Income and population mechanics

[shatner]

A mod I have been contributing to was released recently which introduces a new nation which has high admin castles, a cheap patrol-bonus unit, a cheap patrol-bonus commander and a cap-only mage who reduces unrest in the province by 4/turn. While I didn't set out to make that nation eminently over-taxable, things did end up evolving that way. For those folks who really want to test the viability of growth + over-taxation, MA Jomon would be a good place to try it.

I noticed elsewhere in the forum a bit of misinformation I want to disabuse people of: having a unrest reducing unit in a province does NOT reduce population as though you had been patrolling it. Again, that theory was posted elsewhere and I have personally tested it and found it wrong (test data will be provided upon request).

However, unrest reduction does behave a little differently than you might expect. Say you have a province that has an initial unrest of 50 (say from previous over-taxation or a bad event or something), is being taxed at 110% (which generates 2 unrest/turn), and contains a unit which reduces unrest by 4/turn. You'd expect to have the unrest there be reduced by 2 a turn (plus any unrest reduction you get from having friendly dominion) and you would be right. However, say that same province has 0 initial unrest, 110% tax and that same unit stationed there. You'd expect to have 0 unrest each turn (since it's being increased by 2 and decreased by 4) but instead you'll have 2 unrest at the start of each turn. That's because the unrest reduction of your unit happens before the unrest increase of your over-taxation. In fact, it seems to work like this:
1) lower unrest from abilities
2) collect income
3) raise unrest from taxation
?) I'm not sure where in all this lowering unrest from patrolling goes...

So, say you have a province with 100 of these unrest reducing units and you are running 200% taxation. What that means is that you will be getting money from that province at 200% each turn (as though you had zero unrest) but the province will have 20 unrest. That will reduce the number of resources that province has to recruit units but it will NOT reduce the income that province is generating. In that situation you are effectively trading some of your recruitment capacity for extra money.

This presents a new taxation scenario for you number-crunchy folks to chew on. Oh and try the new mod out; I think you'll find it interesting.

[HoleyDooley]

Nightfall, are you saying its NOT worth over taxing?

If so under what circumstances? Like growth 3?

Dooley

[Nightfall]

Originally Posted by HoleyDooley

Nightfall, are you saying its NOT worth over taxing?

If so under what circumstances? Like growth 3?

Dooley

Given the scales in the original post it's of dubious value doing it perpetually in the capital, and even worse anywhere else.

Overtaxing certainly has uses, first turn in capital, low pop provinces with mines and provinces that you expect to lose in the next few turns, but I don't think this is a good one.

[HoleyDooley]

Thx Nightfall for your thoughts and advice. A lot in this game to get your head around.

[Olm]

Thx for all this, very enlightening.
I will go over it myself, when I have the time, but for now it seems my strategy was not perfect.

[Torgon]

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10701954/Tax...culations.xlsx

Just made up a spread sheet to calculate this out. Adjust assumptions and scales as desired. I have it set for a build I was trying out for man. O3P1C3G3

Bottom line is that overtaxing at 1.2 in your capital brings in about 1000 gold extra within around 20-25 turns at which point the total difference begins to decrease. At 1.3 its around 1500 gold extra by around turn 20. Your talking about an extra fort or two within the first 20 turns. That's a pretty big deal.

Overall I would say its worth it. Especially in CBM. In vanilla the trade off is a bit more questionable since foresters have a lower patrol and you almost always need 2.

However, as MA Man you also have an incentive to get up a lot of extra forts. You don't quite live and breath the stink of castle walls the same way was LA Man, but you do have some advantages they don't. Namely nature mages coming out you ears to provide supplies, and a bunch of stealthy, high strength wardens (if you're playing CBM) to sneak in and hold up the walls. Given this you can probably have a couple forts crank out a forester or two for 20 gold to patrol some provinces, leading to more gold, leading to more forts, leading to more mages. True if you used a capital recruitment turn to pick up another forester you would lose some research, but ultimately you get more if you have more castles cranking out mothers and bards.

As far as optimizing the strategy, you want as many positive scales as possible. Since the tax rate is multiplicative with any scales, the more positive modifiers you have the more this trade off tilts in favor of over taxing. For instance with O3P3G3 you can get almost 1800 extra gold by turn 21 at 1.3 tax. Take it up to 1.5 and you can get almost 2700 extra by turn 20. That's two extra forts, two labs, and almost half a temple.

[Nightfall]

Originally Posted by Torgon

Overall I would say its worth it. Especially in CBM. In vanilla the trade off is a bit more questionable since foresters have a lower patrol and you almost always need 2.

Basic testing in CBM shows that you do need 2.

[Torgon]

Originally Posted by Nightfall

Basic testing in CBM shows that you do need 2.

Two will basically ensure that unrest never builds up. But in general I've found that one keeps unrest at 0 when taxing at 120% probably 90% of the time. Every once in awhile you miss a turn, but you're still only getting up to 2-4 unrest usually before it drops back down to zero. Still even if you insist on using two, that extra 1100 in gold income over the first 20 turns is still worth it. Its an extra fortress + part of a lab to crank out bards.

Lets assume you need one forester for every +10 in taxes. If you're taxing at 150 you get an extra 2390 gold within the first 20 turns, with the advantage dropping off after that. It hits gold parity around turn 40. Each forester costs 20 gold, 1.3 upkeep. Lets just say 2 for simplicity sake. That's 10 gold per turn in upkeep. So at turn 20 your still sitting at +2190 gold. Which would be about 2 extra castles and a lab, or 16 extra mothers, or 62 extra wardens, or 39 extra Knights of Avalon. It seems like this is well worth it. And that assumes the foresters are completely worthless other than for patrolling. They're still scouts, and they's also precision 12, a pretty good chassis for some magic bows (thunder bows in CBM 1.92 are wicked).

And if it takes 6 foresters then stick 6 foresters on it. Are you really saying that you're not going to have a few fortress turns free here and there at some point? Fortress completed prior to a lab going up? spend 20 gold for a forester. Left with an odd amount of gold at the end of a turn and cant afford another mother or bard? Spend the 40 gold and buy a couple foresters. Seems pretty easy to get a few of these guys, and once you do crank up the taxes, and even if you have to actually recruit one INSTEAD of a mother or bard, they pay for themselves rather quickly. And with the extra gold you get from overtaxing you can get more mothers and bards in the long run. Yes, it might take awhile before you end up with the six needed to tax at 200%, but that doesn't counter the overarching point: gold now is worth MUCH more than gold later since it lets you expand now.

[Torgon]

And if you really have a problem with using two at 120%. Then just use one at 110%. Still nets you an extra 600 gold in the first 24 turns, and doesn't reach gold parity until turn 46.

It just seems sort of strange that there are plenty of people out there who are willing to take death scales in order to get an advantage early at the cost of some gold later in the game, but very few are willing to do the same with overtaxing. 120% taxing along with patrolling kills off less % population than death 3 scales, but actually nets you more gold than 3 scales of order.

[Olm]

GREAT!!
I wanted to do it just like that, but between job, 3 children and building a house I just barely have enough time to play one dom3 MP game and read the forum.
So many thanks to you!
This should definitely go to the strategy index, I'll send a PM to Valerius.

By the way: The exponential effect can only be seen very slightly....