The Tax System

Very elaborate and interesting post. Congratulations on putting all those numbers together and explaining them in a detalied way.

The first question that comes to me is what happens to the unrest due per number of cities. I suppose you drop it in favour of corruption. I think that it should stay anyway. The more cities, the more complicated is to administrate the whole nation so it has to be reflected and not be capped to 15% like in your model.

Second, that's a matter of personal taste, but rather than "Corruption" I'd prefer to call it "Inefficience", "Incompetence" or just "Waste". Seems difficult to believe that among people who willingly go to live in cities there is already corruption. I think that their motivation would prevent them from being corrupted. But of course they are inefficient, as they don't know how to properly manage a city.

Third, I think that it's easier to understand when buildings make a flat reduction to unrest/waste instead of having a formula. That allows for bigger waste reducing building as the tech tree progresses.

With that in mind I would alter your formula to make "waste" in tht way:

Waste = MIN [ (WasteFactor * NumCities) - WasteReduction ; 0 ]

where

- WasteFactor is that 3% we have now due to cities, and that probably should be changed to a different number and also should escale with map size
- WasteReduction is just the sum of all waste reducing improvements and abilities.

Then resource output is:

ResourceOutput = ResourceProduction * (100%-WastePercentage) * (100%-UnrestPercentage)

Oh, and waste would apply to Gildar.

Just my 2 cents

i agree that the tax levels could use some work, since "low" is the most efficient by a fair margin, which makes all the higher settings pretty useless. 

i don't think the proposed corruption system is a good solution, though. seems overly complicated to me. you basically just add another unrest system on top of the other unrest system that interacts with the original system. 

not saying your system wouldn't work, or that the idea is bad, but if you need half a page of examples to illustrate the basic idea, it's probably too complicated.

the money side of things is really pretty simple in this game - you have a handful of cash buildings and a tax modifier that determines the amount of money you get out of those sources. the trade off is that at the same time it reduces production and research. this is a simple but efficient system, easy to understand and to explain (which is an important aspect and should not be neglected)

adjusting the tax levels would be a lot simpler - basically just rebalance the levels  - or add some extra levels between the current "none" and "low" - or make the higher taxes less punishing to make them worth considering - going from 40% income to 50% income (low to normal) increases unrest by 16% in think - that's never worth it really.

That's why I proposed the changes I proposed. With my changes the system can be explained as easy as "There are two factors that contribute to waste: Unrest and inefficience, and each of those factors needs to be reduced by its own buildings and/ or abilities". Simple to understand AND to act about it. Isn't it?

ok, so you have a waste percentage and an unrest precentage, and they both do the same, basically. i fail to see how this improves the game. you just add a new system/variable that does almost exactly the same as a system that already exists. maybe i'm missing your point here, but i really don't see how this system is better than the system that is currently implemented in the game.

First I see them as two parts of the same system, not as two different systems. And each one has different purposes.

- The unrest due to tax is a way to balance gold vs research/production. So you can get more gold if your treasury is running low but you will have to sacrifice research and production in exchange for it. That's what it's supposed to be from the begining and also what happens in Civilization and other 4X games.

- The waste part is supposed to balance expansion. As you found more cities this part grows severely handicaping your economy, and only by careful planification (waste reducing techs, waste reducing buildings and waste reducing administrator traits) you will be able to counter that handicap and thus grow your empire.

That's why two parts of the same system are advisable, because each part has a different function.

so the difference between the unrest from city count and your proposed waste mechanic is that the waste mechanic can be countered by buildings/techs? if that's the case, you can have the same effect without a new mechanic - by adding some more unrest reducing techs and/or buildings. 

Both parts can be reduced by buildings/champions traits. The difference is their source, as one comes from tax and the other comes from your empire size.

- Unrest is a way to focus your economy in producing gold at the cost of research and production.

- Waste limits the growth of your empire by forcing you to develop a strong economy that supports that grow.

yeah i see your point, but to be honest, i don't think your new mechnic really adds anything new to the game.

i mean, this is your summary:

change it to:

- Unrest is a way to focus your economy in producing gold at the cost of research and production.
- Waste Unrest limits the growth of your empire by forcing you to develop a strong economy that supports that grow.

and you pretty much have a descirption of how the game works right now.

The only reason that unrest limits growth is because it has a second factor wihch depends on the number of cities. This is what I call "Waste" and what GFireflyE calls "Corruption". I am just advocating to make things more clear by stating clearly what is what instead of having two different sources producing the same unrest. Sometimes more is simpler and sometimes less complicates things and makes them more obscure. Yes, we can say this unrest is just because "there are too many cities" but having it as inefficience or corruption looks much more elegant.

Making things more complete does not equal to making things more complicated. In fact introducing more clear and better diferentiated dynamics contributes to a better understanding by the player and thus a better gameplay experience.

K, a few very interesting posts here. I'll try to comment accordingly:

@OliverFA_306

Unrest due to number of cities would still exist. I suppose I didn't explain that part all the best, but I did say "Unrest from all other sources must still be handled by the effects produced by the Fortress improvements, Commanders, etc." This would include unrest from number of cities as well as noncontigousness from capital, etc etc. All adds up.

As to the name, corruption or waste, makes no matter as the term only exists in game. You'll never see it up front. The player just has to understand that buildings 'waste-management' buildings helps decrease waste and thus helps increase tax revenue.

Equations can always be fine-tuned. I proposed mine because it naturally bands within 0-100%. You're proposed system appears to be more reaching, turning the unrest from number of cities and intergrating waste into the formula. Could work. My thoughts to having a corruption application only effect the tax system however was to give tax a bit more flavor. I don't want tax rate to be 'just along for the ride'. I would like important decisions being made as to what your tax rate to be and I would like that decision to be different depending on how you play the game and how far along you are in a game.

@Azunai_

Another 'low' player I see. I think that's the setting most just play on. If you take and plot the values in any of my charts you find a quadratic curve is shown, encouraging the player to reduce the tax rate. The game balance however should be set to push the player to want to increase the tax rate. Thus the decision.

Ultimately, my proposed addition would add a variability of 15% to the current unrest embedded in the tax system while also giving the player a more diverse and meaningful set of values to tax at. Is that worth fighting over? Or are there other ways that you can receive the unrest discount easier? Remember that it would have to be an 'additional' other way, ie one method of reducing unrest is handed out and can be relied on in abundance. (imo, that should never happen in the game....but it may)

i made a suggestion a few weeks back about another mechanic to handle unrest. the thread never really took off and i didn't feel like bumbing my own idea, but since we are discussing a related topic, i may as well summarize my idea i proposed then:

the basic idea was that fortresses already serve as centers of unrest reduction (in a way), but only at level 4 (prison -10% global unrest)/level 5 (onyx throne [?] -30%). the suggestion was to remove the level 4 perk and instead add the unrest reduction to other fortress buildings (i suggested the defensive buildings (walls/castles), but a new line of garrison or patrol - themed buildings would work just as well). this way, you wouldn't have to build your fort to level 4 to get the bonus, but could unlock the bonus over several steps (say, 2% for the tier 1 building, 3% for t2 and 5% for t3 or something). so you'd have a simple way to counter unrest and at the same time, you'd make the underused fortress city spec more popular/useful (i think many players never build more than 1 or 2 fortresses since towns and conclaves are a lot better for economic purposes)

don't know if that idea was better than yours. the main focus was to minimize introduction of new (and possibly confusing) mechanics while at the same time making an underused mechanic (fortessess)more useful. the thread died quickly, so i just assumed that the idea wasn't as good as i thought it was

I do like that fortresses serve the purpose of reducing unrest and I most certainly would not want to take away that importance. I wouldn't mind it though if the fortress level 3 provided an unrest option as well in order to give you the option at level 4 to choose something other than the now currently obvious choice of prison.

My thoughts in adding 3 structures in the town tree was simple to mitigate the 15% corruption and no more. Bring more meaning to the tax system.

However, even if none of this corruption stuff was added to the game, I still think the values of tax revenue versus unrest penalty is WAY better than what is currently used.

Another update:

After the changes made in 1.0 to the LH tax system (and still not overly impressed with the final results...though it was a step in the right direction) I have compiled another list of tax rates that I feel to be very balanced. They are as follows:

Name          TaxRate         Unrest

Free Spirited      0%             10%
Low                   10%           13%
Normal              30%            21%
High                  50%            36%
Brutal                70%            59%
Oppressive         90%            90%

Rates on the whole are a little higher than the defaults, but a better spread of tax options is made available. So far I have been very impressed with the results, but would LOVE opinion from others that wish to play with my recommended values.

In addition, since the unrest is a little higher for said tax rates, I'll be looking to see if the Propaganda Spell should be increased back to +2gildar/essence, which should compensate nicely. Lastly, I'll be looking to decrease the shop buy/sell rate from 5:1 to 4:1 to make items more affordable....as is you just don't buy from the shop. I'm hesitant here though because you don't have to buy heroes anymore as they are provided for with fame.

More to come...