...and this should be fixed by letting provinces produce multiple things, and modelling Victoria 2 style pops for taxation instead of base tax. Such a change would deepen the economy and generally non war side of the game, which I would see as a great improvement.
Greek base taxes are a joke, improve them.
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...and this should be fixed by letting provinces produce multiple things, and modelling Victoria 2 style pops for taxation instead of base tax. Such a change would deepen the economy and generally non war side of the game, which I would see as a great improvement.
Can someone explain how a certain production material directly affects base tax? Wouldn't that be more trade/tariff related?
So 280k people is worth slightly more than 3x as much as 4k people?
Those same 280k people aren't even worth 1.5x as much as 45k people.
You're seriously undervaluing large populations. This isn't even about historical data, this is entirely about choice of scaling. Your claim that Greece is undervalued is dominated by the fact that you're hugely overvaluing small populations.
Any scale which uses only urban population and rates total urban population of 10k at greater than 1BT is patently ridiculous.
This is just the method I use.
Of course, if you find a better way, just share it with us.
And if you think 10.000 is few urban people, it's pretty clear that you know little about demographics in that era. :rofl: On a serious note, you'll find the map will be full of BT 1 and 2 since urban population was pretty scarce save some specific areas.
I appreciate you taking me seriously. I disagree with your final point; I do not feel population should be the top modifier for base tax. What if we took total land area as the top modifier? Literal arable land mass in square kilometers to determine the regions' base tax might actually be closer to how most of the world taxed people historically than a census. Ironically, they DID have a tax, used frequently in this period, that was levied on the entire available population of the region based purely on head count - it was used to fund wars - and the game's war taxes have literally nothing to do with base tax.
I am all for BBB's ideas of adding more resources to a region and improving the economic system. Certainly you could really broaden the game by having a region with a high "base tax" from population if it had a low wealth modifier, so that it was contributing really well to force limits but little to income or trade. Without a change like this, however, making base primarily reflected off the census of a region, rather than off the actual wealth of a region, does not fit and would not work. Rich people paid more in taxes then, just as now, and in fact the scale was heavier. Government tax revenues were very little based on total population and a lot more off things like land and luxuries, which impoverished masses certainly weren't paying.
Scarce BT and cities would be formulaic in showing how Europe came to be Europa Univeralis.
I take it you skipped my questions?
Anyway, base tax should be entirely based off of arable square kilometers in a region if it's going to be one arbitrary figure, rather than using population as that figure. Taxes on the masses were rare, while taxes on landowners, especially in a feudal system, were normal. Arable sq km = base tax.
Eh, that is too much for my taste. Even though EU4 is rather simplified in many aspects, Vicky POPs and production really go too far. Basetax is a crude model, but it's viable. It allows provinces to have slightly differently values and a lumping/splitting of provinces without unhinging the game too much.
Abstraction is not a bad thing, you lose focus otherwise.
What if Paris were modeled as 300k people producing various things? To justify that, their consumption should be modeled, too, as huge cities were notoriously hard to feed. And wouldn't that open more tactical possibilities in war, too? What about the trade system, which is woefully unequipped for such models? Forcelimits? Population growth? Urbanization?
Linear scaling really shows the board game character of most mechanics, and you can not convincingly deepen one mechanic without changing the others.
Did you make me a question? Didn't read, sorry.
I totally disagree, but whatever. It is pretty clear that we (and by me I mean all the participants in this thread) are not going to agree.
BTW, good look making calculus of arable land in the timeline.
You seem to be forgetting production. That or either there was a paragraph I missed where you mentioned it.
But your example where you compared SE Asia with Norway seems to prove that you forgot that base tax does not include production, which is explicitly listed separately.
Ergo Cuba from your other example should have high production (and a high priced good produced) and relatively low base tax
If I want Vicky 2, I know where to find it. (Namely, installed on my windows partition.)
I do not want Vicky2 chocolate (or CK2 grape jelly for that matter) in my EU4 peanut butter.
Really? That would make some large provinces in America super valuable while rich cities are worthless (arable land in Venice, hmmm .. it's wasteland?).
Take the Wild Fields[Ukrainian Steppe], which are wide, fertile plains, totally arable. But open to nomad raids, so only really settled late in the EU time period.
So there are vast provinces which are arable, but virtually unpopulated and small city-provinces without much arable land. Neither parameter should be the only deciding factor. Effectively, a highpop province will have people forced into subpar jobs (thus diminishing returns for higher population, after the prime land/jobs are taken). And a lowpop province just can not produce enough to matter.
The basetax value is not arbitrary, but can not be based on just one thing without looking at other possible reasons.
Production is DIRECTLY linked with base tax in game. The game's mechanic for certain areas producing more goods than another area with the same trade good IS base tax. The region with 7 bt produces more tobacco than the one with 3 bt. If you increase the base tax of Athens you increase how much wine is produced there. Arguing that base tax and production should have no link is a fundamentally false argument because the game links these two directly together. If you want to figure base tax as something with no bearing on production, you absolutely must first separate the two in the game.
Tax revenue in the modern world is based more off of total population than it was in 1444. Most of the world today taxes individuals of low income, household goods, and common items. Back then they were predominantly taxing land and luxuries, not essential goods or income. The idea that population = base tax actually makes more sense in a game modeled off today than it does for one modeled off the rise of the Ottomans, and it still makes no sense. The system today where one large corporation or billionaire pays more in taxes than a thousand lower classes citizens held true back then, where a single wealthy estate contributed more wealth to the crown than an equally-sized slum.
Base tax absolutely must be a measure of the wealth of a region. It cannot be a measure of any arbitrary measurement such as population. Let the game mechanics of overseas provinces and local autonomy for colonies do their job or reducing the value of an unsettled region; let the base tax remain a factor of how valuable the region is, not how populous.
Tax revenue in the modern world is based more off of total population than it was in 1444. Most of the world today taxes individuals of low income, household goods, and common items. Back then they were predominantly taxing land and luxuries, not essential goods or income. The idea that population = base tax actually makes more sense in a game modeled off today than it does for one modeled off the rise of the Ottomans, and it still makes no sense. The system today where one large corporation or billionaire pays more in taxes than a thousand lower classes citizens held true back then, where a single wealthy estate contributed more wealth to the crown than an equally-sized slum.
Base tax absolutely must be a measure of the wealth of a region. It cannot be a measure of any arbitrary measurement such as population. Let the game mechanics of overseas provinces and local autonomy for colonies do their job or reducing the value of an unsettled region; let the base tax remain a factor of how valuable the region is, not how populous.
Population is "arbitrary" while being an objetive data but "how valuable is a region" is somehow objetive. I must ask then, how is it measurable?
Population is not arbitrary as a value. USING population as your singular value determination is what is arbitrary. Saying "the population of Athens was 10k" is not arbitrary, while saying "The base tax of Athens should be based off its population of 10k" certainly is.
This would not be Victoria 2 because it is set from 1444 to 1821, not from 1836 to 1936. So there are not factories everywhere and most people are fine with slavery. Comparing Victoria 2 and EU4 to chocolate and peanut butter is only valid if you think chocolate is much better than peanut butter, which I do not especially. EU4 is currently a silly, war-obsessed blobbing game stuck between CK2 (itself with appalling problems, largely resulting from the Charlemagne update) and Victoria, and with the depth of neither. Imagine if it could have the dynastic dealings of CK2 AND a pop system similar to Victoria, both of which existed from 1444 to 1821, and represented the transfer from the feudal to the early modern state. Then we could really have something to be strategy game of the decade, never mind the year.
Referring to population as a source of tax is not enough by itself, for reasons many people have said already. Tax should be determined by population size, wealth and tax policy. Remember that feudalism did not disappear when the world magically went back from 1453 to 1444. Early modern states did not appear overnight. As the middle classes grew and nobility declined, taxes changed. Personally I would like to spend more time adapting my tax policy than slugging against a ridiculously persistent coalition in the 10th conquest of a few provinces in Italy, finally beating them senseless and being able to extract very little from them, only for 100,000 well-armed rebels to appear in a previously peaceful colony which did not even contain that many people, including babies, and be dispersed by fairy dust - I mean, raising their autonomy a little and giving them a few concessions.
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Aldaron, sorry, I want to basically repeat an early question just a little differently, for you:
Pretend you are asked to work on an eu4 mod. This mod is going to use the eu4 engine, but it is based off the modern world, and the start date is January 1st, 2014. How do you assign the base tax of the world's regions? Is Bangladesh the richest province in the game? Is India the 2nd richest nation at the start? I imagine, being a sensible person, the answer is absolutely not.
My question, then, to follow up: do you agree that the systems for generating revenue in 1600 were less based on a census count than 400 years later, for the majority of the world? Would you agree with my statement that taxes on the lower classes in the game's time frame was virtually non existent in any regular fashion, instead being based almost entirely on land, luxuries, and tariffs for which a majority did not see? Would you agree that the tax system of most of today's world, in which almost everyone pays an income tax and every consumer pays a level sales tax, actually presents a closer census tax than anything but rare wartime poll taxes in the game's era?
You strike me as intelligent, so I think maybe I'm just not being reasonable enough and this can be explained. The entire point of my posts towards you are summed up by this simple statement: Population is not an accurate measurement for "Base Tax" in a modern setting, and is even less accurate when applied to the time period of EU4.
Pretend you are asked to work on an eu4 mod. This mod is going to use the eu4 engine, but it is based off the modern world, and the start date is January 1st, 2014. How do you assign the base tax of the world's regions? Is Bangladesh the richest province in the game? Is India the 2nd richest nation at the start? I imagine, being a sensible person, the answer is absolutely not.
My question, then, to follow up: do you agree that the systems for generating revenue in 1600 were less based on a census count than 400 years later, for the majority of the world? Would you agree with my statement that taxes on the lower classes in the game's time frame was virtually non existent in any regular fashion, instead being based almost entirely on land, luxuries, and tariffs for which a majority did not see? Would you agree that the tax system of most of today's world, in which almost everyone pays an income tax and every consumer pays a level sales tax, actually presents a closer census tax than anything but rare wartime poll taxes in the game's era?
You strike me as intelligent, so I think maybe I'm just not being reasonable enough and this can be explained. The entire point of my posts towards you are summed up by this simple statement: Population is not an accurate measurement for "Base Tax" in a modern setting, and is even less accurate when applied to the time period of EU4.
Well people are the ones that pay taxes, nor the land or "the richness of the land". It is people. So it makes sense that the more populous a region is, the more taxes you get from it. In my mind, it makes sense that urban centers are more easily taxed than rural areas, that's why I use that data. Besides, as Chieron said, there are provinces that only cover a city so it makes sense to me.
As none has officially said what BT represents, we are all (including you) using arbitrary things to determine BT anyway.
But I do think that in modern times there are a lot more factors than before to quantify taxes. Back in the days it was far more simple. And as this is a game full of simplification and abstraction, why wouldn't we use something that even if far from perfect makes sense and it is somehow quantificable (as we have data)?.
The problem here is that I'm not stating "hurr durr my method is perfect. It is flawless". I'm working with what the game gives to me. I cannot use a linear progresion for BT since the range is so wide that the scale just doesn't work (I have to work with populations from a little over 0 to millions (depending on the era)) so yes, I have to make an aproach and admit that the higher the population is, the less BT difference would be. But in this case, the distribution of population allows me to have less consideration to huge cities since they were far to few in comparison with those of 10000 inhabitants that were a huge amount.
Besides I have too many variables to work with to think about BT, but I choose population because it is one of the most important ones and can be traced. That's my whole point. Use abstractions to reach to the most realistic aproach as possible.
I tried to ninja edit my final paragraph, because after rewriting it repeatedly it ended up unintentionally mean. My apologies. Anyway...
Seriously, if you were making a mod based on today, what would you use to determine base tax?
Do you agree that since base tax factors directly into the production of goods in a province, it needs to account for this?
Using population is simple, and having it scale on a curve rather than linear is very sensible if you do so, my question is... why? The game is not specific but is rather obvious in that it determines base tax as SOME kind of measurement of "wealth" and not just population. The province history files list population, so we know they were tracking it, and not linking it to tax.
I think a big problem may just be that it is listed as "base tax" and not "town wealth" or something similar like other games do for similar values. If this was renamed from "base tax" to "province value" would population alone still make ANY sense? When base tax has a direct correlation to how much goods are produced, does a fabulously wealth plantation province in the new world having a base tax of 1 because it had little population (even counting slaves as full or 3/5 they'd be tiny), while a downtrodden overpopulated slum is cranking out the goods, make any sense at all? I think not.
Basically, base tax MUST be based on more than population. If you want it to be simple, I understand, but to argue that the literal game (not even a mod for it) should change a province like Athens or London because of solely population strikes me as wholly absurd.
No problem.
First this is not the issue of the thread.
Second, probably EU IV wouldn't be the perfect game for that scenario.
Third, I just use whatever the game provides me. I have to work with abstractions, and that's what I do. I can see that you don't agree, but since you don't provide with an alternative I will stick to my method.
As I said, I do realize of some of the flaws of my system, but I do have to work with what the game gives to me. It is far from perfect, but it is a good aproach IMHO.
I never said that it was obvious. In fact, Paradox has always been pretty obscure in this matter. So linking BT to population is just the aproach I considered as the most apropiate. I, by no mean, say that it is the only method, nor even the best. I just say that for me is the best I could find.
Besides, according to my research, much of that population data is far from correct.
In that case, the wealth is simulated with trade value.
For the name, I have no answer. As I have said (a million time by this time LOL) Paradox has been pretty secretive with what BT means. So every asnwer could be equality correct or wrong.
It is your opinion, and I respect it, but I don't share it. Simple.