JustBugsMe: Bribes & Taxes

[Duneflower]

The idea of "bribing" a city's people to keep them content makes a fair amount of sense, and I suspect it's happened more than once historically; however, being an economist-in-training, the aftereffects (or lack thereof) bother me for this simple reason: Money doesn't just disappear. Specifically to this situation, the money gifted to the city wouldn't just go away; it would be used for some purpose, and I have yet to think of one that wouldn't generate some (probably small, especially for game-balance purposes) positive effect for the city - coming immediately to mind are parties in the people's honour (happiness), construction projects directed by the city (duh), infrastructure improvements, that sorta thing. While it would definitely require some balancing, the idea that the only effect a bribe has is quieting the people down pushes my willing suspension of disbelief a little far.

Similarly, I've noticed that pushing money into culture or espionage causes people to register it as !tax, which makes no sense at all since the source of these funds would logically be taxation. The big flaw in the reasoning here seems to be in defining the "path of least resistance", if you will, of the culture's cash-flow being the one into the treasury when realistically it's actually the one just circulating around inside and between the cities. My gut says that taxation - that is, moving money from the cities into the treasury - should be another slider working with the research/intel/culture sliders and that shifting revenues into any of them should register as "tax" on the rev-indeces, with the unused portion generating secondary effects similar to those of bribery.

Jdog, this actually seems to tie in quite well with the concepts I put forth in that PM I sent you a while back; want I should repost that message here?

 

[glider1]

@Dune
Yeah I see your point about money recirculating. Perhaps you are really suggesting a completely different economic model for the game not just Revolutions! I'd be interested in hearing your ideas on this thread.
Cheers.

 

[BobTheTerrible]

I always thought of the bribes as literally paying the ringleaders cash so they don't organize continue with the revolts, so that's why the money wasn't recirculated.

I agree the game needs better economic models, and also that it would integrate well with Revolutions. I'm not really sure how much can be done, though.

 

[Duneflower]

Well, that's the funny thing: I wasn't really thinking of a whole new model as just some additions to the existing one, primarily shifting the "default" flow of cash away from the treasury.

Well hell, I guess I'll go ahead and spoiler my message to Jdog...

Spoiler :

I had a vague idea on that the other night: Ascribing separate traits to the people. It needs a lot of fleshing-out, but perhaps this could be used to tip scales in either direction, as well as to help determine various results of successful rebellions. One could take cues from their UBs and possibly UUs, maybe also from , and give them each a building-type or effect that tweaks their chances to revolt, like so:

Scientific
Values: Knowledge
Effect examples: Library, Laboratory
Favourite leader trait: Philosophical
Obvious candidates: Russia, Greece, Germany

Productive:
Values: Industry
Effect examples: Forge, Factory
Favourite leader trait: Industrious
Obvious candidates: Germany, Persia, Mali

Nomadic
Values: Space
Effect examples: City-size/overcrowding
Favourite leader trait: Expansive
Obvious candidates: Sioux, Mongolia

Bohemian
Values: Happiness
Effect examples: Happiness from buildings
Favourite leader trait: Protective
Obvious candidates: Rome, USA, France

Maritime
Values: Sea Trade/Power
Effect examples: Harbour, Lighthouse
Favourite leader trait: Organized
Obvious candidates: Carthage, England, Spain, Portugal

Militaristic
Values: Security
Effect examples: Barracks, Walls
Favourite leader trait: Aggressive
Obvious candidates: Rome, Persia, Germany, Azteca

Proud
Values: Prestige
Effect examples: Results of wars, vassalization
Favourite leader trait: Charismatic
Obvious candidates: Germany, HRE, England

Artistic
Values: Culture
Effect examples: Theatre, Broadcast Tower
Favourite leader trait: Creative
Obvious candidates: France, Italy, China

Religious
Values: Piety
Effect examples: Monastery, Cathedral, Holy City
Favourite leader trait: Spiritual
Obvious candidates: Egypt, Azteca, Maya, Japan

Agrarian
Values: Growth
Effect examples: Granary, Grocer
Favourite leader trait: Imperialistic
Obvious candidates: Inca, Wales, Egypt

Commercial
Values: Money
Effect examples: Market, Bank
Favourite leader trait: Financial
Obvious candidates: Rome, USA, Korea, Carthage


You could give each civ two of them, and/or have each city generate its own based on various factors, and the combination of these would dictate who they'd prefer to lead them, who they'd become if they rebelled successfully, and what civics they prefer - for instance, an artistic city in a religious/productive culture might clamour for Organized Religion, be biased toward someone like Louis or Hatshepsut, an form an artistic/religious culture upon a successful rebellion.

Thoughts?

One could also use the "city trait" option to determine how a given city tends to use its commercial gains: they might initially generate hammers toward their favoured buildings; and if they run out of those, they could translate the commerce into something matching their collective personality - Industrious cities turn them into hammers, Artistic cities turn them into culture, etc.

..........

Commercial ones provide an interesting conundrum here, I notice. What would they do with it?

Bob: I see what you're saying, but I find that a bit difficult to swallow for this reason: Revolts in Rev are popular movements, so it seems like at least a 50/50 chance that if the establishment bought off one ringleader, another would take over with little delay.

 

[zappara]

I've been thinking that there should be option to kill some revolting people instead of bribeing them - though this should lead to more problems in the long run as you are seen as cruel leader.

 

[BobTheTerrible]

My suggestion was to make it so spies stationed in a town reduce the rev index (by spreading propaganda, etc), and also create new missions for spies like "assassinate rebel ringleaders" to bring down the rev index, or "spread the rebellion" type missions causing enemy cities' rev indexes to raise.

 

[Ekmek]

civ3 made the taxation slider a tradeoff between generating gold science, and gold and luxuries. basically you took inn less gold in taxes but made people happier with luxuries (I saw it as low taxes or local city spending).

i think civ4's taxes are supposed to do that bt it gives no happy benefit if you keep taxes low.

 

[Duneflower]

has two sliders - one for , one for . All did was to replace with and have also provide .

 

[GoodGame]

I kind of agree that bribing is a bit 'formulaic'. What if clicking on the revolt bar was a bit more like playing 'russian roulette'----you'd get an response that could include a demand for gold, but like quests, could also be contextual and varied. And refusing the specific request might actually cause an immediate slide towards city revolt, as might failing to complete the request in alloted time (e.g. 10 turns).
Earlier versions of Revolutions were a little like that no? (Or maybe that was a different mod)

 

[Milly]

Honestly, I don't quite see how how the "tax" complaint works, especially since all of the government's resources are basically collected by taxing the tiles that people work on, so all the sliders add up to 100% every time. Unless culture isn't counted, perhaps?

One other thing that bugs me is the lack of effect that courthouses have on discontent. I mean, the flavor text of the building specifically -says- it is used to help keep control of an empire by making sure the laws are served even in faraway places.... Would the same oversight apply to jails?

 

[BobTheTerrible]

I'm pretty sure both courthouses and jails reduce the rev index, it just doesn't say so ingame yet.

 

[Milly]

I see. Well, I never really noticed much of a difference... Perhaps they should be displayed?

Also, do the Zulu Ikhanda and the Holy Roman Rathaus have any extra effects on the rev index? I haven't noticed much with Zulu...

Edit: Also, how about the espionage buildings? Do they help as well, or no?

 

[BobTheTerrible]

I suggested a while ago that all espionage generated by a civ also helps reduce its rev index (due to having indside info/spying on rebels, spreading propaganda, etc), I'm not sure if that ever made it in or not.

 

[Duneflower]

Honestly, I don't quite see how how the "tax" complaint works, especially since all of the government's resources are basically collected by taxing the tiles that people work on, so all the sliders add up to 100% every time.

That's exactly the problem: The way the revindex counted was simply 100%-minus-sciencerate, which even if you accept the idea of the science-rate being specifically money not collected as tax doesn't make sense since perforce all of the others are taxes in action, particularly espionage. Why aren't espionage and culture counted as taxes?

 

[phungus420]

That's exactly the problem: The way the revindex counted was simply 100%-minus-sciencerate, which even if you accept the idea of the science-rate being specifically money not collected as tax doesn't make sense since perforce all of the others are taxes in action, particularly espionage. Why aren't espionage and culture counted as taxes?

I have a working function uploaded in the taxes thread that adresses this. Basically it calculates the tax rate to be the Sum of all Commerce earned (all types Esp/Sci/Gold/Cult and included modifiers), and it calculates the Sum of all expenses (Unit cost, civic maintence, etc.) and devides the Cost by the Total Commerce figure. Then plugs in that number into a revised Tax code that was built off of the function that jdog originally had. Ie, I plug in the taxBurden variable into all the spots that used to use goldPerc in the old code, and tweaked the numbers a little.

 

[stagnate]

I had a potentially interesting way to make the money spent bribing a city translate into long-term improvements.

The initial idea was that cash-rushing projects should be treated as a small bribe. I shouldn't have a city hovering near revolt if I'm cash rushing projects every other turn in an otherwise stable empire.

Taking that idea one step further, though, would be to have the bribe option actually give a list of prices to rush buy various buildings. This could be balanced by giving a discount to people in Universal Suffrage that can already cash rush (and/or a penalty if not), and would be limited to items that improve the revolution conditions, so the player would not have a significant degree of control over what is rushed.

One benefit is that having a link to clicking the bribe and getting text "The citizens would be happier if they had a lighthouse which improved shipping safety and increased commerce" would let players know that a lighthouse helps improve the revolution situation.

The problem that I can see is that the improvement to the revindex doesn't necessarily correlate well with the shield cost, so the initial idea of presenting increasingly expensive buildings for a greater return doesn't work reliably.

The best mix that I can think of is that each bribe will assign a number of shields to the building that will do the most to reduce the revolution index. Depending on the amount of gold available more shields can be 'bought' this way, all the way up to purchasing the building if there is enough gold.

Any thoughts?

 

[lucidstorm]

links are dead anyone can give me this version?