Eye of the Lord's best uses ...

[Borg]

Is that patrolling bonus of 15 really something valuable or not ?

I would be kinda interested in hearing if you have any tips on how to use units with a "patrol" ability most effectively.

Is it worth it to save "build points" from your Order balance and instead invest them in "Growth" and then Tax your provinces 10 or 20% higher while patrolling them with an Eye of the Lord to keep unrest down, or will this just make unrest spiral up more ?

I reckon, not only can he keep unrest down, but at the same time you also get a continuous search for enemy spies and scouts.
The change from "Order" to "Growth+taxes" should provide equal gold (I hope) while even producing more gold and supplies in the long run.

Order3 gives a 21% gold bonus.
If you raise taxes in your province to 120%,
are we talking about the same amount of gold then (21% to 20%) or is this calculated differently?

If Order3 indeed equals 120% (121 to be exact) taxes, then I think there are some interesting possibilities, or are there any variables I'm overlooking ?

[Heironeous]

With your starting Eye + warriors you can patrol your home territory and jack taxes up quite a bit - I've had it at ~150% with no unrest build-up yielding 240+ gold a turn. However, Growth 3 won't prevent you from losing population, so the province's income will drop slowly over time. The Eye patrolling alone can allow a tax rate of 120-130%, but he'll have a bad day once in a while and you'll get some unrest.

I'd generally favor Order 3 just for the reduction in micromanagement, on the other hand bundling some archers with a patrolling Eye provides a little boost to the otherwise paper-thin Machaka PD. I've generally only applied this tactic to provinces with enough gold income to make it worthwhile, as the up-front & upkeep costs of the Eye + archers aren't worth it in low gold provinces.

If only the Eye was Holy-3...

[Agrajag]

Hmmm...
AFAIK 110 taxes kills 0.3% of the population (equivilant of Growth+1), so if you take Growth+1 you'd think you can tax at 110, but then you'd get unrest, which has to be dealt with with patrol which kill your population.
If I had exact numbers on tax kill percentages and patrol/unrest kill ratios maybe I could calcualte if it was worth it, but overall I'd say Order+3 is better than Growth+3 (if you are going to use it only for taxing). (especially since you need less luck with Order+3)

[Heironeous]

Eye of the Lord + 25 warriors (starting troops) patrolling at 150% tax, Order 0, Growth 3:

turn 1 income: 249 gold
turn 2 income: 245 gold
turn 3 income: 242 gold
etc
10 rebels killed per turn
all rebels killed so no unrest increase (stays at 0)
population drops 1% each turn