Greek base taxes are a joke, improve them.

[grommile]

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.

Those are statements about Victoria 2's subject matter. I was making statements about my preferences regarding game mechanics.

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.

I was making a pop-cultural reference. For the record, I think chocolate and peanut butter are great tastes which do not go great together.

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.

I'm imagining something that the business side of Paradox would lolnope because sales cannibalization.

 

[Big Blue Blob]

Those are statements about Victoria 2's subject matter. I was making statements about my preferences regarding game mechanics.

I was making a pop-cultural reference. For the record, I think chocolate and peanut butter are great tastes which do not go great together.

I'm imagining something that the business side of Paradox would lolnope because sales cannibalization.

...except no, because the historical periods are different enough that the games would be very different too. If you want to play the industrial revolution, you won't find it from 1444-1821, even in my design. Steam ships, telegraphs, poison gas warfare, women's suffrage, none of this and much more is to be found in EU4's time period. Looking further back to CK2, Europe was not full of pagans in 1444, feudalism was falling rather than rising and the mediaeval period was drawing to the close. But it was not over, as Paradox seems to think in EU4. If they wanted a game with centralised early modern states, they should have started it around the 30 years' war, maybe a little earlier than that, but not in an age when the Ottomans had the only standing army in Europe!

What we have here is a series of half-baked games, with EU the most half-baked and Victoria the least, instead of one fully baked and excellent game or even series covering the full period. This is a sorry state of affairs.

 

[crownsteler]

Aldaron; where did you get the data on Athens population from? My main source, the website of the National Hellenic Research Foundation, does not give the impression that Athens would ever have reached that number. Nor do any of my other sources. Although none give exact numbers. So I'm curious where you got the data from.

And secondly, the metric you've used to determine base tax seems flawed. It greatly overvalues small population centres, and very much undervalues large population centres. Furthermore, it only uses a single data point, and does not take historical development into account. Nor does it take into account the average wealth being taxed. Not to put too fine a point on it, but your metric gives Athens (33.000 inhabitants) 1 less BT than Amsterdam (60.000 inhabitants, and controller of about half the worlds trade) and Antwerp (50.000 inhabitants, and 'centre of the entire international economy'), while giving it the same BT as such insignificant cities as Ghent (30.000 inhabitants, and city in which Paris would fit according to emperor Charles V) and Hamburg. While giving it one more BT than Bruges.

 

[grommile]

What we have here is a series of half-baked games, with EU the most half-baked and Victoria the least, instead of one fully baked and excellent game or even series covering the full period. This is a sorry state of affairs.

Notably, the game you call the least half-baked also has the worst sales.

 

[Aldaron]

Aldaron; where did you get the data on Athens population from? My main source, the website of the National Hellenic Research Foundation, does not give the impression that Athens would ever have reached that number. Nor do any of my other sources. Although none give exact numbers. So I'm curious where you got the data from.

Paul Bairoch's "La population des villes europeennes de 800 a 1850" and Tertius Chandler's "Four thousand years of urban growth".

And secondly, the metric you've used to determine base tax seems flawed. It greatly overvalues small population centres, and very much undervalues large population centres.

As I said, having to work with BT's from 1 to 20 with a range of population between 1,000 and 1,000,000 it's not easy without a little of "magic". If you guys have a better system, I'm all ears.

My decision was "fairly" easy. If I took all the data I have I can securely say that cities over 100,000 inhabitants are fairly few, and the higher the population the less the number of cities. So I did make a sacrifice. I prefered to have more "BT numbers" to play with for less populated places (between 10,000 to 100,000 that are the biggest chunk of the data) and be "less accurate" with the most populated cities since they are "a few" of them.

Furthermore, it only uses a single data point, and does not take historical development into account.

Almost 3,000 provinces and a period of time from 1444 to 1821. Good luck finding data for all of it.

I only use 1600 AD as data (well, +/- 50 years or so) and I have been working on it for more than a year. Having only one data is a good compromise to me.

Nor does it take into account the average wealth being taxed.

What does this mean to you? For me I can have other aspects of "wealth" with the trade goods and trade values.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but your metric gives Athens (33.000 inhabitants) 1 less BT than Amsterdam (60.000 inhabitants, and controller of about half the worlds trade) and Antwerp (50.000 inhabitants, and 'centre of the entire international economy'), while giving it the same BT as such insignificant cities as Ghent (30.000 inhabitants, and city in which Paris would fit according to emperor Charles V) and Hamburg. While giving it one more BT than Bruges.

Amsterdam have another extra things that makes you win more money: modifiers, TN and so on.

And as I said, I do realize my aproach is far from perfect, but it works pretty fine. If you have a better method, I'm all ears.

Btw, Ghent is far from insignificant.

You guys seem to not realize that a city of 30,000 inhabitants back in 1600 was a very big city. Cities of over 100,000 were huge. And Beijing (700,000+ inhabitants in 1600) is just a big huge monster.

According to my data and my method, Athens would be BT 8 and Amsterdam BT 11 (there are more big cities in the province), Antwerp BT 9 and Ghent BT 10 (a lot of big cities in the area: 64,000 in total). Paris is BT 13.

Each +1BT makes a big difference, and the bigger the final number, the bigger difference is to earn +1 BT.

 

[Chieron]

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.

And it would be played by a few dozen people until about 1500, when they abort the round for having won..
A 'game' of that scope and complexity would likely be cumbersome and overburdened, not fun to play. A niche game of a niche genre, truly promising. -_-

For the record, I think chocolate and peanut butter are great tastes which do not go great together.

Heathen!

 

[WeissRaben]

Notably, the game you call the least half-baked also has the worst sales.

Yeah, it's the most niche. Still the best one in detail - I'm hoping it's not going to be overly simplified in the transition to #3, even if arguably it gave good results in the hop from #1 to #2.

 

[deezee]

You guys seem to not realize that a city of 30,000 inhabitants back in 1600 was a very big city. Cities of over 100,000 were huge. And Beijing (700,000+ inhabitants in 1600) is just a big huge monster.

According to my data and my method, Athens would be BT 8 and Amsterdam BT 11 (there are more big cities in the province), Antwerp BT 9 and Ghent BT 10 (a lot of big cities in the area: 64,000 in total). Paris is BT 13.

Each +1BT makes a big difference, and the bigger the final number, the bigger difference is to earn +1 BT.

It really depends on region. For example, China in 1600 had a population of around 160 million people (according to populstat.info) and it is represented by about 100 provinces, so Chinese provinces would AVERAGE over a million people per province, although most of that was in relatively more densely populated villages instead of monstrously large cities like Beijing. If the distribution of people between cities is anything like the distribution of people today, China should have dozens of cities with >50,000 people (China has around 100 cities over 1 million people, which is around 1/20th the population of its largest city; 50,000 is around 1/20th of the largest city in 1600) By that standard, 30,000 people is nowhere close to being a fairly large city, even if it might be relative to the rest of the Balkans. I don't really have good numbers of India, but my impression is that its a similar standard.

So by your metric (or by any other method that is purely population-based), a typical Chinese province would have BT 16. This might produce some balance issues

 

[Tacticus101]

If the distribution of people between cities is anything like the distribution of people today

It isn't though, we know this. Historically populations were far less urban than they are now, much more concentrated in agriculture, China even more so. Bejing was by far the largest city in China at that point with almost 1 million people (estimates vary). There certainly weren't any other cities with anywhere near 1 million population.

Similar things can apply to any city, including Athens. The city itself may have been small, but that only includes the city itself, not the entire province. 50,000 was a fairly large city.

 

[Zak Preston]

Great Power is what I meant too. In game, you can build a colonial nation equal to the size of the 13 colonies by 1600, and swap to it, OR simply relocate yourself and settle that territory (sucking up 50% autonomy) by then if you prefer. You can be a great power in under 200 years. Historically, look at the USA formation to great power status, and it's that way. You could look at Brazil for a less dramatic example. Relocating to the new world and over hundreds of years building into one of the preeminent world powers is not ahistorical, and not game-breaking. They even nerfed it (except swapped colonial nations) this last dlc. If the puritans could do it, why not a human player?

You are forming a nation on valuable land with abundant natural resources, and barring a very few remote islands, everything in the game you settle historically had people living there. Some of these places, such as Cuba which I linked, were more densely populated in 1444 than Greece, and certainly far more profitable throughout the game's history than Greece. There's no good historical argument for these productive plantation regions to not be so valuable, and there's no good balance reason either really, since redomiciling to America is less powerful than just conquering your neighbors back home... simply far easier or less complicated is all.

USA became a "secondary power" XVIII-XIX centuries (Vic2 terms) mostly because of very effective immigration policy, quite liberal laws and taxes, vast and suitable for settlement lands with great potential and some luck (gold in California and Alaska). But in EU4 terms even full formed Thirteen Colonies are quite weak despite their high-BT lands mostly because they don't bother to build forts, to say nothing of other buildings and lag behind in mil tech without any reason.

You're still putting far too much emphasis on population! The Lesser Antilles were more profitable than regions like Bulgaria in this time period. They had extremely prosperous sugar plantations. The fact that the wealth was tied up locally is very well represented too! You are getting literally 1/4th of the tax value here that you would from a Balkan province connected by land, 1/2 if you moved your cap to the region. Once again, just because there a ton of people in a region does NOT mean it is rich, wealthy, or potentially so. It is true today and it was just as true back then.

These regions were also not at constant peace and stability. The Caribbean was full piracy, and many of these places were raided. On the other hand, places like Bulgaria and Greece spent most of the period in relative calm and under a reasonably stable empire.

In player hands (I played as Brittany) someone who directly owns Caribbeans only may be considered as a Secondary power. I agree that total income from Jamaica was higher than from Athens, but most of it (as Oblio has already pointed) was from trade and production. Base tax seems to represent population density, while FL, production efficiency (if I'm not wrong) and trade efficiency are it's derivatives. So to make Caribbeans more accurate (in my point of view) PDS could change BT but increase sugar cost.

Hungary is a problem but it is also an exception to the norm; it's BT seems to be reflective of having already been demolished by wars with the Ottomans. I think both sides of this debate would agree it is represented too low. This thread at least is more talking about regions like Athens or Southern Italy, which, while possibly full of human people, were not profitable regions. I firmly hold that Athens should in no way have a higher base tax than Havana; it had a stable overlord and was not the victim of regular warfare yet never amounted to anything exciting in this period. Implying it would have under a Byzantine overlord instead of an Ottoman one, despite never being much of anything when the Eastern Romans DID rule over it, is also preposterous. Athens is not particularly that wealthy in CK2, and it's primary source of wealth even today as the center of Greece is tourism; why should it be special in the game?

IMHO both Hungary and Balkans were designed not quite rich only to prevent Ottomans from overblobbing in European direction too hard.

 

[Chieron]

It isn't though, we know this. Historically populations were far less urban than they are now, much more concentrated in agriculture, China even more so. Bejing was by far the largest city in China at that point with almost 1 million people (estimates vary). There certainly weren't any other cities with anywhere near 1 million population.

Similar things can apply to any city, including Athens. The city itself may have been small, but that only includes the city itself, not the entire province. 50,000 was a fairly large city.

Attica may also have been comparatively urbanized / centralized, giving a fairly large capital city with rather empty-ish hinterland in the province..
50k would be a large city, but the number we've seen so far are more in the 10k-30k ballpark. Still a major city, but rather common to have at least one even in not-to-urbanized regions.
But yes, urbanization levels in general were much lower than they are today (except for city-provinces like Venice, Lübeck or Íle de France).

 

[darthfanta]

Attica may also have been comparatively urbanized / centralized, giving a fairly large capital city with rather empty-ish hinterland in the province..
50k would be a large city, but the number we've seen so far are more in the 10k-30k ballpark. Still a major city, but rather common to have at least one even in not-to-urbanized regions.
But yes, urbanization levels in general were much lower than they are today (except for city-provinces like Venice, Lübeck or Íle de France).

Not 1444 Attica.It was barely urbanized.

 

[Chevaresqye]

I'm imagining something that the business side of Paradox would lolnope because sales cannibalization.

Will EU:Rome II cut sale of Rome II total war? Can Stronghold Crusader II cut sale of Crusader King II? Gameplay different is what lead player to buy game. And I rather have one super successful line of product than dozen of mediocre ones.

 

[Chieron]

In player hands (I played as Brittany) someone who directly owns Caribbeans only may be considered as a Secondary power. I agree that total income from Jamaica was higher than from Athens, but most of it (as Oblio has already pointed) was from trade and production. Base tax seems to represent population density, while FL, production efficiency (if I'm not wrong) and trade efficiency are it's derivatives. So to make Caribbeans more accurate (in my point of view) PDS could change BT but increase sugar cost.

The Carribbean islands could do with a flat goods produced modifier and a moderate basetax reduction, methinks. Just because their forcelimits seems to be rather high for a string of islands (where the population actually was pretty small, simply due to their size.)

IMHO both Hungary and Balkans were designed not quite rich only to prevent Ottomans from overblobbing in European direction too hard.

Those areas were rather poor in EU3, too. And there the Ottos massively underperformed. The relative poverty also weakens the Balkan states, making them prey of the Ottos and Austria instead. So it is the other way round at least.

 

[Squirrelloid]

With apologies for not quoting anyone, because its been over a full page since I last got to look at teh forum.

Re: vicki2 chocolate in your EU4 peanut butter. But... but... chocolate and peanut butter!

Using population for BT:
1) Trade and production cover most other sources of income
2) Most taxes in western europe during and even just before the time period were hearth taxes (based on #family domiciles) and goods taxes (frequently on things like salt, which tended to be regressive taxes in practice). Many nobles - the large landowners - were actually exempt from taxation in France at game start.
3) Urban populations produced much of the exploitable value for the crown, and generally had hearth or head taxes.

In short, population does directly relate to taxation, even in the time period.

As far as a modern game with the EUIV engine - it would be terrible, because modern infrastructure is so much more important than infrastructure in the period. But if you put a gun to my head and made me do it, then I'd do BT based on population, seriously jack up the cost and benefits of infrastructure (re: admin buildings), vary that cost based on population, and start western nations with much of the infrastructure already built. Then their effective tax would be a lot higher despite lower populations, representing the additional wealth their population has. Bangladesh could catch up and even exceed western nations if it can afford to build out the infrastructure, but that would represent turning Bangladesh into a westernized powerhouse with much higher standards of living. Of course, this demonstrates the limits of the EUIV engine to represent modern periods - governments don't control that kind of thing. Private enterprise commands vastly more wealth than any government, and this kind of economic development is not something that can just be fiated by governments. (They can do things which encourage or discourage it, but they can't just throw money at the problem and make it happen).

Re: scaling.

10,000 is not a very large city in 1444. A large city is like 50k people, of which there are plenty. Rome was a depopulated ruin in ~1444, with a population of 19k. OTOH, despite losing something like 2/3 of its population to the Black Death, Cairo still had well over 100k people. (Quite possibly 200k).

But we aren't talking about just a single city, we're talking about provinces which may have more than one city in them. The total urban population of a province could well exceed 50k or 100k even with no single city exceeding 10k. Any *province* with a total urban population of 10k or fewer should be 1BT.

At the same time, large cities were incredibly more wealthy than small cities. Wealth concentrates in large cities. Even using a *linear* scale might not represent the wealth advantages of having a large city adequately. The difference between a major city of 100k people and a 4k large village is certainly greater than a 25x increase in wealth. Now, relative size has some effect - wealthy individuals aren't going to move from Europe to Beijing readily, so being the largest city in Europe, or Northern France, will tend to maximize the agglomeration of wealth benefits from being large.

Now, the EUIV system imposes constraints. #1: BT can't be lower than 1. #2: there's some limit to province BT based upon warscore considerations. I'm not actually sure what it is, but more than 25BT in a single province would probably be too unwieldy to use. Accomodating possible events, set the top province at 22BT (Beijing). Set any province with 10k or fewer urban population at 1BT. We want a scale which isn't too far from linear, and then we want to boost the top regional cities a little bit to represent wealth attraction.

Actually, let's just use the largest city in a province unless there are two+ cities that are within the same (power of 2) order of magnitude, that'll make it vastly easier to calculate. (Or you can redo this chart once you know what the total urban population ranges look like for whole provinces summing up all cities - I just have individual city data to go off of).

Rough guess:

Urban Pop   |   BT
10k         |    1
20k         |    2
35k         |    3
50k         |    4
65k         |    5
80k         |    6
95k         |    7
110k        |    8
125k        |    9
145k        |   10
165k        |   11
190k        |   12
215k        |   13
240k        |   14
270k        |   15
300k        |   16
340k        |   17
380k        |   18
440k        |   19
500k        |   20
600k        |   21
700k+       |   22

Then add 1 if its the largest city in its culture group.

Note: I'm assuming you're choosing a date 1600 or before. Once we start getting near 1700, populations start growing rapidly and this scale would be no good.

This still undervalues large cities, but it doesn't do so egregiously.

 

[Camtheman]

What we have here is a series of half-baked games, with EU the most half-baked and Victoria the least, instead of one fully baked and excellent game or even series covering the full period. This is a sorry state of affairs.

Agree. Seems like Paradox likes to suck as much money as possible off of slightly different titles.

A CK2/Victoria 2/EU IV combo game would be epicsauce, playing from whenever Charlemange DLC starts (dont have it yet) to 1936...

One will play as the character in charge AND the nation itself.

 

[darthfanta]

Reason why base tax correlates directly with population:most taxes at this stage are poll tax.I am in favor of a Vicky style tax where you can set the tax rate yourself.Low tax can solve the problem of unrest and high tax tax increases unrest.

 

[Aldaron]

It really depends on region. For example, China in 1600 had a population of around 160 million people (according to populstat.info) and it is represented by about 100 provinces, so Chinese provinces would AVERAGE over a million people per province, although most of that was in relatively more densely populated villages instead of monstrously large cities like Beijing. If the distribution of people between cities is anything like the distribution of people today, China should have dozens of cities with >50,000 people (China has around 100 cities over 1 million people, which is around 1/20th the population of its largest city; 50,000 is around 1/20th of the largest city in 1600) By that standard, 30,000 people is nowhere close to being a fairly large city, even if it might be relative to the rest of the Balkans. I don't really have good numbers of India, but my impression is that its a similar standard.

You're taking in consideration all the population to make your speech, while I use urban population. Even if concentrated in some relatively big cities, China was mainly rural.

50,000 is a pretty normal number, and I said that these numbers where included in the "Gauss Bell" considered to make some data more relevant to other.

Once again, the fact that China (one of the biggest most populous country in the world) doesn't mean that everywhere is the same. I have a pretty big excel with lots of data and trust me, 30,000 is still very big.

So by your metric (or by any other method that is purely population-based), a typical Chinese province would have BT 16. This might produce some balance issues

This is not true. I have already said that I use urban population. If you use data I'm not using just to "win the discussion", you're just cheating.

10,000 is not a very large city in 1444. A large city is like 50k people, of which there are plenty. Rome was a depopulated ruin in ~1444, with a population of 19k. OTOH, despite losing something like 2/3 of its population to the Black Death, Cairo still had well over 100k people. (Quite possibly 200k).

In 1444 a vity of 10,000 inhabitants is large. In fact 50,000 was not that common.

But we aren't talking about just a single city, we're talking about provinces which may have more than one city in them. The total urban population of a province could well exceed 50k or 100k even with no single city exceeding 10k. Any *province* with a total urban population of 10k or fewer should be 1BT.

I'm really curious of how you'd be able to take data for this.

At the same time, large cities were incredibly more wealthy than small cities. Wealth concentrates in large cities. Even using a *linear* scale might not represent the wealth advantages of having a large city adequately. The difference between a major city of 100k people and a 4k large village is certainly greater than a 25x increase in wealth. Now, relative size has some effect - wealthy individuals aren't going to move from Europe to Beijing readily, so being the largest city in Europe, or Northern France, will tend to maximize the agglomeration of wealth benefits from being large.

Now, the EUIV system imposes constraints. #1: BT can't be lower than 1. #2: there's some limit to province BT based upon warscore considerations. I'm not actually sure what it is, but more than 25BT in a single province would probably be too unwieldy to use. Accomodating possible events, set the top province at 22BT (Beijing). Set any province with 10k or fewer urban population at 1BT. We want a scale which isn't too far from linear, and then we want to boost the top regional cities a little bit to represent wealth attraction.

Actually, let's just use the largest city in a province unless there are two+ cities that are within the same (power of 2) order of magnitude, that'll make it vastly easier to calculate. (Or you can redo this chart once you know what the total urban population ranges look like for whole provinces summing up all cities - I just have individual city data to go off of).

Being a huge-BT city already has it's own benefits, specially since most of them are already TN or have modifiers.

Rough guess:

Urban Pop   |   BT
10k         |    1
20k         |    2
35k         |    3
50k         |    4
65k         |    5
80k         |    6
95k         |    7
110k        |    8
125k        |    9
145k        |   10
165k        |   11
190k        |   12
215k        |   13
240k        |   14
270k        |   15
300k        |   16
340k        |   17
380k        |   18
440k        |   19
500k        |   20
600k        |   21
700k+       |   22

Then add 1 if its the largest city in its culture group.

Suddenly you have half of the world being BT 1 or 2. This utterly destroys balance.

And the scale between numbers looks pretty random.

Note: I'm assuming you're choosing a date 1600 or before. Once we start getting near 1700, populations start growing rapidly and this scale would be no good.

Agreed.

This still undervalues large cities, but it doesn't do so egregiously.

I don't see the "advantage" of this since numbers are still pretty random. Besides, you're know undervaluating most of the cities (that's less than 100,000).

With your scale, England is:

London 12
The rest of the province BT 1 or 2.

Scotland:

Edimburg 3
The rest BT 1

France:

Paris 16
Provence 9
The rest of the provinces BT 1 to 5? Maybe a couple could be 6 or 7.

Scandinavia:

Copenhagen BT 2 (or 3 being generous)
The rest BT 1

 

[ChildeR]

...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.

While I would like to see some depth in the game imported from Victoria and CK2, after the map expansion in 1.8 I feel that the game cannot handle any more per province micromanagement. Any new mechanics should, I think, operate on a higher level.

 

[Sorenzo]

I really like the idea of giving certain culture groups decisions to "form X country and get +Y base tax in the provinces required". Empires tend to focus more economic stimulus on their most core regions. A smaller nation like Greece, if it broke away from the Ottomans, would probably spend more Greek wealth in Greece, thus improving the local economy. It makes sense for certain historical underdogs to get this potential bonus if they do manage to claw back their territory.

And no, Prussia doesn't get the bonus.