First turn

[Aezeal]

I hear a tactic is to set tax high first turn and then patrol.

What tax rate is generally used to avoid pop loss and to avoid having a high unrest next turns?

If there are more such tactic for early turns I'd like to know.

[Zenzei]

As far as I know any tax rate over 100% reduces population.
I've found out that awake Keeper of the Bridge pretender set on patrol allows you tax at 200% with no unrest, population does drop fairly fast though.

[OmikronWarrior]

High taxes drops population and patroling to reduce unrest drops population. Combining the two is problematic. As a strategy for the first two or three turns, though, just to help the player get out of the gate, is doable.

[thejeff]

It's usually done by patrolling with the starting army, while you recruit a few tougher troops to attack with next turn.

Some go straight for 200%
I usually aim around 130-140%
Usually no unrest with that.

You get a nice little early gold boost for the critical early turns, with only a slight hit to your longterm cash flow, which you should be able to make up with taking more provinces with less losses.

[Karlem]

My normal rule is:

For each 10 troops in the army: 25% extra tax rate.

It usually means no unrest.

[ano]

If you play a race that has good cheap patrollers (Bakemono, for instance or any race with slingers) then it's worth considering taking high growth to heavily patrol in the first 15-20 turns in the capital. The income boost will be quite solid and the population will drop by year 20 to only about 20000 (with tax 160-170 and growth 3)

[sector24]

I asked the same question awhile back and this was the answer I found most useful:
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10% extra tax creates approx. 3 unrest.

3 soldiers will approx. remove 1 unrest.

Those figures are only a rough guide but I find useful in maximising my tax income.

-Meglobob
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Obviously things change when you have patrol units, or flying units like Harpies.

[ano]

That is really a rather rough guide, because if a unit has precision below 10 its patrol value is significantly lowered. For example, cheap markatas and lobo guards are very bad patrollers due to this reason (it was not obvious to me some weeks ago). And slingers or militias are excellent for the price because they have 12AP and 10 prec.

[moderation]

ano said:
If you play a race that has good cheap patrollers (Bakemono, for instance or any race with slingers) then it's worth considering taking high growth to heavily patrol in the first 15-20 turns in the capital. The income boost will be quite solid and the population will drop by year 20 to only about 20000 (with tax 160-170 and growth 3)

Before I go test this myself, does anyone know how much extra gold this provides? It sounds like you will cut the long term gold production in your capital by about 1/3, so maybe 50-100 gold per turn depending on your scales. Interesting idea though.