Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...

[aldin]

I'm certain I dont understand the way this works, so I'd appreciate feedback. Your home province starts with ~30,000 people, right? Growth boosts that by 0.2% per turn per scale, right? Patrolling kills 10 population per 1 unrest killed patrolling, right? So if 140% tax rate produces 8 unrest (it does), doesn't Growth 2 more than offset it (+120 Growth -80 Patrolling)?

Thanks for the responses!

~Aldin

[apoger]

>Patrolling kills 10 population per 1 unrest killed patrolling, right?

There is also pop loss due to the tax rate.

[Keir Maxwell]

I'm not convinced that the whole raising tax for unrest etc is so cheesy. As I understand it (and I may well be wrong) unrest reduces supplies so setting your own provinces to 200% tax in the face of an on rushing army you can't beat right now seems a very legitimate approach. Being of scottish ancestry I can appreciate the impact of burning your own land in front of the enemy to deny them the use of it.

In terms of raids on enemy provinces which capture them briefly and raise taxes its like having an option to pillage in the turn you take the province - it take as a bit to round up all the booty so you don't get it straight away. "Move and Pillage" should probably be an order but till they do it raising taxes to 200% is ok by me.

The idea that it only takes a couple of turns to destroy a province by over taxing does not fit my experiance. I have bought provinces back from 100-200 unrest just by leaving them at 0% tax. It takes awhile but so it should. It generally seems to take a bit less time than it would to get the unrest to that level at 200% tax. Reducing unrest by low taxes *seems* to me more reliable than the added unrest from high taxes but this might just be dominion impact decieving me. In my experiance unrest is decreased 3+% per 10% less taxes and increased 2-3% per 10% increased taxes. My guess is both figures are 3% and the deviation is the impact of dominion as the higher the numbers involved the closer the maths seems to get to the magic 3% per 10% tax.

I'm not saying there are no abuses or unrealistic possibilities and some have been mentioned - I'm justing putting forward the view that the present system has its strengths and any changes should reflect this.

cheers

Keir

[Pocus]

I dont think its a big issue compared to an active pillaging. 200% taxes cost you 3% of population and 18-20 unrest. Annoying but not that crippling for the re-conqueror.

Ywl, I'm rather unsure that the defender of a besieged fort get his income. I have not made specific tests about that though, are you sure?

[RyanZA]

The whole system for this is kinda bad...

Lets take an independant province as an example. Then Red Empire captures the province. This causes unrest, but patrolling takes this unrest down. The population remains without any unrest for 20 turns until its captured by Blue Empire. Blue Empire immediately marches out of the province after raising taxes to 200. Two turns later Red Empire captures back the province.

Red Empire faces massive unrest, but why? Red Empire is the liberating army, freeing the province from the heavy tax. The unrest should already be on Red Empires side, helping them to retake the province. Why should Red Empire need to do any patrolling at all?

The current system is plain broken imo, and abusing it is very very bad play.

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by RyanZA:
Why should Red Empire need to do any patrolling at all?

They don't. They have to set the taxes to 0% to allow the locals to recover from the havoc caused by the invasion and all the tax gathers with their enforcers. If however they want to keep taxing the poor buggers then yes they better do soem patrolling. As far as the locals are concerned the difference between side blue and red may well be no more than the colour of their uniforms.

The current system is plain broken imo, and abusing it is very very bad play.

I would like to strongly disagree with this sentiment. The taxing rules are an intergral part of the game and while not perfect have many strengths. The idea that it is "abuse" to raise taxes to 200% is very wrong IMO. It is playing the game as designed and as far as we know (the feature has been going since Dom1) accepted by the games designers. I think the critics are wrong and should try to establish their point a bit better before suggesting there is something unsporting in the way many of us have played Dom for years.

I have provided concrete examples of what raising taxes simulates based on history - scorched earth, pillaging during conquest, full on oppression - a cohesive counter arguement would be nice if people are going to go so far as suggest this is abusive play. I do it, I consider myself a very fair, deeply thematic gamer who really enjoys playing the game in character - I roleplay alot in PBEM. I don't appreciate the suggestion I am doing something dodgy.

It also really doesn't take long to get the unrest back to 0 at 0% tax rates - try it.

An area being regularily fought over, with the constant pillaging this entails, has its economy devestated - spot on. I really can't see how discouraging people from doing this improves the game - quite the opposite in my books. Why do we have to be nice to the people - oppress them if you feel like, send out the tax gatherers with their whips, their cronies and their implements of torture. Tis a brutal age being simulated - historically tax gatherers stooped to measures such as poring molten lead down unfortunates mouths to try and make their relatives cough up the hidden loot - for everyone in danger of being taxed hid their loot. When an army passed through an area forgaing would leave a trail of devestation across the countryside - and thats when its your own side doing it. Having an enemy army march through your province was often a really horrible event and dominions gives us that choice. If we wish to be nasty we can rasie the taxes to 200% - they will recover but there will be suffering. If you have lots of time you can pillage and really create a mess but it sis not generally a sensible option in my experiance. Removing 200% taxing would make warfare positively cuddly feely in its impact on the locals.

Lets be a bit cautious on saying a style of play is abusive please.

Cheers

Keir

[Kristoffer O]

Originally posted by RyanZA:
The whole system for this is kinda bad...

Lets take an independant province as an example. Then Red Empire captures the province. This causes unrest, but patrolling takes this unrest down. The population remains without any unrest for 20 turns until its captured by Blue Empire. Blue Empire immediately marches out of the province after raising taxes to 200. Two turns later Red Empire captures back the province.

Red Empire faces massive unrest, but why? Red Empire is the liberating army, freeing the province from the heavy tax. The unrest should already be on Red Empires side, helping them to retake the province. Why should Red Empire need to do any patrolling at all?

The current system is plain broken imo, and abusing it is very very bad play.

Unrest is not popularity. It represents broken bridges, roads in disrepair, empty cabins, confused and migrating inhabitants, brigands and a general lawlessness. Thus it will take some efforts for the red empire to rebuild the province. This is represented by lowering taxes. Taxes are still collected, but they are used to rebuild the province and do not pass your treasury. This is a way of reducing micromanagement. If you had different scores for unrest and infrastructure and had to spend money on both you would end up in a swamp of micromanagement. And then you could argue that we should divide infrastructure into administration, communicarions, trade, agriculture etc. Soon Dominions would be an economic game (wich I'm most fond of), but not a war game.

The current solution was deemed simple and efficient enough. Of course if the system is faulty it can be remade. The old system was in my opinion worse by far.

I have a hard time seeing how abusing can be very very bad.