[.981] What the hell happened to Taxes?

'Total bollocks' - so you don't think taxes work well then Sean

I think gold is now a % of the gold output from settlement level and buildings, which means you can't just ignore them by building city improvements - you have to use taxes now. I'm not sure what to make of it really.

It also seems as if the buildings that reduce unrest are there solely to allow you to creep up your tax rate. I played an entire game last night without raising my taxes, and I never had to build more than one of the unrest reducing buildings. It's good that I could avoid that whole group of buildings since I didn't need/want them. Perhaps it's meant to balance out having to pay for upkeeps for large armies by making you have to build intermediate buildings so you can increase the tax rate? I'm not sure exactly what I'm getting at. . . but it seems kind of artificial.

The plan on that is that Empires ignore unrest for certain things and Kingdoms try to mitigate it. I like that sort of differentiation, but it never totally came into focus. Anyone have a complete description of tax mechanics?

Population now provides no resources, while city levels provide research, production (an inconsequential ammount I might add) and gildar. The tax slider was not rebalanced with the previous unrest levels from increasing taxes, and changing it from 'low' doesn't serve much purpose.

Consequently since population now provides no resources, once you reach a level 5 city it's only purpose is to provide conquering players bigger cities..

Thats pretty much it.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

It was brought in for beta 5C - tax now affects the entire gold output of the city - markets, city level, enchantments, everything. The percentages are now much higher too - I think 'low' is now 40% as opposed to the 1% it used to be.

So low taxes on a village with a market would be calculated like this:

Village (2 gold) + market (1 gold) = 3 gold

3 gold x 0.4 (due to 40% tax rate) = 1.2 gold per turn from that village

Taxes really confused me as well until I *think* I worked out how they work.

You can only get gold income from tax % of total output.  In other words, if my city produces 4 gold and i have 0% tax rate, then I get 0 gold from that city.  But if my tax rate is on 50% ,then I get 2 gold from that city.

It was pretty annoying in my last game because I cast prosperity on a city that gives 1 gold/essence and I had 2 essence.  Intuitively you would think I would then get 2 gold per turn because of the prosperity spell, but alas that was not the case.

At 0% tax rate, you get 0 gold from a 4 gold output city.  If your tax rate was on 50% you would get a 2 gold output.  In other words, 0% tax rate means 0 gold irrespective of gold producing buildings, city enchantments, etc.  It makes prosperity a crappy enchantment early on, which I learned the hard way and changed it to meditation for a guaranteed 2 mana/turn for that particular city.

I reserve judgment about whether this is a good change or not.  It at least makes taxes something to think about.  My first impression is that it is actually a good change as it forces one to think about optimal tax rates a lot more.

I knew I would not like it, but this is so much worse than I thought. My mod is so screwed now. I will have to spend hours testing out new balances all for the sake of this minor change in the gildar equation. I really liked the old way, especially since I could increase taxes in a given city. Now I have to figure out how to do that with the new system. QQ

From my understanding to the tax system is the following.

Every building gives you a gildar bonus say merchant is +2. Now this represents the amount of money you would get under 100% (more than oppressive) taxes. But being a reasonable leader you tax at say... 50%. Thus, you only get a +1 gildar per season from the merchant. Namely that percentage is the percentage of the gildar you are going to get for the tax rate.

The info cards is the amount of money that the merchant produces per season and the tax is the amount of that money you take from them... It's rather an elegant system once you understand what the system is doing.

But it's strange that a bread roll costs something like 30 guildar, which represents years of output from an entire village. It's just so bizarre, I guess it does the job but it's hardly an elegant system really.

What do you guys think about the unrest from those taxes?

Do all additions to Gildar now use this equation? Does Apiary, for instance, add +1 or +1*TaxRate?

It's all +1*tax rate now

Okay. I will just double the gildar on all buildings then. Thanks for the info. 

I think it's too easy to completely negate unrest, especially in cities with essence. Really you could halve the values on unrest buildings. Other then that I like it. Your just mad about your mod.

Precisely. I was about 8 hours into a game when I noticed taxes were different. I was so mad I cast Break Realm, the ragequit of spells. 

It should be fixed, but generally we get a heads up before they rip the heart of game out and replace it with something new.

In the change log. .981

"The tax rate is applied to the entire cities gold production, running with low taxes is much harder now."

I agree with you seanw3 that this tax change should have been clarified before it was buried in the change log.  I don't recall much talk about the new tax system, but I do like the new system. It is simplistic and makes sense, although it is not as easy to figure out how much money you will be making if you build such a building. But I suppose this information could be added later, as they are trying this system out.

I like your solution, as this is what it looked like what the dev's did, or close to it. I can't wait for this game to be released, so I can try out your mod.

Out of curiousity how close is the vanilla gameplay vs. your balanced mod? Is it a completely different feel or roughly the same?

I like the tax change, although it makes me lean towards the idea of doubling all gold sources.  I don't think I've ever run a tax rate of more than 50%, so even doubling would result in less money than before.

The major differences are minute. The devs and I have a difference of vision on how long a battle should last, how scary monsters should be, how many armies each faction should have, weapon balance, armor balance, magic balance, game altering spells and quests, hero progression, using randomness for every game mechanic, faction aggression, starting Sov power, leveling speed, etc. Overall it is more challenging. A design for hardcore players that don't want to give any room to new users for things like learning how to play the game. I will probably break the mod up into content and balance changes after the initial release.

I hear ya, ol' buddy.  Partly why I liked your mod. 

I can also say that I can understand the reason for the fix.  It should be a bit unrealistic to get by with a low tax rate all the time.  If I lucked out, I could get by finding one of 'them' heroes with merchant / governor path and plug the holes in my early game budget.  All the while researching pretty dang effectively.  So if nothing else it's to say you as players need to have worked a bit to research at an optimal rate.  Or something like that.  That's my guess.

But then why does it take years of taxes just to buy a bread roll!? The money system already requires a suspension of disbelief so we shouldn't dwell on how realistic/unrealistic the tax system is

it's all about profit...and how much the merchant cheats on his taxes

Err I think when shogun says 'unrealistic' he means that in a strategy game where resources define the actions you can take, being able to 'mostly' ignore the gold aspect of the game isn't lending much credit to it's usefulness. I doubt he meant unrealistic in terms of how much peasants were really brutalized in the medieval era.

Ahem, I do agree that the game runs smoother with a base monetary bonus from city levels, rather than relying on income from population, that was too low to do anything with at the start of the game. Removing population from resources entirely though.. just makes it feel like the mechanic is now an afterthought, or a poor initial decision. As far as the bonus production is concerned... 2 production per city level isn't going to do anything worthwhile. Considering how slowly units and buildings are constructed, I think a % bonus to production from population or city level would have been a much more impactful change.

Okay, initial dislike is over. After hours of time getting used to it, it is superior. The bonuses to research from a city now make sense at 2x*city level or whathaveyou. Since we are all getting Unrest on that number, it no longer gives insane amounts of tech from leveling. As the commander says, Production needs to be high as well to match the concept. +2 Production per turn is less work done than the american senate over a decade. Needs a boost.

Sir, you give the US senate too much credit.

I do like the fact that they used a simple +X to production for the city levels, but yeah it probably need to be jacked up just a tiny tad.