Tax and V&Vs

[Banquo's Ghost]

I believe that having a Very High tax rate for some time inflicts bad vices onto governors/generals. How long does the tax rate need to be punitive for this to happen, and if the rate is reduced, how long before a new governor is considered a nice person?

It appears to have a substantial effect on the quality of heirs too. In my current Cuman campaign, because of the low resource provinces one starts with, taxation has been very high for over fifty years. Whilst Cuman khans are very good at making babies, the gene pool is a bit stagnant, as almost all heirs are deeply flawed the moment they can sit on a horse.

Nonetheless, since I have only once got a non-royal general to start with a command star (in three campaigns!) the heirs command armies. With the strung out nature of the homelands, and the six or seven factions which they border, defensive armies have to stay put for a long time while I build to be able to produce something better than raw spearmen. Combine all this with almost yearly notifaction of heirs becoming obese, corrupt or forming liasions with pachyderms, a raid by the neighbouring faction's pet rabbit causes terror and routing.

I'm not sure if I can survive with lower taxes, but if I lower them now, will there be any benefit for future generations?

[Ludens]

I believe that having a Very High tax rate for some time inflicts bad vices onto governors/generals. How long does the tax rate need to be punitive for this to happen, and if the rate is reduced, how long before a new governor is considered a nice person?

It appears to have a substantial effect on the quality of heirs too. In my current Cuman campaign, because of the low resource provinces one starts with, taxation has been very high for over fifty years. Whilst Cuman khans are very good at making babies, the gene pool is a bit stagnant, as almost all heirs are deeply flawed the moment they can sit on a horse.

The bad effects of high taxation are indeed reported often, but nobody ever told me which vices one incurs. As for removal of them, I have bad news for you: there is no way you can get rid of any vice or virtue. The best you can hope for is gaining an opposite one. As for the quality of heirs: high influence helps, king that fight on the battlefield help, staying in high-taxation provinces that aren't being developed doesn't help. Oh, and winning battles always helps.

[Banquo's Ghost]

The bad effects of high taxation are indeed reported often, but nobody ever told me which vices one incurs. As for removal of them, I have bad news for you: there is no way you can get rid of any vice or virtue. The best you can hope for is gaining an opposite one. As for the quality of heirs: high influence helps, king that fight on the battlefield help, staying in high-taxation provinces that aren't being developed doesn't help. Oh, and winning battles always helps.

You are quite right, I discover!

The vices that my governors and heirs developed were always the perverse and lunatic ones (seems streamlined, if they insist on marrying their sisters etc, the inbreeding is going to bring deluded oddballs at the very least ).

But this seems to be the Early years, when all Cuman men of status are very low in attributes, and defeats common - barely a command star among the generals, few men of acumen and so on. Now that my khan is of high (seven) influence, the fourth generation of heirs are much less weird.

Perhaps mating with an elephant produces stronger genes in the long run?

Anyway, it seems from this experience that having a higher influence king really does help - taxation is still very high and has been, save for a few years, that way for nearly a century.