siege tax question

[Gandalf Parker]

If you drive the unrest over 100 then even if he gets the castle back he cant make troops until it goes down. So when I seige I always tax 200% and capture blood slaves. Pillaging nearby provinces is good also. When it looks like I might actually TAKE it soon then I might backoff but initially I drive it as high as I can as fast as I can.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
If you drive the unrest over 100 then even if he gets the castle back he cant make troops until it goes down. So when I seige I always tax 200% and capture blood slaves. Pillaging nearby provinces is good also. When it looks like I might actually TAKE it soon then I might backoff but initially I drive it as high as I can as fast as I can.

That sword cuts both ways, and tends to hurt you worse than your foe. After all, it's *you* that's trying to end up with the province, not him. He can't make troops while under siege anyway, and you wouldn't/shouldn't be attacking if you didn't plan to win. I only tax at 200% when raiding, not when attacking for conquest.

[Boron]

Originally posted by Arryn:

quote:

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Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
If you drive the unrest over 100 then even if he gets the castle back he cant make troops until it goes down. So when I seige I always tax 200% and capture blood slaves. Pillaging nearby provinces is good also. When it looks like I might actually TAKE it soon then I might backoff but initially I drive it as high as I can as fast as I can.

That sword cuts both ways, and tends to hurt you worse than your foe. After all, it's *you* that's trying to end up with the province, not him. He can't make troops while under siege anyway, and you wouldn't/shouldn't be attacking if you didn't plan to win. I only tax at 200% when raiding, not when attacking for conquest.

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not necessary

especially when being ermor / pan cw you don't care about the population anyway.
so even if you don't conquer the province you do serious harm to your opponent .
but unless you are 100% sure you conquer the province it is always a good idea .
you have slightly reduced income / population later and to patrol or lower taxes for the following turns if you conquer the castle but that's not a bad deal for the nice extra money you get and the trouble your enemy gets through taxing .
gandalf you are a genie when playing nasty

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Boron:
especially when being ermor / pan cw you don't care about the population anyway.

True. But playing Ermor is so much different than playing the other, living nations it's almost like you're playing a different game. Certainly different rules apply. I should have been more specific so that people won't nit-pick the basic argument, especially given how many people on this forum play as Ermor.

If you play Ermor, disregard the rest of this post.

so even if you don't conquer the province you do serious harm to your opponent.

As I said, I generally avoid attacking unless I have a fair degree of confidence I'll win. I'm not big on Pyrrhic victories, either. Besieging a castle that I don't expect to take, with the intent of "seriously harming" my enemy falls into the Category of "raiding", and I already said that I do tax at 200% when raiding. Generally, though, if I have enough force to crush the local defenders and reach the castle walls, then I have enough force to take the castle too, without a long siege. (I consider a long siege anything over 2-3 months.) It's not worth it to me to screw up a province's unrest for battles I expect to win, and provinces I want to keep.

but unless you are 100% sure you conquer the province it is always a good idea .
you have slightly reduced income / population later and to patrol or lower taxes for the following turns if you conquer the castle but that's not a bad deal for the nice extra money you get and the trouble your enemy gets through taxing .

The income is not "slightly reduced". That's bad assumption #1. 200% tax very quickly raises unrest, which very quickly lowers income. A more than 50% loss of income (after just 1 turn) is not a "slight" matter.

Population in Dom 2 dies much easier than it can be replaced. Bad assumption #2 is thinking that losing a little population can be ignored. It might not hurt much, but it's still an income loss. Losses add up. About the only time pop loss can be ignored (to a degree) is if you have growth scales, and most players don't take growth scales.

Patrolling ties up troops that can usually be used to better effect doing something else (like conquering other provinces). Having to waste time and resources (troops) to patrol away all that excess unrest is bad assumption #3. The long-term cost of not having those troops doing something else is almost always worse.

It takes longer to reduce unrest via lowering taxes than it took for the unrest to go up when you increased taxes. The lowered income for the next several turns is always more than the income you gained in the one turn in which you "got rich quick". It's sort of like betting against the house in a casino. You always lose in the long run. So assumption #4 is thinking you're costing your enemy more than you're costing yourself. Not true if you expect to be the victor in the battle.

Now if you have troops that have nothing better to do than patrol, AND gold isn't all that important to you (for some odd reason), then what I've said above is moot.

[Boron]

arryn in general you are right .
for everybody else then ermor ae/sg and pan cw expect for raiding purposes keeping unrest low is a better strat . in the long run you get more money as you said .

but as gandalf would agree i think in certain cases e.g. as caelum or a stealth nation it is a good strat . you damage yourself in the long run too but it enables a much earlier victory over the raided nation .
it's scorched earth
and if your opponent e.g. has a vq and heavily relies on it in early - midgame you have not too much chances beating her directly if not having a sc pretender yourself or i think abysia might get her while buffing with a devil attack .
but since the vq can only be in 1 province per turn if you raid 3-4 provinces per turn you will slowly but surely win .
it's always a question between short run and long run . if you can afford the better long run outcome you chose long run but with special nations like caelum or an equal strong enemy the scorched earth tactic is perhaps better .
another good use is if your enemy relies heavier than you on standard troops if you make a death zone through complete pillaging which forces him to either risk that his national troops starve away or he can only bring Neednoteat troops to battle + commanders or needs to forge supply items .
when you e.g. play against ulm which normally relies longer on national troops than almost
every other race this can be good .

edit : another reason for scorched earth tactics :
if you fight multiple opponents you perhaps can delay some opponents with quite low effort through various raging/stealth tactics while concentrating your main forces on your main enemies .

i myself can't afford to guard every border very well with most nations until lategame .
so concentrating your main forces on one - two enemies while delaying and disturbing the opponent with relative weak forces is nice too .

[ July 25, 2004, 15:40: Message edited by: Boron ]

[Arryn]

All very good points, Boron. And such tactics tend to be more useful against human opponents, who are more aggresive than the AI, and thus need to be slapped as hard as you can as often as you can.

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Boron:
i myself can't afford to guard every border very well with most nations until lategame .
so concentrating your main forces on one - two enemies while delaying and disturbing the opponent with relative weak forces is nice too .

Heh. I don't know about all humans - but if someone is doing raids on my provinces, they're likely to have another war on their hands.

Or possibly you mean when you're already in conflict with multiple people, concentrating on one while harassing the other to slow them down?