Royal tribute collector is a joke

[Headshotkill]

He should demand certain items/animals/prisoners/silver/food one time a year instead of begging for some scraps. Failing to provide tribute to the crown should result in a loss of goodwill and potentially a downgraded royal title. With each higher royal title and colony wealth he should demand more stuff.

[RhyoliTe]

What does he currently demand and what are the consequences?

[Headshotkill]

Originally posted by RhyoliTe:

What does he currently demand and what are the consequences?

He doesn't demand anything, you voluntarily donate some stuff to the crown in exchange for monarch points.

[RhyoliTe]

Oh wow that does sound like a joke.

[Dwang Zhongson]

That thing is really begging for an overhaul, completely agree that tribute collector should demand a certain amount of things, depending on the titles of your pawns.

[UltimateTobi]

Well, there are two things they want; prisoners and gold.
If you can provide both, you are rewarded with royal favors.

If you do not, you don't get anything.

I believe that's fine and doesn't force the player into anything.

[RhyoliTe]

Originally posted by UltimateTobi:

Well, there are two things they want; prisoners and gold.
If you can provide both, you are rewarded with royal favors.

If you do not, you don't get anything.

I believe that's fine and doesn't force the player into anything.

But then they're not really tax collectors for a feudal kingdom, are they? They're just goodwill collectors at that point.

[Zorelnam]

Originally posted by RhyoliTe:

Originally posted by UltimateTobi:

Well, there are two things they want; prisoners and gold.
If you can provide both, you are rewarded with royal favors.

If you do not, you don't get anything.

I believe that's fine and doesn't force the player into anything.

But then they're not really tax collectors for a feudal kingdom, are they? They're just goodwill collectors at that point.

to be fair, your colony is basically less than a little tiny dot in the map at best in an uncolonized extremely dangerous planet in the middle of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ basically, while i agree they should demand stuff it would be kind of silly to get taxed even in literally a planet with no government

[RhyoliTe]

Originally posted by Zorelnam:

while i agree they should demand stuff it would be kind of silly to get taxed even in literally a planet with no government

Then you don't agree with what I'm saying. If you submit yourself to a feudal empire (as you can with the DLC) then you should expect to get taxed. Its not like this is a bad thing, he could set the tax 'rate' as a % of your colony wealth scaling with difficulty.

Being small is no excuse either, every village was still taxed in medieval times. By a tax collector.

[Zorelnam]

Originally posted by RhyoliTe:

Originally posted by Zorelnam:

while i agree they should demand stuff it would be kind of silly to get taxed even in literally a planet with no government

Then you don't agree with what I'm saying. If you submit yourself to a feudal empire (as you can with the DLC) then you should expect to get taxed. Its not like this is a bad thing, he could set the tax 'rate' as a % of your colony wealth scaling with difficulty.

Being small is no excuse either, every village was still taxed in medieval times. By a tax collector.

If you have a choice about joining then yes i agree.
I think that it would work better if instead of having fixed demands they demanded things from present in the map. This way it would work more realistically. So for example instead of the tributary showing up and demanding lets say 200 gold instead they demand the equivalent in other objects or maybe specific items the nobility would want. Say for example a masterwork or legendary royal clothes and that kind of thing.

[Headshotkill]

Basically my main problem with this DLC is that EVERYTHING is optional, it can't hurt to sometimes force the player into task if it's meaningfull, after all joining the empire is already optional.
Some events like:

-A count is passing through the area and needs a place to rest for 2 days, he expects a decent bedroom and atleast fine meals. His presence might attract raiders, he brings 2 royal guards with him who carry their own rations.
-A local duke has taken knowledge of your colonies growing wealth and wants to pay you a visit, he will arrive in 3 days and expects an impressive bedroom and lavish meals. Additionally he would like for you to erect a monument in honour of the high stellarch. his presence might attract raiders, he brings his 2 huskies and 5 royal guards with him who carry their own rations. He will stay 5 days at your colony.

Both these events if succesfull could give the player silver, monarch points or they might even leave one of their guards as reward. Additionally the player now has a nice bedroom to give to one of his colonists and perhaps a beautifull monuments for your people to admire.
If you fail to protect or entertain your guests you would suffer a penalty in monarch points and a potential downgraded title.
If you make all of this quests then you'll pretty much never end up in a situation like: "Damn I've had three raids in the last 2 days and now I have to house the local duke.", it can be tense but also amusing to have situations like this where the duke has to walk over a field full of corpses.

Also some permanent residence quests couldn't hurt like:

-A count from nearby was attacked by mechanoids and has lost his base, he's asking if he could move into your colony, he brings with him his royal entourage of 3 and 2 royal guards. During his escape he managed to salvage most of his most valuables which he will give to the colony upon arrival. He and his entourage expect a decent bedroom, fine meals, blablabla. If you keep him happy he will use his social skills to negotiate better deals with the royal tribute collector.

[Talithmara]

Do keep in mind that the Royal Tribute Collector arrives even if you're simply neutral and have no members within them. It's more of a means to foster goodwill than a tax.

If they showed up, made demands, and then penalized you for not meeting them due to the availability of the resources, I'd just disable the event in the Scenario Editor, full stop. It'd be one thing if you had high colony wealth, a high ranking noble, and accepted more than just gold and slaves, but they come on the first year when you likely have nothing to offer them. Immediate repercussions for that would be ridiculous.

Frankly, I wouldn't use the DLC at all if things weren't mostly optional. Imagine if in the Vanilla game, a trade request also penalized you for not forking over 2000 Cloth that you don't have. Or if not going out to rescue a captured pawn saw their ghost coming to attack and haunt your colony for a bit. You NEED that option to just not do it, because sometimes the requests are simply beyond your means entirely. Now imagine the monumnt building quests being forced. "You need to build this thing out of 2000 of this stone block and 1000 of this stone block." What if you don't have any stone blocks? Suddenly, repercussions for failing a quest through no fault of your own because you had no way of knowing you'd need those specific resources in advance.

[Headshotkill]

Originally posted by Ranylyn:

Do keep in mind that the Royal Tribute Collector arrives even if you're simply neutral and have no members within them. It's more of a means to foster goodwill than a tax.

If they showed up, made demands, and then penalized you for not meeting them due to the availability of the resources, I'd just disable the event in the Scenario Editor, full stop. It'd be one thing if you had high colony wealth, a high ranking noble, and accepted more than just gold and slaves, but they come on the first year when you likely have nothing to offer them. Immediate repercussions for that would be ridiculous.

Frankly, I wouldn't use the DLC at all if things weren't mostly optional. Imagine if in the Vanilla game, a trade request also penalized you for not forking over 2000 Cloth that you don't have. Or if not going out to rescue a captured pawn saw their ghost coming to attack and haunt your colony for a bit. You NEED that option to just not do it, because sometimes the requests are simply beyond your means entirely. Now imagine the monumnt building quests being forced. "You need to build this thing out of 2000 of this stone block and 1000 of this stone block." What if you don't have any stone blocks? Suddenly, repercussions for failing a quest through no fault of your own because you had no way of knowing you'd need those specific resources in advance.

I imagine the royal tribute collector would take stock of your belongings and demand a couple things to reach a certain percentage of your wealth. So you should always be able to satisfy the collectors' demand.

[Dizzy Ioeuy]

He shouldn't show up at all if I ain't in the Empire or rebelled... perhaps other more convincing people could show up though, in raids.

[Gamefever]

Tax Collector only comes once a year, he also only wants prisoners and gold. They seem to prefer prisoners which can be difficult to keep alive for a whole year. You have to keep them fed and healed up that whole time plus deal with prison breaks which put pawns at risk and burn supplies.

Get a bad string of events well having a prison break can be unfortunate. However dont underestimate the impact of having non-working pawns around for a long time for only a few favor points.

[Dave]

So you mean I just gave him a perfect slave for nothing? :(