Population Growth/Population question

[Flavius Gonzo]

So, I know that Pop growth is super important early in the game as it decides how soon you'll develop the rest of your villages.

The question is, once a region has developed all it's villages, what impact does pop growth have? Does population have any effect on wealth growth or taxes? Or is extra pop useless once a region has no villages left to develop?

I guess the one other factor would be for european factions, extra pop will affect how quickly colonies grow... but beyond this, is there any value in extra pop? For example, if all of your regions in the Americas had all their regions developed, and you had no happiness problems, would there be any reason NOT to set Lower class taxes to max?

[anweRU]

Setting them to max would probably cause rebellions.

Once your regions are developed, and you've researched all the farming techs, your town prosperity starts going up. All those very poor towns eventually reach wealthy status. I suspect the tax rate has something to do with it, as the rate of town prosperity increase went down when I upped my tax from level 1 to 3.

[al Roumi]

Deciding when or whether to switch from low (level 2 for me) taxes to high is a difficult decision. I don't think there IS a hard and fast rule, rather a set of advantages & disadvantages that may or may not suit particular situations & periods within your empire's life-span.

It's probably worth breaking tax down a bit.

Tax income is a fairly complex mechanism (for a TW game's economy) that is dependant on 2 variables: tax rate and town wealth.
Tax rate is what you set on the sliders for each theatre in the "policies" tab.
Town wealth is the overall pot of money possessed by your population (in each region) from which your state/government can draw money as a tax percentage. What makes this interesting is that town wealth is a dynamic value, which the player can influence through the tax rate itself and the particular province's development.

There are always two active political classes in ETW, ruling and ruled. Which of the three (Nobility, middle class, working class) are active and where depends on the government type. Tax from both active classes provides an income to the treasury, but the tax rate you set has different effects on the ruling and ruled class.

The tax rate for the ruling class affects the growth rate of your economy (through growth to town wealth), the tax rate for the ruled class affects the growth rate of your population.

Basicaly, low tax stimulates population growth (more money to feed more mouths) or economic growth (more disposable income to invest and make more money). Increasing the tax rate results in a rise in tax income, to the detriment of population or economic growth. Raising taxes far enough will cause negative economic and population growth as people emigrate and do not have enough disposable income to invest and make more money -shrinking your economy.

The above all point to the importance of taking a long-term view of tax, your economy and population. Personaly, i run with a low tax rate on both sliders unless I really have to.

I only ever raise taxes beyond the limit of growing either economy or polulation for particular circumstances: a short term requirement for more cash (raising an army urgently), to prompt a revolution, or to promote growth in overseas colonies through emigration.

Even once all towns have appeared accross all theatres, it's still wise to keep taxes low enough to increase their wealth rating, as anweRU said above. The wealth rating results in a correspondingly higher or lower income from each town, in the same way as the yield rating affects the production of a plantation or mine.

So, maybe once you get all towns up to "Wealthy" accross all theatres would it be worth cranking the tax rate up. Frankly I've never achieved that though and I suspect it would take longer than I can normaly be bothered with each campaign (my interest having waned by 1750 ~ 1760 usually).

For all my CA bashing and the concomitant trieless work of this forum's mods, I am actually very happy with the subtleties of the economic model in ETW, well done CA! Perhaps now you can teach the AI to play the game too? ;)

[alpaca]

Pop growth has no advantages in vanilla after all villages in a theatre have grown. Tax them as much as you can without risking rebellions or needing garrison stacks/town watch.

Upper class taxes are a different animal but lower class taxes can be ramped up as far as you like.

By the way: I agree about the economic model, I like a lot of it, too. Unfortunately it's not explained in the manual and we had to nag Thamis about a lot of the details ;)

[Flavius Gonzo]

OK, I totally agree with alh_p that where to set the tax slider is a complex decision, but I think only for the upper class tax slider.

If alpaca is correct that a higher pop doesn't affect your tax income at all than determining where to set the lower class tax slider should be as simple as:

- As low as you can afford until towns are developed
- As high as you can without getting rebellions once no villages remaine

I mean, I may be oversimplifying, but this seems like the case. The only two things that might change this equation are:

1) When a town says "growing" (vs. Very poor or wealthy) what does that mean, and what causes it? Does a town in a region whose population is growing get wealthier quicker than a town whose pop is static, assuming the wealth growth rate in both cases is the same?
2) Lower class taxes seem to affect immigration, I'm not sure how to take this into account. (E.g, by mid game, new colonies seem to explode due to immigration from the home theater.)
3) Are there any consequences for negative pop growth AFTER all towns are developed? Can towns be abandoned?

[alpaca]

OK, I totally agree with alh_p that where to set the tax slider is a complex decision, but I think only for the upper class tax slider.

If alpaca is correct that a higher pop doesn't affect your tax income at all than determining where to set the lower class tax slider should be as simple as:

- As low as you can afford until towns are developed
- As high as you can without getting rebellions once no villages remaine

I mean, I may be oversimplifying, but this seems like the case. The only two things that might change this equation are:

1) When a town says "growing" (vs. Very poor or wealthy) what does that mean, and what causes it? Does a town in a region whose population is growing get wealthier quicker than a town whose pop is static, assuming the wealth growth rate in both cases is the same?
2) Lower class taxes seem to affect immigration, I'm not sure how to take this into account. (E.g, by mid game, new colonies seem to explode due to immigration from the home theater.)
3) Are there any consequences for negative pop growth AFTER all towns are developed? Can towns be abandoned?

1) The growing, very poor, and so on add a multiplier to any gdp benefits you get from a town. If it's wealthy you get twice as much as when it's very poor. This doesn't have anything to do with population and is supposed to be dependent on town wealth in your region but town level growth is in fact mostly triggered by a bug that causes most towns to go to wealthy in a very short time and some to stay at a lower level forever (Cork for example)

2) Yeah, immigration = good and less happiness = more emigration so high taxes = less happiness = more emigration = good ;)

3) No. There's not a single drawback which is lame. If you want to have any pop effects you have to play a mod or mod the game yourself in quite complicated ways.

Edit: Jan van der Crabben (Thamis) posted a good deal of useful info on the TWC here

I posted some stuff, too, mostly in that thread and something about admin cost calculation here

Here's something about the difficulty adjustments, too.

[anweRU]

1) When a town says "growing" (vs. Very poor or wealthy) what does that mean, and what causes it? Does a town in a region whose population is growing get wealthier quicker than a town whose pop is static, assuming the wealth growth rate in both cases is the same?

Town prosperity has 5 levels:
very poor -> poor -> growing -> prosperous -> wealthy

Growing is simply the middle stage prosperity label. It doesn't mean that the town population/prosperity is growing.