Tax is killing me

In my last game my tax rate ended up at 82%. It made it very hard to plan for the WOI with so little cash available. What tactics can I use to slow down the rate of tax increases during a game?

Does the frequency depend on the amount of goods traded in Europe or just the amount sold? If I buy guns and horses in Europe to sell to the Indians will that still help push up the tax rate?

Does the Kings attitude significally affect the tax rate? I usually try and stay in favour with him early on but later in the game I refuse to make any cash payments.

If I buy cheap military from the King would that have any bearing on the tax rate?

How important is it to trade in large quantities? If I send me goods to market frequently in small volumes will that result in a higher tax rate than if I wait until I can fill a Galleon each time?

I dont know how often this happens but in the current game I am playing, I have given into the king every time he has asked for something. Normally its no more than 200 or 300 gold, which I can afford. And I'm on turn 572, and the king JUST raised my tax rate from 0% to 3%. This may be because I dont ship anything off to Europe and sell it. I build warehouse expansions, and then let my access goods automatically get sold. That way I'm not carrying tons of goods and dont get taxed.

Trading with Natives / Other Colonies is not subject to Tax.
As far as trading with Europe is concerned, the only thing i can think of is trading only the most valuable goods, because the Tax is affected by the amount of goods traded.

JoeCivFan's observation is certainly caused by him not trading. Not by keeping the King happy (Mood has a effect, but it is very minor)

Buying military from the king, buying units at the docks, hurrying immigrants or selling treasure does not affect tax. (Buying Cheap Military does affect the REF tho.)

In short the tax woks as follows:
* There is a Threshold for trade volume. (Goes after amount of goods, not gold; Bought and Sold do count)
* Once the threshold is reached, you are eligible for a Tax increase.
* On each Turn if you are eligible the King might or might not increase the taxes (20% chance each turn, so it won't take long)
* The amount of the increase is random between 1% and 5%
Once the King increases the taxes, the Threshold is re-calculated... (Threshold raised, Trade Count reset)

The threshold does depend on:
* Base Value form XML (200) modified by Game Speed.
* The Tax % you already pay (For each 1% of Tax Rate the Threshold is raised by roughly 10%)
* Kings Mood does affect it very few (Each attitude point +/- will let you trade about 0.5% to 1% more/less)

(Note when throwing a party there is no Threshold increase, nor are the goods counts reset... - this makes throwing a party rather useless - with no Tax increase the Threshold is unchanged, you are still eligible and can expect another increase withing next ~5 turns.)

Trading in large quantities should have a "opportunity advantage" - selling more goods at the old tax rate.

Warehouse expansions sell goods not subject to taxes (not count for tax Raises), but they only sell overflow, limited amount of it, and you only get 50% of the value.

Note: This goes to original game. Dales Patch/Mod does change a lot here

(Note when throwing a party there is no Threshold increase, nor are the goods counts reset... - this makes throwing a party rather useless - with no Tax increase the Threshold is unchanged, you are still eligible and can expect another increase withing next ~5 turns.)

Click to expand...

I discovered that the hard way when I got 3 parties in 3 turns ( thank god it was food, lumber and cotton ). That point is really, really stupid.... another loose end of this game

JoeCivFan's situation is actually caused by a bug in warehouse expansion selling. The bug is that trade via this method is not counted by the game as trade.

In the vanilla game the warehouse expansion sells to Europe (the King), and is also taxed by Europe (the King). So profit == selling price - 50% warehouse cost - tax rate.

But the tax rate will never increase because of this method of selling resulting in 572 turns without a tax rise.

This bug is as bad as the old custom house bugs.

Thanks Refar for your comprehensive reply. Interesting it goes by volume traded not by price. That means buying all those cheap tools is not a good bargain after all?

Dale said:

This bug is as bad as the old custom house bugs.

Click to expand...

I played Col 1 extensively but didn't know there was a custom house bug. What was it - and was it exploitable?

dalgo said:

I played Col 1 extensively but didn't know there was a custom house bug. What was it - and was it exploitable?

Click to expand...

Custom House sales ignored Embargoes.. so, once you had Custom Houses the only drawback to refusing a tax increase was the one time loss of 100 of whatever the relevant product was.

Very exploitable.

zyphyr said:

Custom House sales ignored Embargoes.. so, once you had Custom Houses the only drawback to refusing a tax increase was the one time loss of 100 of whatever the relevant product was.

Very exploitable.

Click to expand...

....and the ability to purchase the product in Europe.

zyphyr said:

Custom House sales ignored Embargoes.. so, once you had Custom Houses the only drawback to refusing a tax increase was the one time loss of 100 of whatever the relevant product was.

Very exploitable.

Click to expand...

OK. I just assumed that Custom Houses were trading with other European countries who didn't have a boycott.

One exploit I did use with Custom Houses was to stop using them several turns prior to the DOI, and in fact to buy up a couple of galleon loads of finished goods. If you timed it right, commodity prices soared and were then locked in place by the DOI.