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

[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.

[licker]

Nice to see some discussion

Let me say that while I do think the 200% tax trick is cheesey, its not a really bad kind of cheese. None the less the ramifications of being able to tax at 200% for a short time, gain a little extra cash, and then have your 'scortched earth' province useless to the enemy is very unsatisfing to me.

First of all, when engaging in a scortched earth policy the scortcher does not benefit in the short term, however, in Dom2 he does. The scortcher also must use some of his military to create the scortching, in Dom2 he does not. Really I don't think that the term scortched earch is particularly accurate in terms of the 200% tax dodge, but I guess its close enough. Does that provide enough of a reason why the system is poor and due for a change Keir? I don't mean to demean anyones style of play, but at the same time I don't think that simple acceptance of systems that could use some tweeking (I never called it broken, just lacking...) based on past history in using a certain play style is any kind of defense.

Basically this comes down to me wanting the system improved in terms of realism without resorting to a major change in the game mechanics. Here's another thought, why not have an overall nation tax rate? It does seem somewhat strange that each province is so autonomous does it not? I don't see that haveing both local and global taxes would increase micro or complexity by much, and it should allow for less abuse (as I see it) in the 200% tax and trash tactic. Really though this gets back to a much older topic of population movement and the pushes and pulls on population movement. As far as I remember Dom does not have pop movement per se, its still all about individual autonomous provinces. Think about the MoO3 system here (for as much as MoO3 got wrong, it did get some things right, or at least make a noble attempt to get them right). Anyway, I don't really want added complexity for the sake of complexity, and I don't think that this system really needs a major overhaul, rather I want to point out what I see as an exploitable flaw in the game design and hope that if enough other people agree the devs will take a look at simple fixes (like limiting the amount that taxes can be raised per turn when going over 100%) or even larger fixes.

[RyanZA]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:

quote:

---

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.

---

Raising taxes destroys bridges?! Well alright, if you say so. I think when you mean a war-torn province, ur thinking of the pillage command? Now that would wreck bridges.

Unrest is definately popularity.. When theres unrest I put an army in the province, tell them to patrol it, and they kill off large amounts of the population, fixing the general unrest. The term 'unrest' in no way implies anything to do with infrastructure, and fixing that with patrols would certainly not be killing off large portions of the population.

The people should definately care about who is taking the tax money from them. If they are so upset by the heavy taxes that they are revolting, and becoming bandits to hamper the people taking the tax money from them, they should welcome in a new ruler if only because he just beat off the guys who they were revolting against!

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.

One small army can run through an enemy territory, totally destroying the tax income without even needing to pillage the province. You should be required to actually spend time in the province pillaging it.

The idea of an army passing through a perfectly happy province, and going along with an insane tax rate with no sign of the enemy is a bit far fetched. How does the gold even get back to the other empire?! And after the province has been reclaimed one turn later by the guys who have been ruling them peacefully for ages - the armies of the god they all believe in - why would there be any unrest among the population which would need to be put down by killing a large number of it?

[RyanZA]

Originally posted by licker:
Nice to see some discussion

Let me say that while I do think the 200% tax trick is cheesey, its not a really bad kind of cheese. None the less the ramifications of being able to tax at 200% for a short time, gain a little extra cash, and then have your 'scortched earth' province useless to the enemy is very unsatisfing to me.

First of all, when engaging in a scortched earth policy the scortcher does not benefit in the short term, however, in Dom2 he does. The scortcher also must use some of his military to create the scortching, in Dom2 he does not. Really I don't think that the term scortched earch is particularly accurate in terms of the 200% tax dodge, but I guess its close enough. Does that provide enough of a reason why the system is poor and due for a change Keir? I don't mean to demean anyones style of play, but at the same time I don't think that simple acceptance of systems that could use some tweeking (I never called it broken, just lacking...) based on past history in using a certain play style is any kind of defense.

Basically this comes down to me wanting the system improved in terms of realism without resorting to a major change in the game mechanics. Here's another thought, why not have an overall nation tax rate? It does seem somewhat strange that each province is so autonomous does it not? I don't see that haveing both local and global taxes would increase micro or complexity by much, and it should allow for less abuse (as I see it) in the 200% tax and trash tactic. Really though this gets back to a much older topic of population movement and the pushes and pulls on population movement. As far as I remember Dom does not have pop movement per se, its still all about individual autonomous provinces. Think about the MoO3 system here (for as much as MoO3 got wrong, it did get some things right, or at least make a noble attempt to get them right). Anyway, I don't really want added complexity for the sake of complexity, and I don't think that this system really needs a major overhaul, rather I want to point out what I see as an exploitable flaw in the game design and hope that if enough other people agree the devs will take a look at simple fixes (like limiting the amount that taxes can be raised per turn when going over 100%) or even larger fixes.

Just reducing the unrest to normal 'newly conquered' levels, instead of leaving it at 100+ would be a simple and effective fix imo.

[Psitticine]

I think what he is saying is that raising the tax rate above 100% is also siphoning money away from infrastructure upkeep, so that bridges decay from lack of repair. Also, the high taxes combined with ignoring the needs of the people does create literal unrest, and that means there are possibly those who are tossing brands onto those bridges in protest.

[PDF]

This reminds me of the ridiculous "revolts" in MTW, and the cheats involved : a good way to kill a AI opponent is to create revolts in his former provinces ... and then buy the revoltees to add to your army !
I think that the problem in Dom2 is basically the same : the "unrest" is not relative to the player creating it, but an "overall" turmoil state, allowing one player to "buy" it for its opponent...
Maybe when one province is conquered unrest should be reset, or at least seriously lowered, so the new owner doesn't get all the mess the former did

[Psitticine]

Hmm, I dunno. The worst part of any war is dealing with the aftermath.