Tax Collector's Office - building

[Creativus]

Hello,

I put together a small mod which add the Tax Collector's Office into the game. Will upload it to mod browser.

The building will provide the following:
+1 gold for every citizen in the city
3 gold per turn maintenance
-10% gold and -10% production in the city, the explanation for this can be the corruption and the inefficiency in the tax systems,but maybe the reduction should be even more .

Currently it use the Bank icon and can be built after the discovery of currency.

I was thinking a lot how to name the building, the current one is not perfect, so I am open for suggestions. Please also post your ideas on how to improve it.

Thank you.

Creativus

 

[eviltypeguy]

It seems like it should reduce happiness too slightly, after all, who likes paying taxes?

 

[greyTiger]

Agreed. Paying taxes should affect happiness.

Perhaps if you added a Tax Collector specialist (say 2 per Tax Office) that generates +1 gold per citizen and -0.5 Happiness per Citizen. Then the player can adjust the taxes they are collecting by removing the citizen from the Tax Office if they find their Happiness too low.

It's currently possible to modify the empire wide happiness using lua and you can tie it into the specialist with a new Yield. I did this for my recent mod "(greyTiger's) Courthouse Judge Mod" where I have my Judges generate Happiness when assigned.

Feel free to use the code ive put together if you want. Credit would be appreciated though

Cheers

 

[Gusss]

Great idea, both of you guys!

 

[Gazebo]

Genius idea with the tax collector building and specialists. If you don't mind, I might incorporate this mod into my own diplomacy mod in the future- I think it might be fun!
G

 

[Creativus]

Hi All,

Thanks for the ideas. I tired to add happiness to the building to give it a flat number so lets say 3. But it was displayed like this +- . So it didn't look to good, and in the total happiness calculation it reduced the building and was not added to . But it can be done. One of the other reasons I went with total gold and production reduction that the happiness does not scale well with mapsizes, so giving penalty to it can make the game even harder on huge maps.

greyTiger,

Thank you for the offer, I will check your mod and try to add the taxcollector specialist with some gold income and negative happiness. Will probably take some time .

Gazebo,

You can add the building to your mod, I will try to make the specialist also (might need help ).

Creativus

 

[greyTiger]

Creativus,

I've started putting together an mod that includes changes to production, food, happiness, culture and the economy. Would you mind if I were to include the concept of the Tax Office that you have released.

Cheers

 

[Creativus]

greyTiger,

Yes, you can include it. Please also create the tax collector specialist as you suggested . Well maybe you can leave a default tax income to the building and take the rest with the specialists.
I was also thinking on another idea, that in case there is a military unit in a city where there is a Tax building, to get more gold income, historically it would be correct.

Creativus

 

[Mannu]

By my calculations the population break even point for building a Tax Collector's Office and adding a Tax Collector would be about a size 9 city. I make the following assumptions:
- A tax collector counts towards the taxable population (+1 gold for himself)
- All other citizens can work a tile that is 3 gold per turn such as a river trading post. Most cities should be able to average 3 gold per turn for the first 9 tiles by the time we get to Currency.
- I'm not calculating the gold value of the production penalty, or any opportunity costs except that the tax collector could be working a trading post
- Not considering the effect of golden ages

This city could work 9 trading post tiles which is about +27 gold per turn.
Or it could work 8 trading posts for +24 gold gpt and 1 tax collector for +9 gpt and pay maintenance of -3gpt and be penalized -2.4 gpt for a total of +27.6 gpt.

I'll try it out as is, but I think I would offer the following suggestions (these are based on gameplay, not realism which must be secondary i.m.o.):

Name: Treasury?

Specialist: Tax Collector / Assessor. The benefit of assigning a specialist to work must be carefully balanced against having a specialist assigned. Basically if it would be stupid to ever have the building without a specialist, then you shouldn't make it a choice for the user and the building shouldn't house a specialist.

Get rid of the maintenance. None of the other buildings which provide gold have maintenance (i think). It should be consistent with those. Just think of it this way, the cost of the building is figured in to the benefit it provides already. If you think this provides too much gold per turn then instead of one gold per citizen make it a multiplier (.5 gpt per citizen or whatever is balanced).

Get rid of the other negative consequences. They are too difficult for the player to calculate the advantage of the building. In fact it would be easy for the player to construct a Treasury which they would be better off without (at that point in time). That's against the CIV5 design philosophy where positive effects of options must be compared in a world where not all options are attainable.

Maybe it should come earlier in the game, since currency already has the Market? Currency can be a little overlooked though, it might be a nice boost for that path of the tech tree.

The above suggestions are for use with the stock game. Overall the building has a nice mild effect which I really like for a game which will continue to get a lot of income from citizens working tiles.

I myself am considering a mod that will remove or restrict trading posts and I would like to add this building in to replace the lost income. For that purpose I may need to pump up the effect a bit. Would you mind if I made some changes to it as long as I gave you credit for it? I would only be releasing it as part of a larger mod.

 

[Androrc the Orc]

Get rid of the maintenance. None of the other buildings which provide gold have maintenance (i think). It should be consistent with those. Just think of it this way, the cost of the building is figured in to the benefit it provides already. If you think this provides too much gold per turn then instead of one gold per citizen make it a multiplier (.5 gpt per citizen or whatever is balanced).

Consistency isn't necessarily a good thing

The maintenance is good, because it makes the Tax Collector's Office be less rewarding if the city is too small - this models nicely that it is only worth it to set up a bureaucracy in a large enough community.

Get rid of the other negative consequences. They are too difficult for the player to calculate the advantage of the building. In fact it would be easy for the player to construct a Treasury which they would be better off without (at that point in time).

The disadvantages are good, precisely because they make the player have to think about whether it is best to built or to avoid building the Tax Collector's Office, and take a strategic decision. Furthermore, they serve to represent that taxes have the effect of reducing the investment to production, and thus reducing production output a bit.

That's against the CIV5 design philosophy where positive effects of options must be compared in a world where not all options are attainable.

And it is exactly because of such a design philosophy that those disadvantages make the Tax Collector's Office better - as there are already plenty of building with no disadvantages in the vanilla game, this brings something new, something fresh.

However, you have a point in regards to the disadvantages being too great. But I don't think they should be removed but, rather, toned down. Like to, say -5% to production and gold, and having an upkeep of 2 instead of 3.

 

[Mannu]

Consistency isn't necessarily a good thing

I disagree strongly with this statement.

I don't see how you can argue that a mod intended for use in the vanilla game doesn't need to be designed consistently with the game. If it was for a scenario or total conversion then it would be ok if it were just consistent with the other modifications.

And it is exactly because of such a design philosophy that those disadvantages make the Tax Collector's Office better - as there are already plenty of building with no disadvantages in the vanilla game, this brings something new, something fresh.

In fact, I can't think of a single building that has a negative consequence. Are there any? If not, you are introducing a pattern that is unique to the game and a player isn't going to be used to thinking in this way. It will trip them up and I think it could trick some players into weakening their economy.

Also, is the AI capable of making a decision like this? I doubt it from the code I've seen. To me, build decisions are based on the flavor of the building and a single weight integer to indicate how high a priority it should be. I doubt the AI has any ability to decide if the maintenance and the penalty will make the building a bad investment.

I've already adapted it for my own personal use. Because I've removed trading posts, there were a couple of other changes that I needed to make in order to balance this out (cheaper and available with Mathematics since there is no other source of gold).