newbie questions and comments

[Lex]

has anyone ever tried, or calculated the benefit of doing 200 tax on your capital for the first 10 turns and patrolling heavily (with your starting troops plus a few extras) to keep unrest at 0... In games where expansion is slow at the start, isn't having double the income worth the loss of population at the start of the game?

i've also tried patroling my capital up till turn 40 and the pop drops to about 13.5k from 30.3k, which halves the income, and neutralizes any benefit of having 200 taxes (since you're making the same as if you had 100 tax at the begin). But at that point to stop the patroling+taxing would create a loss in income. And to continue would just kill off everyone in the capital. So, there must be an optimal time to stop patroling+taxing your capital (if you even believe its a good idea in the first place, but truth is, because of its high population, its the ideal, if not only, place to tax+patrol)

To do the math I would need to graph out where the income with 200tax becomes less beneficial then income with 100tax (and would need to include future tax revenues as well, since after heavy taxing, normal 100tax drops). The real important factor is how long the game will Last. In short games, heavy taxing might work because the real damage is only felt much later.

What I did figure out is that in 40 turns, if i start with a nice 177 income in my capital, i'll make a total 11636 gold from my capital in 40 turns (taking into account the compounded loss of 1.55 income per turn due to population loss of 0.42k per turn. Without population loss (ie, if you have Growth+3, you'd probably make 14160 in total (probably less though). Without 200tax, i would have only made a total 7080 in gold from my capital. So in 40 turns, there was a huge benefit to doing 200 tax the entire time. (although I didn't record the drop in production, although I don't think that gets affected by population drop *as much* as income)

Also, I'm not including the upkeep for the starting units+commander, since I consider them a write-off (in a game with indep lvl 6+ they are pretty much useless, so rather then slaughtering them, might as well put them to good use)

Anyways, I've only been playing SP, and look forward to some MP action, so please do correct me if I'm heading for trouble with all this.

[rylen]

Thanks for the replies. I wasn't joking about Mictlan magic -- I just wasn't thinking in the right terms. I'd been trying them on tight maps like Desert Eye and Reemergence where you've got to carve something out or get eaten. I ran them with more emphasis on the summons (and some luck) on Aran to considerable effect. I have not yet tried all the communion reccomendations. For a while, I gave them nature 9 for regeneration, but that didn't help. Some earth and (eventually) high level nature spells.

Thanks.

Rylen