To get back on topic...
I was running 16% taxes just fine before TMP kicked in. Then, even 8% was "insane and stupid". By the time I got the taxes down to tolerable levels, production was killed, the city had 100% sympathy but like 10% morale and control was dangerously low. With the lowered taxes, morale and control was regained, but production remains !@#$. As such, my income is null. Therefore, my trade balance of 550 gold was more than my tax collection. My city basically went bankrupt. This morning, I get:
All this, despite the messages saying that since it's winter they aren't as mad? All this damage was done instantly.
And how long was this going on, and your realm didn't do anything to find a way to take care of the issue? This kind of thing doesn't sneak up on you out of nowhere. You had to have known that sooner or later you would be running into problems. The need to constantly lower your tax rate in response to the constantly growing intolerance should have really been a big tip. Didn't
someone in D'Hara say something like "Hey, we've been getting these warnings for a month, maybe we should do something about it"?
The Verdis Elementum Hoplites, notably, were an elite 90/100/90 SF centre I believe (or pretty damn close).
Not
that close: T60/W45/A100, non-ranged
As I repeatedly said, these taxes are paying for their food. And their food is paid for before everything else. It is completely unreasonable that such damage can happen so ridiculously rapidly to a realm. The tax tolerance is *way* too low during TMP, the winter exception doesn't seem to work, and it should *not* apply to realms with a ridiculous food supply. This is not going to make *any* such realms go to war, as by the time the warning comes it's too late.
I am extremely upset that because a few units failed to go kill one or two monsters abroad, everything in the capital is lost. Not all realms are large enough to have rogues spawn internally to stave off TMP. This tax mechanic is therefore way more hurtful to small realms than large realms, which is not something we should be encouraging.
And seriously, *everything* shutting down because taxes don't balance for one given week? I could have *easily* paid for all that maintenance with my pocket money. That's a completely different code than TMP, but I find it quite unreasonably unforgiving as well. Damage should be gradual, with an option to invest pocket money for repairs. Honestly, maintenance is less than 50 gold per week. All that infrastructure that was destroyed is worth thousands of gold. I have about 700 on hand, too. One week of negative balances should *not* result in this.
I agree that the instant loss of all of your infrastructure does seem a bit heavy-handed. A hefty weekly damage allotment would probably be much better. But really, you had a deficit that week that was nearly 400 gold even if you only count food. Add on building maintenance and militia payments, too. So maybe a 550 gold deficit that week? I would expect that for that week, you'd take some hefty damage.
However, going another way would still open up possibilities for exploits. Any kind of automated system would be subject to abuse by clever enough players, I think.
The problem with just assessing some non-lethal building damage and moving on is that it allows you to exploit that to make your region a gold fountain. Just collect food in the region next door, set your Buy price as high as it will go, and then have your buddy sell you the food. He gets craploads of gold (2,000 bushels at 100g/100b = 2,000 gold) , and you get some building damage, which has no effect whatsoever on you if the buildings are not destroyed. Or if the only buildings you have are cheap/junky buildings. Building damage is repaired automatically as part of a region's normal operations, at no cost.
In the example above if your tax income is normally 300 gold, you just created 1,700 gold out of thin air. Next week you sell it back to the guy that sent it to you. Or to the next guy in the chain. Repeat as often as necessary. Heck, you could hit three or more regions in one week with the same shipment of food. Or just keep shipping it back and forth between the two of you. If the game were to try and take it from the lord's gold/bonds on hand, then they could drop it into a guild/temple/SS for tax day to avoid paying it. Or send it to another player entirely.
Unless you can see some way to do it that is non-exploitable?
