NM/use penalty can easily be made up by fielding extra troops to hold a key city or gaining a a couple battlefield victories that would not have been possible without high bonuses and extra artillery. Several players have commented that they don't worry about inflation, and I can see why. The money gained from printing is so large relative to other CSA income that it will take a long time before 4% inflation will cost as much as the one time bonus. A division in 61 is much more valuable than a division in 63. The extra force can help to hold income producing cities you might otherwise lose, thus offsetting any real long term cost. Finally, the economic sunrise event favors those with high inflation and significantly lessens the cost of printing. Suppose I print an extra 6 times so my inflation is 24% higher than otherwise. That means every 4th turn I get an extra sunrise, so every 8 months (4 turns * 4 sunrises = 16 turns) I can print for free (leaving aside the NM hit).
Historically the CSA printed heavily but did so only because of its failure to collect much in taxes or borrowing. I think that if we conceptualize the Exceptional Taxes and 8% Bonds options for the CSA, we should assume that this actually represents a high level of printing, but it is abstracted as just maximizing revenue. (Maxing taxes and bonds should create high inflation for CSA, but little for US because US economy could actually support this.) Printing should therefore represent a particularly desperate and hasty effort to put money in government hands. Since printing does not create new wealth, the effect of printing was to shift economic resources from the population to the war effort; therefore, it was the population that bore the brunt, not just the future procurements of the army. My analysis is based mostly on this http://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/region_focus/2005/fall/pdf/economic_history.pdf
For AACW2 or modders: I would like to see no economic sunrise events - let inflation do it's work. A larger NM hit for printing to represent the major hardships. A smaller payoff. A system where the cost of printing increases each time it is used to represent the devaluation of money in anticipation of future easy money. (If everyone expects the government to increase the money supply tomorrow, they will want to spend their money first, thus increasing the velocity of money and driving up prices today.) The last one is the most complicated, but would add a lot to the game by modelling diminishing returns.
Finally, I am wondering if anyone agrees with me and has come up with house rules to address this. The most obvious is to simply cap the number of times players may print. In my current game, we have said twice per year, does this seem reasonable? Is it too tough on CSA? We are also playing with no 61 draft, so the effect of recruitment bonuses is greatly amplified in the early game.