An inquiry into tax inefficiency.

[Zolcos]

Tax inefficiency in itself makes sense, but the way it is implemented is the object of much frustration here. Here's what I originally expected the effect to be:

Once you get a lot of fiefs, each new one is less helpful to your income, making the total income level off, meaning you would be better off giving the land to a vassal, because the cost of garrisoning everything is linear, meaning it would eventually outstrip the income you get.
However, the devs seemed to have wanted to force your hand a bit more, making it so there's a direct income disadvantage to holding all those lands personally. That way you hand out villages too and not just castles/cities that need to be garrisoned. Okay, so make more fiefs past a reasonable threshold decrease your income asymptotically to zero, right?

Seems likely. Unfortunately, here's what you actually get:

Holy Shariz! I suppose that in the simulation, one could explain it by saying that, with such a large number of fiefs, the cost of supporting the tax collection bureaucracy (including embezzlement) exceeds the actual income. But realistically, in that case, wouldn't you just stop expanding the tax collection? Leave some taxes uncollected, and only bother with those for which it is actually worth it -- maybe rotate it around. I'm sure the villagers will be happy about it. It would make things more like one of the first two graphs.

 

[CryoNomad]

What? You're unhappy because the larger the main goverment gets the costs become more to run than it makes? I'll show you all the goverments today in major debt and rest my case. Tell them why they can't even follow the top two damn graphs.

 

[Zolcos]

I'll show you all the goverments today in major debt and rest my case.

How many of those are feudal monarchies experiencing a rapid expansion of territory?
There doesn't seem to be much "government" going on in Calradia anyway, certainly no social services, corrupt Federal Reserve, or corporate bailouts. I may be mistaken but it seems like taxes are only to fund the lord's army for protection from enemies, and the people handle most other things on their own. So it's not like a post-industrial society at all.

Also: this is a video game.
This topic is about game balance.

 

[Grummen]

What? You're unhappy because the larger the main goverment gets the costs become more to run than it makes? I'll show you all the goverments today in major debt and rest my case. Tell them why they can't even follow the top two damn graphs.

Tax inefficiency doesn't imply to me overhead costs or maintenance expenses from a large government. Besides, its not like there are roads to maintain or any real infrastructure to speak of. It seems to me it's either corruption or bad accounting. The problem is, if in real life it got to the point where some corrupt clerks were pocketing so much money that the kingdom was going into the red, believe me, there would have been some hangings or imprisonment at the very least until the issue was resolved. Instead, in the game the player is stuck with an over sized penalty with no way to address it.

I don't really care for it anyway, because it seems like they are trying to force you to play a certain way, and in an open-ended sandbox game there should be multiple paths to success. I really do wish they'd come up with more ways for the player to improve the economy in their kingdom and stop coming up with new ways to try and ruin it. In every game I've played, it's been plenty bad as it is.

It seems the only ways to consistently make real money in this game is either looting or trading, and if you don't want to do either of those things you're SOL. The problem with that is I don't remember ever hearing of a King or Queen that went about being their own personal trading caravan, and looting can be very counter-productive to your own interests. Being able to successfully develop the infrastructure and economy to the point it turns a profit only makes sense. Even the Romans understood that, it's part of the reason they were so successful for so long. Why can't I be the ruler that brings Caldaria out of it's Dark Age and into the Renaissance?

 

[TheMageLord]

Actually it drops off drastically at first then rises again, since the inefficiency caps out at 70%.

Each village and castle counts as 1 center, each town counts as 2. Each center above 3 counts as 5% inefficiency. I'll assume that each center is worth 500, since I usually get around 500 for villages/castles and 1000 for towns.

This means the early maximum income will be 3300 at 11 centers. Everything above 11 reduces your income up until you get 17 centers and max out the inefficiency, earning 2550 for 17 centers. Everything above that will add 150 per center since the inefficiency is maxed. At 22 centers you will get the same 3300 income that you had at 11 centers. Above that you'll increase your income by another 150 per center. This doesn't actually take into account the costs of defending said centers, which can really add up.

For instance, the cost of the NPC starting garrison at Narra is approximately 1900 at 7 leadership. Narra is a total of 4 centers (city, 2 villages) which makes the cost of the garrison about 475 per center. That means a player with 7 leadership (a pretty decent score) would be about breaking even maintaining that garrison. If we take Tulga and add a similar garrison we'd be losing 800 per week. Capture Ichamur too and add the same garrison and suddenly we're losing 2400 a week. With this kind of profitability, why on earth would someone want to own a city, let alone more than one? Now some cities are a bit better off (the ones with more than 2 villages), but some are even worse - Halmar is only 1 village. And this all assuming the player has 7 leadership - I often only go up to about 5.

It makes one wonder where these kings are getting the money to own nothing but a city (not any fiefs associated with them) and not only maintain the city garrisons but run around with 200+ men.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Unfortunately, here's what you actually get:

No, what you get is 5%*(2*NOfTowns + NOfCastles + NOfVillages - 3), capped to the interval [0%;70%], which your curve does not represent at all. Learn this and make use of it.

A town can be defended very reasonably at a cost of 400-600 denars/week at a high level of leadership by garrisoning hundreds of lowlevel troops, primarily level 1 recruits and a contingent of lowlevel archers, and only a few (or none) highlevel, assuming that your accept that the purpose of the town garrison is to discourage small groups of enemies from assaulting it in the first place and to tie up large enemy armies for long enough for you to arrive with your field army and either defeat them in the field or take over the defense during an assault.

NPC garrisons make no sense whatsoever given the economic model of the game, but that's ok - their primary purpose is to be speedbumps for SP progress after all.

 

[TheMageLord]

I don't really buy the idea that garrisons should be a bunch of useless recruits. The fact that it deters armies at all is faulty AI, not a game feature.

The fact is that these cities and towns should provide enough income to pay for a decent garrison. Not a top tier super garrison, but at least enough to really pose a challenge to the common lord army instead of just deterring them due to faulty AI logic.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

I don't really buy the idea that garrisons should be a bunch of useless recruits. The fact that it deters armies at all is faulty AI, not a game feature.

That is certainly a reasonable opinion, but  with the game as it is now it is a very reasonable way to play and a very decent answer to all the "the economy is screwed, I cannot defend myself" posts.

The fact is that these cities and towns should provide enough income to pay for a decent garrison. Not a top tier super garrison, but at least enough to really pose a challenge to the common lord army instead of just deterring them due to faulty AI logic.

Well, they do that already.

A garrison large enough to defeat two or three common nobles, who band together, can easily be funded out of the income a town with a few attached villages generate. Most players who complain about garrison cost and the inability of the garrisons to defend themselves appear to be talking about the income from a town (sometimes alone, sometimes with a few villages) standing up to a major army of lots of enemy nobles banding together and the complete inability of funding large enough garrisons in each town and castle to defend every point against such major attacks.

It might be more fun if the game allowed one to play that way but I am skeptic on that point.

The way it currently works adheres, even if one can certainly argue against the methods of achieving this, much closer to the strategic considerations of the early medieval methods than a model where every strategically important location can be defended at the same time against considerable enemy concentrations of force without losing money on a big scale.

 

[CryoNomad]

I'll show you all the goverments today in major debt and rest my case.

How many of those are feudal monarchies experiencing a rapid expansion of territory?
There doesn't seem to be much "government" going on in Calradia anyway, certainly no social services, corrupt Federal Reserve, or corporate bailouts. I may be mistaken but it seems like taxes are only to fund the lord's army for protection from enemies, and the people handle most other things on their own. So it's not like a post-industrial society at all.

Also: this is a video game.
This topic is about game balance.

If you are playing well. One monarchy at least is. As for it being a feudal monarchy. If you own half the map and are not distributing fiefs I don't think it is anymore. It's there to encourage that people actually do have a monarchy. Oh and the goverment bailouts are there. I can't tell you how many Caravan merchants I've bailed out of a tough situation.