Trickle down economics for Towns : useful?

[tanathos]

As the title say. Does putting taxes lower effectively work for cities? I usually help them start out, when I build new holdings (and I almost exclusively build new cities except baronies sometimes) by purchasing level 1 wall and taxe generation. Now my question is this : is it better to put the taxes lower for cities when you wish them to develop (mostly, then, the early game (first 100 years))?

Something else I wonder, is the money transfered from lord mayor to lord mayor or does his amassed fun disappears? This would put even more emphasis on permitting each lord mayor of obtaining the highest amount of money possible as fast as they can if they want to upgrade their holding (and would also explain why we never ever see vassalized lord mayors build universities).

[carbonfire]

I too have wondered the exact same thing, per both questions.

In my experience, my best guess is that trickle down does indeed work, but the money can be much better used by yourself instead of saving it for towns. Mayors tend to build random ass buildings, and not just the tax ones (wall, tax, port), so the very slightly increased income of the mayors is likely to be wasted on a random building. You are much better off getting that tax money, and buying one or two buildings for the mayor to really boost his income to the point where you don't care what he builds.

As for the mayor to mayor inheritance; I think that they do indeed keep the money left from the previous mayor because I have seen young mayors with fortunes that could not have been collected in their entire lifespan.

[whosthebestcop]

Tax them to hell!!!!!!

[Lamartine]

My understanding is that there is no dead weight loss for fiscal transfer in Crusader Kings II, if you tax 35% from cities then you get all of that 35% without having to give the tax man a cut. So the real question is, can you spend that 35% better than the AI? I would say yes

Also, it really irks me that a king cannot invest in their vassal's holdings.

[Swuboo]

You can invest in vassal holdings as long as you own the province capital.

[whosthebestcop]

I usually set city tax to harsh, feudal tax to large and church tax to medium.
I set feudal levies to max, city levies normal, and church levies to min.

The church never has any significant number of troops to be helpful so that counter balances the increased taxation.
Then Investiture is always set to free. That gives you a +10 to every vassal and a +25 to every bishop. I choose elective for succession and that vies you another +20 for every vassal.

I usually keep crown law set to medium. If I rapidly expanding into other Catholic territory than I sometimes use high crown law to avoid inheritance problems. And I educate all my heirs and try to get as many traits that give +10 to every vassal as well. If you get a bad heir and are set to high crown authority sometimes it is necessary to drop the feudal levy law to get a large positive opinion modifier.

I strictly only set up counties in the feudal manner, no lord mayors or prince bishops etc. So once you are a large realm your feudal tax is almost as much as your city tax. And even without an anti pope mostly all of your bishops pay tax to you because of free investiture and minimum levies. But bishops don't make that much money anyway since they almost never improve their buildings as much as mayors do.

Starting out as a count of Naples I was making over 75 gold per month in less than 70 years using the setup above. I did have like 200 counties in my realm mostly former Muslim lands. But that law setup gave me max tax, no revolt/rebellion risk, and almost max number of troops possible. I don't think any of my vassals ever even had a negative opinion of me. My demesne was usually between 10-13 depending on quality of ruler at the time.

The thing about universities is they usually never save over 600 gold they rather build any other building that actually helps their city. university doesn't impact their city at all so it makes sense they would never build one.

[Bylandt]

Cities are the only holdings that actively build their own improvements. Castles and temples only very rarely do something useful with their money. Barons spend money on hunts, feasts etc. Bisshops give their money to the Pope.

So you want your cities to have enough financial means to expand and build. But you also want to reap the financial rewards. That's why I set taxes to medium for the cites: it keeps them happy, productive and they fill your coffers. I always give them a starting boost: each new city receives a few financial improvements (port, market, ...) paid by me. After that you can leave them to their own devices.

[Zzzzz...]

Tax them to hell!!!!!!

I prefer to tax those dudes to space.

[that_sweed]

Lower taxes make majors like you more so unless you have a high relation either way it could result in higher levies and maybe even higher income. IIRC the tax law also applies to your vassal counts and dukes and in that case I think the money is better of in the hands of their majors as they build instead of assassinate or claim titles.

[tanathos]

I'm still torn on this issue. I'm starting a new game in which I'll highly tax my towns but request fewer levies, and see if I profit better by channeling that money into my own baronies and counties in terms of troop build up, compared to my other game in which I did the contrary: that is low tax but higher levy requirement for towns.

I'll see what I can...