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Where are the Taxes?

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Nov 14, 2000
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How come the one feature that seems to have been modeled by most every strategy / builder game, namely taxes, are totally ignored in EU?

I know that I do get taxes every month and every year. The question is why can I not change the rate? This surely must have been the primary reason for popular discontent much more than religious things. I would not be surprised if the tax rate had been a feature of EU but had been disabled for one reason or another.

Whatever, I think very much that the addition of tax rates should be one of the main features for the EU expansion / EU 2 release.

Any comments?

/zwingli
 
Originally posted by zwingli:
How come the one feature that seems to have been modeled by most every strategy / builder game, namely taxes, are totally ignored in EU?

I know that I do get taxes every month and every year. The question is why can I not change the rate? This surely must have been the primary reason for popular discontent much more than religious things. I would not be surprised if the tax rate had been a feature of EU but had been disabled for one reason or another.

Whatever, I think very much that the addition of tax rates should be one of the main features for the EU expansion / EU 2 release.

Any comments?

/zwingli
Click to expand...

I agree its definitely one of the few thing that I miss in this great game. That and tactical battles :)
 
I don't know unfortunately, but I beleive the game is modelled on the idea that the nobles and the king is permanently hardcoded on the 'bleed them dry' setting. :))

Cobos

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If you are not part of the solution you are part of the precipitate.
 
Originally posted by driedcow:
There are 'war taxes' you can implement in times of war which increase discontent. This sounds pretty realistic.
Click to expand...

That is true, but I wouldn't mind being able to raise or lower taxes in peace time, that is also realistic
 
Originally posted by Cobos:
I don't know unfortunately, but I beleive the game is modelled on the idea that the nobles and the king is permanently hardcoded on the 'bleed them dry' setting. :))

Cobos
Click to expand...

Well that is unfortunate because while the principle may have been the same, surely the execution was not. I cannot believe that Europe at that time had a single uniform tax rate throughout.

And as for historically realistic I ask what is more realistic to set by decree, the tax rate or the religious tolerance?

Don't get me wrong, I am in no way arguing for a replacement of the religion sliders. Far from it. I love them. But I do wish they could be complemented by flexible tax rates.

Maybe the tax rate would be one way to influence the total of available religious tolerance points: the lower the taxes, the more tolerance is affordable.

A country that strived to have only one religion could increase taxes as a kind of reward.

just an idea

/zwingli
 
I actually think it is pretty fine as it is. While I don't have any historical evidence to back me up, I believe that tax levels were pretty constant through the centuries. The church got approx. 10% and the monarch... well, as I said: I don't know.

I find it hard to believe that tax levels were increased and decreased(?) as flexible as today. It does not seem likely to me that a 16th century farmer would be told to pay 7,5% this year instead of 8,5% - even today with pocket calculators a lot of people would have a very hard time trying to figure that out.

So while tax levels might have been fairly fixed, tax revenues probably depended a lot upon the efficiency of the tax system - just as it is modelled in EU by the promotion system.

As for connecting the religion tolerance with the tax levels, I have a hard time seeing why a nation with low taxes should be more tolerant. First of all I don't think there's any evidence. And secondly I fail to see any plausible cause-effect relationship.

Regards,

E.

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Uhm... nice province. I
think I'll take it.
 
Originally posted by Octavian:
I agree its definitely one of the few thing that I miss in this great game. That and tactical battles :)
Click to expand...

yes i miss the tactical battles. i think that taxes are handled well in the game though. it would be a pain to have to raise and lower the taxes manually.
 
Originally posted by Octavian:
It wasn't uncommon that new taxes or tolls were imposed, and thus the overall tax level increased
Click to expand...

Well, isn't that modelled in the game? There are quite a few infrastructure improvements that raise the overall tax levels. I guess it's actually a quite nice approximation to the infrastructure changes that had to be done historically in order to claim toll, tax etc. Kronborg is a nice example, isn't it?

Regards,

E.

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Uhm... nice province. I
think I'll take it.
 
Hi all,
I guess i would call the building of Manufacturies a lowering of taxes, because it was actually rather rare that a monarch built up a large manufacturing ability themselves.
More accurately it was the people being taxed less and thus being able to spend more on expansion of business etc. , that allowed a countries infrastructure to grow.
I have always felt that a government getting involved in 'making jobs for the people'
is just wasting your tax money; business grows by the government not interfering.
But, then, i'm a 19th century liberal.
So, i feel that the game handles taxes well, and informally.
However, the Ottomans at least through the first half of this period charged around half the taxes that the christian states did. There are many stories of peasants picking up their possesions and leaving Austria, Hungary, Transylvania etc., and fleeing to Ottoman territory. The stories of Turkish Cruelty to christian peasants are mostly christian propaganda to convince the peasants to stay and to convince the landowners themselves that they were not greedy despicable pieces of filth.

Michael A Johnson
New Address: lycortas@yahoo.com
 
Hi, I just want to add a thing to what Lycortas said here.

Lycortas said:
I guess i would call the building of Manufacturies a lowering of taxes, because it was actually rather rare that a monarch built up a large manufacturing ability themselves.
More accurately it was the people being taxed less and thus being able to spend more on expansion of business etc. , that allowed a countries infrastructure to grow.

Greven adds:
It is also my opinion that the basic incentative for the successful establishing of a manufactory (ie one that survived the so-called mortality phase), but... The economic environment was not as defined and easy to understand 1492-1792 as it became with the evolution of Inustrialism and Capitalism. The majority of the manufactories was created heavily assisted by the State. The State had a strong and active economic policy, which was one of the most important essence of Mercantilism, as a matter of fact much more important that the doctrine of budget surplus.

/Greven
 
Originally posted by Generalfeldmarschall:
yes i miss the tactical battles.
Click to expand...

I don't think tactical battles would be a good idea in a game like EU. First, there is the scope of the game. You're supposed to be a kind of grey emminence behind the monarch, not a general in the field commanding troops. You shouldn't be bothered with tactical battles, at all.

And, of course, battles in the period covered by EU were pretty straightforward affairs. With the kind of interface usually found in computer games, you would miss all the interesting aspects of warfare during, let's say the Thirty Years War - which for example are placing your army properly and then keeping *some* degree of control over the whole affair, while acting on a very limited amount of information - mostly incorrect - and relying on mounted messengers (or horn signals, very useful with all this noise everywhere) for communication with your subordinates, which of course takes some time, which means that some of your orders would be not very much up to date when they reach their destination - if they reach their destination at all.

Quite a lot of battles went strictly on autopilot after they started, and the influence of commanders in the field on the outcoming of the battle was very limited indeed - definitely no micro-management of single units.

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Mighty Warrior of the Cubicle
 
Variable tax rate would be a good thing. In that it ties with stability, pop growth or decline. Possible revolts. Varialbe tax rate could bring stability to a province or nation at the cost of income and science. Increase in taxes to increase the Army or infrastructure could cause unrest. Another way taxes could effect popualtion growth high taxes could cause low or negitative effect on growth rates.
Taxes could effect trade high taxes could have a negitative long run effect on the growth of trade. This could be a interesting tool in the game. Perfect for this level.
 
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