Economy Observations, Tips, Etc.

[Forward Observer]

I wonder if the following is a valid strategy or simply out gaming the game? You may or may not remember that, in the first Shogun, taxes in the form of Koku were only collected once a year in the fall. All one had to do to maximize their income was to raise the the tax level to the highest level on that particular turn and then lower the rate down to nothing for the other three turns. Since you weren't collecting anything for those turns anyway, it kept the peasants happy.

Of course in Shogun II, one collects taxes every turn. What I have taken to doing in my current campaign is raise the taxes to high for every other turn. Needless to say, this gets me the message that everybody is about to revolt, so then I simply lower the taxes on the next turn to put all the happiness level indicators back to green, or at least yellow. Everybody is happy for a turn, so I rinse and repeat.

What this gains is an extra 25% or more in income every other turn. Now I know that the higher taxes also impedes overall growth, but that extra revenue can mean the difference in getting something like a port started a full turn earlier than if I left things alone.

Given the returns on some of the long term investments like ports, farms, etc., I'm wondering if this tactic more than offsets the extra loss in growth every other turn. Once my economy is up and going, I usually stop doing this since it is also easy to get distracted by other game aspects and forget to lower taxes on that next turn. It's an unpleasent surprise when every province revolts on a single turn.

Does the extra income, which allows earlier starts on the more profitable long term investments, offset the minor growth loss in the short term---and, is this simply an exploit or a valid tactic that a savy Diamyo would use?

Thoughts?