[triqui]

There are several beneficial events that reduce the unrest in a province. If you have 0 unrest, they do nothing. If you have 5 unrest, they reduce it to 0. So if you have taxed your province at 110% tax rate for a couple of turns, and you hit one of those events, you have got extra free gold. If you don't, just go back to 100% taxes and leave the province at any unrest level from 1-5, which does not hinder you at all (you need unrest 6+ to lose gold). You get a few extra gold coins this way, and in the begining, that might mean the difference quite a lot. Buying one extra mage at turn 3-7 means a LOT of research through the game. Buying a few extra soldiers might mean the difference between taking 2 provinces in turn 4, or taking 1, and so on.

Another popular strat with some nations (Man, Tien Chi, bogarus, Pangea) is to patrol your capitol at 200% tax rate. Those nations have very good patrolers (either free patrol bonus, or very cheap high movement or flying units, such as Pangea). This way you get an extra punch of gold in the begining. Overtaxing your capitol and/or main provinces in the first year might give you an extra 5000 gold, which mean 3-6 castles (specially for nations with good Administration in their castles, such as Bogarus or Man). That's a nice bump. Getting a good headstart might give you a much more confortable midgame: it's way easier to fight midgame if you are leading in provinces, income, castle, or resarch (or any combination of those), than if you are a mediocre nation (or the underdog).