Need Help for Bad Taxmen

**Ivar the Terrible** · 03-01-2005, 20:56

In my campaign I have 3 of 9 family members that have turned into useless assessors. This happens because I send them into newly captured towns with low loyalty and I can not tax the town at high or better until I get the loyalty higher.

Well, fine. That's the way it's supposed to work. Thats the price to be paid.

However, it seems to me from looking at the trigger

Trigger governing19
WhenToTest GovernorBuildingCompleted

Condition GovernorLoyaltyLevel > loyalty_disillusioned
and GovernorTaxLevel < tax_high

Affects BadTaxman 1 Chance 15

I should be able to redeem them and turn them back into at least neutral taxmen by the fullfilling the conditions in trigger

Trigger governing18
WhenToTest GovernorBuildingCompleted

Condition GovernorLoyaltyLevel = loyalty_disillusioned
and GovernorTaxLevel > tax_high

Affects GoodTaxman 1 Chance 75

I have never been able to save a bad tax assessor.

I should be able to redeem them in the same way that I can turn a bad farmer into a good farmer.

In looking at a number of posts it seems to me that everyone's solution is to send these guys off to the boonies to be fighting generals.

Also I have almost never seen a goodtaxman!

So, those of you VnV experts, please help. Is there something wrong with Trigger18? Save our bad tax assessors so they can resume their illustrious administrative careers.

**Old Celt** · 03-01-2005, 21:44

Are you sure you are meeting both conditions in the trigger? Loyalty must be disillusioned (Blue face) and taxes must be set to nothing less than very high to even make the test.

Conversely, if taxes are less than high, and loyalty is greater than dissillusioned, the test for Bad Taxman traits will fire. Treating your people nicely (low to moderate taxes and high happiness) makes your govs bad taxmen in very short times.

And really, money flows so easily in this game that getting hung up over a few percentage points of tax is making a mountain out of a mole hill.

**Ivar the Terrible** · 03-02-2005, 00:39

In order to become a useless tax assessor the loyalty does not have to be blue. It needs to be green. The trigger fires when loyalty is green and tax is normal or low. My guys go into the town where loyalty is yellow, take steps to improve the loyalty such as cutting taxes and turning the loyalty green with low or normal taxes. Sometimes the loyalty change does not take effect until end of turn because it's dependant on a building completion. Then they become useless.

I think it is not unreasonable to want to be able to redeem them regardless of whether or not I'm strapped for cash.

I think trigger18 means that if loyalty is yellow and tax is very high you should be able to have a 75% chance of getting back to neutral. It is this aspect that I would like help with because this trigger does not fire as far as I can tell.

**Hobart** · 03-02-2005, 03:08

Ivar

You might not be saving your bad taxmen because you are not keeping the loyalty at disillusioned (which is the yellow face, I believe).

I edited trigger governing 18 so that it fired when loyalty was >= loyalty_disillusioned. If figured that you should get good taxman if you were doing things "right." That is, had taxes high, but still had decent loyalty. I couldn't see why you shouldn't get it if people were even happier than disillusioned.

What I found was that my useless people became good, and then quite quickly went on even higher (which has negative public order effects, but not enough to worry about, imho). Still, that seemed like it was working too often and I have turned it down to fire 50% of the time (down from 75%). I haven't had much of a chance to play since then (since I forgot to trade in my family and social life when I got the game) so I am not sure how well that will work out.

I should add that I tend to put family members with decent management in a city and park them there to keep money up. Perhaps I am only marginally competent, but in my game as Scipii, I found I was very tight for cash until things start to roll a bit (10 or more provinces). Now I am spending madly and setting up long build queues in cities. Now I have to confess that this is actually the first game I've played beyone the first few dozen or so turns.

[Somewhat off topic, that reminds me of my chief complaint about how you pay now for things you wont build for some turns, maybe many turns. I like being able to plan ahead and set the build order in my cities and not have to come back unless something changes. Now I go bankrupt and cant build or train units if I take that approach. I would much rather a system that warned me when I ended the turn that I wouldn't be able to pay for all my proposed purchases, and told me how much I was trying to overdraw. Or even a system that told me as I was adding to the build queue that this was the case, so I could look at what I was building and then prioritise. A tool that allowed you to suspend a building queue would be good too (together with an icon that showed in the city list that there was a suspended build queue so I dont have to delete the queue and my assessment of priorities in the city if I run short of cash. Can you tell I hate having to set build queues up twice?

While I'm wishing, I would like to be able to queue up building upgrades also. When I am a few upgrades behind in (say) temples, I would like to be able to select the current one, and then have the next one become available to choose. And so on if there were more.]

Back on topic, I think a fix like the one I have used will allow you to save your useless assessors.

**Ivar the Terrible** · 03-02-2005, 06:07

Thanks Hobart. I gave it a try and it fires as advertised. It will save my bad taxmen but it will also make all family members good taxmen shortly.

I wonder what the next step above loyalty_disillisioned is. Is it loyalty_happy? If it was the triggger could have a second line

and GovernorLoyaltyLevel < loyalty_happy.

That would preserve the original intent. What is the state above loyalty_disillusioned?