Normal Taxes

[vikingsiddhu]

Who plays under normal taxes here, anyway?
I like to play my game as such:
--every city has normal or low tax, whichever is available.(normal preferable)
---IF Wars end up costing me too much, I levy taxes. (But when I do so, I levy taxes on select un roman-citizenship cities, never citizenship, and expire this after 10 turns or so with a respite from leving in those cities for 20 more turns, or double of how many turns I levied taxes from)

Obvious benifits:
--forces economy to be built on trade, and farming, not taxing.
--limits corruption. Less cash flow
--more difficulty
--more realistic than super-high taxes.

[Hader]

i don't have a strategy, just do whatever it takes.

[Angarah]

As high as I can, without getting a 'discontent' happiness level. My people pay taxes, I conquer the world. Fair trade

[John I Tzimisces]

Highest taxes actually are realistic. Guys like Cicero who governed fairly (He governed Cilicia in his proconsulship) were extremely rare. Roman proconsuls/governors essentially spent their proconsulship squeezing as much money as possible out of a province in order to pay off the guys who got them elected to the office of Consul to begin with.

[hellheaven1987]

Well, I usually set the tax normal... and never change it again. If the people don't like it, that's it. If they rebel, I would send them into hell.

[.Socrates]

highest as possible before they become blue.
if they rebel, they get hit 5 times.

[vikingsiddhu]

Highest taxes actually are realistic. Guys like Cicero who governed fairly (He governed Cilicia in his proconsulship) were extremely rare. Roman proconsuls/governors essentially spent their proconsulship squeezing as much money as possible out of a province in order to pay off the guys who got them elected to the office of Consul to begin with.

In the timeframe of Rome total war that is wrong, maybe a little after, but I'm reffering to 270-130 or so.

In the early days of the Roman Republic, public taxes consisted of modest assessments on owned wealth and property. The tax rate under normal circumstances was 1% and sometimes would climb as high as 3% in situations such as war. These modest taxes were levied against land, homes and other real estate, slaves, animals, personal items and monetary wealth. Taxes were collected from individuals and, at times, payments could be refunded by the treasury for excess collections. With limited census accuracy, tax collection on individuals was a difficult tax at best.

By 167 B.C. the Republic had enriched itself greatly through a series of conquests. Gains such as the silver and gold mines in Spain created an excellent source of revenue for the state, and a much larger tax base through its provincial residents. By this time, Rome no longer needed to levy a tax against its citizens in Italy and looked only to the provinces for collections.

http://www.unrv.com/economy/roman-taxes.php

[ThermoBrave]

Highest taxes for all cities. But when they are revolting, I must give them lower taxes.

[Fabolous]

In the timeframe of Rome total war that is wrong, maybe a little after, but I'm reffering to 270-130 or so.


http://www.unrv.com/economy/roman-taxes.php

Your only talking about the Romans there, for many nations, high taxes are perfectly realistic. Second the whole monetary system of R:TW is an abstraction, therefore it is tough to say it is "unrealistic"

[vikingsiddhu]

Your only talking about the Romans there, for many nations, high taxes are perfectly realistic. Second the whole monetary system of R:TW is an abstraction, therefore it is tough to say it is "unrealistic"

I agree that many other nations did levy huge taxes. But in the case of realism, one can only look at Rome and compare it, not parthia or anything else. So yes the realism aspect would occur to Rome only. If a mod could change the poll, please do so.

Regarding the handicap, the way I think of it as I am the liberator, guiding the races of the world against their cruel masters(is it really fun to be Rome and play with super-high taxes?). And it makes the game significantly challenging. Of course, this is for hard difficulty and below, not very hard.
Regarding abstraction, the system is most related(when I say most, i mean greatest, it is still a poorly simulation of tax collection) to the Roman taxing system, and therefore when comparing realism we should compare it to a Roman standard. (So if a mod could change that part go ahead)

Come on 6 votes for low/normal and no one responds on it

[Slimshoom]

i set taxes on high at the beginning of the game, to keep myself from going into debt and so i can get a little extra money. Once my economy is set and im making a decent amount of denarii a turn, then i set them to normal so i dont have many problems with rioting. When i play with a very poor faction (Parthia, Gaul) i tend to leave it on high longer than usual cause it takes longer to get my economy set.

[Proximus]

It’s basically very simple; I need money to pay for my conquest of the known world. I get money from taxes, thus I tax my cities as high as possible before they start getting rebellious.

[player1]

Highest possible, exempt for <2000 population towns, which get low taxes to promote growth.

[Slimshoom]

If i take over and exterminate a city, I generally set the taxes on low to promote the city to grow, along with other actions that promote growth. But once they have been under my rule for several years and the population has grown, I set them on high or normal depending on the situation.

[mike^_^]

since i usually only play as rome i keep the taxes on very high, if they decide to rebel i just put them on the cross

[Red Harvest]

Poorly constructed poll. You ask an opinion but label all the options but the favored one as "unrealistic?"

By the way, you will get bad traits from having taxes too low, plus you will get *unrealistic* growth rates in your cities.

I fail to see the relevance of the UNRV quote. It is referring to Rome itself. Rome was known as a "tax farmer" raising its money from the provinces.

[NobleNick]

Poorly constructed poll. You ask an opinion but label all the options but the favored one as "unrealistic?"

I heartily agree: The survey is far from impartially worded, and appears to be soliciting support for the author's choice (which, by the way, I don't believe is the best choice).

LOW, HIGH and VERY HIGH taxes are far from unreasonable. In fact, higher taxes help keep POPulation in check by lowering PG. Yes, this means you need to deal with a higher PO penalty; but if you design for that, it is no problem.

In every city that I have a choice (except for the very few that I use as exclusive military build cities), I ***DESIGN*** the non-squalor PG to be about 5% with NORMAL taxes, which is the same as 4% with VERY HIGH taxes. Then I set taxes to LOW until POP gets to about 6000 (best taxes per person is for towns of POP less than about 7900). While this is happening I do NOT neglect to build/upgrade temples and financial infrastructure (roads, ports, mines, markets) Then I hike the rate up to VERY HIGH and leave it there. The settlements max out at about POP = 12000, with PO = 100 (base) - 40 (squalor) - 50 (VH taxes) = 10. Add in 40 (temple) + 5 (colesium, yearly games) = 55; so we need 20 more points to get to the magic 75. A full garrison (12%) gives the full 80 point garrison, but we only need 20 more points; so garrison size is (20/80) x 12% x 12000 = 3% x 12000 = 360. On LARGE unit size (80 man units) this is 5 units of Peasants = 500 denarii per turn. This is with -NO- governor. The picture is usually much rosier: With a governor sporting a decent bodyguard and even 2 wreaths of influence, the need for 3 Peasant units goes away, and you have a 200/turn upkeep cost. If you need to use the gov out of town for a few turns, just crank taxes back from VERY HIGH to simply HIGH while he is away, or increase game frequency.

By the way, you will get bad traits from having taxes too low, plus you will get *unrealistic* growth rates in your cities.

The difference between NORMAL and LOW taxes is 0.5% PG. One farm upgrade is worth 1% PG. **IF** someone REALLY wanted low taxes (why? Don't ask me!) then just don't do the farm upgrades.

Hmmm.... Didn't know that bad traits came with low taxe rates. Thanks! I'll file that one away for observation.

[vikingsiddhu]

Poorly constructed poll. You ask an opinion but label all the options but the favored one as "unrealistic?"

By the way, you will get bad traits from having taxes too low, plus you will get *unrealistic* growth rates in your cities.

I fail to see the relevance of the UNRV quote. It is referring to Rome itself. Rome was known as a "tax farmer" raising its money from the provinces.

I'm telling the truth: sorry for that. The Roman senate did not tax people like hell, and said "Look Cronton is getting angry. Lets drop taxes."
Thats the hard reality of the situation, if anything I do agree there should be one more option which can be realistic: set a tax when province is yours, and keep that tax, or increase it if you want. But once you increase it, there may be no decrease, despite public discontent. That is taxing someone highly, which may be realistic depending on the leader.

However, few leaders ever dropped taxes every time a settlement was getting angry, very few, if any. That would be the absolute stupdiest precedent if something like that were to happen; everyone who wanted taxes to drop would just protest and boom lower taxes.

If you want realism there are two ways to play it, one with never decreasing taxes(maybe unless in times of peace?), and the other low/normal taxes.

Oh yeah, lets forget about the city growth factor, remember rome had over a million in its peak in one city. We are talking about taxes, and not these inherent game mechanics. As I said, it forces more on your skill. If you need the taxes to keep public content(through growth being less, and therefore squalor less) than you are not as advanced as someone who relies on other methods. It also lowers your expansion rate, forcing more management tactics, as well as powerful military leadership.

And finally, I was basing this on RTR, and nearly every mod, or even vanilla can apply, except EB, where there are super-high income bonuses.

[Red Harvest]

If you have the "green face" and don't have the taxes maxed then you get some sort of poor tax collector type trait ("useless assessor.") I'm no expert on traits, I picked this up from others. You get some positives (income wise) if you squeeze every last penny out of them IIRC.

Difference between very high and low taxes is 1.5% per turn...3% per year. Now add that to any base upgrades that various structures produce(including farms) and you soon have rapid growth. Higher population = higher squalor. Unfortunately, taxes rise only very slightly with population, so extra garrison costs quickly exceed the benefit of lower taxes in high growth regions.

The region's base farming level is important (tucked away in the regions file.) If it is low then you will need farms, etc. to get the city to grow to the next level while maintaining taxes. If it is high then the last thing you want is to add any farm upgrades or farming temples. If you do add them it only pushes runaway growth, requiring larger garrisons (more cost) and often even lower taxes. (Income per farm level upgrade is 80 denarrii with average harvest on medium, 15% less on very hard.)

And farming temples grant no farming income bonus until the same level of farm is built. Example: if you build the first level farming temple without building the first level farms, you don't get an income boost. When you then build the farm (after the temple) you will get a double boost, since the temple's farm bonus will begin functioning.

Merged double post. - Trajan

Note: games were mentioned, but there are some bugs with them. The most noticeable is that you get the benefit of the games even if you can't pay for them! If you spend all your money every turn, max out the games...you will get them for free. They get charged AFTER all other expenses, but don't get charged once your money is spent. I've not tested this as much in RTW, but it is very noticeable in BI when you play as the WRE. For example, the scroll will project you to be 6,000 in debt if you have the games daily in every city...but when you do the math on the following turn you find that you didn't get charged for them. You only get charged if you have a surplus.

Also, in BI the game effect continues to apply AFTER you destroy the colosseum...IF you set it to a weekly or daily frequency before hand. Funny bug that one is.

[NobleNick]

If you have the "green face" and don't have the taxes maxed then you get some sort of poor tax collector type trait ("useless assessor.")...

DIdn't know this. Thanks for passing it on.

...Unfortunately, taxes rise only very slightly with population, so extra garrison costs quickly exceed the benefit of lower taxes in high growth regions....

I am not quite sure what you mean. No matter what your base PG rate or POPulation, each incremental 1% step up in PG EVENTUALLY yields EXACTLY an extra 3000 POP and a corresponding -10 PO due to squalor. Therefore, each step DOWN in taxes (+0.5% to PG) will EVENTUALLY yield EXACTLY an extra 1500 POP and a -5 to PO. If I remember correctly, each step down in taxes also yields an immediate +25 to PO; so EVENTUALLY the PO benefit of lower taxes decays from +25 PO down to +25 - 5 = +20 PO. This is still a net gain to PO for lower taxes.

There is a primer on tax income that I wish I knew where I saw it. It gives a breakdown of the about 4 or 5 population brackets for purposes of figuring taxes. The lowest population, up to about (I''ll guess) 500 or a 1000 has an excellent tax return per individual at all taxing rates (L, N, H, and VH). The next POP bracket is also quite good, but not great, and so on. I forget the exact breakdown; but I remember that the per person tax rate for those people over a certain population goes from good to abysmal in one big step. I am almost positive that the breakpoint is at POP = 7905 (yeah, I know that is a weird breakpoint). So, increasing POP quickly to about 8000 is very beneficial; but beyond that is only good to get city upgrades.

... The region's base farming level is important (tucked away in the regions file.) If it is low then you will need farms, etc. to get the city to grow to the next level while maintaining taxes...

EXCELLENT info on the base farming files and farm temples! Thanks! I knew that base farming rates varied city to city (for example, Patavium grows like a weed); but I didn't know how to quantify what it was for each town without doing the math on a town I already owned. And I was totally clueless on farming temples. Good stuff!