i wont go into the theory but if we are going to have a lot of new players starting the game instead of writing up wikis, having helper alliance or staff and possibly ingame help all telling people to increase the tax rate at the beginning of the set surely its possible to put it at 33% or some other amount to begin with

ive seen many players even ones who have played along time running at rates like 20% and 30%, its not a huge differance if your not a casher but during startups income goes from something like 2200 to 4700 from memory by changing tax

and that can make building up your initial acres much easier, the one disadvantage is some people who didnt change it might have wound up with more csites

i assume that theres a way to change it and keep PCI and pop the same unless we wanted that to change startups

I suppose there are a couple schools of thought on this.

We can start at 15% which is functional but far from ideal. A new player does not realize this because 15% sounds reasonable and has no conception of the formulas. Over time they will or will not learn to improve that.

We can start at a very good tax rate and thus make it essentially a non-issue. I think this is not a good idea because tax rate is something that you change once or twice during the round now. I feel like if it is a part of the game it should be some sort of factor.

We can start at a poor choice for tax rate. 0% is an obvious choice because it clearly brings you no income. As long as people start with a little cash so they can realize they are losing money and have to change something before they completely run out. The advisor page could have text for say tax rate below 15% saying "Our tax revenues are low. Consider increasing tax rate." Conversely above 59% there could maybe be a message saying "Our people are unhappy with our high taxes and are leaving our lands. We should consider lowering taxes." These two extremes are around 70% efficiency for tax rate (assuming certain bushel prices) and seem like good end members to keep new players competitive but not just telling them the best tax rate. Someone at 30% tax rate is at over 98% efficiency so its really not a huge deal if they haven't optimized beyond that. I feel this is the best option as it makes people consider their tax rate and can't just take it for granted.

0% is interisting the only downside is if that causes PCI kills?

i seem to remember if you leave tax at 0% for ages eventually your PCI drops to 0 and you die

perhaps 1% could achieve the same thing without risk of newbies dying :)

I'd have to check the PCI growth formula to see if that is the case. 1% could accomplish the same thing for sure though ;)

good point

maybe we should make it 35%.... until we rebalance stuff

0% PCI doesn't cause PCI kills.

perhaps that was 70%

or perhaps the game was changed to prevent that and im remembering something from 10 years ago, anyway im sure PCI kils were possible at one point

and yes i just checked 0 and 70 and nothing much happened

actually from what i remember pci kills had something to do with running a lot of turns at 40 pop per turn gain

Most PCI kills I can think of required extended periods of running turns with 0 cash and or 0 bushels.

i demand 100% tax!!

PCI kills are possible, they are just damned hard; main thing is you need to run out of food/money for a few turns to reallly make it possible

they only have happened to me when walling at <300 pop for many many turns... once your PCI hit like .02 in 2025, no matter what you did, you were gonna die if you played more turns

damn u enshula! I just posted this on another thread, didn't see this. Good idea there should be no debate, honestly this should be changed immediately, its so bloody obvious. Also get rid of the 100 troops!

well im not sure getting rid of starting troops is a good idea, since it lets players have some offence and defence

could get rid of food too and it wouldnt matter much except for theos but i dont think it would be as no brainer as tax

well if this is the case why bother having a tax rate at all?

how many actually have time to lower it when walling why raise it etc etc
make it useful or get rid of it

err it's very very useful for cash starts