Crusader Kings 2 Taxes, Levy and Laws

[unmerged(175291)]

Crusader Kings 2 Taxes, Levy and Laws

Taxes

There are 3 types of holdings in CK2:

Castles are owned by feudal lords
Churches are owned by bishops
Cities are owned by mayors

You are a feudal lord so having a city or a church in your demesne is considered having a wrong type of holding and you get 25% penalty to the holding's base income (BI):

Castles have 6 base income
Churches have 8 base income and 6 base wrong type income
Cities have 12 base income and 9 base wrong type income

Looking at this there is no advantage in holding a church in your demesne instead of a castle!! However if u build a village in both you would get 6.8 base income from the church and only 6.5 from the castle, building a church or castle city gives u 7.5 for the church and 7 for the castle. Despite this you are still better off with the castle because you get more and better troops for a mere 0.5-1 gold a year difference.

Your State Stewardship (SS) is your personal stewardship (PS) and your adviser and spouse's (AS, WS)

SS = PS + (0.5 x WS) + AS

Example:
Your Stewardship = 12
Wife Stewardship = 8
Advisor Stewardship = 14

State Stewardship = 12 + (0.5 x 8) + 14 = 12 + 4 + 14 = 30

The bonus (SB) SS gives to your demesne's income is 4% for every point over 5 so the formula is:

SB = 1 + ((4 x (SS – 5))/100)

Example:
State Stewardship = 30
Stewardship bonus = 1 + ((4 x (30-5))/100) = 1 + ((4 x 25)/100) = 1 + (100/100) = 1 + 1 = 2 (100%)

Additionally you can appoint your steward to increase one province's income with 2.5% for every point of his stewardship value only for your holdings in the province (LSB)

Example:
Advisor Stewardship = 14

Local Stewardship Bonus = 1 + ((2.5 x 14)/100) = 1 + (35/100) = 1 + 0.35 = 1.35 (35%)

So the final formula for yearly income (YDI) from your own holdings is:

YDI = BI x SB and for the holdings where your steward is:
YDI = (BI x LSB) x SB

Example:
Base Income = 6
Stewardship Bonus = 100% → 2
Local Stewardship Bonus = 35% → 1.35

Yearly Demesne Income = 6 x 2 = 12 without LSB
Yearly Demesne Income = (6 x 1.35) x 2 = 16.2


For your vassal's holdings your income depends on the tax set by laws (TL).

Castle Tax depends on Feudal Tax Law 10%/20%/30% (6) 0.6/1.2/1.8
Church Tax depends on Church Tax Law 30%/40%/50% (8) 2.4/3.2/4.0
City Tax depends on City Tax Law 15%/25%/35% (12) 1.8/3.0/4.2

It is clear that the best vassal holdings are churches followed by cities. However if you are catholic bishops will pay taxes to the pope if they have better relations with him so you can hardly have Large Church Tax for –20 relations and get any income at all.

Vassals have their own stewardship bonus for their holdings (VSB) that is applied to their base income (VBI). So if you have any feudal taxes make sure your vassal counts and dukes have high stewardship value. You can also have Lord-Mayors and Prince-Bishops as vassals but you get -30 relation penalty for wrong government type and even if you manage to get positive relations you only get taxes from their demesne income which is usually one city or church.

Finally negative vassal relations (NR) give tax penalty (TP):

TP = (100 – NR)/100
If vassal-liege relation is positive or zero TP = 1

So the formula for yearly vassal tax income (VTI) is:

VTI = (VBI x VSB) x (TP x TL)

Here is an example:

Mayor has 30% stewardship bonus → VSB = 1.3
Mayor has relation of -7 with liege → TP = (100 – 7)/100 = 0.93
City base income is 12 → VBI = 12
City tax is Large 40% → TL = 0.4

Yearly Vassal Tax Income = (12 x 1.3) x (0.93 x 0.4) = 15.6 x 0.372 = 5.8 gold

Levy

K = knights, HI = heavy infantry, LI = light infantry, LC = light cavalry, P = pikemen, A = archers, HA = horse archers

Castles give 225 base Levy (150 HI, 60 LI, 15 LC)
Churches give 130 base Levy (45 HI, 45LI, 40A)
Cities give 115 base Levy (75LI, 40A)

Additional types of troops depend on the province's culture and technology but standard buildings give:

Castles: K, HI, LC, P, LI, A
Churches: HI, LC, P, LI, A
Cities: LI, P, A

You raise 100% of the Levy in your own holdings. Since castles give the most and best types of troops you want to have castles in your demesne unless you don't want to use only mercenaries and vassal levy.
Relation with your vassal and Levy Laws determine how much of the vassal levy you can raise. Crown Authority sets the minimum levy you get and Levy Laws set the maximum:

Crown Authority → 0 min /10% min /20% min /30% min /40% min
Feudal Levy Law → 60% max / 70% max / 80% max / 100% max (225)
City Levy Law → 50% max / 65% max / 80% max / 95% max (115)
Church Levy Law → 50% max / 60%max / 70% max / 80% max (130)

You always get the min levy set by crown authority but the actual amount up to the maximum is determined by vassal-liege relation (VLR). Relation is transformed into percentage value (P) according to the following formula:

P = ((25 + VLR) x 0.69)/100

Now when you apply P to the maximum levy set by law (MXL) you get the percentage of troops (PT) you get from the holding:

PT = P x (MXL/100)

Multiply by the number of levy (NL) in the holding and you get the actual troops (AT) you can raise:

AT = PT x NL

Example:
Mayor has 25 relation with liege
City has 115 troops
City Levy Law is Normal → 65% max

Percentage of max = ((25 + 25) x 0.69) = (50 x 0.69)/100 = 34.5/100 = 0.345
Max Troops you get = 0.345 x 65/100 = 0.345 x 0.65 = 0.224
Actual troops you get = 0.224 x 115 = 25 soldiers

Laws


Now that we know how taxes and levy work we can calculate the positives and negatives law changes give us. Negative relations affect tax and also the maximum levy you get. Positive relations increase the maximum vassal levy you get and lower the minimum tax penalty limit. Crown Authority gives you minimum levy but lowers relations with your barons, thus feudal tax if any. However the penalty hardly applies to feudal levy since with the increased minimum levy you get more troops than any of the Feudal Levy Laws. The only exception is Low Crown Authority where you get more levy at 0 relations from the Minimum Feudal Levy Law. The following suggestions are based on 0 relations and are applicable above that. It is obvious that if you have 100 relation with a vassal the maximum tax and levy laws are the best. Although you will be able to get your relations high in the green zone after a long reign any new ruler will have a hard time keeping his vassals if he has -25 or more relation hit from lows, for mayors and bishops the limit is even -10 since your main income comes from them and you also need good relations with your feudal vassals' vassals since you get levy from them too. The -25 is decided by the chancellor increase relations event which gives +25 and the send gift option which gives +20, so u can easily keep your vassals close to 0.

These are the best law options at 0 relations:

///Crown authority / Feudal Levy / Feudal Tax / City Levy ///// City Tax //// Church Levy / Church Tax///////
///////minimum ///// minimum ////// large //// minimum/// large or harsh/// minimum ///// medium////////
///////// low ///////// minimum////// harsh///// minimum/// large or harsh/// minimum ///// medium////////
/////////med//////////minimum////// large///// minimum/// large or harsh/// minimum ////// medium////////
/////////high///////// minimum////// small///// minimum/// large or harsh/// minimum ///////medium///////
///////absolute///////minimum/// minimum/// minimum/// large or harsh////minimum/////// medium////////
////////no CA/ ///////minimum/small or harsh//minimum//////// large/////// minimum//////// medium////////

At first glance it becomes clear that minimum levy laws are the best for all types of vassals. This is so because with Medium Crown Authority and up you get more troops from the minimums than the maximums. At Low and Minimum Crown Authority you get less troops with higher Levy Laws than with the Minimum Levy Law. The way to increase levy under Low and Minimum Crown Authority is to lower tax laws – you get relation boost thus more maximum troops.

The No Crown Authority column is for countries that are not part of a kingdom and have no crown authority at all or for vassals which get the crown authority bonus but not the relations penalty. In the first case you don't have the minimum levy boost so you need to get troops on you own, that's why you can't set the tax laws higher because it lowers your levy size. Feudal Tax is set to s/l/h depending on which you need more – troops or gold. Small or even Minimum tax is recommended for states with low number of vassals and Large and Harsh are recommended for large number of vassals and high vassal relations. In the case where you are a vassal under some crown authority you want higher taxes for higher authority and the No CA laws under Low or Minimum Authority.

Finally church taxes are considered for non catholic countries and you should always keep them at minimum levels for catholic or the pope will get more gold than you. Also if you dont get taxes from churches in a catholic country you may consider No Tax and Normal Church Levy Law. Higher church levy laws get you less troops at 0 relations. Also you cant beat Medium Crown authority this way so if your CA is higher than Low go for taxes

 

[Dakk]

You are a feudal lord so having a city or a church in your demesne is considered having a wrong type of holding and you get 25% penalty to the holding's base income (BI):

Castles have 6 base income
Churches have 8 base income and 6 base wrong type income
Cities have 12 base income and 9 base wrong type income

Looking at this there is no advantage in holding a church in your demesne instead of a castle!! However if u build a village in both you would get 6.8 base income from the church and only 6.5 from the castle, building a church or castle city gives u 7.5 for the church and 7 for the castle. Despite this you are still better off with the castle because you get more and better troops for a mere 0.5-1 gold a year difference.

Interesting reading (even if more headers would increase legibility)! Note however that Wrong Holding Penalty is 50% on release (v1.1), which will change your calculations.

 

[Pode]

Set up a spreadsheet and played around with all this quite a bit before concluding that the default law configuration is actually pretty near optimal unless you have a LOT of direct count vassals. Adding small castle taxes costs you a net -20 relations penalty and about a dozen troops and nets you a bit more than 1 gold/ vassal county/year. The relationship hits/bonuses to church and city recruitment pretty much balance out and give you 15-30ish troops no matter what. Basically, your personal land is for income, and your vassals are for troops, and until you have enough of both to specialize in that manner, don't muck with the laws.

 

[Nathaniel]

Excellent write-up to explain the law effects in practice. Perhaps following this I can actually get my vassals to contribute some forces for once.

 

[Dark3lf]

If i have free space at my county, is it worth it to build a new city/church barony and grant it to someone else? With medium/harsh tax for city or medium tax for church can i expect decent profit?

 

[Purplebleeder]

Great work. Very useful.

 

[bjorkrismacho]

i think the castle holding is the very best holding you can build for yourself initially, maybe in the long run some other holdings aswell but as i see it, your power pretty much depends on your personal levies, the more the better.

 

[Dark3lf]

i think the castle holding is the very best holding you can build for yourself initially, maybe in the long run some other holdings aswell but as i see it, your power pretty much depends on your personal levies, the more the better.

But barony count as 1 demesne, while county also count as one demesne. If you have personal holding several counties with 3-4 empty slot each, isn't it better to build church/city, less headache than handling minor baron.

 

[Nathaniel]

But barony count as 1 demesne, while county also count as one demesne. If you have personal holding several counties with 3-4 empty slot each, isn't it better to build church/city, less headache than handling minor baron.

Not sure I'm reading you right there but each City/Church would also count towards your total demesne so you can't have to many of those either without going over the limit or suffer dealing with vassals anyhow.

 

[unmerged(164239)]

It is very interesting, but I think that owning wrong holding is bad in long run. It is better to get just taxes and let your mayor / bishop get the rest. If you own holding yourself you get 75% in demo 50% in full game and rest get lost. If you let others to rule in holding, you get taxes and mayor or bishop get rest. It is better to collect 100% of money and let mayors and bishops to upgrade holding, than get just 50% yourself and upgrade it from your money.

 

[Nathaniel]

It is better to collect 100% of money and let mayors and bishops to upgrade holding, than get just 50% yourself and upgrade it from your money.

In the long haul I certainly agree with that but as a count just starting out having a city as a direct holding to fund your mercenaries expansion in the first couple of years it should be a very good boon.

 

[unmerged(68578)]

It is very interesting, but I think that owning wrong holding is bad in long run. It is better to get just taxes and let your mayor / bishop get the rest. If you own holding yourself you get 75% in demo 50% in full game and rest get lost. If you let others to rule in holding, you get taxes and mayor or bishop get rest. It is better to collect 100% of money and let mayors and bishops to upgrade holding, than get just 50% yourself and upgrade it from your money.

Well, it's probably not a big deal when you're small and maybe only have one or two counties. However, as soon as you have more counties, it's always better to start getting as many counties as possible. Even more so, when you're able to pick up the counties that have 6-7 areas to build in. However, considering factors like that cities have the lowest levies, but the highest income, using laws like harsh city tax with lowest levies is the best idea.

 

[Achab]

In the long haul I certainly agree with that but as a count just starting out having a city as a direct holding to fund your mercenaries expansion in the first couple of years it should be a very good boon.

Exactly, who needs upgrades when you have mercs

 

[unmerged(164239)]

In the long haul I certainly agree with that but as a count just starting out having a city as a direct holding to fund your mercenaries expansion in the first couple of years it should be a very good boon.

I agree there is a difference between count / duke and king / emperor. If you are count you need money for mercenaries to gain more power. If you are emperor you would have that huge levies that mercenaries are waste of money. There are so many cities to be build.

 

[unmerged(175291)]

Interesting reading (even if more headers would increase legibility)! Note however that Wrong Holding Penalty is 50% on release (v1.1), which will change your calculations

Even so the first thing you should do as a count or minor duke is to revoke all vassal titles at day 1. The when you reach your demesne limit release the churches:
6 (castle) + 6 (city) + 4 (church) = 16 If you release the church you get 12 + 2.4 (church tax) = 14.4 If you release the city you get 12 + 1.8 (city tax) = 13.8 Even if you are catholic the bishop will still like you enough to pay you tax at least in the beginning.

If i have free space at my county, is it worth it to build a new city/church barony and grant it to someone else? With medium/harsh tax for city or medium tax for church can i expect decent profit?

Usually you want your main province to have the most possible settlements and build castles in it and own them. Never build a castle if you are not going to own it. I personally build only cities in my secondary counties and rely on personal levy from one big province. This is because if you have a large province with many castles you own you put your marshl and steward in it for a huge boost. If you have harsh city taxes and many city vassals profit is great, and non catholic churches net nearly as much as cities because tax is bigger. The other way to do it is own as many counties as possible and rely on taxing. This way you will have more vassals for more gold and the few churches may be used for levy only to compensate for the lost marshal bonus.

Not sure I'm reading you right there but each City/Church would also count towards your total demesne so you can't have to many of those either without going over the limit or suffer dealing with vassals anyhow

You should not own churches or cities in general, later in the game you will get more gold from them if they are your vassals. This is just a beginning move to boost your income.

Exactly, who needs upgrades when you have mercs

They should nerf mercs a lot, too powerful and ruin the game, AI rarely uses them, its much more fun to have to assassinate someone who is kicking your ass in the battlefield

 

[iamdanthemansta]

It seems after looking at all the laws that it's best to have high levies and low taxes from feudal lords since the increase in max levies only costs -15 opinion and they should generally have good relations with you, but they have less tax income and there's no reason to take the tax relationship hit. For churches it seems that you either want to keep both low and hope that they have better relations with you so you get the taxes or just set the levies high and ignore the taxes. For cities I think you'd want high taxes, since they have so much money, but low levies so they pay more taxes, since they don't have very much in the way of soldiers anyways.

 

[Letar]

At first glance it becomes clear that minimum levy laws are the best for all types of vassals. This is so because with Medium Crown Authority and up you get more troops from the minimums than the maximums. At Low and Minimum Crown Authority you get less troops with higher Levy Laws than with the Minimum Levy Law. The way to increase levy under Low and Minimum Crown Authority is to lower tax laws – you get relation boost thus more maximum troops.

But this is only for 0 relation, right? You say above the table that the examples are applicable to 0 and above.

EDIT: Above 0, depending on the type of the holding, it is certainly possible to get more levies by using harsher law(s).

 

[Allastair]

I clearly understand everything, but how holdings o my vassal's vassals are counted?

 

[unmerged(287474)]

Hi guys. I have some questions on some assumptions I've made.

Playing the demo as king of poland, I've found that the best way to raise funds is to focus my efforts on shmoozing my bishops' opinion of me to be higher than the pope.
Also during this time, getting my mayors opinions up as well for more tax money.
After I get all of my bishops paying taxes to me, and my mayors playing higher taxes, I have a nice little bank saved up and a decent income rate.

Because poland is right next door to some infidel owned duchies (good ones at that, Pomerania and Polmeralia sp*) I can blitzkrieg those dutchies from them for my own, using mercenaries to help speed it up.
Once those are mine, I give away the dutchy titles to my children and siblings, but give the cities over to my best mayor/burgher, and the churches over to my best bishop, and keep the castles for myself. (up to the limit or my vassals get pissed)
One question is definitely: am I correct in assuming that if I have a bunch of cities under one good mayor vassal, that if I keep him happy that he'll pay me pretty good tax even if others don't like me very much? Same question for bishops.

Thats the thing about income that I've found most effective, get your king maximum castles as fast as possible, this boosts your tax income enormously, as you get 100% of that (6 * number of castles) gold a year.
Once you have those castle incomes rolling in, I've found that loading up 1 county with 5 castles and focusing your steward on it is really effective income. When you upgrade those castle cities and walls to like 8.7ish gold per year * 5 castles * yoursteward bonus, you can get close to like 19 gold per month. (along with upgrading your other castles' under your direct control tax to 8.7ish as well)

With this much direct tax income, you can afford to hire multiple powerful mercenaries and upgrading your personal keeps really high, to the point where you can defend your kingdom without your vassals for the most part.

Some of this is theoretical cause the demo doesn't last long enough for me to put this into practice, but from initial testing it should work like you'd expect. I almost don't see the point of upgrading my vassal's holdings because all they do is bitch and moan when I need to raise levies or raise tax laws. If I'm conquering infidel duchies then I need my bishop to be converting religions and cultures, not babysitting my bishop's opinions of me. Same for the mayors.

The return on investment for upgrading non-personal holdings seems to be non existent.

Also, if what may happen later on in the game, my heir becomes king and my vassals dont like him and rebel, I can kick their asses, imprison them, and ransom them. (yay they paid for the mercenaries I used to subdue them!)

My luck with fully understanding ANY paradox game means that theres some hidden subtlety in the game that will cause my subjects and allies to hate my guts eventually. Might as well keep them weak and just pay your fucking taxes. ^_^

 

[unmerged(287474)]

Also another question. Lets say I can have 11 holdings.
Is it a good idea to eventually consolidate all my holdings from multiple counties down to like.. 2?
The idea is, I don't want to build cities/castles/churches for my vassals, and then upgrade them. If I were to instead get all of my castles in as few counties as possible, and then give the other counties over to my other vassals, they would eventually build stuff there themselves and I'd collect tax, right?

I'm not sure I trust them to do stuff like that considering my headache with paradox AI when it comes to capitalists in Victoria and stuff.

Also is it a good idea to increase city/church tax laws, if I lower their levy laws as well?

Another question, does it matter how well I distribute the counties among my vassals? If one vassal has an entire duchy and associated counties, is it worse than giving each county to a different vassal when it comes to them being able to afford new holdings?

Also is a vassal more likely to build taxable holdings if have the accumulate wealth ambition?