Income and population mechanics

[JonBrave]

Originally Posted by Olm

Where is the break even between killed population and more income?

Break even in what sense? Forgive me if I'm wrong, but hasn't it been established that patrol-killing is simply always worse overall, what it brings is only in short term.

[shatner]

From the wiki we know

Every 3% tax above 100% kills 0.1% of the population.

In CBM 1.92, each level of growth increases population by .3%. So growth-3 gives +.9% growth which is enough to negate 27% taxation. Since we can only tax in increments of 10%, if you run tax at 130% you'll lose .1% of your pop each turn.


However, this does nothing to mitigate the unrest which will build up over time. Specifically the 6 unrest/turn from 130% taxation:

Every 5% tax above 100% increases unrest by 1.

I can't find the source but I seem to recall you lose 10 population for every point of unrest you reduce via patrol. That means that every 10% taxation above 100 is going to generate 20 deaths/turn from patrolling, in addition to the roughly .3% pop-death from over-taxation. Since we're now dealing in absolute numbers and not percentages, the larger the province's population, the less the unrest/patrolling deaths are going to matter. In a capital with a population of 30,000, with a tax rate of 130%, you are killing 1% of the population from over-taxation plus .2% of the population (60 people) from patrolling to reduce the unrest. That's 1.2% lost and .9% gained at growth-3 in your capital, resulting in a net loss of .3% each turn. For every province smaller than that (i.e. all of them), the patrolling deaths will count for a larger percentage of the population killed, further reducing the efficacy of using growth+overtaxing for profit.

As such, you have two options:
1) Take Growth-3 and overtax at 120% each turn (for -.8333% death rate mitigated by your .9% growth rate for .07% overall growth... assuming capital-size populations)

or

2) Take Growth-3 and repeat the following pattern: run 130% tax for 3 turns (while patrolling) and then set the tax to 100% for one turn. That will keep your population roughly stable and give you an average tax rate of 122.5% which is > option-1's 120% tax rate. Of course, this will be a micro-management nightmare so I'd recommend against this option.


TLDR: with full patrolling, you can overtax at 120% with growth-3 and have a stable population. Anything more and you're population will be in decline. If this is ever "worth it" it would only work in provinces with lots of money multipliers (high-admin castle, high order scales, no money loss from temperature).

[JonBrave]

For the illiterate among us: The best you are aiming at above is stable population. Is it not the case that you would always be better (richer) in the long-run letting your population actually grow? I'm just trying to conform my understanding.