50% Tax Plan Vs. 100% Tax Plan

[Jazz]

I have done a little bit of analysis of both Zenrax's (50%) and Lord Wellington's (100%) tax plans.

In case you are unfamiliar with these tax plans, I will post links.
Zenrax's 50% Tax Plan
Lord Wellington's 100% Tax Plan

Here's my 2 cents:
These are both great tax plans, however the deciding factor is going to be how much you play on an average 24 hour period.

For both scenarios, lets assume a 10,000 population maximum.

• The 50% percent tax plan will give reach equilibrium at 2500 gold/hr
• The 100% percent tax of course never reaches equilibrium but with constant Disaster Relief comforts you keep your loyalty at 100 you get 10,000 gold/hr minus what you spend on food for disaster relief.
• The 50% plan give you roughly 1/4 of what the 100% tax plan does.
• The 100% plan will not work when you are offline. you must reduce the tax rate to 5-10% when you are offline otherwise you will log on with zero loyalty and population.

So my thought is that make the hours of play the deciding factor of which plan to use.

Point 1:
These plans reach equilibrium (more or less) at 6 hours of game play in a 24 hour period. (they will make you the same amount of gold.)
Less than 6 hrs of game play/day, the 50% tax plan will make more gold.
More than 6 hrs of game play/day the 100% tax plan will make more gold.

Now the next question is it feasible to do both plans. (Switch back and forth)
The answer is that I don't know for sure.

Point 2:
My initial thought is it depends on your max population size. Population doesn't seem to grow on 100% tax rate. Even if your loyalty is to the max. It seems you need to lower your tax rate to get your population to grow to maximum. Letting your population grow to maximum consumes a lot of time where you get minimal tax. Then only to let it decline again when you log off. For small population maximums this is not so much an issue.

Point 3:
You can apply the same principals of the 100% tax plan maintaining a constant 50 loyalty while you are online using disaster relief comforts. Then when you are ready to log off switch back to a 50% tax rate. In fact, this hybrid of both tax plans is probably the most cost effective way to tax your population for those playing an average of 6hrs or less per day.

Point 3:
I would definitely say that anyone going on an extended vacation should use the 50% plan regardless.

There you have it folks.
JAZZ

[UniqueName]

There is an additional tax plan that you should compare those two methods with, its simple and has great gains.

Assuming you are at 0% rate with 100 loyalty (otherwise skip down to your current rate below):
1. Set your rate at 100%
2. Rake in the gold until loyalty gets really low, I stop at below 10.
3. Set rate to 80% until loyalty reachs 20.
4. Set rate to 60% until loyalty reachs 40.
5. Set rate to 40% until loyalty reachs 60.
6. Set rate to 20% until loyalty reachs 80.
7. Set rate to 0% until loyalty reachs 100.
8. Go to step 1.

You can also do this in increments of 10, but it requires more micromanagement, you can also stop at 10% rate before going to 100% so as not to lose money due to hero costs.

Recently I've stopped at 50% rate to be safe with all the lag and server outages. Its no fun to forget or not be able to get on while your rate is 100%.

[pokkai]

Unique, you must have alot of cottages or really low production since getting your loyalty to 10 doesn't effect other things in your cities.

[Darwin]

You seem to have forgotten the best tax rate plan of all that I came up with.
I'm a nice person so I'll explain it again for everyone.

Loyalty changes every X number of seconds. For the purposes of my explanation, X number of seconds will be referred to as a 'tick'. The best tax is obtained by starting with a loyalty of 50. Now make your tax rate to 100% for one tick, your loyalty should go down to 49, now change tax to 50% again for another tick, and repeat.

Lets look at it mathematically.

20% tax rate
.2 tax * .8 pop = .16 efficiency per two ticks

50% tax rate
.5 tax * .5 pop = .25 efficiency per two ticks

100% tax rate
1 tax * ~.9 pop = ~.9 efficiency - (cost of food) per two ticks

Not to mention most people will occasionally forget to use disaster relief and end up having to pray to raise loyalty, or even worse, forgetting to change it back when logging off or having it on 100% during a server crash.
All of this unpredictability and cost of food makes 100% tax rate very unreliable.

50%/100% tax rate
((.5 tax * .5 pop) + (1 tax * .49 pop)) per two ticks
(.25 + .49) per two ticks
That comes out to a whole .74 efficiency per two ticks.
I think this is more then conclusive, this is the best tax rate possible.

100% tax rate is still inconclusive and 50% tax rate has just been mathematically owned. Epic Win!

I was thinking we should call it the "Darwin Tax", but that would just get things all confused again like with the Darwin Tactic.
We can call it the "Alternating Tax Plan" instead. As in, "I believe you should use the Alternating Tax Plan."

[sague]

If high tax rates aren't kept in check through comforting your population starts to dwindle and that limits the soldiers you can train.

I have all the materials need to recruit but am still getting "0" in the Max box.

[Apulu]

If high tax rates aren't kept in check through comforting your population starts to dwindle and that limits the soldiers you can train.

I have all the materials need to recruit but am still getting "0" in the Max box.

I Say don't do this until you have 10kplus of people

[Himanoco]

You seem to have forgotten the best tax rate plan of all that I came up with.
I'm a nice person so I'll explain it again for everyone.

Loyalty changes every X number of seconds. For the purposes of my explanation, X number of seconds will be referred to as a 'tick'. The best tax is obtained by starting with a loyalty of 50. Now make your tax rate to 100% for one tick, your loyalty should go down to 49, now change tax to 50% again for another tick, and repeat.

Lets look at it mathematically.

20% tax rate
.2 tax * .8 pop = .16 efficiency per two ticks

50% tax rate
.5 tax * .5 pop = .25 efficiency per two ticks

100% tax rate
1 tax * ~.9 pop = ~.9 efficiency - (cost of food) per two ticks

Not to mention most people will occasionally forget to use disaster relief and end up having to pray to raise loyalty, or even worse, forgetting to change it back when logging off or having it on 100% during a server crash.
All of this unpredictability and cost of food makes 100% tax rate very unreliable.

50%/100% tax rate
((.5 tax * .5 pop) + (1 tax * .49 pop)) per two ticks
(.25 + .49) per two ticks
That comes out to a whole .74 efficiency per two ticks.
I think this is more then conclusive, this is the best tax rate possible.

100% tax rate is still inconclusive and 50% tax rate has just been mathematically owned. Epic Win!

I was thinking we should call it the "Darwin Tax", but that would just get things all confused again like with the Darwin Tactic.
We can call it the "Alternating Tax Plan" instead. As in, "I believe you should use the Alternating Tax Plan."

This too is a good plan, but is dependent on a strong server. You could be within the 100% "tick" and bam, down you go. Odds are low, true, but still. It could happen.

Really, the design behind every "plan" is activity. If you can be on and be active (barring any distractions or server problems) you can pull off any plan.

[Candouidus]

I've tried both and I must admit i prefer the 100% one. What i do his that i keep it at 25% when I'm offline because I know I'll be from 2 to 2 1/2 hours, so after 1 hours you're back at 100% loyalty and you've let the time to the population to growth back,
5-10% doesn't give you lot of gold and his good for the 1 hour per day type of player who wants to maximize gold when he's on.

The 50% Tax rate his cool, you don't need comforting population each hours.

Ohh another cool thing with that strategy; it's easier and styll show a larger increase in the income (compare to the 20% i use to have). It's a good alternative; it help a lot to buy specific ressource because you got more money.


100% strat positive.

Helps A LOT for the growth, the money his beautiful and when you've kept population 100% with comforting, it helps a lot for the Population Growth Bonus.

50% strat positive

Let's say 100% strat didn't prevail putting back the tax rate to his 5-10% because he got dropped off the servor: Thanks for the lagging conditions. If the servor is off 2-5 hours, it's tough to get it back at 100% loyalty quickly (takes time!). Therefore a Tax rate of 50% his so easy: no need to think about it.

[UniqueName]

Unless you have a lot of cottages and thus a lot of people, your tax rate really doesn't matter. The most money can be made when loyalty is at 100, which is another way of saying you have the max population your cottages can support. Taxing then at 100% will garner the most amount of money, even if you were going to move to a 50% tax rate all the time, you would still want to tax at 100% until loyalty reaches 50%, or else you are just throwing away gold.


If you wish to worry about full employment then stop at any rate you wish. Me, I know that gold far outweighs all other resources. But evenso, I stop at 50% or thereabout as I mentioned above.


Each segment of time is however long it takes for loyalty to go down by 10. Someday when the servers aren't so laggy I'll figure that out.

Anyway as a direct comparison.

50% all the time
t1 - 2500
t2 - 2500
t3 - 2500
t4 - 2500
t5 - 2500
subtotal for first sequence = 12500
t1 - 2500
t2 - 2500
t3 - 2500
t4 - 2500
t5 - 2500
subtotal for second sequence = 12500, and total gold = 25000

100% down to 50 loyalty (loyalty change in parens)
t1 - 10000 (100 -> 90)
t2 - 9000 (90 -> 80)
t3 - 8000 (80 -> 70)
t4 - 7000 (70 -> 60)
t5 - 6000 (60 -> 50)
total for first sequence = 40000
t1 - 2000 (50 -> 60, pop 5k * .4)
t2 - 1800 (60 -> 70, pop 6k * .3)
t3 - 1400 (70 -> 80, pop 7k * .2)
t4 - 800 (80 -> 90, pop 8k * .1)
t5 - 0 (90 -> 100, pop 9k * 0)
subtotal for second sequence = 6000, and total gold 51000


That's almost double the gold income holding it at 50% all the time.

I just reposted this in a thread of its own.

[UniqueName]

The best tax is obtained by starting with a loyalty of 50. Now make your tax rate to 100% for one tick, your loyalty should go down to 49, now change tax to 50% again for another tick, and repeat.

You were led astray by the OPs math which imply a stead state condition, 50% tax rate is not the *BEST* nor 50 loyalty which you seem to be mixing here. I'm not sure what you are saying really but the best tax income comes from taxing at loyalty 100, with a 100% rate.

The most income, and thus the most taxes comes from something like taxing at 100% until loyalty reaches 95, then giving the people food to raise it back to 100. Does loyalty drop slow enough to do this constantly. But you have to figure out the food cost, which is low right now because the cost doesn't match the description.