Strange building problems with Pergamon

[xsithspawnx]

So I started a 0-turn campaign with Pergamon on RS 2.6 (BI .exe) and I've noticed a couple of strange building issues. First of all, once government determination is built, instead of having the annexation option there is the Parthian Satrapy building in its place.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It appears to serve the same function, as it lowers public order and increases taxes, but it seems a bit jarring to be building a Parthian Satrapy as Pergamon. This is simply an aesthetic issue, but a more troubling issue is the inconsistency with Pergamon's tax buildings.

As far as I've seen from the 2.6 campaigns I've played so far the tax buildings have been changed from their original state. In earlier releases of RS2 you had increasingly large law penalties with each level of tax policy built, instead of the newer and more realistic model of a large initial happiness penalty that is reduced with each successive level. Pergamon's tax buildings seem to follow another model entirely for some reason. The first level simply adds a 20% penalty to happiness, but then each successive levels adds another 20% or more to that penalty, with the fourth level reaching a 100% happiness penalty. This is completely inconsistent with what these buildings seem to be representing throughout the rest of the mod.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I was under the impression that the actual level of taxation your people were under was still represented by the normal tax option, (i.e. low, medium, high, and very high taxes) and thus the more you squeezed out of them the more unrest you created. There are traits that accentuate this in the mod so it seems to be reinforcing this notion. However, the tax buildings represent the efficiency of the bureaucracy put in place to collect those taxes. The more effective and refined the process gets (represented by each successive level of tax building) the more corruption (not the game mechanic) is decreased, causing increased revenue and happiness of your people. For example, corrupt tax officials that inflate taxes to line their own pockets are replaced, and taxes are assessed more proportionally with regards to wealth so that they no longer fall disproportionately hard on the less well off. These were real problems that plagued empires throughout history and inevitably the reform of such systematic corruption increased happiness and profitability.

I'm assuming that this is a mistake (most likely of simple oversight), seeing how drastically different this is from what I've encountered with other factions so far in 2.6, but I haven't played nearly all the factions in this version yet so I could be wrong. If it is wrong then I'd love to see a hotfix put out at some point seeing as Pergamon is one of my favorite factions for this mod (if the devs have time of course. I know this comes from your free time) If not I'd appreciate being pointed in the direction of how to go about changing them to match up with how they are implemented in the rest of the mod.

Thanks for your time, and hopefully this information will help in perfecting this great mod even further.

[tungri_centurio]

I dont think it adds up every penalty.it replaces the last penalty when you build the next building in line.
But can you post your empire,like to see your progress with pergamon,did one with them in 2.5 and loved them.

[dvk901]

Well, I checked a few factions and the settings are the same for all of them, including Rome. Could you tell me what factions are different? There is merit to what you are saying, however, I don't think our idea concerning the building was tailored that way. The building was to allow the player to get more money if he\she needed it, but at the cost of increased displeasure on the part of the citizens. It wasn't meant to be a 'permanent' building, but one used in an emergency or during war.

Not saying that can't change, but that was the idea.

[Greymane]

Sithspawn, you might want to check export_descr_buildings in the Pergamum zero turn campaign folder and see if those tax buildings are the same as in other folders (like the Rome 1 turn, I know for a fact that one is working correctly). Just edit the values of the Pergamum one.
A quick glance told me it's slightly different from the way the MedII building file is set up (I only mod that one, basically, so not much help here), but it doesn't look too difficult.

And dvk, if those tax buildings are meant to be quick solutions, shouldn't it take less time and money to build? Maybe at the expense of even more unrest? Just an idea.
Might be more work than it is worth (and the AI probably couldn't cope with it), so I get it if reforming the tax building system is not exactly on your to do list.

[xsithspawnx]

I dont think it adds up every penalty.it replaces the last penalty when you build the next building in line.
But can you post your empire,like to see your progress with pergamon,did one with them in 2.5 and loved them.

I understand that they're not cumulative, but my point is that each time you build the next building you are gaining 20% or more unhappiness. The first building gives you a 20% happiness penalty and the next 40%. A twenty percent difference, and the next one adds another 40% to that (it gives you an 80% penalty).

Back to the actual issue.

So it looks like I was partially mistaken. It appears that in 2.6 the tax buildings do all have successively higher happiness penalties like those encountered in my Pergamon 2.6 campaign. It was 2.5 that had the model I described. I guess I just hadn't used the tax buildings all that much in 2.6 yet so I was surprised to see them working completely different from the previous version when I last used them heavily. However, upon reading the descriptions for each building in the communal tribute line the philosophy they seem intended to represent matches closer to the 2.5 model than the 2.6 one. (I'd copy and paste them if I knew where to find the descriptions, but they are in game so they're not hard to find if you want to re-read them yourself)

Pergamon 2.5

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

They do imply getting more money out of an area, but through improved administration that simultaneously reduced corruption in most cases (excluding the first level where corruption is the rule). Maybe it's just me but it seems redundant to have these buildings work in the same manner as the already existing tax slider. One (the slider) would be the actual amount of taxes set to be collected, while the other is how those taxes are collected. If you had a relatively low amount of taxes set to be collected but employed corrupt and inefficient methods of collection you will still run into unrest despite the low amount of taxes that you intended to levy. On the flip side, if you have a somewhat higher tax policy but a more efficient and equitable administration collecting those taxes the burden will be spread out, and thus the net unrest will be less, or at the least little worse than the first instance.

Keeping them both the same (proportional increase to income and unrest) is like saying that any and all tax reform is simply increasing the extent of a corrupt system. Rather than changing the fundamental way the tax collection works you're just throwing more corrupt tax collectors at it. This would be fine if that's what was being described by these buildings, but that doesn't seem to be what is being implied. I guess that my point is that to some degree I would think that the purpose of these buildings must have been envisioned along the lines I've detailed, based on both the descriptions attributed to them and how they were implemented in 2.5. Admittedly, the 2.5 implementation was the exception rather than the rule with how these buildings have worked throughout RS2's history, but I found it a welcome change in terms of logical consistency and gameplay.