Rich, please stay out of this discussion until we've settled the
taxation issue... :-)
> A TAX <severity> command can be applied by a ruling force to the
> province entity. It attempts to extract gold from the citizenry.
What's the scale on severity? It should be something understandable,
like "gold pieces per month per pop".
> TAXing a province will not yield so much money as to destabilize
> the game. And it's not windfall income, it's a command that takes
> time to execute. Think of it as mining gold from the pockets of
> the people.
Hmm. It's an interesting idea to make taxation a skill. Subskill of
LEADERSHIP? Each man with TAXATION can tax 100 peasants a month? Or
can 1 person tax the whole province? A 1 month execution time?
So to control a province, you'd need to:
(1) Build a tower/castle.
(2) Train sufficient men in taxation (tax collectors).
(2a) Probably build a defense force.
(3) Use TAXATION for a month.
> The ruler may decide to use force to turn away travelers at
> the border.
To my mind, border control is a separate issue. I don't think ruling
a province should automatically give you control of the borders. I
think that should be accomplished by stacking troops with the exits.
> One player could militarily control a region, while the "mind of
> the people" was in another player's hands.
I don't like this at all. Who's going to bother spending money to
grab the loyalty of a province when another player has military/taxing
control? Especially since the military ruler can then tax like crazy
and make money while eroding the loyalty of the province? (I suppose
you could make taxing raise the loyalty of the region if controlled by
another player.) I don't know, seems to me like complication without
adding much to the game. (My opinion)
It seems much more realistic to tie loyalty && taxation together. So
that it becomes more difficult to tax the region as the region's
loyalty drops.
> [1] Taxing applies only to the population of the region entity itself,
> not to character entities which may be present in the location.
> If you want to shake them down for money, use ATTACK BOOTY.
> Taxing works only on the helpless masses.
I know that taxing economic transactions in a region is difficult to
implement, but it's a popular idea. I think it's more interesting
than the head tax on the peasants.
-- Scott T.