No varying tax rates by city or province in Rome II. WTF? Who thought this was a good idea?

[Antonio Luna]

That reasoning makes no sense what so ever.....It's like they just thought, we hated doing that....like it truly served no benefit to us what so ever....just...cant...comprehend...

I understood what they meant although it isn't the right way in doing it. See if they put this varying tax rates system, you no longer would need to think much about what to build in some settlements because you just adjust the tax to compensate for the stability of that settlement especially as your empire grows. build a lot of money producing buildings that produce squalor but you lower the taxation on that settlement to ease the population which defeats the purpose. When one is having a problem with a settlement that has increasing unhappiness, instead of exempting the province from taxation or doing anything else to curb the problem, you can just adjust the taxation rate to stabilize the settlements and not only will the problem be solved right away, you will still get money albeit lower. It takes time and makes management of your provinces' stability easier. Without this system, you need to think carefully on how to use agents, what to build to avoid instability, and think about the enemy's movement in the region.

[kafrion]

I understood what they meant although it isn't the right way in doing it. See if they put this varying tax rates system, you no longer would need to think much about what to build in some settlements because you just adjust the tax to compensate for the stability of that settlement especially as your empire grows. build a lot of money producing buildings that produce squalor but you lower the taxation on that settlement to ease the population which defeats the purpose. When one is having a problem with a settlement that has increasing unhappiness, instead of exempting the province from taxation or doing anything else to curb the problem, you can just adjust the taxation rate to stabilize the settlements and not only will the problem be solved right away, you will still get money albeit lower. It takes time and makes management of your provinces' stability easier. Without this system, you need to think carefully on how to use agents, what to build to avoid instability, and think about the enemy's movement in the region.

Completely invalid statement , that wasnt the case in the original rome and it isnt the case now since taxation isnt really a big deal anyway even at legendary its minus 7 for medium taxation , money is scarce early on , rebel armys are a joke and conquering a province is what really provides negative public order . Also whats that about difficult management of the empire , producing dignitaries is difficult or recruiting 3 unit armies or adding and subtracting the bonuses from each building or reesearching philosophy and the fact that regions are organised into provinces makes it even easier . In short you have plenty of ways to increase public order , and the penalties if you dont are not serious . The whole system can become more complex and challenging by changing the numbers and adding varried taxation levels because right now you can essentially expand and build your empire through temple construction which is just laughable , the only reason i build field and cattle ranches or some of the very high tier buildins is to give myself the challenge of solving the problems they cause because with the same money i can just build another army conquer aniother territory and gain the fiscal bonuses as well as completing the game objectives at the same time a lot quicker .

[shadowflare1995]

If you played Shogun 2, you wouldn't be surprised.

[Emperor Arcturus Mengsk]

I think it's clear that the game is being dumbed down to appease to a more wide customer base.

Which is why I don't understand this choice.

The way I see it, if the game was more complex to be more to the liking of their hardcore fan base, and just had options to simplify or automate in game mechanics to also comfort the people who just want to play the battles and skip most of the empire management part, It's highly possible that it would be better for all parts involved, and would sell much more...

[NavyBee]

I can understand CA's desire to streamline tax management, but would still like the option to set taxes individually, at least for each province.

Anyway, if streamlining was a reason for an empire-wide tax rate, its implementation is not implemented too well, as access to provincial information is NOT streamlined. In R2TW, after having to click through each provincial info tab to learn about each province's income, squalor, happiness etc., it would not take much additional time to set a tax slider. At the moment, the tax rate for an empire is determined by the highest tax rate its freshly conquered "uncivilised" regions can sustain. Together with the limited number of armies (less garrisons for maintaining public order) and dignitaries, this makes for a strange design choice. Yes, you have to build public-order buildings faster, thereby "integrating" the province/region into the empire, but at what price?

On a side note, I always found that individually managing historical provinces was a distinction of the TW series from e.g. the Civ series. I loved both (until Civ5), but also appreciated their differences.

[Viljanen]

Changing the taxes for individual settlements in MTW2 and before was indeed just a manual, boring management task you had to repeat every few turns to maximize you tax gains. There wasn't much decision-making or balancing involved. The current tax-system forces you to balance the tax rates with growth and public order and involves much more planning and choosing with much less micromanagement.

[Antonio Luna]

Completely invalid statement , that wasnt the case in the original rome and it isnt the case now since taxation isnt really a big deal anyway even at legendary its minus 7 for medium taxation , money is scarce early on , rebel armys are a joke and conquering a province is what really provides negative public order . Also whats that about difficult management of the empire , producing dignitaries is difficult or recruiting 3 unit armies or adding and subtracting the bonuses from each building or reesearching philosophy and the fact that regions are organised into provinces makes it even easier . In short you have plenty of ways to increase public order , and the penalties if you dont are not serious . The whole system can become more complex and challenging by changing the numbers and adding varried taxation levels because right now you can essentially expand and build your empire through temple construction which is just laughable , the only reason i build field and cattle ranches or some of the very high tier buildins is to give myself the challenge of solving the problems they cause because with the same money i can just build another army conquer aniother territory and gain the fiscal bonuses as well as completing the game objectives at the same time a lot quicker .

I fail to see how being able to change tax rates for each settlement makes it more complex and challenging when all it does is to provide instant solution to public order without doing anything else. The good thing it offers is that you can get a lot more money out of the settlements that are incredibly happy by increasing their tax rates. And that even makes it easier for you to increase money without doing anything else. Forget about all those ways to increase public order, all you need to do is just adjust the tax meter that suits each settlement and voila. When your empire grows and you've got a lot of money, you don't need to think about some settlement's unhappiness and its buildings, all you need to do is just adjust the tax rate. If you lack money, just squeeze all you can from settlements where your big armies are stationed and/or those that are incredibly happy and voila. All it does is make things easier though it takes time.

[Neige]

If you think having control over your economy is somehow bad/boring, perhaps you shouldn't be playing strategy games?

[Neige]

I fail to see how being able to change tax rates for each settlement makes it more complex

So... you're saying you fail to see that many sliders is more complex than one global slider? Perhaps you should look up the definition of complexity?

[Grimreapo]

Just a quick note to the people saying its dumbed down mechanic but none of the Paradox games have such a mechanic of adjusting tax by a provincial level and are far more realistic by adjusting taxing on at a social level, taxes are one of the most complex things created by mankind with a sane ruler thinking "What can be taxed, how can it be taxed and what can I get away with?" being able to justify to his people, he cant just say "People of London, if you are being taxed at the highest bracket because of how loyal and how hard working you are whilst those rebellious folk in York have to pay less, so keep up the hard work!". Heck the history of civilization is being dodging taxes some way or another by revolts, smuggling or even bricking up windows to lower the tax bracket the house would come under, taxes are more complex than being Paulie from Goodfellas saying "***** you, pay me" to your provinces...

[Antonio Luna]

So... you're saying you fail to see that many sliders is more complex than one global slider? Perhaps you should look up the definition of complexity?

Because those many sliders do not make things any more difficult which eventually leads to true complexity. In fact those sliders are there for "instant" solution to a problem. All you need to do is just adjust the slider and voila problem solved. That doesn't produce any complexity. Sure you will need to do a lot of things with this system but it's doing the same damn thing for each settlement so there's not a lot of variation nor thinking involved with this. It just takes time. Now with the global slider, you can't change that easily because you will have to look at each province's stability. Since you can't control the taxation system of each province you need to do a lot more than just sliding your way through the problem.

[Gallus]

The ability to adjust the taxes for each city has been gone since ETW...

[Neige]

Since you can't control the taxation system of each province you need to do a lot more than just sliding your way through the problem.

Like what? Construct buildings and have armies present? That's new.

[Tiwaz]

There is also the point that sliding down the tax is not solution. You are handicapping your empire if you ignore, as Antonio claims, the root issue of disturbance.

Because sinews of war is infinite money.

Solving in old games increasing instability with tax slider made it harder to field armies. But it gave ability to manage the empire with greater detail. Areas which had high stability could be taxed till they would be bleeding while recently conquered areas enjoyed period of reduced taxes until infrastructure was in place.

[Tiwaz]

Double again

[NavyBee]

Just a quick note to the people saying its dumbed down mechanic but none of the Paradox games have such a mechanic of adjusting tax by a provincial level and are far more realistic by adjusting taxing on at a social level, taxes are one of the most complex things created by mankind with a sane ruler thinking "What can be taxed, how can it be taxed and what can I get away with?" being able to justify to his people, he cant just say "People of London, if you are being taxed at the highest bracket because of how loyal and how hard working you are whilst those rebellious folk in York have to pay less, so keep up the hard work!". [...]

Good point.

Yet to me, R2TW empire management is more like "People of Pella, I force... ahem, ask you to bear a heavier tax burden than some unruly provincial backyard because no wars have been fought on your soil for decades, your province has a much higher level of infrastructure, your ruler is one of your culture, and you can pray to any god of your pantheon you like."

But i can live with the current tax system. It is a big nuisance in the beginning of a game, when fine-tuning each region would give me the higher tax yield i need to build up my forces. Later in the game, my state finances are usually in a better shape, and i can easily afford leaving some newly-acquired, culturally averse provinces tax-free while their public order recovers.

[SinerAthin]

I'd love to see this.

It doesn't make sense that some rag-wearing goat herders far off in some mountains in the east have to pay as much the rich and noble aristocrats in my wealthiest provinces.

[karamazovmm]

So... you're saying you fail to see that many sliders is more complex than one global slider? Perhaps you should look up the definition of complexity?

I see those as an added complexity to be sure.

anyway if one think that this game is more complex in terms of management than other previous titles by LONG shot, specially those in the older engines, I understand their refusal, specially given that people will adjust the first slider that they will see. and then we would have threads with people sneering at others who its too complex.

Its in the end its more realistic to have one set of global taxes than any other way and invariably it adds more difficulty.

now Im on the search for province specialisation builds that allow me to milk as much as I can from them. and its been invariably complex to do so, I wanted it to be more complex still

[Carlucio]

Complexity reduce sales.

[Earende]

Some say the reason is to dumb down for casuals... but! the old total war titles had auto-management! Isn't that better?