Taxation tweak suggestion
Printed From: Illyriad
Category: Miscellaneous
Forum Name: Suggestions & Game Enhancements
Forum Description: Got a great idea? A feature you'd like to see? Share it here!
URL: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/forum_posts.asp?TID=1578
Printed Date: 17 Apr 2022 at 13:08
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.03 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Taxation tweak suggestion
Posted By: HonoredMule
Subject: Taxation tweak suggestion
Date Posted: 27 Feb 2011 at 22:47
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I have in mind something that should be more logical than the current taxation tradeoff while trading old restrictions for new ones that better represent balance alongside specialization. Every city produces basic/natural resources at the same general rate, and needs them for, well, everything else. Currently, taxation is generated according to population and causes a detriment to resource production. But population mostly comes from the production of advanced resources, which also carries the true weight of wealth and trade, as well as importance to military operations. So, I think it would be more appropriate for taxation to affect the rate of production of advanced resources (equipment) instead of natural ones. The consequences of such a tradeoff would include:
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Replies:
Posted By: Llyorn Of Jaensch
Date Posted: 28 Feb 2011 at 01:55
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I cant fault the logic (as usual). Dev's Im interested in your position on this as well. |
Posted By: Lionz Heartz
Date Posted: 28 Feb 2011 at 02:22
I respect your opinion in terms of improvements in games because, like me, you are able to naturally think of ways that will make the game better. Your add-on and suggestion to improve tournaments is proof of that. Some players are good at politics etc, but you are pretty good at coming up with ways to improve the game. What you are suggesting are classes to this game. I like that idea. To use an analogy from Darkfallonline, there is only one class in that game. Which means everyone in that game levels up everything to have the best advantage in game. The same can be said in this game more or less. Most of the players in this game have the same type of building at maxed out levels. There are a few that also have only a resource build and have a building with no troops at max tax level to earn max gold per hour for faction trade in the future. So there are really 3 class builds right there... Overall I feel what you suggested would be good, but you need to add more details to every suggestion. I am having a hard time putting all of this together under a certain size town. So that is why I am coming up with these suggestions to add since I do not fully understand what you are talking about. Perhaps there should be a prestige class options. A player will start out producing resources at 100 an hour and once they reach 100 population, the player will be forced to choose the "town build class". These suggestions will allow the pop of each town to be changed and balanced for these suggestions to work and have each build progress at the same town class build level. A player must choose a town to be either of these classes, but not all of them. Overtime, they can add a new class build with a new town. Military build Trade/Gold build Basic Resource build Equipment build Only one of these builds can be attained for one town, but a player that picks a certain build will not be allowed to make a barracks, if they are a trade or basic or advance build. Every town can use a Mage tower. Military -Can make all diplomat units and all military units. -There will be a cap on how many diplomat units and military units a town can make. -20,000 units can be made once a player reaches 5000 pop for one town. This will be the max amount. -5,000 units can be made once a player reaches 5000 pop for one town. -A max amount of 100 diplomat units can be sent to other towns to defend against other diplomat attacks for 14 days. A player can stack 100 spies with burgulars together to help defend a town. -This player will have a very slow production on basic resources and will not be able to make advanced resources. Trade/Gold -This player will be able to not make troops or diplomats because it can not make the building for it. -Unable to make advanced resources and basic resources are produce at a very slow rate. -This player can trade on the market because it can produce gold. Basic Resource -This player will be not be able make troops or diplomats because it can not make the building for it. -This player can only sell basic resources on the market, but can not buy anything on the market. -Unable to make advanced resources. -Can produce basic resources at a max level at around 20k each at 5000 pop. Equipment Build -This player will be not be able make troops or diplomats because it can not make the building for it. -This player can only sell advanced resources on the market. -This player can not buy anything on the market. -Can produce advanced resources at an exceptional rate. Once a player chooses a certain town type, they will be stuck with that for six months and will have to use prestige to change to the other town classes. Basically players will have to be more dependent on each other and will have towns unprotected due to the need for each class. These classes will get rid of the one size fits all town that pretty much every player uses. More teamwork and strategy will have to be used in the game because of it. Not sure if I am covering your idea right HM... But after I read your suggestion, I thought of this. Clarify if I am way off. |
HonoredMule wrote:Posted By: Llyorn Of Jaensch
Date Posted: 28 Feb 2011 at 02:37
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You are way off. HM is suggesting a shift in Taxation: from basic to advanced resources. What you are suggesting is a complete redress of the whole gaming system. None of which appeals, as In 'specializing', as you suggest, you are cordoning off whole area's of the game for yourself. Cannot see the attraction in that. So to redress the thread back to its normal course: Dev's: Love to hear your input on HM's taxation adjustment concept. |
Posted By: Lionz Heartz
Date Posted: 28 Feb 2011 at 02:47
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So, HM wants maxed out resources to go along with a maxed out military?
A player can also have maxed out resources with an exceptional increase for advanced resources... A military city is unable to produce advanced resources at a good rate... So a player will either have to have a town produce military units or advanced resources? Is this what HM is saying? Still I would like HM to add more detail. |
Posted By: Llyorn Of Jaensch
Date Posted: 28 Feb 2011 at 03:17
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LH: Shush. HM's concept is perfectly sound. Please stay off this thread as you're derailing the issue and some of us are interested in developer feedback. Please start your own thread for your moronic idea's. What do you care anyway? You don't even play the game (apparently) anymore. Now off and 'go clubbin' or something. |
Posted By: Hora
Date Posted: 28 Feb 2011 at 04:23
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To stay fair, the second post of LH was not even derailed, I think he got the idea of HM now. To add my few thoughts on that: 1. The basic idea of HM to separate the different ways of playing is a step in the right direction. Perhaps there would some way of including magic as the third one somewhere in there? 2. another pro would be the need for players to interact (if they specialize with ALL towns). 3. The only fear I got with "Larger cities could support larger standing armies"; seems to prefer big players even more in building out there militaric strength... 4. LH's suggestion of separating the ways completely by building in fix town classes wouldn't fit on the sandbox character of this game (in my opinion). Further, it depends on prestige to much for my liking  Going in further details before a statement of the GM's would be a waste of time, as only they can grasp all the influences it has on the mechanics (at least I hope so)  Hora |
Posted By: Llyorn Of Jaensch
Date Posted: 28 Feb 2011 at 04:45
1. HM is NOT referring to separation of playing styles. HM is suggesting a DIFFERING TAXATION SYTEM. IE a shift from Basic to advanced resource tax as this is a more accurate taxation on population. This does not neccessarily transfer into specialization, merely a more accurate system which, as listed, would provide several advantages. 2. Please read the END of the sentence. Larger armies would be supported WITH THE COMPROMISE ON REBUILD TIMES. IE trade off: Size vs Attrition. Bigger players are NOT necessarily better off. |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 28 Feb 2011 at 05:16
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Llyorn is pretty much correct regarding the thrust of my post. All I'm suggesting is that taxation hurt equipment production rather than basic resource production. All the subsequent points are just exploration of how that single simple change would affect gameplay and surrounding mechanics. With specific regard to the larger armies bit, I understand how that can immediately be seen as scary. But really, it's not going to mean more powerful players/alliances so much as more incentive for concentration of a player's/alliance's power into military-focused centers. After all, the increased ability to keep an army comes at a cost of decreased ability to produce an army. City A's military power increase comes at the cost of city B's military power decrease so that B can produce the volume of equipment that A no longer can. Furthermore, the nature of the tradeoff means more focus on standing armies due to comparatively reduced capacity to replenish troops. Peaceful-but-prepared players should theoretically have the upper hand, which means new actors in any field will be more likely to produce a tipping point and bring wars to result. Such a distance between "reserve" capacity vs "production" capacity would have produced a more diverse and variable dynamic with the month-long tournament, for example. And ultimately, it is what it is--one of several minor shifts that are believed (at least by myself) to offer an overall improvement in the diversity (and thus fun factor) of gameplay. I do not believe any of the individual points will be very pronounced in effect on their own anyway. |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 28 Feb 2011 at 05:22
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I should also note that regardless of the sinks draining basic resources, keeping equipment production queues loaded is never really a problem for a reasonably developed city, no matter how fast it's being produced. Resource costs of equipment just aren't really that substantial. An exception of course is when sovereignty is being heavily used to increase equipment production, but then you're not going to want to tax that city for an even stronger reason than saving basic resources--retaining that equipment production capacity. So currently, the food drain is a real issue and a pain to balance, but the other resources are basically always overflowing anyway, once a city is done being built. Sovereignty is limited by gold and research long before natural resources get strained, so it feels like the "cost" of taxation isn't really felt except by people trying to reach high populations. Instead it should affect something more universally valued. |
Posted By: Brids17
Date Posted: 28 Feb 2011 at 07:54
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Wouldn't that sort of imbalance prestige? The thing that slows down the speed of my city building and increases the usage of my prestige is running out of resources. The more resources I get per hour the less money I have to spend. I know 5 prestige per renewal might not sound like much but that quickly adds up. |
Posted By: STAR
Date Posted: 28 Feb 2011 at 12:02
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I think your idea makes sense but wouldn't taxing adv res make it harder on new players? building an army would take a new player months if his adv res is being taxed? not to mention the high posibility of adv res being expensive to buy. and wouldn't a new player be making 0 gold if tax was on adv res cos they don't have the buildings to make them (not sure if im reading that correctly or not) Most of your suggestions and comments are focused towards already established players or players that are in an alliance. That is the impression i am reading from your post. could you please clarify where new players would fit into your suggestion or ones that choose to play solo/independently. Im just not sure if what your suggesting is fair |
Posted By: STAR
Date Posted: 28 Feb 2011 at 12:34
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LH i think your suggestion for pres building would lean towards a pay to play game (not sure if thats what your meaning bout pres builds? sorry if its not correct) How do you choose what kind of town to build when you don't know the game? having a 100 pop town doesnt mean you know what you are doing, especially if you are new to this type of gaming. You have some good ideas but they have limitations and i dont like that. (totally my own opinion) I like being able to build as much military and dips as i want, but with your suggestions there are limits. A mage tower can only protect against so much or would there be an alteration in this department as well? most of your suggestions, suggests a whole game make over, and it suggests you need to have a fair idea on how to play too. I dont know where new players fit into your game plan too especially ones that have never played a game like this before. Thats how im reading it from your post. |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 28 Feb 2011 at 13:39
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Taxation income comes from population (both currently and in my version, meaning how much gold you actually get is decided solely by tax level and population count) and incurs a slowdown in production somewhere either way (but this is more like an incidental than an equal trade. In that regard there's no change. New players currently need as much basic resources as they can get, so they set low taxation. In my system, they might as well crank up taxation and use gold to buy equipment they aren't yet able to produce, because the basic resources the need most will flow just as heavily anyway, and equipment you can't produce won't come any slower. Young cities already have dismal production rates even when they can produce their own equipment, too. So the most substantial change I'm suggesting against new players is actually that they'd get on their feet much more quickly because they'd have more flow of basic resources to keep them developing (leveling up equipment buildings) and producing what equipment they can even as they increase gold income from the population they're also increasing (most population comes from leveling up equipment production buildings, which are also cheaper but take longer to build). And leveling up production buildings will increase production much more than lowering taxation. Small cities will be boom towns. Then as they get big like mine, the balance settles toward a state quite similar to now, just slightly more rewarding of diversity/specialization. Also, to put things in perspective, I'm suggesting taxation apply to advanced resources in pretty much the same manner as they currently do to basic resources. That means even at 100% taxation your equipment would take 4 times as long to produce, but at reasonable rates like 35%, you're looking at a 10% drop in production rates. It's not that dire. I'm undecided whether you should be allowed to boost production up to 25% by dropping taxation to between 0 and 25% (as basic resource production behaves now). The positioning of that "break-even" threshold (where taxation doesn't affect production either way) could be adjusted to something more appropriate for the new tax tradeoff. @Brids17: your prestige spending habits sound a bit strange to me. Basic resources are easy to acquire by free methods, especially if you're in an alliance. The quantities young cities need is so minuscule that plenty of people will happily give it away. Even mid-to-upper-range developing players can usually find a lot of aid, presuming they even need it. All my prestige goes toward instabuilding those multi-day construction projects that would drag out development into the next ice age. Most lvl 14+ advanced buildings take so long to build that my resources would overflow a lvl 20 warehouse+storehouse if I waited for them to finish naturally...and that's at high taxation. I do spend to boost food production, but under the new tax tradeoff, I would continue to do so (but manage my taxes, population, and production differently). I wouldn't really care about basic resource loss to taxation as a developed player (except for the annoyance of trying to make population thresholds for founding city n+1 in the face of food deficits--and by the way, the trick with that is just to cheat your peasants out of food by leaving the stockpile empty and the production queues full). Removing the impact of taxation on basic resources is much more about benefiting new players and bringing them up to speed more rapidly than anything else. Otherwise, I'd say cut production of everything. But then I do prefer to stick with systems that make real-world practical sense, because that tends to be more intuitive and more predictably balanced, since it's more similar to the real-world constructs which do work and are balanced. That means economics should revolve around and trade value against the items of greatest intrinsic (and concentrated) wealth--systematically, not just within the "trade system." And in this game, that's definitely equipment. Also this game already mimics real-world economics in that staples/natural resources are only valuable in industrial volumes, the transportation of which further constrains the value of such high-traffic commodities. When people give away 40 caravans worth of wood, they're not caring about the wood, but the time spent without the use of those 40 caravans. The wood itself is just something that annoyingly needs to be moved. It's so cheap that when you buy it, you're actually mostly paying for the service of having it delivered. If it were actually valuable, people would be stealing trees from your yard and the unsecured local park. |
Posted By: bartimeus
Date Posted: 28 Feb 2011 at 15:04
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+1, I really love the idea (HM's idea, not LH's idea...)... congrats for the best suggestion since a long long time... both simple and awesome. What say you dear Devs? ------------- Bartimeus, your very best friend. |
Posted By: Mr. Ubiquitous Feral
Date Posted: 28 Feb 2011 at 15:44
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I vote for HM's idea. Not because I understand it, which I don't. Not because I read it, which I tried to do. I agree because HM's track record, as I see it, is much higher than my own level of understanding. I have no idea what any of this means so I will vote yes and hope the problem goes away. As long as it doesn't cost me anything, and even if it does we'll deal with that later in the next post that I won't understand. ------------- I am a Machine. |
Posted By: Llyorn Of Jaensch
Date Posted: 28 Feb 2011 at 16:29
I like this guy ^^ |
Posted By: Brids17
Date Posted: 28 Feb 2011 at 18:15
I wait until most of my cities reach near max resources (so 650k+) before activating prestige on my account and like you, use it on buildings that would take entirely too long to build. The problem is that when a building starts taking 200k+ of each resources per level, you run out of resources very quickly. While I'd like to believe there's players that would happily give me another 700k of each resources (and maybe there are) I'm not going to ask for it. I can usually empty my resources once from the time I starting using prestige then maybe again in my main two cities just before the 7 day period is over. If my basic resources didn't suffer from taxation, I wouldn't have to renew as often. |
Posted By: Hora
Date Posted: 28 Feb 2011 at 18:34
Ehm... yes...thanks Lyorn; with separation I meant a small trend to specification, as HM said. I got the idea, liked it, but did use the wrong words  The problem with towns with large armies at slow recovery and towns with small army but large recovery is the difference between the impact. You can run many small armies agains a big army and have way less impact than one single attack! Then fast recovery helps, yes, but does it outweight that disadvantage? And I'm still missing the magic in there, as geomancy only aims at basic resources... Perhaps there should be some small shift to advanced resources, too, then? Hope I read all the important parts as those theories really are lenghty (and I wonder if I should already give that much brainthinking into it, as we don't know up to now, if the GM's like it  )@brids: I have the same tactic with prestige, you're not alone...  mfg Hora |
Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 28 Feb 2011 at 19:29
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Hi All, We do think this is very interesting. However (there's always a however!), we're quite keen to see what the impact of some of the (imminent) changes are going to be before we go too far down any one road. Without going into too much detail on all of this, we have the following incoming (eg):
Any one of these items will change the Illyriad economy fairly substantially, and at different player levels from the new player to the very advanced player. We've modelled what these changes might look like to the gameworld, which makes them a (fairly) known quantity to us, and we'd certainly like to get these planned changes out before we then reassess more of what needs tweaking (or wholesale changing) at the more fundamental level. We've played with many ideas around taxation in the dev forums - from looking at decoupling food and research from the slider to applying tax penalties (and bonuses) elsewhere around the resource and production systems, from adjusting sovereignty costs to providing entirely new sinks (and faucets). Part of our analysis is from the "purely economic" side, and other parts are for potentially competing goals, such as "improving the new player experience". From those discussions my head says that HM's idea has much merit in many different ways. However, there's a lot going on and coming up in the whole Illy economy as we speak, and I'd hesitate to commit to anything until some of the other things we have planned are out and bedded in. Please, however, continue discussing this one; it's a very interesting topic and one we have spent much time on. We will definitely continue to read well-argued and well-considered perspectives from the playerbase! Regards, GM Stormcrow |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 28 Feb 2011 at 19:54
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Hey a definite maybe! That's heartening! I recognize of course that as the overall game system matures and more plans reach an "already well-mapped-out future" stage, the cost-benefit ratio for even good suggestions from outside the dev loop become decreasingly attractive. I appreciate hearing that player suggestions are still being seriously considered and more importantly still offer attainable possibilities from the fresh perspective department.  |
Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 28 Feb 2011 at 20:04
Oftentimes the simplest ideas (such as yours) might achieve the overall effect we want faster and more efficiently than all the other changes we have in the pipeline put together. I think the general difference is that it's specifically an overall gameplay/economy change. Whilst we've definitely learnt that baby steps are the key when it comes to adjusting and tweaking an integrated, organic system that most often behaves irrationally, I think it's more a question of how far we wish to stack the effects (ie each individual item's impact on the economic whole is greater than the sum of the parts). I do think your concept is very sound, but we may need to do some mulling and modelling once some of the other imminent changes make their impact and more numbers are to hand. Regards, SC |
Posted By: Llyorn Of Jaensch
Date Posted: 28 Feb 2011 at 20:16
Sheesh Catty SC, nobody puts Mule in the corner! |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 28 Feb 2011 at 21:37
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Ah, but simple has very positive connotation in this context. Simple is elegant--like a sleek black dress (on a girl).
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Posted By: Mr. Ubiquitous Feral
Date Posted: 01 Mar 2011 at 01:24
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Wait! Read this one!
First, my disclaimer: I don't understand.
Now I will offer my opinion. If the game were to tell me how much in taxes I owe, I should be able to do whatever it took, within reason, to pay that amount. I would decide which resource to change production rates with, and tweak those that were still producing at the needed rate. I would raise the taxes on different areas of my production. If I need iron and stone, then I would tax wood and clay. The amount of tax would depend on my population, but the resources taxed would be up to me. Then, the gold set aside for the taxes would go to the Head King In Charge, who would use the money to pay for building and upkeep for roads throughout Illy. There may even be Illy sponsored barbeques on occassion. I thought this up all by myself! Thank you and good night. ------------- I am a Machine. |
Posted By: Mandarins31
Date Posted: 01 Mar 2011 at 08:27
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as you explained verry well, more tax/less advanced ressoures is more logic than more tax/less basic ressources. the first point i wanted to talk about is that i dont really think it would be usefull to restrict the continuous production of soldiers. because the important is the proportion of difference of power between a player and an other one. and for me, this system would just reduce the general amount of soldiers produced, but the difference of power between all the players will stay the same... this system wont advantage little or big populated players, comparated to the actual system. also i think about the implementation of this system: .as after the system is implemented, people will regen their armies more slowly, players who had a big army before the implementation would have a big military advantage on players who had a little army (cause they just lost a battle or whatever). so putting this system would ask to reset every soldiers and advanced ressources of every player to be fair with everyone, i guess. .for players who already have verry specialized cities, like me, this may ask to totally reorganise each city, and this could be long and disavantageous. i mostly talk about the link between taxation and the basic ressource upkeep of sovereign structures. talking about this you must define if mana and research production would be affected by the taxe rate the same way as today. if it is modified, this could be a big change for players like me who has just enough research production in a city to support its sovereignty. |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 01 Mar 2011 at 15:19
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In the cases you exemplify, Mandarin31, wouldn't you be "ok" with your current configuration and only want to change to accommodate new possibilities? I.e. you could claim more sovereignty if research is no longer affected by tax. I think the range of military strengths would increase and more according to a player's focus rather than his developmental progress. The reasons being thus:
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Posted By: Kumomoto
Date Posted: 01 Mar 2011 at 16:00
You can ignore him. Simplicity is excellent.
AND... he won't get the analogy... dingos don't wear dresses... ;)
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Posted By: Llyorn Of Jaensch
Date Posted: 01 Mar 2011 at 16:20
| Sheesh. I steal ONE baby.... |