White Lion said:
To be honest I like and dislike "tax inefficiency". What do you guys think?
I think if you want to even vaguely represent a historically accurate system of fief management there NEEDS to be delegation and layers. Like there are your peasants who pay taxes to a farmer, who pools it up with fellow farmers at a higher administrative level, and so on. The level just gets higher and higher to the top, with each level being unique in both the type of people who are involved and the possibilities for inefficiency/corruption. I think it would be very interesting to be more hands on in this, as historical lords were. If you find you are getting less taxes than you believe you should (rather than the game just saying "Tax inefficiency: -15%") then you could ask around the local populace and perhaps hire some investigators (this was kind of in VC, but less dynamic). If you find it's just the peasants being reluctant with their taxes, you have a variety of options - help them and make them love you, and they will be less reluctant to support you - hire someone to enforce tax collection like lords often ask you to do in native - take punitive action, perhaps to the point of sacking your own village, at the obvious benefit of massive income at the time but long term distrust and economic difficulties - and I'm sure many more. However if you find the issues are at a higher level, perhaps with a noble you have appointed to the office of treasurer or steward who is taking a bit too much for himself or being slack with his collections, the situation would become more difficult. If you remove him from office, you lose support of him and his family, making your situation in the nobility a bit more precarious. You could give him a stern talking to, using your persuasion and charisma skills, perhaps convincing him to straighten up or perhaps starting a fight. And if his situation amongst the nobility is much stronger than yours, perhaps he will flat-out refuse to leave office - are you willing to start a civil war that will tear your nation apart over some missing denars?
To conclude I think corruption should be treated differently at every level but should ultimately have a theme: corruption is an inevitability, but it is up to the player to decide the balance, based on his playstyle preference and the current situation in the game world. The overall idea is that corruption reduces efficiency and stagnates a nation, but to remove it will cost stability and therein perhaps more money and more progress than was lost by allowing a bit of corruption. If you want to eradicate corruption you should be ready to manage your vassals, the nobility, and the peasants with an iron fist whilst also maintaining your diplomatic and economic skills in order to sustain a level of peace and prosperity that will allow your continued dominance. However, if you let corruption in while you are having difficulties, it can allow you to freely build up your power and improve the strenuous relation with lords whilst increasing the future workload of removing the said corruption. And I think it should be allowed to spiral out of control. How cool would it be if you were just doing these tax collecting quests for a king, and as you do them you notice the lords becoming more and more disgruntled and are hearing about issues within the court as the king banishes and arrests corrupt officials, only to see the country ripped to shreds in a violent civil war of multiple different factions with different leaders who rebelled for different reasons, perhaps just being opportunistic of the times? And on the other hand, a nation that is lax with its corruption will slowly sink into depression, as peasants will virtually ignore their lords, nobles will sit idle and decadent, and the lords and king will have little money to support their armies and garrisons, and will likely fall prey to a stronger, balanced faction.
That's my thoughts.
Edit: I said delegation and layers at the top but only really talked about layers. I think the type of people you assign to the various jobs involved in tax management should be very important. If you are a ruler who does not care about his people and is in search of pure income at the expense of those below him, perhaps a bandit-type companion you picked up on the way is a better idea than the kind-hearted, high honour companion that has more economic skills... even though it would seem he is better at handling the money, the conflict of practices and doctrine between the layers of management should be highly detrimental.