Unrest Balance

last time i checked, AI cities had the exact same unrest penalties as my own cities. the only exception would be the city with the tower of dominion, which isn't affected by the number of cities (but again, the mechanic is the same for both, Ai and human players)

i don't think reducing tax unrest is a good idea. the whole point of the mechanic is to slow down expansionist factions. it's not like an extra city is worthless just because it increases your global unrest. that effect only kicks in at pretty high numbers. you can always shave off at least 20% with bell tower/town hall and usually another 5-15% with cleric/shrine/temple if the city has at least one essence. if you plan to expand a lot, it's probably also a good idea to make your first champ a commander (and possibly pick up more commander heroes if you have the choice) and get them to admin III for another 10% reduction. without a commander, you can easily have 10 cities at about 30% (or less if they have essences) unrest penalty. by the time you want to grab more, some of those cities will already be level 4, which means each of them can either increase your global production (town), research (conclave), or reduce the unrest penalty (fortress).

the system really just punishes mindless city spamming. if you have any plans to develop those cities to a decent size, the situation is still easily manageable.

I really think the tax system needs some love. Currently I set tax to 'low' and don't need to change it the entire game.

The tax system requires a second dynamic to it in order to make choosing your factions tax rate to be meaningful. The two following thoughts come into play:

• Tax Collected - Corruption = Moneys Gained
• Base Unrest + Corruption = Unrest Gained

The result is the following equation to be used to determine tax:

BaseUnrest = ((TaxRate)^2/100) + Corruption

Now to describe this mechanic of corruption. The base is 15%. This equilibrum should always be reached by taking the number of 'Corruption Fighting Buildings'/(# of cities in empire); thus

Corruption = 15% - (Buildings/#Cities)

Therefore, since your base will be zero buildings divided by (presumably) 1 city, the result will be 15%.

The following table can be made:

Name          TaxRate         Unrest  (note that the +15% from corruption is added to each line in Unrest already)

Free Spirited      10%             16%
Low                   20%             19%
Normal              30%             24%
High                  50%             40%
Brutal                70%             64%
Oppressive         90%             96%

Note, since 'zero' tax is a system that is bound to fail in reality, it should not be an option.

Finally, there should be buildings throughout the build tree that alleviates corruption.  There should be a tree within the Town where buildigns like Tax Office or Courthouse provide discount into this system.

• Tier 1 buildings provide 5% discount
• Tier 2 buildings provide 10% discount
• Tier 3 buildings provide 15% discount

Now remember, these buildings add there bonus and divide by the number of cities.

Example 1: If you had 5 cities, but only 2 of them were towns with each having a Tier 1 building, then the corruption would only be decreased by 2%.   

Your net Table would look as follows:

Name          TaxRate         Unrest

Free Spirited      10%             14%
Low                   20%             17%
Normal              30%             22%
High                  50%             38%
Brutal                70%             62%
Oppressive         90%             94%

Example 2: If you had 7 cities, and all  7 cities were towns with Tier 3 buildings in each then (15+15+15+15+15+15+15)/7 = 15% discount. Essecially corruption is eliminated and you are left with just the first part of the equation. HOWEVER, in THIS case, ALL are towns.....VERY unlikely to happen in a regular game.

Name          TaxRate         Unrest

Free Spirited      10%             1%
Low                   20%             4%
Normal              30%             9%
High                  50%             25%
Brutal                70%             49%
Oppressive         90%             81%

Also, note to this system: This only effects the unrest from the tax. Unrest from all other sources must still be handled by the effects produced by the Fortress improvements, Commanders, etc.

Thoughts? Comments?

Altar faction is unbalanced in this regard, as  you can just churn out 10-15 henchmen, get them all one extra low level (if they start at a fortress), and now  you got 15 commanders with administrator III and 150 unrest reduction.

Bless the city covers unrest of 10 cities (3 perc x 10). Opression 10 perc. more. Fortess lvlup 10 perc. more, town hall 20 perc., shrine 10 perc. palance, tower of dominion, other 1 per faction buildings.

Its enough to have low unrest on your core cities 4 - 5, others can be just a slight bonuss to money, research, mana.

And why 6 cities for hudge map is not enough ? 2 conclaves, 1 fortress, 3 towns seems good for everything.

Completely agree with this.  Unrest is generally so high at Low the idea of pushing for more money by Taxation is hardly ever an option.

I would love to see the tax system get some attention, especially if government-types could be tied into it somehow...

Yes pls.

At the moment you can't really play a 2 player game on a large map and have each side with a dozen or so cities.  Well, you can but he unrest gets a bit crazy.  That sort of game might not appeal to many, but it's nice to have the option of setting up different types of games like this.  Would be great to have either of these suggestions implemented which would help accommodate the different style/scales.

Unrest is too high.  I'm halfway through on a large map and there are many tiles that could hold a settlement but the AI won't use them and I won't use them.  I'm at the point where if I conquer a city I have to raze it.   It slows the game too much since resource development is inhibited by lack of cities.

It's fine. It's supposed to make choosing to raze and not continually expand an option.

Currently, unrest penalty is a non-factor on a tiny map and the dominant force in the game on a huge map.  The goal is to prevent city-spamming, right?

I would think, then, that the solution is to penalize someone not for having lots of cities, but for having more cities than the opponents.  A city-based unrest function like the following could accomplish this:

Unrest= player_city_count/total_city_count  - 1/number of players + C

This function at least seems scale-invariant.  Further refinement could include manipulating the function to more heavily weight the leading faction in the average (to help other factions to catch up).

Ssssshhhh don't complain about unrest or devs will remove it! *encumbrance* ahem... *encumbrance*

Ok, now a bit more serious. Yes, I think that the unrest dynamics would really benefit from some love. The good thing is that this is something that can be modded.

For starters, I never understood why there are so few spots in the tax slider, and why the jump in unrest produces by them seems to be so arbitrary. A well thougt overhaul would make wonders.

Shh, don't talk such mutinous talk, or the forum's unrest will rise and the devs will lose productivity   

Part of the problem on Large and Huge maps is that not as much distance is required between cities in order to settle a spot which is ending up in a lot of city spawn.  If there was a mechanism for "clearing/salting" individual hexes that gave a one-time benefit for either the acting Mage or nearest city, that would help.

There really needs to be a few more tech items that address Unrest.  Especially in the Entertainment portion of the Tech Tree, not a single item there addresses Unrest which seems silly.

What about tax slider on each city as a separate option ?

The one thing which anoys me in whole system is that i could raise tax rate for my core cities, but then my new cities or conquered ones will stop building at all.

Personally I have a strong dislike of the unrest mechanic as implemented. But I've posted my thoughts in detail several times before so I'll just say I don't like it .

I would certainly be in favor of unrest from cities somewhat depending on map size, or a combination of map size and remaining players.