Taxation above 100 (long)

[NTJedi]

MaxWilson said:
Setting tax rates above 100 can give you an early-game boost at the cost of losing some population. I did an analysis of how much money you stand to make in the short term, as a percentage of how much money you would make from normal rates, assuming you have enough patrollers to keep unrest at zero. (I.e. it's a best-case analysis of "extra" income if you have spare patrollers lying around.)

Patrollers have a gold upkeep... this is not included within your equation. Patrollers can be good for bottleneck locations during the early part of the game, but using units for expansion is better.

[Dedas]

Well some nations have very good patrollers, for instance late C'tis Desert Rangers with a patrol bonus of 2, making them quite cost effective I believe.

[quantum_mechani]

Actually, the masters of early game patroling are Pangaea and Caelum. They can pretty much set at 200% from turn 2 on.

[MaxWilson]

NTJedi said:

Patrollers have a gold upkeep... this is not included within your equation. Patrollers can be good for bottleneck locations during the early part of the game, but using units for expansion is better.

Yes. That's what I meant about it being a best-case analysis. Some nations have cheap patrollers, and other times you have a chokepoint province that you have to keep troops in anyway for extended periods. Besides, it's trivial to compute the upkeep for your patrolling force if you want to decide whether 200% taxes is a good idea for a particular province.

-Max