Taxing and a byzantine question

[Vigi]

Ok well two questions basically. First, how do you guys handle your taxing? Just go as high as you can until you can't get any higher(aka very high taxing) or do you try to keep it at normal or so to keep loyalty better in the long run? I've tended to just throw at as high as possible and garrison each province with 2 peasants minimum, but part of me wonders if lower taxing despite less profits might induce better loyalty in the long run.



My other question is I tried to rush Sicily my first turn with the byzantines with my troops from naples. The Sicilians didn't even bother fighting and retreated to their keep. I checked Sicily's loyalty and it was, of course, at 0%. I play on hard by the way. So anyways, I tried waiting the siege out to, but the problem was I lost too many men a turn from doing that. The one archer unit that kept rebelling each year didn't bother me in the least; I just hid in the trees and waited for them to come near me, only to have them waste all their arrows and not hit me once. After that they usually ran. If I could catch them before they saw me(preferably by ambush- gotta love trees) my byz inf typically routed them rather quickly. Getting back on topic, the sicilians tried to sally out of their keep and attack me, but I defeated them rather easily. Lost very few men, but any men lost really hurts at this point over there because the more men I lose, the harder it is to finish the siege. Even worse, I now had to deal with the fact that the Sicilians had less men in the keep from attacking me and therefore the siege would last longer as a result. Assaulting it isn't an option I don't think as I wanted the keep so I could quickly replace my losses. So, my question then is what do you guys/gals that do this strategy do to take Sicily?

[Tozama]

I always have taxes maxed as high as possible if I can keep loyalty at 120%.

As for your seige, I never let one run. I always storm the castle. Just my style I guess. Try it.

[mercian billman]

I always auto-tax. This will save you alot of micromanagement time.

For Sicily check, the guide forum. There's a whole thread about the Byzantines.

[Drake]

Control the taxes yourself, it takes a bit more time but can be much more safer.

Storming the keep sounds like a good plan. If you pull your troops out of range of their battlements and then swarm in only once you've got the walls down you have a chance as long asa you rush your men in once they start coming under missile fire. This could of course be useless if you don't have artillery units, which given such an early stage seems unlikely. My tip is to hire mercs, bring them to Sicily to take castle in an assault, then disband them all once purpose served.

[Colovion]

I've never used Auto-Tax. I usually just press Shift at the beginning/end of each turn and usually keep my taxes High or Very High. I only really go Very High on Core Provinces or ones that give out serious cash like Tripoli etc. Of course those provinces tend to have better than peasants in the garrison

[mercian billman]

Actually auto-tax will decrease the tax rate if loyalty falls below 120% (maybe it's 100%.) It simplifies things alot because all you have to do is click shift and if provicinial loyalty falls into red or yellow you know that you have to move troops to that province.

[afrit]

I totally agree with mercian billman on that one I have very, very few rebellions in my campaigns (even with MTW 1.1). I Set Auto-tax on, then before pressing End year, I hold shift key and then use the mouse on the minimap in the far left to quickly survey for green/yellow/red (if you hold V at the same time, you get to see the sea lanes too). It literally takes all of 3 seconds.

The other thing I do is occsionally run the list of provinces to make sure that auto-tax had assigned them all on "very high". If not, I increase their garrison until they are on very-high. Almost always, the cost of the extra peasants is way less than the additional income from tax increase).

I also routinely assign all province titles to 4 acumen governors, only exception being provinces that grant extra command, which get assigned to promising generals.

afrit

[Cannibal]

You get an easier time doing this if you are playing on expert because the AI gets a morale bonus which means the troops tend to stand and face you rather than heading straight for the keep. If you can kill the whole lot before they escape by routing off the field, the territory is yours without a siege.

If you don't manage to kill everyone on the first go around, you'll probably have to head back to Naples to defend against an uprising there (if you want to hang onto Naples as well). By the time you have defeated the Naples rebellion, the remaining troops will have come back out of the keep in Sicily, because they have to repossess the territory if they want to build any more buildings, or train any more folks. You then have a second chance to totally wipe out the depleted and unreinforced soldiers in Sicily before they run away back to the keep.

If great planning meets good luck and an opportunity, you may be able to take over Sicily and retain Naples. A word of warning, though, if you hold on to Naples you are very likely to end up in an early war with the Italians.

Cannibal

[Maeda Toshiie]

Quote[/b] (mercian billman @ July 27 2004,00:55)]Actually auto-tax will decrease the tax rate if loyalty falls below 120% (maybe it's 100%.) It simplifies things alot because all you have to do is click shift and if provicinial loyalty falls into red or yellow you know that you have to move troops to that province.

MTW auto-tax set at 100% happiness
VI auto-tax set at 120% happiness

[RollingWave]

I don't like autotaxing much... it's a bit fake... i usually just keep everything on normal and adjust down if needed... give me more challange..

[Seven.the.Hun]

i try to keep a close eye on the taxes, time consuming, but a good idea i think

[Goofball]

The easiest thing to do is to edit the Autotax feature such that it maintains 180 loyalty rather than 120 loyalty, because you can still get rebellions very easily at 120. This makes the Autotax feature much more practical.

[HicRic]

Goofball, if a province had 120% loyalty, how can it revolt? Rebellions only have a chance of happening at under 100%, don't they?

[The_Emperor]

Autotax is very useful... There are times when i am too impatient to go through each and every one of my provinces and set the tax manually, and it seems to work well enough.

Plus I like to Squeeze as much cash as i can from my lands, it really helps my massive building and troop training efforts.

[Ulair]

MTW auto-tax set at 100% happiness
VI auto-tax set at 120% happiness

Slight subtlety: in MTW 1.0 auto-tax aims for happiness above 100%; in MTW 1.1 (the patched version) it's 120%, same as VI.

I use it all the time now: gives you exactly the desired effect without a lot of pointless pointy-clicky stuff ever turn or so.

I never see rebellions from loyalty 120% without there being some other major factor involved. The +20% is there as a safety net for the typical variations you might see across a turn boundary: ruler moves a province farther away, an enemy spy or two, that sort of thing. If your enemies have stacks of spies doing you dirty you'll need a higher safety margin, of course.

[katank]

I always use autotax in VI.

BTW, for the Sicily thing. I was ones of the people who started that whole rush so I can tell you the optimal for that.

attack the first turn and the spear always goes to the keep.

second turn go back and fight the rebellion in Naples then attack Sicily again the 3rd turn.

this time, the spear will stand and fight.

pin with Byz inf, nuke with naptha from behind and charge from both sides to capture them all without any survivors. This will make the keep fall right away whereupon you can build a peasant or two to maintain the peace and send your troops back to crush Naples rebellion.

your Byz inf and naptha shall be the fire brigade and perpetually go back and forth. soon, you'll have a very strong infantry general.

It's quite possible to keep both provinces.

SIcily is also a nice shipyard. The forward shipyard helps although you should pump garrisons to maintain loyalty.

Also try to build to Byz inf in Sicily to replenish your general's unit.

[The_Emperor]

and this works in Expert?

[katank]

I pretty much only play expert and I pulled this off twice.

It usually ended in war with the Italians though as they find Naples weakly garrisoned and try to invade.

I've never avoided that but this method makes you a supreme naval power.

You cripple the Sicilians so that their third ship doesn't even hit the water and the Italians got wasted when they tried to fight me.

I managed to use the naptha to kill the bulk of their RKs (princes) in an ambush and surrounded their king and captured him once, gaining a nice ransom and bankrupting them.

The other time ended with giant march upon Venice and loads of treb archers mowed down the enemies before massed Byz inf ran over their forces.

[Goofball]

Goofball, if a province had 120% loyalty, how can it revolt? Rebellions only have a chance of happening at under 100%, don't they?

Nope. Cross-turn events (king being stranded, excommunication, spies, etc...) can drop loyalty significantly and cause provinces to revolt on you if you are only maintaining 100% or 120% loyalty. 180% gives you a better cushion to protect against unfortunate occurrences.

[Ironside]

Nope. Cross-turn events (king being stranded, excommunication, spies, etc...) can drop loyalty significantly and cause provinces to revolt on you if you are only maintaining 100% or 120% loyalty. 180% gives you a better cushion to protect against unfortunate occurrences.

The point with auto-tax is that if you got a province with 160% loyalty on very high and a sudden drop causes a 80% drop in loyalty, the auto-tax will change the tax to low or very low to get over 120%.
The only difference if you change it to 180% is that your tax in the beginning is only going to high.

Auto-tax got one bug with spies though, if the loyalty is low and you send in a good spy, you can get the comp to tax his province with high taxes and 98% loyalty for example. I assume that this is the same with humans on auto-tax but that isn't a problem thanks to border forts.

[afrit]

Here's my understanding of auto-tax and its effects:
In VI auto-tax adjust for a minium of 120% loyalty. You only get rebellions if loyalty is under 100% . HOWEVER, events that happen after you hit End Year may affect loyalty and the Auto-tax is not adjusted till your turn comes back. These events most commonly are :
- your king dies and new one with less happiness bonuses takes the throne
- your king is cutoff because enemy blocks a sea lane or he moves to province without a port
- province has a famine or something similar (although I think this takes a whole new turn to take effect)

Now there is some confustion on the 120% loyalty and faction resurrection. From the numerology thread on www.totalwar.com I understand that faction reemergences can spread to provinces with loyalty above 100% and less than 120% . However, for a reemergence to start , a province with less than 100% loyalty has to exist . If this province used to belong to the dead faction, a rebellion that starts there can transform into reemergence. Once a reemergence is occurring, other provinces can join it if their loyalty is under 120%. So the following (theoretical) scenario can happen:
You are Spain and you have wiped out Egyptians and are sitting nice in Palestine, Sinai and Egypt. Egypt has loyalty of 130%, Palestine 115% and Sinai 110%. They are therefore ALL GREEN when you hit the end year. Now, Turkey has Arabia (old Egyptian province) and their loyalty there is 80%. An Egyptian reemergence rebellion starts in Arabia because it is under 100%. Now Sinai and Palestine can JOIN the rebellion because they are under 120% [message comes out: long lost heir to Egypt leading reemergence in Arabia. 2 other provinces a joining in the rebellion or something like that]. Egypt stays loyal because it is over 120%. Result: you have a rebellion in provinces with >100% loyalty.

This is why auto-tax aims for 120% loyalty.

I hope this clarifies things.

afrit

[Duke of Gloucester]

The disadvantage of the auto tax (VI version) is it works so well 99% of the time. Something goes wrong - you lose control of a sea lane, your king dies or picks up a negative vice or something - and the province has less than 100% loyalty even on very low taxation, but the auto tax doesn't tell you. You have been using it with no problems right from the start, so you think you are still ok. If you are lucky you get away with it, and you don't even notice, but sometimes you get a loyaltist revolt or the HRE re-emerges in Switzerland! Answer - check loyalty at the end of every turn even on auto-tax.

[spmetla]

Although it won't always win you games I usually just keep my taxes at normal. If I'm planning on crusading I raise taxes a bit and if I get involved in a slug fest war I raise them as well. I play so that I'm always building up money for safe keeping and by taxing at a normal it gives me the extra cash boost I need when I tax higher by allowing me to build more troops while still putting money in the bank.

[katank]

doesn't it still take huge effort to raise and later lower taxes?

autotax works so well for me.

I use the shift and scan method for checking rebellions every turn.

I wish you can change the green level to 120 though.

[spmetla]

I enjoy micromanaging. When I tax I tax evenly across my whole nation. The biggest pain in the ass is that I can't raise taxes for all of my provinces like I could in STW I need to go to each one. I don't really worry about rebellions though, if it looks as if a province will rebel I usuallly wait for them to rebel and then send a nice army to crush it. Many a general of mine has become higher ranked and "field defense specialist" thanks to rebellions.
It wouldn't be fair to the more loyal of my people if I were to give the more rebellious ones tax breaks simply because they might rebel. No tax cuts for the rebellious!