Death and Taxes... well mostly taxes...

[RyanZA]

Originally posted by Psitticine:
I think what he is saying is that raising the tax rate above 100% is also siphoning money away from infrastructure upkeep, so that bridges decay from lack of repair. Also, the high taxes combined with ignoring the needs of the people does create literal unrest, and that means there are possibly those who are tossing brands onto those bridges in protest.

That still shouldnt kill large amounts of population to fix. I think the unrest is definately meant in a more litteral fashion, as well as taxes. When you put the tax on 100, its normal tax which they expect. When you put it on 200, its twice as much tax as theyd normally pay, so they get upset and go off and cause unrest. Which should be at least partially relieved by the province being conquered by someone else.

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by RyanZA:
That still shouldnt kill large amounts of population to fix. I think the unrest is definately meant in a more litteral fashion, as well as taxes. When you put the tax on 100, its normal tax which they expect. When you put it on 200, its twice as much tax as theyd normally pay, so they get upset and go off and cause unrest. Which should be at least partially relieved by the province being conquered by someone else.

Kristoffer made the game, I am sure he knows quite well what he means with unrest.

And I thought your post answering Kristoffer was a bit disingenious, if you where a little more charitable in how you interpreted Kristoffers post it should be apparent that he did not mean that you tax bridges to death nor that your patrollers hunt and kill rebellious bridges. Unrest is meant to represent general disorder in the province, it is more abstracted than just popularity, but it also includes popularity. Taxing more than 100% out of a province does not correspond exactly to raising income tax in a modern economy, it represents a non sustainable and abusive collection of various funds and resources in the province, if you are still hung up about the bridge consider it amongst other things a siphoning of maintenance funds resulting in disrepair etc. This abuse of the province and its populance results in disrepair of public works, farmers that are taxed so heavily that they do not have the seeds to replant their fields and people that have taken to banditry out of desperation or anger and so on. People die when the province are patrolled because there are bandits and dissenters that are hung to quell the unrest or desperate people slain while trying to steal food from the patrolling forces that have just repaired a bridge fallen in disrepair etc. Unrest is an abstraction, an abstraction that serves it's purpose and can be fit to relevant historical facts if you utilise a little charitable imagination.

Edit: If you consider unrest as an abstraction unrest relative to players also make less sense. Unlike the inhabitants of Robin Hood movies people do not automatically and instantly switch from lawlessnes and banditry just because a tyrant is disposed, nor are roads and bridges repaired or crops replanted without effort.

[ January 03, 2004, 15:42: Message edited by: johan osterman ]

[RyanZA]

Originally posted by johan osterman:

quote:

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Originally posted by RyanZA:
That still shouldnt kill large amounts of population to fix. I think the unrest is definately meant in a more litteral fashion, as well as taxes. When you put the tax on 100, its normal tax which they expect. When you put it on 200, its twice as much tax as theyd normally pay, so they get upset and go off and cause unrest. Which should be at least partially relieved by the province being conquered by someone else.

Kristoffer made the game, I am sure he knows quite well what he means with unrest.

And I thought your post answering Kristoffer was a bit disingenious, if you where a little more charitable in how you interpreted Kristoffers post it should be apparent that he did not mean that you tax bridges to death nor that your patrollers hunt and kill rebellious bridges. Unrest is meant to represent general disorder in the province, it is more abstracted than just popularity, but it also includes popularity. Taxing more than 100% out of a province does not correspond exactly to raising income tax in a modern economy, it represents a non sustainable and abusive collection of various funds and resources in the province, if you are still hung up about the bridge consider it amongst other things a siphoning of maintenance funds resulting in disrepair etc. This abuse of the province and its populance results in disrepair of public works, farmers that are taxed so heavily that they do not have the seeds to replant their fields and people that have taken to banditry out of desperation or anger and so on. People die when the province are patrolled because there are bandits and dissenters that are hung to quell the unrest or desperate people slain while trying to steal food from the patrolling forces that have just repaired a bridge fallen in disrepair etc. Unrest is an abstraction, an abstraction that serves it's purpose and can be fit to relevant historical facts if you utilise a little charitable imagination.

Edit: If you consider unrest as an abstraction unrest relative to players also make less sense. Unlike the inhabitants of Robin Hood movies people do not automatically and instantly switch from lawlessnes and banditry just because a tyrant is disposed, nor are roads and bridges repaired or crops replanted without effort.

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Yes but this all occurs over a period of a single turn. With no hostile army anywhere near to enforce this general provincial destruction. The loss of some repairs (this is medievil times, we'r not talking electrical grids here..) for a single turn is not about to place the province into a situation where the liberation of the province causes half of the population to be unable to construct anything. This would require a general pillage of the province by an army, not a few tax collectors left behind an army.

[RyanZA]

I feel I need to go a bit further..

Firstly, the actual game play issues of this strategy are bad ones. Tactically the only way to stop this type of assault is to have sufficient defences in all of your provinces to stop him, as well as a free army to hunt him down. I have been in two games were the best option for both empires was to simply run their way through enemy territory settings taxes to 200 to offset the same damage being caused back in their home provinces. You need roughly three times the resources to defend against an enemy using this tactic. There are no negatives at all to this tactic either.

You either gain territory if your opponent decides to not use resources to take the territory back right away, or you cost the enemy huge amounts of troops to stop you, which will end in a normal battle causing both sides to lose troops.

This would be fine, except that you are making large amounts of money for no risk to yourself and crippling your enemies economy. When he takes his provinces back, he now needs to reduce the unrest you so easily gave him, probably costing him the game. If one player starts using this tactic - given even sides - all players will have to use this tactic. It is simply the most effective way to use your resources in any situation where both sides are roughly even.

Again, on non-tactical terms, broken infrastructure or destroyed crops do not require that you kill a large amount of your population to fix. I fail to see how killing the farmers helps them plant their crops any faster.

Edit: One further thing,

If you consider unrest as an abstraction unrest relative to players also make less sense. Unlike the inhabitants of Robin Hood movies people do not automatically and instantly switch from lawlessnes and banditry just because a tyrant is disposed, nor are roads and bridges repaired or crops replanted without effort.

Unrest of this type could not be removed by lowering taxes? Why would proper banditry (not revolting peasantry) be stopped by lowering taxes? They dont pay taxes already! They arent going to start plowing fields just because someone wont be asking for as much gold anymore.

[ January 03, 2004, 16:39: Message edited by: RyanZA ]

[johan osterman]

Raising taxes to 200 for one turn only results in 20 unrest. If you pillage with a large army you can generate unrest 10-20 times that as well as killing of most of the population. 200 tax is the amount of fiscal abuse you can subject province to without resorting to an outright pillage. You are assumed to have some adminstrative authorities in place in a province even when you do not have any commanders there, they are assumed to be able to threaten the populance enough to recieve the increased incomes. As I said unrest is an abstraction and I do not think that 20 in unrest represents to severe a penalty for increasing the tax to 200%. And as for the tactic being cheesy I think that realism should, if anything, dictate much more unrest in newly conquered provinces. If you wish you can consider the extra money spoils of war and the players abstaining from raising taxes to 200% as an uncommonly benevolent and disciplined conquering army.

In the early stages of dom 2 development there were some discussions of changing the way unrest works, so that there was a provincial unrest and one national happiness factor for the whole empire as well as a couple of other ideas, in the end it was decided that the current unrest model was sufficent and simpler to use and implement, there was also a slew of consistancy issues that arose from moving away from the current system to a more detailed one. The end result of these discussions were the pop killing effects of taxes in excess of 100%, and I think the system as is stands works well enough both from a gameplay and and realism perspective.

[johan osterman]

I won't argue the strategic effects of the current system with you since I think they are ok, and it boils down to a matter of taste.

Originally posted by RyanZA:

...
Again, on non-tactical terms, broken infrastructure or destroyed crops do not require that you kill a large amount of your population to fix. I fail to see how killing the farmers helps them plant their crops any faster.

Edit: One further thing,

quote:

---

If you consider unrest as an abstraction unrest relative to players also make less sense. Unlike the inhabitants of Robin Hood movies people do not automatically and instantly switch from lawlessnes and banditry just because a tyrant is disposed, nor are roads and bridges repaired or crops replanted without effort.

Unrest of this type could not be removed by lowering taxes? Why would proper banditry (not revolting peasantry) be stopped by lowering taxes? They dont pay taxes already! They arent going to start plowing fields just because someone wont be asking for as much gold anymore.

---

You do not need to be so literal, reduced taxes can also represent distributing previously collected in natura taxes, providing seeds to farmers, hiring people to repair bridges, administrative measures to counter bandits (bounties, hiring additional constables or whatever) etc. Unrest represents general disorder in the province, patrolling represents a heavy handed way of dealing with this, lowering taxes a less heavy handed way. Dom 2 is not intended to be a realistic economic model unrest, resources, income, taxes and patrolling are all abstractions and they obviously fall short of modelling reality in many respects, but I do think they do what they are intended to do well enough and to me at least are believable enough not to upset my sensibilities.

[RyanZA]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
Raising taxes to 200 for one turn only results in 20 unrest. If you pillage with a large army you can generate unrest 10-20 times that as well as killing of most of the population. 200 tax is the amount of fiscal abuse you can subject province to without resorting to an outright pillage. You are assumed to have some adminstrative authorities in place in a province even when you do not have any commanders there, they are assumed to be able to threaten the populance enough to recieve the increased incomes. As I said unrest is an abstraction and I do not think that 20 in unrest represents to severe a penalty for increasing the tax to 200%. And as for the tactic being cheesy I think that realism should, if anything, dictate much more unrest in newly conquered provinces. If you wish you can consider the extra money spoils of war and the players abstaining from raising taxes to 200% as an uncommonly benevolent and disciplined conquering army.

In the early stages of dom 2 development there were some discussions of changing the way unrest works, so that there was a provincial unrest and one national happiness factor for the whole empire as well as a couple of other ideas, in the end it was decided that the current unrest model was sufficent and simpler to use and implement, there was also a slew of consistancy issues that arose from moving away from the current system to a more detailed one. The end result of these discussions were the pop killing effects of taxes in excess of 100%, and I think the system as is stands works well enough both from a gameplay and and realism perspective.

That is a 20 in addition to the extra unrest from having the province conquered twice, which takes it to almost half of the production for the province.

[RyanZA]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
I won't argue the strategic effects of the current system with you since I think they are ok, and it boils down to a matter of taste.

quote:

---

Originally posted by RyanZA:

...
Again, on non-tactical terms, broken infrastructure or destroyed crops do not require that you kill a large amount of your population to fix. I fail to see how killing the farmers helps them plant their crops any faster.

Edit: One further thing,

quote:

---

If you consider unrest as an abstraction unrest relative to players also make less sense. Unlike the inhabitants of Robin Hood movies people do not automatically and instantly switch from lawlessnes and banditry just because a tyrant is disposed, nor are roads and bridges repaired or crops replanted without effort.

Unrest of this type could not be removed by lowering taxes? Why would proper banditry (not revolting peasantry) be stopped by lowering taxes? They dont pay taxes already! They arent going to start plowing fields just because someone wont be asking for as much gold anymore.

---

You do not need to be so literal, reduced taxes can also represent distributing previously collected in natura taxes, providing seeds to farmers, hiring people to repair bridges, administrative measures to counter bandits (bounties, hiring additional constables or whatever) etc. Unrest represents general disorder in the province, patrolling represents a heavy handed way of dealing with this, lowering taxes a less heavy handed way. Dom 2 is not intended to be a realistic economic model unrest, resources, income, taxes and patrolling are all abstractions and they obviously fall short of modelling reality in many respects, but I do think they do what they are intended to do well enough and to me at least are believable enough not to upset my sensibilities.

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These "heavy handed" methods should not be causing this level of death within the population then.

I am not asking for a total rewrite of the unrest code, only that when conquering a province with high unrest, it is lowered somewhat to stop people just 'buying unrest' for the oposing player, and to better fit in with an army arriving to liberate the province from the harsh taxes it has been facing from the enemy.

[Wendigo]

Looting & pillaging by mere citizens come with wars, nothing wrong with having some unrest mirror this when armies march around.

And to the peasant one foraging army is no different from another, whatever standard the army flies the peasant knows he's going to lose his sheep.

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by RyanZA:

...
These "heavy handed" methods should not be causing this level of death within the population then.

I am not asking for a total rewrite of the unrest code, only that when conquering a province with high unrest, it is lowered somewhat to stop people just 'buying unrest' for the oposing player, and to better fit in with an army arriving to liberate the province from the harsh taxes it has been facing from the enemy.

Why shouldn't they cause death? Unrest is an abstraction that is intended to represents civil unrest as well as other forms of disorer and lawlessness, so unrest means there are dissenters, agitators, bandits etc. people that your patroller discourage by a few (or more than a few) hangings. Unrest is intended to be a number of factors some of these your patrollers solve by killing people, some by just showing up and putting the fear fo God into your people and in some cases they might repair bridges, clear passes of brigands or do whatever else might be reqiured to restore order.

As for your Last point I remember being frustrated by opponents using similar tactics against me in VGA Planets, but now it doesn't bother me. What would bother me on the other hand would be the possibility of allied player switching provinces between each other to share the use of a province and lower the unrest present. At present they do at least get the small penalty of increased unrest, your suggestion would reward their behaviour.

[ January 03, 2004, 18:04: Message edited by: johan osterman ]