[Frostmourne27]

In dom2, population was not needed to get income from sites. However, with 200% tax rate and a site that gave for example 50 gold/turn, you didn't get 100 gold. You got about 75. I'm not sure why, but it certainly can be helpful. It was especially crazy as ashen ermor or sould gate. Many people took earth gods just to be able to find the hidden gold sites, crank tax up to 200% and pillage to nothing. Note that (un)natural popkilling dominion takes a long time to kill laast few hundred people since it is percent reduction, so spell or pillaging is needed most of the time.