Some observations on using troops to increase taxes...
1) Each 100-man unit causes province loyalty to increase by 16.00 to 16.67 (it's 16.67 rounded down, so 1 peasant unit gets you 16 loyalty, 3 get you 50). It doesn't matter which kind of troop you use, peasants or royal knights - only the number of warm bodies. So use the lowest maintenance/man units you can find as tax collectors, which is 37 for 100 peasants (0.37/man). Other 0.37/man units are: common archer units EXCEPT vanilla archers https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/no...gc-anxious.gif (xbows and arbs, shield or no), arquebusiers, gallowglasses, highlanders, kerns, nubian spears, and woodsmen.
2) Each increase in the tax rate causes an equal and opposite decrease in loyalty. Relative to the Normal tax rate, Very Low income is -25%, Low is -10%, High is +10%, and Very High is +25%. Thus e.g. going from Very Low to Low is a change of 15% - and causes a drop of 15 Loyalty. (If you test this in the game, you'll see the percent increase clearly with farms, but trade has a lot of rounding in it, so it only approximates this. Also, mines and cathedrals are not affected by tax rate.)
3) To go from Very Low to Very High is a net change of 50% income and causes a drop of 50 loyalty - which would need 3 peasant units to counter. Three peasants cost 111/turn.
4) Thus, in order to be worth it, peasants should be used (for tax collection) in regions where 50% of the Normal income is at least 111 - or in other words, where Normal income is at least 222. Income versus tax rate for a Normal=222 province are shown below.
But there are inefficiences built into using tax collectors: There's an initial build cost, time wasted moving to the target province, and in particular, the fact that there'll almost always be extra peasants past what you need for Very High (you can't break up the unit to make it exactly enough for Very High). This isn't as bad as it sounds - you wouldn't want provinces teetering on the edge of rebellion. (Although sometimes, of course, you might deliberately want rebellion.) Also, auto-tax has a window of +20 loyalty before it moves to the next higher bracket, to ward off rebellion (a real problem with the MTW 1.0 autotax). Anyway: there'll always be some peasants wasted (if we're talking precise); more than one if you use auto-tax (peasants increase loyalty by 16; the autotax window is 20). In short, for a more relaxed fit of provinces that are worth tax collectors, the income should be bumped up a little.
Here are province tax income levels for a precise fit (peasants cost 37/turn) or a more realistic relaxed fit (50/turn; Normal=300). Provinces should at least have these incomes at the given tax level, for tax collectors to pay for themself:
Tax level: Very Low, Low, Normal, High, Very High
Precise fit province: 167, 200, 222, 244, 278
Relaxed fit province: 225, 270, 300, 330, 375
5) The above figures apply to total province income for farms and trade. Other modifiers (governor and king, farm level, etc.) don't matter per se; just that farm+trade exceeds the income shown. Mine and cathedral income is not affected by tax level, so it should be excluded if you're being precise.
Yours in efficient pillaging and plundering https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/no...evalcheers.gif
