Income/manpower buildings need buffs (especially tax offices)

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Arthrodira

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Dec 7, 2013
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The building system needs some rebalancing - forts, ports, libraries, granaries, and aqueducts are obviously useful towards their intended purpose. That's fine, no problem there. And the bottom row buildings, especially temples (for conversion) and amphitheaters (for assimilation) are generally very useful.

Markets can be used to stack assimilation bonuses, but are good for little else, the trade route bonus is far too small to ever really matter enough to give you an additional trade route (and if it doesn't cross the new route threshold, the percentage increase is completely useless). Training camps are pointless - manpower is mostly irrelevant in 2.0.

Tax offices are the biggest offender though. A 10% tax increase sounds reasonable, until you realize that you make next to nothing from the taxes of any one city. Tax income is so small that it is only meaningful in aggregate across an entire empire (even then it's inferior to commerce income). This is a big problem; not only are the tax buildings themselves kind of pointless money sinks, but they are also the only way to directly use money to boost your income. There are many possible fixes to this: (1) make the percentage increase from tax offices much larger (maybe 40%), (2) give tax offices an increase to commerce and tax income (commerce income simulates taxing imports/exports, so this makes sense), (3) increase the taxes paid per freeman (not my favorite fix, but possible), and (4) make all non-slaves pay taxes!!! It's pretty ridiculous that citizens and nobles pay literally no taxes - it doesn't even make sense. Yes, nobles got out of paying a lot of taxes, so their tax percentage would be much smaller than the percentage on freeman (whatever that translates to in game). But most of any state's income should theoretically come from cities taxing the agriculture of nearby farms. It's easier to keep track of a few large estates than many small farms - so it's not like nobles got off scot free.
 
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Buildings now play an important role as civ builders, besides their more obvious roles. About this matter, I agree with your following arguments:
  • Markets they should give us more trade routes
  • Tax offices should make taxes more efficient on tax income and commerce.
I do not agree with you that nobles and citizens pay literally no taxes, who do you think pay those taxes on commerce? They are the owners of those trades!
 
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Well I meant taxing agricultural production. In order to be a noble the pop would need to own an estate, which would be taxable. So it's reasonable to tax them. This is somewhat true for citizens, but they are a tricky category. The citizen label kind of encompasses equites (smaller landholders who should be taxed), professionals (physicians, scholars, priests, bureaucrats, architects, engineers, etc. who would not be taxed), and merchants (taxed as commerce income). If anything freemen are honestly the pop that wouldn't be taxed because they don't own any land (assuming freeman means non-slave lower class labor, and not literally freeman which could be very wealthy). I understand the gameplay rational, but I've always struggled with the logic of taxing freemen.
 
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I do agree that Tax offices are pretty weak, they always have been but specifically after the nerf to taxation with the recent update. I find marketplaces pretty strong, though they should give either a small bonus to commerce income in that city, a larger increase to trade routes, or both. The assimilation buff is pretty strong and very helpful, and should definitely be kept.
 
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If anything freemen are honestly the pop that wouldn't be taxed because they don't own any land (assuming freeman means non-slave lower class labor, and not literally freeman which could be very wealthy). I understand the gameplay rational, but I've always struggled with the logic of taxing freemen.
I agree. But for the same logic, slaves should not be taxed at all as they do not own any land nor have any income.

The Imperator Wiki defines: Tax income is paid by all pops of certain classes in the country, each producing a different amount of base monthly tax income:
  • 0.008 gold, for freemen
  • 0.003 gold, for tribesmen
  • 0.022 gold, for slaves
For me taxes other than trade are obtained when people entered cities, moved through roads or lived in a town/city. Nobles and citizens were exempted because they had connections. Freemen and tribesmen were the easy target.

But for slaves... I do not get it.
 
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I think the taxes from slave come from the taxes on the goods they produce. You don't actually tax the slaves, but the fruits of their labour. I do think that, like you said, transportation was heavily taxed at the time, I think when pops migrate, it would be nice to get a small bonus of money.
 
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maybe the tax you get from slaves in reality comes from their owners? does it make sense?

I think the taxes from slave come from the taxes on the goods they produce. You don't actually tax the slaves, but the fruits of their labour.

But their owners or the goods produced are already taxed in commerce.

I do not think slaves had disposable income that was taxable.

I am against the promotion of slavery economic efficiency, I already denounced this in the Game of POPs, and the player should not want to have slaves but for the goods produced.

 
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maybe the tax you get from slaves in reality comes from their owners? does it make sense?
It's this.

The "tax income" produced by a pop isn't the literal tax monies paid by that group of people, it's a representation of the labour surplus that is extracted from them and made useful to the state. That's why slaves produce the most- not because they're the most efficient workers, but because they are the pop class who labour least belongs to themselves. Freemen might be doing as much or more, but a large fraction of that labour is going towards their own upkeep, social activities, etc. It's labour that's useful to the pop but not the state, so the game ignores it. Nobles sit around eating figs all day and not working, so they generate nothing (more seriously, the sort of labour the state gets from its nobility is represented as levy cohorts and the characters that fill offices).

Citizens are weird because they're a weird, incoherent pop type and have been ever since nobles stole their niche.
 
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It's this.

The "tax income" produced by a pop isn't the literal tax monies paid by that group of people, it's a representation of the labour surplus that is extracted from them and made useful to the state. That's why slaves produce the most- not because they're the most efficient workers, but because they are the pop class who labour least belongs to themselves. Freemen might be doing as much or more, but a large fraction of that labour is going towards their own upkeep, social activities, etc. It's labour that's useful to the pop but not the state, so the game ignores it. Nobles sit around eating figs all day and not working, so they generate nothing (more seriously, the sort of labour the state gets from its nobility is represented as levy cohorts and the characters that fill offices).

Citizens are weird because they're a weird, incoherent pop type and have been ever since nobles stole their niche.
But the surplus labour of slaves is captured by their owners, not the nation or society.
 
But the surplus labour of slaves is captured by their owners, not the nation or society.
Yes, and then the state captures it through tax. That's the part the game abstracts away.
 
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Yes, and then the state captures it through tax. That's the part the game abstracts away.
Ok that's reasonable. Citizen and noble estates would be taxed via the slaves and freemen working on those estates. So no need to expand the pop-types paying taxes. Just need to buff the base tax per pop maybe? That would make tax offices more useful without buffing the building itself. I am sort-of leaning towards just buffing the building itself though.
 
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But their owners or the goods produced are already taxed in commerce.

I do not think slaves had disposable income that was taxable.

I am against the promotion of slavery economic efficiency, I already denounced this in the Game of POPs, and the player should not want to have slaves but for the goods produced.

But if the game represented the inefficiency of slavery then how can Paradox make you to replicate the economic trends of the late Roman Republic?
 
yes so far , the really useful buildings seems to be satisfactions one, the theater and great temple, the others just some bonus you will consider to build if you have too much money.
 
I want to warn, that a economy rebalance is needed, if these building get buffs or otherwise money is completely obsolete. It's already in the late game no issue anymore. As long a income buff gets applied to these buildings, it must be alongside overall income rebalancing (or other buffs should get applied, which are useful, but not income related).

But I agree that these buildings are in almost all cases not useful, just negative side effects of a buff need to be considered.