Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

Its an old trick, its a new trick cuz the mechanics of Dom2 are a bit different with respect to taxes. Yep I'm talking about the take a province raise taxes to 200 and basically destroy the province (if you keep it a couple of turns).

Personally I don't use this tactic in SP games because its completely bogus (not the troll mind you). Perhaps its more bogus because the AI doesn't know how to handle it, but I still find it to be annoying, especially when discussed as strategy since I feel it definately falls into the catagory of cheese.

Anyway, without going into specifics on why its cheese (that'll probably follow in later Posts anyway...) I'm going to suggest that there be a tweek to the way taxes can be changed. First you should be able to drop taxes to any level you want, but when raising taxes you should only be allowed to do it in increments of 20% when going above 100% (I was gonna say 10%, but that would really slow things down too much). That's the quick fix. A more difficult fix would be to change the relationship between taxes and unrest in newly conquered provinces which would involve keeping track of province ownership history.

Anyway the simple fix allows for easy management of your provinces, dropping taxes to fix unrest then going back to 100% (or 120% for those overtaxers out there), however when trying to 'ruin' a province it would take longer, *unless* you were willing to spend a turn or two pillaging or blood hunting. It just doesn't seem right to me that you can conquer a province, then in the next turn move out all your forces have the taxes at 200% and wind up with a useless province at no expense to yourself (in regaurds to time).

Well agree disagree discuss... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

Does one or two turns with taxes at 200% really ruin a province? How much pop does one turn with 200% tax kill?

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

although I use this strategy,
I agree with you entirely,
cranking ennemy territory taxes to 200% before the ennemy has time to react looks like a little an instant-plunder to me
and furthermore you cannot plunder a fort you're besieging but you can raise taxes anyway !

you can plunder a territory but that takes two turns (one for conquering & the other for plundering) not one only !

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

I often go the other way in my SP game, i.e., I decrease the tax rate to 0 while seiging. The income of the defender is set by same tax rate. So, if I set it to zero, I can deprive the defender of the income and have less trouble quenching unrest when I get the castle.

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">One turn no, two turns... maybe, its not so much about killing pop as it is about the killer unrest (over 100), but the title 'unrest and taxes' didn't have the same ring to it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Really? The defender gets income from beseiged provinces? I didn't know that (though I don't get seiged that often... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ) Anyway, I don't see any abuse in setting taxes to zero.

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

I haven't studied the details of the effects of high taxes enough to have an opinion on the cheese level, but I see your point. Effortless collection of super-taxes could be cheesy. On the other hand, it could make sense, depending on what the effects are.

It makes some sense in this game world to be able to march an army through and collect some taxes right away. The conquering army could appoint local sub-warrior honchos to collect taxes.

However, setting taxes to max without any troops present should be noticably less lucrative, and noticably less damaging, than having troops actually plundering the province.

I do like the idea of having provinces remember whom they are mad at. Liberate a province from a hated tyrant, and they won't be mad at you. Try to conquer people who loved their former god, and you may start with massive unrest. Etc.

Playing casually with the existing system, it tends to seem ok. Violence causes unrest, low taxes and patrols reduce it, and I haven't seen any weird results. However I'm still enjoying leisurely playing the game against the AI and not trying to exploit the system.

What actually happens when you over-tax? I know unrest goes up and some population dies. How much? How long does it take to repair a province with high unrest by setting taxes to low or zero? It's always seemed pretty quick (a few turns) to me in the case of unrest from sites/events/magic/blood-hunts/battles.

PvK

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

I'm certain I dont understand the way this works, so I'd appreciate feedback. Your home province starts with ~30,000 people, right? Growth boosts that by 0.2% per turn per scale, right? Patrolling kills 10 population per 1 unrest killed patrolling, right? So if 140% tax rate produces 8 unrest (it does), doesn't Growth 2 more than offset it (+120 Growth -80 Patrolling)?

Thanks for the responses!

~Aldin

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

>Patrolling kills 10 population per 1 unrest killed patrolling, right?

There is also pop loss due to the tax rate.

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

I'm not convinced that the whole raising tax for unrest etc is so cheesy. As I understand it (and I may well be wrong) unrest reduces supplies so setting your own provinces to 200% tax in the face of an on rushing army you can't beat right now seems a very legitimate approach. Being of scottish ancestry I can appreciate the impact of burning your own land in front of the enemy to deny them the use of it.

In terms of raids on enemy provinces which capture them briefly and raise taxes its like having an option to pillage in the turn you take the province - it take as a bit to round up all the booty so you don't get it straight away. "Move and Pillage" should probably be an order but till they do it raising taxes to 200% is ok by me.

The idea that it only takes a couple of turns to destroy a province by over taxing does not fit my experiance. I have bought provinces back from 100-200 unrest just by leaving them at 0% tax. It takes awhile but so it should. It generally seems to take a bit less time than it would to get the unrest to that level at 200% tax. Reducing unrest by low taxes *seems* to me more reliable than the added unrest from high taxes but this might just be dominion impact decieving me. In my experiance unrest is decreased 3+% per 10% less taxes and increased 2-3% per 10% increased taxes. My guess is both figures are 3% and the deviation is the impact of dominion as the higher the numbers involved the closer the maths seems to get to the magic 3% per 10% tax.

I'm not saying there are no abuses or unrealistic possibilities and some have been mentioned - I'm justing putting forward the view that the present system has its strengths and any changes should reflect this.

cheers

Keir

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

I dont think its a big issue compared to an active pillaging. 200% taxes cost you 3% of population and 18-20 unrest. Annoying but not that crippling for the re-conqueror.

Ywl, I'm rather unsure that the defender of a besieged fort get his income. I have not made specific tests about that though, are you sure?

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

The whole system for this is kinda bad...

Lets take an independant province as an example. Then Red Empire captures the province. This causes unrest, but patrolling takes this unrest down. The population remains without any unrest for 20 turns until its captured by Blue Empire. Blue Empire immediately marches out of the province after raising taxes to 200. Two turns later Red Empire captures back the province.

Red Empire faces massive unrest, but why? Red Empire is the liberating army, freeing the province from the heavy tax. The unrest should already be on Red Empires side, helping them to retake the province. Why should Red Empire need to do any patrolling at all?

The current system is plain broken imo, and abusing it is very very bad play.

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">They don't. They have to set the taxes to 0% to allow the locals to recover from the havoc caused by the invasion and all the tax gathers with their enforcers. If however they want to keep taxing the poor buggers then yes they better do soem patrolling. As far as the locals are concerned the difference between side blue and red may well be no more than the colour of their uniforms.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I would like to strongly disagree with this sentiment. The taxing rules are an intergral part of the game and while not perfect have many strengths. The idea that it is "abuse" to raise taxes to 200% is very wrong IMO. It is playing the game as designed and as far as we know (the feature has been going since Dom1) accepted by the games designers. I think the critics are wrong and should try to establish their point a bit better before suggesting there is something unsporting in the way many of us have played Dom for years.

I have provided concrete examples of what raising taxes simulates based on history - scorched earth, pillaging during conquest, full on oppression - a cohesive counter arguement would be nice if people are going to go so far as suggest this is abusive play. I do it, I consider myself a very fair, deeply thematic gamer who really enjoys playing the game in character - I roleplay alot in PBEM. I don't appreciate the suggestion I am doing something dodgy.

It also really doesn't take long to get the unrest back to 0 at 0% tax rates - try it.

An area being regularily fought over, with the constant pillaging this entails, has its economy devestated - spot on. I really can't see how discouraging people from doing this improves the game - quite the opposite in my books. Why do we have to be nice to the people - oppress them if you feel like, send out the tax gatherers with their whips, their cronies and their implements of torture. Tis a brutal age being simulated - historically tax gatherers stooped to measures such as poring molten lead down unfortunates mouths to try and make their relatives cough up the hidden loot - for everyone in danger of being taxed hid their loot. When an army passed through an area forgaing would leave a trail of devestation across the countryside - and thats when its your own side doing it. Having an enemy army march through your province was often a really horrible event and dominions gives us that choice. If we wish to be nasty we can rasie the taxes to 200% - they will recover but there will be suffering. If you have lots of time you can pillage and really create a mess but it sis not generally a sensible option in my experiance. Removing 200% taxing would make warfare positively cuddly feely in its impact on the locals.

Lets be a bit cautious on saying a style of play is abusive please.

Cheers

Keir

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Unrest is not popularity. It represents broken bridges, roads in disrepair, empty cabins, confused and migrating inhabitants, brigands and a general lawlessness. Thus it will take some efforts for the red empire to rebuild the province. This is represented by lowering taxes. Taxes are still collected, but they are used to rebuild the province and do not pass your treasury. This is a way of reducing micromanagement. If you had different scores for unrest and infrastructure and had to spend money on both you would end up in a swamp of micromanagement. And then you could argue that we should divide infrastructure into administration, communicarions, trade, agriculture etc. Soon Dominions would be an economic game (wich I'm most fond of), but not a war game.

The current solution was deemed simple and efficient enough. Of course if the system is faulty it can be remade. The old system was in my opinion worse by far.

I have a hard time seeing how abusing can be very very bad. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

Nice to see some discussion http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Let me say that while I do think the 200% tax trick is cheesey, its not a really bad kind of cheese. None the less the ramifications of being able to tax at 200% for a short time, gain a little extra cash, and then have your 'scortched earth' province useless to the enemy is very unsatisfing to me.

First of all, when engaging in a scortched earth policy the scortcher does not benefit in the short term, however, in Dom2 he does. The scortcher also must use some of his military to create the scortching, in Dom2 he does not. Really I don't think that the term scortched earch is particularly accurate in terms of the 200% tax dodge, but I guess its close enough. Does that provide enough of a reason why the system is poor and due for a change Keir? I don't mean to demean anyones style of play, but at the same time I don't think that simple acceptance of systems that could use some tweeking (I never called it broken, just lacking...) based on past history in using a certain play style is any kind of defense.

Basically this comes down to me wanting the system improved in terms of realism without resorting to a major change in the game mechanics. Here's another thought, why not have an overall nation tax rate? It does seem somewhat strange that each province is so autonomous does it not? I don't see that haveing both local and global taxes would increase micro or complexity by much, and it should allow for less abuse (as I see it) in the 200% tax and trash tactic. Really though this gets back to a much older topic of population movement and the pushes and pulls on population movement. As far as I remember Dom does not have pop movement per se, its still all about individual autonomous provinces. Think about the MoO3 system here (for as much as MoO3 got wrong, it did get some things right, or at least make a noble attempt to get them right). Anyway, I don't really want added complexity for the sake of complexity, and I don't think that this system really needs a major overhaul, rather I want to point out what I see as an exploitable flaw in the game design and hope that if enough other people agree the devs will take a look at simple fixes (like limiting the amount that taxes can be raised per turn when going over 100%) or even larger fixes.

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Unrest is not popularity. It represents broken bridges, roads in disrepair, empty cabins, confused and migrating inhabitants, brigands and a general lawlessness. Thus it will take some efforts for the red empire to rebuild the province. This is represented by lowering taxes. Taxes are still collected, but they are used to rebuild the province and do not pass your treasury. This is a way of reducing micromanagement. If you had different scores for unrest and infrastructure and had to spend money on both you would end up in a swamp of micromanagement. And then you could argue that we should divide infrastructure into administration, communicarions, trade, agriculture etc. Soon Dominions would be an economic game (wich I'm most fond of), but not a war game.

The current solution was deemed simple and efficient enough. Of course if the system is faulty it can be remade. The old system was in my opinion worse by far.

I have a hard time seeing how abusing can be very very bad. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Raising taxes destroys bridges?! Well alright, if you say so. I think when you mean a war-torn province, ur thinking of the pillage command? Now that would wreck bridges.

Unrest is definately popularity.. When theres unrest I put an army in the province, tell them to patrol it, and they kill off large amounts of the population, fixing the general unrest. The term 'unrest' in no way implies anything to do with infrastructure, and fixing that with patrols would certainly not be killing off large portions of the population.

The people should definately care about who is taking the tax money from them. If they are so upset by the heavy taxes that they are revolting, and becoming bandits to hamper the people taking the tax money from them, they should welcome in a new ruler if only because he just beat off the guys who they were revolting against!

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">One small army can run through an enemy territory, totally destroying the tax income without even needing to pillage the province. You should be required to actually spend time in the province pillaging it.

The idea of an army passing through a perfectly happy province, and going along with an insane tax rate with no sign of the enemy is a bit far fetched. How does the gold even get back to the other empire?! And after the province has been reclaimed one turn later by the guys who have been ruling them peacefully for ages - the armies of the god they all believe in - why would there be any unrest among the population which would need to be put down by killing a large number of it?

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Just reducing the unrest to normal 'newly conquered' levels, instead of leaving it at 100+ would be a simple and effective fix imo.

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

I think what he is saying is that raising the tax rate above 100% is also siphoning money away from infrastructure upkeep, so that bridges decay from lack of repair. Also, the high taxes combined with ignoring the needs of the people does create literal unrest, and that means there are possibly those who are tossing brands onto those bridges in protest.

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

This reminds me of the ridiculous "revolts" in MTW, and the cheats involved : a good way to kill a AI opponent is to create revolts in his former provinces ... and then buy the revoltees to add to your army ! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif
I think that the problem in Dom2 is basically the same : the "unrest" is not relative to the player creating it, but an "overall" turmoil state, allowing one player to "buy" it for its opponent...
Maybe when one province is conquered unrest should be reset, or at least seriously lowered, so the new owner doesn't get all the mess the former did http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

Hmm, I dunno. The worst part of any war is dealing with the aftermath. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That still shouldnt kill large amounts of population to fix. I think the unrest is definately meant in a more litteral fashion, as well as taxes. When you put the tax on 100, its normal tax which they expect. When you put it on 200, its twice as much tax as theyd normally pay, so they get upset and go off and cause unrest. Which should be at least partially relieved by the province being conquered by someone else.

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Kristoffer made the game, I am sure he knows quite well what he means with unrest.

And I thought your post answering Kristoffer was a bit disingenious, if you where a little more charitable in how you interpreted Kristoffers post it should be apparent that he did not mean that you tax bridges to death nor that your patrollers hunt and kill rebellious bridges. Unrest is meant to represent general disorder in the province, it is more abstracted than just popularity, but it also includes popularity. Taxing more than 100% out of a province does not correspond exactly to raising income tax in a modern economy, it represents a non sustainable and abusive collection of various funds and resources in the province, if you are still hung up about the bridge consider it amongst other things a siphoning of maintenance funds resulting in disrepair etc. This abuse of the province and its populance results in disrepair of public works, farmers that are taxed so heavily that they do not have the seeds to replant their fields and people that have taken to banditry out of desperation or anger and so on. People die when the province are patrolled because there are bandits and dissenters that are hung to quell the unrest or desperate people slain while trying to steal food from the patrolling forces that have just repaired a bridge fallen in disrepair etc. Unrest is an abstraction, an abstraction that serves it's purpose and can be fit to relevant historical facts if you utilise a little charitable imagination.

Edit: If you consider unrest as an abstraction unrest relative to players also make less sense. Unlike the inhabitants of Robin Hood movies people do not automatically and instantly switch from lawlessnes and banditry just because a tyrant is disposed, nor are roads and bridges repaired or crops replanted without effort.

[ January 03, 2004, 15:42: Message edited by: johan osterman ]

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Kristoffer made the game, I am sure he knows quite well what he means with unrest.

And I thought your post answering Kristoffer was a bit disingenious, if you where a little more charitable in how you interpreted Kristoffers post it should be apparent that he did not mean that you tax bridges to death nor that your patrollers hunt and kill rebellious bridges. Unrest is meant to represent general disorder in the province, it is more abstracted than just popularity, but it also includes popularity. Taxing more than 100% out of a province does not correspond exactly to raising income tax in a modern economy, it represents a non sustainable and abusive collection of various funds and resources in the province, if you are still hung up about the bridge consider it amongst other things a siphoning of maintenance funds resulting in disrepair etc. This abuse of the province and its populance results in disrepair of public works, farmers that are taxed so heavily that they do not have the seeds to replant their fields and people that have taken to banditry out of desperation or anger and so on. People die when the province are patrolled because there are bandits and dissenters that are hung to quell the unrest or desperate people slain while trying to steal food from the patrolling forces that have just repaired a bridge fallen in disrepair etc. Unrest is an abstraction, an abstraction that serves it's purpose and can be fit to relevant historical facts if you utilise a little charitable imagination.

Edit: If you consider unrest as an abstraction unrest relative to players also make less sense. Unlike the inhabitants of Robin Hood movies people do not automatically and instantly switch from lawlessnes and banditry just because a tyrant is disposed, nor are roads and bridges repaired or crops replanted without effort. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes but this all occurs over a period of a single turn. With no hostile army anywhere near to enforce this general provincial destruction. The loss of some repairs (this is medievil times, we'r not talking electrical grids here..) for a single turn is not about to place the province into a situation where the liberation of the province causes half of the population to be unable to construct anything. This would require a general pillage of the province by an army, not a few tax collectors left behind an army.

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

I feel I need to go a bit further..

Firstly, the actual game play issues of this strategy are bad ones. Tactically the only way to stop this type of assault is to have sufficient defences in all of your provinces to stop him, as well as a free army to hunt him down. I have been in two games were the best option for both empires was to simply run their way through enemy territory settings taxes to 200 to offset the same damage being caused back in their home provinces. You need roughly three times the resources to defend against an enemy using this tactic. There are no negatives at all to this tactic either.

You either gain territory if your opponent decides to not use resources to take the territory back right away, or you cost the enemy huge amounts of troops to stop you, which will end in a normal battle causing both sides to lose troops.

This would be fine, except that you are making large amounts of money for no risk to yourself and crippling your enemies economy. When he takes his provinces back, he now needs to reduce the unrest you so easily gave him, probably costing him the game. If one player starts using this tactic - given even sides - all players will have to use this tactic. It is simply the most effective way to use your resources in any situation where both sides are roughly even.

Again, on non-tactical terms, broken infrastructure or destroyed crops do not require that you kill a large amount of your population to fix. I fail to see how killing the farmers helps them plant their crops any faster.

Edit: One further thing,
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Unrest of this type could not be removed by lowering taxes? Why would proper banditry (not revolting peasantry) be stopped by lowering taxes? They dont pay taxes already! They arent going to start plowing fields just because someone wont be asking for as much gold anymore.

[ January 03, 2004, 16:39: Message edited by: RyanZA ]

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

Raising taxes to 200 for one turn only results in 20 unrest. If you pillage with a large army you can generate unrest 10-20 times that as well as killing of most of the population. 200 tax is the amount of fiscal abuse you can subject province to without resorting to an outright pillage. You are assumed to have some adminstrative authorities in place in a province even when you do not have any commanders there, they are assumed to be able to threaten the populance enough to recieve the increased incomes. As I said unrest is an abstraction and I do not think that 20 in unrest represents to severe a penalty for increasing the tax to 200%. And as for the tactic being cheesy I think that realism should, if anything, dictate much more unrest in newly conquered provinces. If you wish you can consider the extra money spoils of war and the players abstaining from raising taxes to 200% as an uncommonly benevolent and disciplined conquering army.

In the early stages of dom 2 development there were some discussions of changing the way unrest works, so that there was a provincial unrest and one national happiness factor for the whole empire as well as a couple of other ideas, in the end it was decided that the current unrest model was sufficent and simpler to use and implement, there was also a slew of consistancy issues that arose from moving away from the current system to a more detailed one. The end result of these discussions were the pop killing effects of taxes in excess of 100%, and I think the system as is stands works well enough both from a gameplay and and realism perspective.

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

I won't argue the strategic effects of the current system with you since I think they are ok, and it boils down to a matter of taste.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Unrest of this type could not be removed by lowering taxes? Why would proper banditry (not revolting peasantry) be stopped by lowering taxes? They dont pay taxes already! They arent going to start plowing fields just because someone wont be asking for as much gold anymore. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You do not need to be so literal, reduced taxes can also represent distributing previously collected in natura taxes, providing seeds to farmers, hiring people to repair bridges, administrative measures to counter bandits (bounties, hiring additional constables or whatever) etc. Unrest represents general disorder in the province, patrolling represents a heavy handed way of dealing with this, lowering taxes a less heavy handed way. Dom 2 is not intended to be a realistic economic model unrest, resources, income, taxes and patrolling are all abstractions and they obviously fall short of modelling reality in many respects, but I do think they do what they are intended to do well enough and to me at least are believable enough not to upset my sensibilities.

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That is a 20 in addition to the extra unrest from having the province conquered twice, which takes it to almost half of the production for the province.

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Unrest of this type could not be removed by lowering taxes? Why would proper banditry (not revolting peasantry) be stopped by lowering taxes? They dont pay taxes already! They arent going to start plowing fields just because someone wont be asking for as much gold anymore. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You do not need to be so literal, reduced taxes can also represent distributing previously collected in natura taxes, providing seeds to farmers, hiring people to repair bridges, administrative measures to counter bandits (bounties, hiring additional constables or whatever) etc. Unrest represents general disorder in the province, patrolling represents a heavy handed way of dealing with this, lowering taxes a less heavy handed way. Dom 2 is not intended to be a realistic economic model unrest, resources, income, taxes and patrolling are all abstractions and they obviously fall short of modelling reality in many respects, but I do think they do what they are intended to do well enough and to me at least are believable enough not to upset my sensibilities. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">These "heavy handed" methods should not be causing this level of death within the population then.

I am not asking for a total rewrite of the unrest code, only that when conquering a province with high unrest, it is lowered somewhat to stop people just 'buying unrest' for the oposing player, and to better fit in with an army arriving to liberate the province from the harsh taxes it has been facing from the enemy.

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

Looting & pillaging by mere citizens come with wars, nothing wrong with having some unrest mirror this when armies march around.

And to the peasant one foraging army is no different from another, whatever standard the army flies the peasant knows he's going to lose his sheep.

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Why shouldn't they cause death? Unrest is an abstraction that is intended to represents civil unrest as well as other forms of disorer and lawlessness, so unrest means there are dissenters, agitators, bandits etc. people that your patroller discourage by a few (or more than a few) hangings. Unrest is intended to be a number of factors some of these your patrollers solve by killing people, some by just showing up and putting the fear fo God into your people and in some cases they might repair bridges, clear passes of brigands or do whatever else might be reqiured to restore order.

As for your Last point I remember being frustrated by opponents using similar tactics against me in VGA Planets, but now it doesn't bother me. What would bother me on the other hand would be the possibility of allied player switching provinces between each other to share the use of a province and lower the unrest present. At present they do at least get the small penalty of increased unrest, your suggestion would reward their behaviour.

[ January 03, 2004, 18:04: Message edited by: johan osterman ]

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

This discussion seem to raise few questions:
1) fixing unrest costs the population.
I haven't seen that. Taxing to 200% reduces population, but as soon as tax is set to less or equal than 100%, the population stops shrinking (unless death scale)
2) patrolling kills a lot of population. Does it? I've never seen more than dozen or two brigands killed during the patrolling, and this is quite rare, more typical numbers are below 10. It seems to be something like 0.1% of population.
3) realism of 200% taxes, unrest and population reduction. When the army marches through the province and battles there for a month (1 turn), foraging in the process, increased unrest sounds very reasonable. The army may choose how to do it.
Being kind to population and foraging carefully (tax=0%) will not cause populatin loss may even decrease an unrest, marching through pillaging quickly on the way (tax=200%) will get some part of population killed (2% ?) and certainly will cause unrest (because of taking away herds, seed, burning houses and infrastructure etc). Pillaging (as in "pillage") for an extra month would probably mean army going in various areas of the province and pillaging all their way through, instead of pillaging quickly on the passage. As expected it causes massive population loss and unrest. The middle way (tax=100%) implies that the army loots within a reason, without taking everything and does not do the damage for the sake of it. In this case there's a mild unrest and no population loss. And one should remember that nearly all those provinces were free only 1, 2 or 5 years ago, so probably different armies are all look as invaders to them. All this looks very sensible.
4) Hit, destroy and run tactic and how it impacts the balance. I wish experienced players would comment on it. The obvious impact is that there're may be 2 kind of wars: full fledged war, where everything goes and "border dispute" where military action are limited to the border provinces and the opponents are intent on annexing those provinces rather than damaging them. This may affect diplomatic relationship, sides in the border dispute may come to peace to make an united front against other enemy. Hit, destroy and run tactic will probably be not welcomed early in the game, because nobody would want to get into this kind of war ealy on. But of course, Ermor may welcome this tactics even if it's not involved directly http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Why shouldn't they cause death? Unrest is an abstraction that is intended to represents civil unrest as well as other forms of disorer and lawlessness, so unrest means there are dissenters, agitators, bandits etc. people that your patroller discourage by a few (or more than a few) hangings. Unrest is intended to be a number of factors some of these your patrollers solve by killing people, some by just showing up and putting the fear fo God into your people and in some cases they might repair bridges, clear passes of brigands or do whatever else might be reqiured to restore order.

As for your Last point I remember being frustrated by opponents using similar tactics against me in VGA Planets, but now it doesn't bother me. What would bother me on the other hand would be the possibility of allied player switching provinces between each other to share the use of a province and lower the unrest present. At present they do at least get the small penalty of increased unrest, your suggestion would reward their behaviour. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm not so sure they would be rewarded if the unrest reset to 100 assuming it was higher to begin with... anyway that's all completely beside the point.

The point being that this strategy, no matter how you wish to abstract unrest, has zero consequence for the agressor, in fact he ultimately benefits from the 1 or 2 turns of additional income due to his 200% tax rate.

I don't think that my origional suggestion of capping the level that you can raise taxes in one turn is overly disruptive, and yet it would 'fix' this problem. A better solution would be to track province ownership, have supply lines mean something for tax collection (similar to supporting troops), or change the system completely. However, I recognize that those latter solutions are more work for perhaps little actual gain.

Now while the concepts of pillageing, scortched earth, and general problems from battles being fought on your farm lands are certainly valid, the failing as I see it is that 200% tax shouldn't cause as much disruption as quickly as it does. Personally I think that if you want to wreck a province you had better use your military to do it, or spend more than a few turns screwing up the tax to do it.

Again, its not a big deal to me in SP, I chose not to abuse this aspect, I just think that for MP it should be looked at and hopefully improved for all aspects of game play, as since the AI doesn't seem able to deal with this tactic (it doesn't do it itself that I've seen) it is definately cheese to use it in SP.

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The english in the 100 years war made a practice of moving rapidly through french terrotories pillaging as they went (no stopping to pillage) simply to ruin the local economy. The french would react with much larger forces and chase the english home but the damage is done. This is a very, very, close parallel to the Dom tactic you hate and yes the French hated it because it was damn hard for them to counter.

It is not a cheesy tactic at all - even a little bit. It is very historical. War was brutal far beyond what many seem to imagine. As for the idea that the local people have a community of interest with either empire fighting over them this was seldom the case in history .

"When Kings make war, poor little men must tremble"

Cheers

Keir

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm very glad you stuck with the current model. Nationalism/Nations may seem the sort of thing thats been around for ever but the standard view in history is that it arose with the rise of the bourgeoise/capitalist state. A French peasant in the middle ages suffered most at the hands of the french rulers - the community of interest many suppose didn't exist on the whole. The emergence of free cities and the conflicts between the nobles and the merchants that this entailed is another example of how disparate interest were in these times.

I think most of the criticisms of the tax system are on the level of "this doesn't feel right." This is not particularily helpful as what feels wrong to a modern person may feel quite right for a feudal lord. Could the critics respond more to the historical details being used against them and rely less on commen sense as it is no guide whatsoever when you leave behind the commen.

Cheers

Keir

Cheers

Keir

[ January 03, 2004, 20:17: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm sure.

He does and the tax rate is by the seiger.

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm very glad you stuck with the current model. Nationalism/Nations may seem the sort of thing thats been around for ever but the standard view in history is that it arose with the rise of the bourgeoise/capitalist state. A French peasant in the middle ages suffered most at the hands of the french rulers - the community of interest many suppose didn't exist on the whole. The emergence of free cities and the conflicts between the nobles and the merchants that this entailed is another example of how disparate interest were in these times.

I think most of the criticisms of the tax system are on the level of "this doesn't feel right." This is not particularily helpful as what feels wrong to a modern person may feel quite right for a feudal lord. Could the critics respond more to the historical details being used against them and rely less on commen sense as it is no guide whatsoever when you leave behind the commen.

Cheers

Keir

Cheers

Keir </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Historical details? What on earth do historical details have to do with this? Dominions may borrow from history/mythology, but its not a historical simulator of some kind. Now before you take those words and use them against me, let me remind you that what I'm after is modifing a game mechanic that not only 'doesn't feel right', it quite simply isn't right in the context of its effect on the rest of the game.

Simply put the freedom to *raise* taxes, especially in provinces with existing unrest, to the maximum level makes no sense. Moreover, historically it simply wasn't possible, again in the context of the abstracted unrest and taxes in dominions, without useing some kind of military or other *stationary* force to enforce compliance. I have no problems with using pillagers to do this, but the free destruction one gets from simply setting taxes to 200%, *especially in newly conquered provinces* is simply abuseive of the system.

Now please tell me what would be wrong with my original suggestion of capping the amount that taxes can be raised (over 100%)? Does it have a negative effect on the game overall? Does it not fix the 'problem' that at least some people are concerned with?

And please, keep the history lessons in the books, they are not germain to this discussion of game mechanics. (though they are otherwise quite interesting http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif )

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ever heard of Lord of the Rings? Y'know the fantasy series by that Tolkien dude? Yeah the expert in ancient Languages and history who created a believable world because he understood the structures of certain levels of human development, the way human thought and language changes with different social orders. Its not a coincidence that the Lord of The Rings is so widely aclaimed.

Dominions is, to my understanding, deeply rooted in our history and this is a big part of why it is so good.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hang on you don't care about history? So what is your basis for saying something is odd then? As compared to what?

The ability to raise crippling taxes existed and was excercised. Whole populations were deported, slaughtered, had one hand chopped off, decimated and many other atrocities. So why can't we raise taxes to 200%? Is 20 unrest really such a big deal? It only takes one turn to recover at 0% taxes. Economic warfare was extremely commen in history - especially when hard to take strongholds abounded. On of the reasons you choise to fight a battle is to stop your crops being burnt.

The english tactic in the 100 years war, described previously, represents the exact form of warfare you object to so where is the problem in terms of history?

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes. As noted by others, the existing system allows people to choose to either conquer peacefully (lower taxes to 0%) or conquer brutally - raise taxes to 200% or somewhere in between. Its a good feature and I think your suggestion would be kill joy.

"Ooh no big bad tyrant you can't be a brutal conqueror, no you have to delay a turn in each province to pillage and thus cripple your campaign"

Sod that - instant taxes = booty from pillage during conquest. No problem.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually I think the history is very relevant and if you want to make a counter case what are you going base it on? Your own personal grasp of the logic of fantasy universes? Sorta leaves us lacking a commen ground. Sure magics and real gods changes things but this is how the peoples of ancient history percieved the world anyway so their perspective is very relevant. The way the ancients fought is also very relevant as they faced many of the same physical constraints.

Cheers

Keir

[ January 04, 2004, 01:07: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

>The ability to raise crippling taxes existed and was excercised.

Not without troops to keep the peace.


This entire discussion is foolish. It has been established clearly that "taxes/tax rate/unrest" is actually an abstraction.

Licker: If you don't like the system, make your point courteously and hope that if enough people speak out, that IW will care. Frankly I'm with you in not being particularly happy with the whole economic system.

Keir: If you like the system, just say so. No need to rationalize about how the system is realistic, it isn't, and it's not even meant to be.

Now shake hands and be friends. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

Sounds like the two sides of the discussion are still imagining different events behind the game effects.

In general, I think Illwinter's explanations are easy for me to imagine making sense.

Setting tax to 200% doesn't for one turn cause effects that are difficult to quickly recover from, in the game.

I think having tax levels for each province makes a lot of sense for a fantasy/medieval game world. Generalizing, most medieval peasants spent their entire lives within a day's march of their home, and on average were kept in their economic position by "taxes". Each local lord would deal with their people in their own way. I imagine that consistent tax policy across an empire would be exceptional. Which isn't to say that a convenient control wouldn't be handy, but the Nation Overview seems to do a good enough job to me.

100% tax probably means the peasants get to keep enough food not to starve. If a new lord arrives and says they have to give everything they have, or twice as much as they used to give, this is not going to require more than the existing people who used to collect and bring the tribute to the previous lord. The effect will be that people won't have enough to eat, and will start to get ill, to go into hiding or leave, for people to start taking from each other, and other various peasantly chaos.

As I wrote earlier in the thread, ya it should be more damaging and lucrative if you use actual troops, but I don't think it'd be entirely necessary. Few if any peasants are going to think of or attempt organized direct mutiny, even against local non-military honchos.

I still haven't studied how the system works in all cases, but I haven't seen any numbers that show anything that looks broken to me.

My only suspected criticism would be that perhaps the population should grow a bit more in times of peace and low taxes. Sometimes population migrates away in impressive percentages, but it only very rarely seems to arrive anywhere else.

PvK

[ January 04, 2004, 09:55: Message edited by: PvK ]

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

Even if there are no armies, there might be enough officials to do their work. Did the Sheriff of Nottingham have an army of few thousand men? I think he didn't. Said by Johan earlier in this thread:

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

I dont think that the game should limit the tax level. Taxes are the king's prerogative and so the players should be free to do what they want. But revolts should be much more common ('A good shepherd should shear his flock, not skin it' said the Roman saying).
What about the following : taxes are not limited but when unrest reaches 100, there is a chance every season that the province openly rebel. The chance is (unrest level -100) %. Or 10% for 110 unrest, and 100% for 200 unrest. If the insurrection happens you see 30 indep units (or 1/1000 pop ?) appearing from nowhere to free the province. This solution is both logical and realistic : dont you think that local population could revolt if taxes are killing them, if pillage is allowed or if young virgins are abducted by evil mages ?
Cheers

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

Firstly I think I made my point courteously, my post asking for the real world history to be kept in check isn't an attack, its a simple statement that as far as game mechanics go in a fantasy based computer game, what actually happened in *our* history has little bearing. What does matter is that the system is satisfing and works within the framework of the game, the fact that the English pillaged without keeping a local force (though they must have used their troops for this anyway...) is entirely beside any point when discussing the abstraction of unrest in Dominions. Either the system works for you or it doesnt. Obviously it doesn't work for me, and if your criticism of my view lies on the fact that I am not a historian, then you fail to grasp that this is a game, not a historical simulator.

It is for that precise reason that I often argue against using 'reality' as an arguement for why game mechanics should exist or be changed, reality in a game should be based more on enjoyability or serving a greater function in the game than on keeping up with what people think makes sense based on reality. Now you will notice that that sentiment precludes me from using historical evidence to support my views, then again that's not really a problem for me, I'm trying to keep on message with the notion that this tactic is flawed from a game mechanics point of view, and it is abusable. We can talk about realism and rationalizations supporting both sides of the argument, but neither side will move an inch that way, that's why I ask to keep history out of it, that's why I ask to look at the effects on game play rather than anyones personal thoughts on what is realistic and what is not.

I suppose the main difference of opinion then lies in how we interpret the abstractness of unrest and taxes. I take it to be removed from military entirely, as no military is needed to enforce the harsher policies. Sure the sheriff of Nottingham didn't have a 1000 men running around, but then again the scale of dominions doesn't have 1000 men running around very often either, at least not in any single province. It would satisfy me if there were a level of local militia required to support higher taxes, I could accept their presence as the backbone that enforces the lords will. Simply put, for me, provinces with zero military presence and high taxes should not provide either the income they do, nor the unrest that is generated.

Anyway, I'm hopeful that this discussion has created some new food for thought for the devs and how they approach the economic aspect of dominions, wheather or not a change is effected to 'correct' ( http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ) this aspect or not isn't all that critical to me, I'm more than satisfied to continue to look at game elements that seem weak and seek ways to improve them.

As to the Lord of the Rings... what can I say? I loved the book and the movies, but I can honestly say that my enjoyment of them had nothing to do with Tolkins ability to keep some historical basis in it. The story is what was compelling, the world of middle earth is to me no better and no worse than any other fantasy based world I've encountered in books. In fact my favorate fantasy series is Stephen Donaldsons six books on Thomas Covenent, though I'm not sure why thats germain to this point http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Just thought I'd pimp Donaldson, all his works are excellent, and hey, he lives in New Mexico http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

OK as I see this thread it goes like this. Some feel that the tactic (my favorite tactic that I often bring up) of increasing taxes to the max (the max being an important point), pillaging, blood hunting, all for the purpose of poisoning the land in case its taken back is a cheesy tactic. OK, it probably is.

Doing it to the province around a castle while the defenders are shoved inside is cheesy. OK.

Its not realistic? then we need to check history. The concept of armies pillaging, living off the land, salting the earth, generally making the countryside unproductive either to increase its own army or to decrease its usefullness to the enemy is pretty well documented in any major war of any age.

Its not a good thing for the game? Too easy to do? Shouldnt be allowed at all? Then we need to offer an alternative.

So its either a bad realism (and we suffer historical discussions) or its a bad tactic for the game to support (and we need formulas which answer the pros and cons)

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">OK so the idea that a seiging enemy is doing horrible damage to the province around a sieged castle makes more sense than it turning up taxes in a captured province and moving on?
I can see that. Maybe it should require at least one of my seiging armys be set to patrol instead of seige.

If I march an army thru a province, crank the taxes, and leave one tax collector there then I could probably expect that poor shmuck to be barbecued by morning. If I leave a small army there then I have a better chance of getting the taxes...

Hmmmmm when I play with lots of chaos scale or major unluck, and I do my nasty tactic, Im almost hoping for a random event of knights or adventurers to save the province. Takes it out of my hands but also keeps it out of his hands with a powerful defending force.

Maybe it would satisfy both Versions of the debate (realism and gamey) if the cheesy tactic would increase the chances of losing the province. So if you really want the tactic to work then you need to invest alittle in defence or patrol to keep it long enough.

Actually, at any time, whether its my own province, or one I freshly took, or a castle Im seiging.... If I crank taxes to the maximum bleed possible, pillage, blood hunt, whatever shoots up unrest.. then there should be a high chance that someone will "save" the province from me. Or that they will revolt. OR (totally new thought) that they might even switch sides?

I think there is already some of this in the game but maybe the chances of retribution could be increased abit. Just brain-farting here.

Gandalf Parker

[ January 04, 2004, 15:36: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

and now for something completely different (mebbe... well, probably not http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif )

Let us imagine our fantasy land without allusion to history. Each area of this land is in one of three conditions:

1) Neutral - Neutral provinces maitain an army to defend themselves so that they don't pay taxes to anyone.

2) Conquered - Conquered provinces have had it proved to them, at the point of the sword, that they live at the sufferance of their conqueror. They pay taxes, at the rate set by the conqueror, because they have no other choice. Even if the army isn't "there", it's within a few days' march as far as they know.

3) Home - The only possible argument in my mind is that perhaps home provinces need to be treated better, but it is the fervent, worshipping home of the pretender and likely to put up with abuses for the sake of their lord.

I'm generally of the opinion that a 'trick' that can be easily performed by any player is fair game. It merely adds a layer of complexity in considering how best to use the trick or in calculating how best to defend against it's employ.

~Aldin

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Im all for extending the things that a player can do. I dont want to see any tactic "removed" from the game. However they all must have consequences and balances which keep it from being a no-brainer choice. I do admit that this one seems like it could use some sort of balancing consequence. Some better reasons to consider the pros and cons.

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

Well, I am of the opinion that setting taxes at 200 is roughly equivalent to finding a suitably unscrupulous minor official, helping him recruit a set of burly bodyguards, and officially make him your tax collector. He'll extort what he can for a time, send you your share of the bounty, and eventually the high unrest will force him to more or less stay in his fortified manor and tax only the farmer next door, unless you back him up with some real troops...

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

Seems to me there is already a strong limit against taxing at 200% without troops - the unrest goes way up, reducing your actual income. That seems quite consistent with the feeling "you should need to have some troops to enforce high taxes".

It also seems to me that not requiring units to enforce taxes is a huge blessing, but as has been said, it doesn't mean there is no one there to enforce them. Administrators and police are most often not military units, and it would add a lot of micromanagement and not much fun to have to recruit, feed, and move them around explicitly. It also wouldn't be right to involve them in battles. It seems like the correct decision to me to abstractly handle them via tax settings and their effects. The fact that it's often not easy to immediately take taxes from a conquered province _is_ represented elegantly by the addition of unrest to a province when it gets taken over. It just might not be noticed or appreciated since it is abstract and not spelled out.

So, what's the fuss about?

Too much permanent damage done to a short-term conquered province without having to use troops? If so, let's see some statistics so we can decide whether the values are reasonable or not.

PvK

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

Re relevance of history.

Back in the old days the ancients road round on horses, they fought with swords, spears, bows . . . they sieged castles, suffered from under supply problems, taxed peasants and so on.

Sound anything like a game you all play?

I find the argument that "I'm not a historian so history doesn't matter" bizarre. Take history out of the equation and we have no basis for even beginning a discussion on the game. So whart are swords then? Any answer you give will be informed by history - the better informed the better in general.

So you find it annoying Licker that I have keep referring to history? *shrugs" Do you know I still read up avidly and much of it is to do with my interest in ancients wargaming - thats right batles with pointy and cutty things. How else can I attempt to understand these but by studying there real usage? The idea that abstract reason can provide us the answers is very wrong. If you want to understand warfare in the age of swords and bows then study history. Want to understand the impact of taxes in a feudal society - study history. If you can't be bothered then thats cool but is there really anything wrong with me bringing history to bear on this debate? It seems profoundly relevant and the only commen ground we have for the discussion. Otherwise its just "I like playing this way" verses "I like playing that way."

I do like Steven Donadlsons Gap series. Disturbing but very compelling. I got frustrated with Thomas "what can I do?" Covenant but I did read them all.

To repeat PvK's point. Nobles who rule provinces have their own forces with which they cheerfully oppress the peasants and merchants (nobles didn't like merchants). How do we know this - history.

Cheers

Keir

Re: Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...
 

I don't think you should be allowed to raise taxes past %100 unless the province has an unbroken connection to one of your forts.

That way if you use a stealth or summoned army take over a province in the middle of enemy territory, you would have to stay and pillage to ruin it.