1.3 Economy and Taxes !!!

from GalCiv2 Forums
OK. I've think heard enough complaining about the economy in 1.3.

I experimented with 1.3 for a few quick games at the normal difficulty setting to get a grasp of the changes.

I am now playing with the difficulty mid-way between normal and the hardest setting available (can't recall the names).

I have 30 planets/colonies with most all of my tiles developed. I would have more planets/colonies but I tend to turn over the smaller planets to my allies to help strengthen them. For example, I have allied with what began as a minor race that is now a far cry from a minor race since I have given them 7 or 8 planets, including a 15 in there home star system, that I obtained through cultural domination.

I have a huge lead in Economy, Industry, Influence & Technology with a comfortable lead in population. I am a bit behind in the military department but then I've been building and supplying ships to my allies, which allows me to have less of a standing military. This should all change over the next few turns as my Elite Ranger’s begin coming off the assembly lines. With respect to the few ships I do have, I can take down most fleets with just 3 of my custom fighters.

Now, with respect to the economy, I have around 250,000 bc in the bank, despite funneling money and selling/trading out-dated ships for far less than cost to my allies, and am generating in excess of 4,000 bc surplus per turn, while building multiple ships.

TAXES!!! If I read one more post about 70% or 80% tax rates I think I’ll puke. That was an obvious exploit or (IMO) a cheat. I have never. I repeat, I have never raised my tax rate above 40%. In fact, my current tax rate is 33%. In reality 70% or 80% tax rates would most likely lead to a revolt or an assassination of leadership and would most certainly not carry a high approval rating.

All in all, 1.3 is much more realistic from an economic perspective. Now, that’s not to say I wouldn’t like to see a few tweaks. For example, I’m a big fan of the Alliance approach and it slows the game because I can’t seem to get the AI (Allies) to trade Weapon Technology to me, which forces me to research it. They’ll trade me Defense Technology and about anything else but not Weapon Technology.

-Kevin
8,717 views 22 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

TAXES!!! If I read one more post about 70% or 80% tax rates I think I’ll puke. That was an obvious exploit or (IMO) a cheat. I have never. I repeat, I have never raised my tax rate above 40%. In fact, my current tax rate is 33%. In reality 70% or 80% tax rates would most likely lead to a revolt or an assassination of leadership and would most certainly not carry a high approval rating.

Amen.

Essentially the people who liked the old system liked being able to just turn up their taxes to 70% after building a single morale improvement (usually just the entertainment network). It was trivially easy to have gigantic populations and then tax them at insane levels.

It was never supposed to be that way. It was just one of the things that happens when a game design meets the reality of real world players.

So in 1.3, you can still make a ton of money but you have to actually do work to get there.  Moreover, users who like having tons of free money can just change the data to whatever they want in the data files which are in plain text. While that's not viable for the metaverse player, the metaverse should be conforming closely to what the original game had in mind.

In any society, if you tax at 79%, you're going to have riots. Not 100% approval. "Yay, we like being taxed and look, our 25 billion people get to share a single measely entertainment network. Sign me up."

Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
well i play 1.31 and i still tax them 70-80%
yea, its a little bit harder, it requires allot of micromanagment but if you have like 30 planets that doable.
also if you play on crippling or above, the 1.3 make your startup harder, not the mid/endgame.

from what i have heard, the people that do not like the changes in 1.3 are because they want the "lazy economy".
i like to have to think things over a bit.
WindowBlinds - Free yourself of the default settings, customize your desktop.
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
1.3 economy is not the end of the world. You have to focus on it
much more. And focus a lot more on morale. The AI has the same
problem.

Under 1.2 there seemed to be more options on how to win.

Maybe we will see a poll eventually. I wouldn't mind splitting
the difference between the 1.2 settings and 1.3.

The main thing is that I would like the AI to building and colonizing
more productive planets.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Still running 80% taxes, just takes a lot more work to get there. Makes the games a lot longer which is a bummer. I'm one of those who wants the "lazy" economy. I'll just have to learn how to play better. Alliances are a different argument altogether. I don't think anyone agrees with me on that one either

Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Maybe now the goofy square root of population should be removed ? (realize other things would probably need to balance with this)

As it stands now there is just no reason to build larger population planets. In 1.2 you could get some more money that way on larger planets. (made for a nice side game trying to get a planet to 45 or 70 billion)

Now going over 19B is just pointless. I agree 80% taxation was rediculous, but the game balance led people to play that way. (nature of things sort of thing...)

The fact is you can still get 70-79% taxes without too much worry about morale. What I'd love to see is more than one good strategy. Ie give me a reason to play with low taxes. Give me a reason to have moderate taxes. The population growth bonus is the only thing to motivate most players to use low taxes, and that lessens in importance by mid-game.

Specialized planets were suposed to be an integral part of playing this game. I feel that 1.3 really took a bite out of the idea of economy worlds.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Still running 80% taxes, just takes a lot more work to get there. Makes the games a lot longer which is a bummer. I'm one of those who wants the "lazy" economy. I'll just have to learn how to play better. Alliances are a different argument altogether. I don't think anyone agrees with me on that one either


I agree with ya!

I also agree that the new ecomony is a lot better

Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Wow. My taxes are never about 36 percent... Ever.

And I still have a huge income every turn.

In my last game I walked away with 780,000 BC in the bank and a 3,750 BC per week income. I just made two key allies, and traded with them exclusively, and fostered them. This was on the next difficulty up from Normal. I can't remember the names either.

My approval was 98 percent, and in a Democracy, that's handy. Populist party. That was all with an 18 percent tax rate; which had only dropped from 20 percent 2 weeks prior. I had 28 worlds under my control in the end (habitable planets set to common, but stars set to uncommon in tight clusters).

Edit: It probably didn't hurt that I had two high-class worlds before we were too far along. Three of my worlds deepest in my territory were class 32...

All in all, I rarely have much of a military rating mid- to end-game. I have enough in the beginning to keep my enemies away, but I always have an ally or two to fight my wars for the most part. I just pimp them out with worlds, money, and ships.

Though I'll agree with you, Craig, Alliances are HARD to get to now.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Amen to the OP as well. Although as a historical side note, apparently during WW2 the top income tax bracket hit like 97% (this is from my Federal Income Tax casebook too!). I just can't believe that, but then again it was basically total war at that time. And of course they have come way down since then. I personally like 1.3. I just played on a medium galaxy and it was a little too easy to dominate. I think it was because of the relatively few habitable planets. I was tied for most colonies with 3 whole worlds...(2 of which were my home system, and one of which was a PQ 6 piece of junk).
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Essentially the people who liked the old system liked being able to just turn up their taxes to 70% after building a single morale improvement (usually just the entertainment network). It was trivially easy to have gigantic populations and then tax them at insane levels.
It was never supposed to be that way. It was just one of the things that happens when a game design meets the reality of real world players.


Hmmm. Are you saying this "exploit" wasn't picked up by the beta testers? It's not exactly ingenious to realise you can get more money by increasing the tax rate as much as morale will let you!

In any society, if you tax at 79%, you're going to have riots. Not 100% approval. "Yay, we like being taxed and look, our 25 billion people get to share a single measely entertainment network. Sign me up."


If that's really what you're aiming for, you're still way off target. It's still not that hard to get 80% tax rate, it just takes a little while longer. Also nerfing the morale buildings without touching the morale resources makes those resources much stronger...and I imagine getting the AI to handle resources well is a major headache, so a change that makes them more important does not help.

I think you may have more success adjusting the tax rate/approval formula - a non-linear relation between tax rate and morale penalty is definitely the way to go, as you already have. Have you thought about simply steepening the curve a fair bit in the 50%+ range? I suppose you could just reduce the "super penalty" from 81% tax rate to something lower, but I'm not a fan of a cap as artificial as that one feels.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
TAXES!!! If I read one more post about 70% or 80% tax rates I think I’ll puke. That was an obvious exploit or (IMO) a cheat. I have never. I repeat, I have never raised my tax rate above 40%. In fact, my current tax rate is 33%. In reality 70% or 80% tax rates would most likely lead to a revolt or an assassination of leadership and would most certainly not carry a high approval rating.


That's not entirely accurate. I believe Norway has something like a 75% tax burden and you don't see riots or assasinations and the people are quite content with their government. So in reality, a 70 or 80 percent tax burden can be implemented and the government can still maintain a decent approval rating. I think it all just depends on how responsible the government is with that tax revenue. If they are irresponsible and wasteful, then the people aren't going to be all that willing to turn over a vast majority of their hard earned money to them.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
That's not entirely accurate. I believe Norway has something like a 75% tax burden and you don't see riots or assasinations and the people are quite content with their government. So in reality, a 70 or 80 percent tax burden can be implemented and the government can still maintain a decent approval rating.


Thanks Commodore.

I was going to ask if Frogboy had been to/read anything about Europe anytime in the last 30 years. Tax rates in countries with socialized medicine -- among other things -- tend to be quite high when compared to the US rates. I don't have a problem with tweaking the econ numbers down some if the developers think that makes a better game, but to say that 70% tax rates are unrealistic is just ignorance of *real world* global economics. Some country's have an effective 100% tax rate, since the State owns all and provides all. So I *really* have no problems with my evil star democracy demanding high taxes while maintaining high approval.

Cheers,
Reaver
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Also nerfing the morale buildings without touching the morale resources makes those resources much stronger...

Well there are a bit nerfed: each mining module add only 5%

Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Maybe now the goofy square root of population should be removed ? (realize other things would probably need to balance with this)

As it stands now there is just no reason to build larger population planets. In 1.2 you could get some more money that way on larger planets. (made for a nice side game trying to get a planet to 45 or 70 billion)

Agreed, the player is discouraged to have large populations. For example a population of 19b only gives the double of taxes as a population of 4.75b. Hardly worth it, I'd say, when you could fill up the planet with stock markets or other buildings instead. Add to it that smaller populations are easier to tax high, and I don't think going over one farm per planet is a good idea in most cases.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Essentially the people who liked the old system liked being able to just turn up their taxes to 70% after building a single morale improvement (usually just the entertainment network). It was trivially easy to have gigantic populations and then tax them at insane levels.


It's very easy to overgeneralise your critics...

I almost never go above 49% tax and usually build two morale improvements per planet (assuming we are not talking a low PQ planet). The reason I dislike the 1.3 system compared to the 1.2 system is that it makes almost always worthless to try to grow planets beyond a certain point. This limits the game, which is a shame. It also makes the 300% bonus tiles all but useless...
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
With all due respect, I majored in economics and happen to know a little about taxes. The European countries you referenced use progressive tax rates likes we do in the U.S, which involves "Marginal Tax Rates". There is a major difference between a marginal tax rate and an effective tax rate.

Here's a simplified example:

Total Income: $100,000
Tax Paid
Up to $20,000 (10%).....$ 2,000
$20,001 - $ 40,000 (20%).....$ 4,000
$40,001 - $ 60,000 (30%).....$ 6,000
$60,001 - $ 80,000 (40%).....$ 8,000
$80,001 - $100,000 (50%).....$10,000
Total Tax Paid:.....$30,000
Effective Tax Rate:.....30%

In this example the effective tax rate is 30% (Total Tax Paid / Total Income) not 50%.

Germany, if I recall correctly at one point had a high end marginal tax of 95%. While yes there was a 95% marginal tax bracket, it was 95% of income in excess of a particular dollar amount and not 95% of all income.

Sweden uses progressive tax rates and the effective tax rate is no where near 70%. In fact, in 2003 the effective marginal tax rate for a single industrial worker was 34% - 56% depending on total individual income compared to 27% - 36% in the U.S.

More importantly, both Germany & Sweden realized that high marginal tax rates stunted economic activity and growth. Thus, they lowered their marginal tax rates and experienced enhanced economic activity and economic growth, which resulted in higher tax revenues.

In applying these basic concepts to the game (IMO), assuming the game is using a flat or effective tax rate, there should be an even greater tax penalty to offset the impact of higher taxes on economic activity and growth.

All that said, I love the game and am more than happy with it's current design.

-Kevin
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In my last game I walked away with 780,000 BC in the bank and a 3,750 BC per week income.


I don't know guys, I'm bringing in almost 24k a week, have a little over 4mil in my treasury, and am running at a 72% approval(with taxes at 66%). All military spending at this point. Diff setting one before Normal. Am I exploiting something and not realizing it yet?
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Missed the Norway comment.

Norway also uses a progressive tax system.

In 2003, the effective marginal tax rate for a single industrial worker was 35% - 49% depending on total individual income.

-Kevin
Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I never put more then one farm on a large PQ world and NEVER in a bonus tile, it just gets to hard to keep that planet happy if the pop goes over 20 Billion.

Personally I think population modifiers should be race based. Some races should like to be very crowded and thus should get higher moral for larger populations. While some races might tend towards anti-social solitary life style and get moral hits for too large a population.

As it stands now I can play an entire game on a large map on the 'tough' setting and not build one farm and do just fine with the economy. Farm bonus tiles are just the biggest waste of a tile bonus.
Reply #19 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Maybe I’m off-base here but it appears “Approval” has little to no value by mid to late game.

Unless I’m mistaken, “Approval” only plays into two (2) aspects of the game. Those two (2) aspects are rate of population growth, which is primarily an early game impact, and re-election as the controlling party.

If I’m correct by mid-game one only needs to keep their Approval Rating high enough to get re-elected. Hence, the player can tax ridiculous rates because it has little in-game effect by mid-game.

Another area “Approval” may play into but I’m not sure if it does is influence.

If I’m missing or overlooking anything here please let me know.

** A couple of tweak ideas for game play: **

(1) Increase the impact of Taxes in relation to Approval Rating. Perhaps something like minus 1% approval for each percentage being taxed…I would need to know the current formula/calculation being used to determine Approval Rating to be more precise but I think it would be a fairly simple tweak.

(2) Add a simple approval multiplier to the Tax Revenue Equation. By this I mean taking the current Tax Income formula and multiplying it by your Approval Rating. This would act as an incentive for a higher approval rating and add more realism to the economic engine currently in place.

-Kevin
Reply #20 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
If I’m missing or overlooking anything here please let me know


Senate agreeing to go to war.

Increase the impact of Taxes in relation to Approval Rating


It already does -- just put your mouse pointer over the approval % number and it will tell you how much of a negative impact taxes have. Just adjust tax rate to find out the numbers.

a few of the numbers

49% tax rate generates -59% morale
50% tax rate generates -65% morale
59% tax rate generates -78% morale
60% tax rate generates -83% morale
69% tax rate generates -96% morale
79% tax rate generates -122% morale
80% tax rate generates -123% morale
81% tax rate generates -302% morale
99% tax rate generates -392% morale
100% tax rate generates -398% morale

2) Add a simple approval multiplier to the Tax Revenue Equation. By this I mean taking the current Tax Income formula and multiplying it by your Approval Rating. This would act as an incentive for a higher approval rating and add more realism to the economic engine currently in place


This is a good idea except that it is pretty easy to actually get both 100% morale and 80% tax rate relatively early in the game.



Reply #21 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I was testing some #'s relating to my tweak ideas and got a real laugh out of the first thing I noticed.

Population 100,000,000 10,000,000 1,000,000
Square Root of Pop 10,000 3,162 1,000
Simple Factor 0.315 0.315 0.315
Tax Rate 33% 33% 33%
RacialAbilityBonus 1.00 1.00 1.00
Government Bonus 1.00 1.00 1.00
EconEnhancements 1.00 1.00 1.00
BC - Tax Rev/Turn 104 bc 33 bc 10 bc

Increasing population (Tax Base) 10-fold does not generate a 10-fold increase in Tax Income, which defies logic. In fact, the larger the population the lessor the increase in Tax Income. Without a doubt, this is a direct result of using the square root of population.

I think I know a simple fix for this problem. I'll run some numbers and update a little later.

-Kevin
Reply #22 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Got it. If you simply take the current Tax Income formula assuming a base population of 1 billion and divide the result by 1 billion you will get the Tax Income per person.

You can then take the Tax Income per person x Actual Population and the ratios work.

This a major help in the early colonization phase but would require increases in costs throughout the game or the surplus revenue in the mid-game to late game would be outrageous.

Any thoughts from others who have looked into Tax Income calculations?

-Kevin