Is it advisable to set the tax rate to the lowest level?

[Blanchflower]

OK, I read somewhere that if you set the tax rate to the minimum, your provinces would grow faster and in the late game, you would be ranking in the income. The problem is, when I do this, I am struggling with my finances.

So what should I do? Or is it better to set the tax rate at the normal level? By the way, I am struggling with this game.

[Legion]

I usually just leave it at normal, unless I am making so much money I can set it to minimum

[Spicy Lobster]

Always at the highest rate (unless, as you would see on the map, provinces get mad, and i dont remember if there is a growth thing in this game, but if there is, don´t get them high taxes and just let them prosper). Ofc sometimes, when a province goes mad even if you have normal taxes, instead of lowering the taxes of your whole clan, exempt the taxes to the mad province.

And a tip, don´t get so many units early on unless ya got good finnace, you´ll get bankrupt.

[Iceira]

only go higher then normal, if you are in debt.. but everytime you go higher then normal you hurt population growth.. ( warning surpression is needed )

and if you keep on high you will loose money there is none to get tax from...

i only set above and lesser if all land is upgrade and then i own everything anyway...
so that is a no...keep it on normal...

[Private Ha]

There is no point going to the lowest tax rate, as your tax income is so low you can barely afford anything, especially at the start. It's best to keep it at normal. Growth will come in time, but you will need the kokus for armies, building, fleets and upgrading the castletowns in the meantime. Focus first on building armies to conquer a couple provinces and placing armies to defend the border provinces. More provinces equals more tax income. It'll increase the amount of koku you'll get each turn and give you extra bonus in researching military technologies.

[Black Hole]

This part of the game was poorly done, I've never touched it, it does nothing to go low or high other than hurt you in the end.

Keep it at normal and just make sure to put a strong force in ALL of your castles. I load up max on teh sniper units they kill from far away typically enough to cause them to route before they get too you anyways, they die quick up close though but I rarely lose castels if I have enough of them covering all the fields and just have a couple of strong mellee units to support, or some bow units.

[Red Spot]

By default just leave it at normal and try to never touch it.
When set high you'll loose out on growth which will be important later on in the game.
Set it to low and you cant do anything early game, late game it would be a waste of missed income.

Also 'be the strategist' when it comes to armies. Dumping armies in every settlement as suggested above is a great way to kill your own economy. Say if a settlement brings in 200 koku but you need to garrison 4 Ashegaru to keep the morale up, you'll loose about 160 koku every turn (200 income - ~360 upkeep = -160 koku). Turning tax off in that settlement means you'll loose out on 200 tax, but you also dont waste 360 on upkeep .. and allows that army to be used elsewhere where it might gain you an other settlement.
^The same applies to garrisons; "Do not place a 800 koku upkeep costing army in a 200 koku earning settlement if you want to make money and own the whole of Japan."

[Mack Yuu]

Disclaimer: I've only played the game with Darthmod, because I hate default CAI.

I've noticed that when you start a new campaign, your towns begin by losing growth and population. If you set your tax income to "low" for the first two or so turns while you get your infrastructure established, you can get them back to a place where their growth will be neutral (neither going up nor down) at normal tax, and at that point, I'd go to normal and stay there until you got to a period where you weren't fighting any wars or needed significant improvements; then set it to low and let your provinces cook for a few years.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by Blanchflower:

OK, I read somewhere that if you set the tax rate to the minimum, your provinces would grow faster and in the late game, you would be ranking in the income. The problem is, when I do this, I am struggling with my finances.

So what should I do? Or is it better to set the tax rate at the normal level? By the way, I am struggling with this game.

:apothekineticist:

It depends a lot on your faction starting position: if you start a game with a faction that has few provinces and is already at war with enemies and rebels in your own lands(e.g. Oda, Date, etc.), that is totally different from a faction that is at peace and can easily form alliances and trade agreements with those around you (e.g. Hattori).

In the former case, you might want to set taxes to High or even Very High for the first several turns so that you can quickly build up a force and end the war. In the later, you might want to set to low, so that you public growth stays good and you build a Stronghold right away.

It depends.

Keep in mind, there are various ways to get a lot of money at the start of the game aside from taxes. For example, you can sell military access for quite a sum (anywhere from 900-5,000 depending on the length of the access). Some factions can do this without having to worry about consequences. For example, if you are Hattori you can sell long term access to clans like Ashikaga and Asai right away, because there is really no risk (Ashikaga never invades anyone, and Asai ends up being taken out by Ikko Ikki or even yourself in little time). This can net big money: like around 10,000 koku.

If your daimyo has decent honor, and you can afford to lose a point or two, you can also sack a couple of large enemy towns and get a large junk of money.

This allows you to keep your taxes low, so you don't have to worry about keeping garrisons for public order, and can roll forward conquering.

Again, it depends on which faction you choose, and whether you want a quick war and blitzkrieg right away, or you want to hold off on making big offensives till later.

Generally, taxes will end up being kept on Normal for most of the game: if you find yourself having to constantly raise taxes or keep them on Minimal, you are doing something wrong.

Late game, there might be a period where you need to blitz the last few enemy strongholds and don't want to worry about public order. At this point, you may also have lower daimyo honor from sacking towns for big income fluxes (so you can, say, bribe the stacks the AI spams at you in Realm Divide instead of manually fighting all of them), so you might find yourself exempting many provinces from tax and keeping tax on Minimal: but at that point, you should have so many provinces under your control, it really doesn't matter.


Finally, I never can tell people enough, to *build Markets*!

Markets add +5 growth, so towns with Markets allow you to keep tax on Normal, but still have the town growing in wealth.

When you take over a town, don't feel you have to build new farms and dojos: you only need a couple of castles to produce your best units. If you take an enemy town and it has a destroyed Naginata Dojo, for instance, don't fix it: for basically the same money, you can demolish it, and build a Market in its place.

Similarly, keep an eye out for buildings that consume food (which lowers growth and thus, tax). The AI will build things like Rice Exchange that take food: when you take over such towns, just get rid of the Exchange and replace it with a normal Market.

[Fadeway]

Mathematically the growth from low tax rate will never recoup the losses from missing out on spending a turn at max tax. The optimal strategy is to keep the tax rate at the highest possible and alternate to the max every other turn (provinces dont rebel from one turn of unrest).

Anyone advocating low/normal for economic as opposed to order-related reasons hasn't run the numbers.

[Blanchflower]

Originally posted by #ANZ Fadeway:

Mathematically the growth from low tax rate will never recoup the losses from missing out on spending a turn at max tax. The optimal strategy is to keep the tax rate at the highest possible and alternate to the max every other turn (provinces dont rebel from one turn of unrest).

Anyone advocating low/normal for economic as opposed to order-related reasons hasn't run the numbers.

Thanks for the tip. That is what I am doing now.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by #ANZ Fadeway:

Mathematically the growth from low tax rate will never recoup the losses from missing out on spending a turn at max tax. The optimal strategy is to keep the tax rate at the highest possible and alternate to the max every other turn (provinces dont rebel from one turn of unrest).

Anyone advocating low/normal for economic as opposed to order-related reasons hasn't run the numbers.

Order related is economic, when you think about it.

Having to invest in more garrison troops is an economic cost: initial cost of recruitment, long term costs in upkeep.

Not to mention the economy of forces, i.e. having to send a stack to go put down a rebellion instead of watch a border or invade a new territory.

The problem with setting to the highest possible every other turn is that you suffer a massive growth loss from unhappiness when you go back down.

True, a province won't rebel from one turn of unrest: but when you turn it back down, you will notice that even if public order is "yellow" or "green," there is still a growth of -25 from unrest.

So, if you turned up to Very High taxt every other turn, that means in the span of 10 turns, you have 5 turns of -25 growth, or -125 growth points. So even though order can be brought back to controllable levels each following turn, you are having a net loss of -12.5 growth per turn (assuming a province that had neutral growth of 0).

That net growth, or lack thereof, will have a big effect. With a settlement of 250 pop number, you are looking at absolute 0 from pop bonus after only 20 turns. That is not insignificant.

One might argue it makes negligible difference if you just blitz and sack settlements right from the beginning of a campaign, but if you are trying to expand quickly, you can't really do it if you are setting to max tax rate every other turn, because you will have to fight a rebelllion in every new town you take.

You could exempt all the new provinces you take, but then this cancels out the effect of keeping taxes on max every other turn, especially if the new provinces are higher income.

Ex: it makes no sense to exempt a new 3,100 income a turn province from tax for 10 turns so you can just keep doing max tax every other turn for the 3 provinces you already have if they only are around 500 income towns, and then add to that the fact at the end of these 10 turns, those 3 provinces have all suffered -125 growth.

[Fadeway]

The -25 from unrest is insignificant. Run the numbers. The bulk of income is from buildings, better to tax 1500 farm + 0 population at 50% than 1500 + 1000 population at 15%. Seriously, start a new game, open a settlement, look at the wealth breakdown, see the tax percentages, load a late-game save, do the same, count the number of turns it took to get there, do math. It's obvious if you try it. Those 10 provinces that suffer -125 growth in 10 turns will suffer -75 more growth in another 10 turns. And guess how much they'll suffer in another ten turns? -0. Because they'll be 0 pop now. Haha. But they'll still have that lucrative 1-2k farm on them. And the market. And the sake shop. You can keep taxing at 10% to keep your 200-pop village. Maybe in a hundred turns it will be a 1000-pop village and your 10% will be equal to my 15%. Too bad I've been taxing at 50% the entire time. But sure, in another 200 turns, your investment will start paying off.

In the first half of your post you're trying to redefine economic and order. It's fine to keep taxes at high because moving to very high will require hiring troops. It's not fine to keep them at high because of "growth". I'm not even gonna comment on the parody about exempting a new 3000 income province (since when does the AI cough up provinces worth more than 1k? Since when is max tax..not the tax that gives the most to your coffers per turn?) or spawning rebels without intending to. Not causing rebellions is trivial. This doesn't even touch on the fact that rebellions in newly conquered provinces are often a >good< thing.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by #ANZ Fadeway:

The -25 from unrest is insignificant. Run the numbers. The bulk of income is from buildings, better to tax 1500 farm + 0 population at 50% than 1500 + 1000 population at 15%. Seriously, start a new game, open a settlement, look at the wealth breakdown, see the tax percentages, load a late-game save, do the same, count the number of turns it took to get there, do math. It's obvious if you try it. Those 10 provinces that suffer -125 growth in 10 turns will suffer -75 more growth in another 10 turns. And guess how much they'll suffer in another turns? -0. Because they'll be 0 pop now. Haha. But they'll still have that lucrative 1-2k farm on them. And the market. And the sake shop. You can keep taxing at 10% to keep your 200-pop village. Maybe in a hundred turns it will be a 1000-pop village and your 10% will be equal to my 15%. Too bad I've been taxing at 50% the entire time. But sure, in another 200 turns, your investment will start paying off.

In the first half of your post you're trying to redefine economic and order. It's fine to keep taxes at high because moving to very high will require hiring troops. It's not fine to keep them at high because of "growth". I'm not even gonna comment on the parody about exempting a new 3000 income province (since when does the AI cough up provinces worth more than 1k? Since when is max tax..not the tax that gives the most to your coffers per turn?) or spawning rebels without intending to. Not causing rebellions is trivial. Just..don't end turn when the map has a flashing red province on it! This doesn't even touch on the fact that rebellions in newly conquered provinces are often a >good< thing.

I think the point I and a few others were making, is that having to hire garrison units is itself a form of koku outlay. So trying to keep good public order entails economic costs.

The idea that after your pop bonus is down to 0 you aren't losing anything is just half the picture: the other half is to see how much more money you could have with a town that has grown in wealth over the course of a campaign. It's not just what you didn't lose...it's what you didn't gain. You can argue the net gains from taxing high outweigh the gains in growth, but that depends on your overall faction situation, i.e. what trade you have going on, where you are at in the map, etc.

Regardless, all I can do is speak from my experiences. Maybe your experience is different, but I can't see how I could have beat the game on Legendary using your advice.

There would have been far too many times where there were inconvenient rebellions (for example: I had a province on max tax; next turn it's on 'flashing red' and I put it back down thinking there is no problem; same turn an enemy monks incites unrest; now I have a huge rebel stack in a far off province where I have no troops), and I would've had to spend far too much on garrisons and overwatch stacks.

Maybe on Easy or Normal it wouldn't have been an issue, but on Legendary I just can't see myself being able to do that.

[Fadeway]

I play legendary as well, don't worry about that.

Do the math. Then come back and specifically tell me what you're losing. In numbers. This isn't about "experience", this is about numbers. Low tax takes too long to start repaying, and even longer to break even. IIRC the point it breaks even is beyond the time limit of the campaign.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by #ANZ Fadeway:

I play legendary as well, don't worry about that.

Do the math. Then come back and specifically tell me what you're losing. In numbers. This isn't about "experience", this is about numbers. Low tax takes too long to start repaying, and even longer to break even.

All I'm saying is that for me, I was not able to beat the game on Legendary trying to keep taxes high. Playing on Legendary sure: but I didn't beat it till I adopted the lower tax approach.

Now, the game is relatively complex on the strategic map, so I don't know if there was something else I was not doing that made it to where I had to keep taxes low, or what.

For example, you must have figured out a way to keep provinces from rebelling after they were in "flashing mode" in light of monk action, faction dilemmas, etc. that I didn't get, or else you structured your empire in a way that a province rebelling here or there didn't matter. But for me, the only way I can beat the game on Legendary is to minimize all of those issues by keeping taxes relatively low and not going to max tax except on just a handful of occassions.

I'm not saying your approach doesn't work for you: I'm just telling the OP that in my experience, to win on Legendary, alternating to max tax every other turn woul result in serious problems.