How could you get 1000% miniaturization, there's only so many techs right?

No, there is no way to get 1000% miniaturization. Marcathonas is just trying to be the loyal fanboy and defend Stardock's every decision, good or bad.
I have to say that a miniaturization-cap at 125 seems very low since Yor will have 140 miniaturization from technology and one Hyperion Shrinker alone. IMO the cap should be removed (if it even exists, haven't noticed it myself) or at least be increased to 150 or something so that the Yor actually benefit from all their miniaturization stuff, like all the other races do.

I can see strongly discouraging certain things, but then there's taking it too far. I mean, when a 1% tax increase drops your morale from 100% to 0%, why even allow you to set tax rate to 81% at all? It looks very unprofessional.

I kinda agree. I think that it should be much harder to have a tax-rate over ~50% then it is now. I would imagine that people would begin to revolt if taxes got as high as 81%. But the drop in morale from 80 to 81% is silly.

The 80% cap is good -- keeps things from seeming ridiculous. Don't understand the miniaturization cap though, unless too many weapons confuses the game. GCI had a limit at 100 billion per planet where if you landed more colonists on the planet they would vanish. Brad said it was to keep people from breaking the game in ways they couldn't think of.

There's two ways to make money in the game. One is to have a high population on a world. This is very difficult, but possible, and it requires the most advanced morale buildings (and possible several morale resources), as well as a large planet with lots of tiles. If you can get past 25-27B (or whatever it is that is the cap), and still have a decent tax rate, then you can make money. Note that this is not easy or often viable, particularly if you wish to retain a 100% morale (for the population growth) on said planet. But if you can pull it off, then that planet can be your money maker.

The other is to have relatively little population, but use taxes and economy buildings to make your money on these worlds. You can pull this off with a much smaller planet, but you won't be able to make the money you could with the above method. The problem here is that you could, with a linear scale and some good morale improvements, literally hit 100% taxes and still have decent morale. The 80% discontinuity exists to keep your profits, while very large, still within some form of reason.

Yes, both of these are what a programmer would call "hacks". They're patches to make a specifically designed system work when someone finds a way to break it. That's one of the downsides with a more free-form building system like GalCiv2 (as opposed to the way Civ games work, where you can only build one of any particular building in a city): if you let poeple compound bonuses, they may find ways to achieve things you never intended.

If you didn't have the first hack (ie, the eventual stopping of morale drops due to population), then the first method of money making would never work nearly as well as method #2. It already requires a big planet to make it work as it is, as well as the most expensive morale building. Even then, it requires a huge population (35+ to really make it worth the effort. The other method can pay off with 17B people.

If you didn't have the second hack, you make money method #2 preferential, because you can hit 100% taxes and make that much more money. Whether this is "reasonable" or not is irrelevant; this is a game. Balancing the game means that both methods of revenue generation should be viable. 80% was considered a reasonable cap on taxes.

I would like to point out, however, in one of my games, I could hit 81% with only a drop to 67% morale.

each race should be different.... they should all have different caps for different things...


the custom races should have a menu where you could control the caps through a point system in order to make them competative with the hardcoded races...

I have no idea how a society could function when the government is sponging 80% of its subject's earnings. I sure as heck would not want to go to work just so I could take 20 cents home and give 80 to the man. 80% taxes is beyond exhorbitant.

I think one point made originally is still a valid one. If going to 81% taxation drops your morale to zero, why bother letting you set it any higher than 80%? Wouldn't that make more sense?

I think one point made originally is still a valid one. If going to 81% taxation drops your morale to zero, why bother letting you set it any higher than 80%? Wouldn't that make more sense?

Thats exactly what I thought.

. If going to 81% taxation drops your morale to zero, why bother letting you set it any higher than 80%? Wouldn't that make more sense?

If you could use the entire slider, it wouldn't be a "tax rate" slider any more but just a "money slider." You wouldn't think "Oh, I'm raising my taxes to 49% now," you'd think, "Oh, I have to get the rest of the way to 100%." 100% of what?

I think one point made originally is still a valid one. If going to 81% taxation drops your morale to zero, why bother letting you set it any higher than 80%? Wouldn't that make more sense?

Because it doesn't drop your morale to 0. What it does is tripple (or more) the taxation morale penalty. If you don't have lots of morale buildings to absorb that cost, then it drops it down to 0.

If they're gonna do that, at least do it professionally and cap the tax slider at 80%.

First off, I also wish they wouldn't use these hard caps and even morale drops at the 10s percentages, though I suppose there is a some logic to that since people are often fooled to an extent by number manipulation like that. I don't see why they can't just use a curve that can slope drastically as it nears percentages that they don't want to be attainable. Morale not dropping at all after a certain point seems like an oversight to me and feels like using it is an exploit of the system.

However, I see potential for some very limited use of leaving the tax slider open to a full 100% even in your morale will be 0. Though rare, it is possible that you could need a few extra BCs for rush buying a wonder or getting out of debt or something that you might want to slip it up above 80% for just a turn or two. I've never needed to or tried it myself, but I don't think you'd lose any colonies if you just had to pull in a little extra money for a vital turn, just some people which can grow back afterwards. Please tell me if 0% morale does something horrible like cuts your population in half every turn, I've never tried it. Unless that's the case, I don't think they should cap the tax slider. I would like them to reconsider the drop offs and caps they have in place though.

I have no idea how a society could function when the government is sponging 80% of its subject's earnings. I sure as heck would not want to go to work just so I could take 20 cents home and give 80 to the man. 80% taxes is beyond exhorbitant.

In the USA alone, _maximum_ income tax rates have been over 80%. World War I : the top tax bracket was 77%. During World War II, the rate for the highest income brackets went to 91% and remained there until 1964, when it was lowered to 70%, then to 50% in 1981.

The USA still seems to have functioned. Mind, most people never paid that high a tax.