Taxed population figures

Looking at past income turns in game 10 I've noticed there's been some non famine related movement on population figures that I don't understand.

Does anyone know if Richard uses a variable for calculating taxed population each year?

Some have said every 5 years there's a population growth but I've not seen that and in my example the population can go down as well as up, but not by anything I can figure out a pattern to. Closest I can find is some sort of link to number of recruits received, but it's not that.

There usually is a slight movement in figures relating to one of the following:

1. Changes in territory (buying or selling colonies, founding new towns?)
2. Famine (or enemy action in recruiting civilians?); this would also include bandit raids or other disruption.
3. Changes between category (if you build more religious buildings it tends to increase the proportion of 'church' vs other categories, who are often taxed differently)
4. Changes in EH.  This is the most likely.  There is a note somewhere in the rules that high EH means that the economy is booming and therefore there is a chance that civilians are attracted from neighbouring countries who may have a lower EH or famine, whereas if the opposite applies you can lose population.  It does not just apply to recruits (although that is what players tend to focus on).  If you assume EH5 (average over the year) then I would expect population changes from this would be minimal, but if you are at an extreme either way then it would perhaps be the reason.  Sustained low EH will give you more recruits, but also lead to people seeking employment in other countries; sustained high EH will give you fewer recruits, but lead to more immigration so your population will temporarily rise?  I don't have a long enough data series from different games to quantify this (G7 England regularly had either territorial changes or enemy action against population, so hard to get base figures), but if you eliminate the other causes, then this is the most likely.

It will partly depend on the scale that you have detected ... if you are seeing 10,000+ disappear then it is probably worth 'asking advisors' in case it is a typing error on the sheet, but otherwise, it is probably just one of those things you'll have to live with.

Papa Clement wrote:There usually is a slight movement in figures relating to one of the following:

1. Changes in territory (buying or selling colonies, founding new towns?)
2. Famine (or enemy action in recruiting civilians?); this would also include bandit raids or other disruption.
3. Changes between category (if you build more religious buildings it tends to increase the proportion of 'church' vs other categories, who are often taxed differently)
4. Changes in EH.  This is the most likely.  There is a note somewhere in the rules that high EH means that the economy is booming and therefore there is a chance that civilians are attracted from neighbouring countries who may have a lower EH or famine, whereas if the opposite applies you can lose population.  It does not just apply to recruits (although that is what players tend to focus on).  If you assume EH5 (average over the year) then I would expect population changes from this would be minimal, but if you are at an extreme either way then it would perhaps be the reason.  Sustained low EH will give you more recruits, but also lead to people seeking employment in other countries; sustained high EH will give you fewer recruits, but lead to more immigration so your population will temporarily rise?  I don't have a long enough data series from different games to quantify this (G7 England regularly had either territorial changes or enemy action against population, so hard to get base figures), but if you eliminate the other causes, then this is the most likely.

It will partly depend on the scale that you have detected ... if you are seeing 10,000+ disappear then it is probably worth 'asking advisors' in case it is a typing error on the sheet, but otherwise, it is probably just one of those things you'll have to live with.

Thanks Papa, some of those don't apply and some it's the opposite.

Not likely a typo, so think it's an advisor question

Marshal Bombast wrote:Thanks Papa, some of those don't apply and some it's the opposite.

Not likely a typo, so think it's an advisor question

Glad it helped. In the G7 income round I did notice that my church tax figures had gone up by more than I expected, but that may well be because of changes I made to the way revenue from vacant sees was collected. So I think there are some subtle changes that are happening in the way the numbers are being calculated. Be interesting to learn what your 'advisors' come back with.

Marshal Bombast wrote:Looking at past income turns in game 10 I've noticed there's been some non famine related movement on population figures that I don't understand.  

Does anyone know if Richard uses a variable for calculating taxed population each year?  

Some have said every 5 years there's a population growth but I've not seen that and in my example the population can go down as well as up, but not by anything I can figure out a pattern to. Closest I can find is some sort of link to number of recruits received, but it's not that.

I would say it depends also on which country you are playing.

Russia for example i've discovered so far has:

1) Minorities (with their own nobles) that might be untaxed at the beginning, not having russian "citizenship" status.
2) tax elusion & corruption. Notable in the muscovite area, becomes huge in th siberian and ruthenian areas.

This is of course beyond all elements correctly pointed out by Papa.

Nexus06 wrote:

Marshal Bombast wrote:Looking at past income turns in game 10 I've noticed there's been some non famine related movement on population figures that I don't understand.  

Does anyone know if Richard uses a variable for calculating taxed population each year?  

Some have said every 5 years there's a population growth but I've not seen that and in my example the population can go down as well as up, but not by anything I can figure out a pattern to. Closest I can find is some sort of link to number of recruits received, but it's not that.

I would say it depends also on which country you are playing.

Russia for example i've discovered so far has:

1) Minorities (with their own nobles) that might be untaxed at the beginning, not having russian "citizenship" status.
2) tax elusion & corruption. Notable in the muscovite area, becomes huge in th siberian and ruthenian areas.

This is of course beyond all elements correctly pointed out by Papa.  

Cheers Nexus, I hadn't thought about minorities, though my example is a proportionate change in taxed population across all areas. I'm wondering now whether having a high EH meaning population move somewhere cheaper to live or low EH attracts people as a cheaper place to live.

My G10 Russia example could be corruption I suppose but the game's based off taxed population for various levels like magistrates or priests etc so I'd have thought the change would have been reflected in a reduced average income per tax class rather than the taxed population decreasing.

It's going to give me something to think about for a while lol.

Nexus06 wrote:

Marshal Bombast wrote:Looking at past income turns in game 10 I've noticed there's been some non famine related movement on population figures that I don't understand.  

Does anyone know if Richard uses a variable for calculating taxed population each year?  

Some have said every 5 years there's a population growth but I've not seen that and in my example the population can go down as well as up, but not by anything I can figure out a pattern to. Closest I can find is some sort of link to number of recruits received, but it's not that.

I would say it depends also on which country you are playing.

Russia for example i've discovered so far has:

1) Minorities (with their own nobles) that might be untaxed at the beginning, not having russian "citizenship" status.
2) tax elusion & corruption. Notable in the muscovite area, becomes huge in th siberian and ruthenian areas.

This is of course beyond all elements correctly pointed out by Papa.  

Not sure if it applies to all Spanish positions or just G7 but my particular "National" problem is getting merchants from abroad to pay tax.

Absolute lowest rate for people with a trade treaty with Spain is 5% while standard rate is 10% and emergency rate for people being mean to Spanish merchants (you know who you are!) is 50%.  So why is return to Spanish Treasury just a tad over 3% and can anyone suggest a solution to this problem?

So far I have considered:

a) Its down to smuggling and tax evasion by foreign merchants.  Attempted to crack down on this problem via the Guarda Coastal and got a pile of complaints from foreign governments, only surprize was I did not have a Captain Jenkins saying the Spanish had cut off his ear.

b) Its corruption and/or ineffeciency in the collection of taxes which has resulted in over 40% wastage of income from customs.  Do have tax inspectors but have never actually gone for the total overall and root and branch reform of the way Spanish taxes are collected.  Partly because I suspect Richard would charge a fortune for a not very large gain.

Also that all seems a bit like "Bourbon absolutism" and my character is a Hapsburg and in theory stands for protection of "local freedoms".  And I do not want the Cortez and the tax farmers all upset that their freedom to rob the Spanish Treasury is being oppressed !!  And sending my honour score sharply downwards.  

Like with Russia above I suspect Spain may work best if you assume that by the time a direct order from Madrid has got too Milan, Lima, Manila etc its going to be viewed as a "polite suggestion" and best option to get anything done is try and find out what the various bits of the Empire would like to do and "order" them to do that.

Stuart Bailey wrote:

Nexus06 wrote:

Marshal Bombast wrote:Looking at past income turns in game 10 I've noticed there's been some non famine related movement on population figures that I don't understand.  

Does anyone know if Richard uses a variable for calculating taxed population each year?  

Some have said every 5 years there's a population growth but I've not seen that and in my example the population can go down as well as up, but not by anything I can figure out a pattern to. Closest I can find is some sort of link to number of recruits received, but it's not that.

I would say it depends also on which country you are playing.

Russia for example i've discovered so far has:

1) Minorities (with their own nobles) that might be untaxed at the beginning, not having russian "citizenship" status.
2) tax elusion & corruption. Notable in the muscovite area, becomes huge in th siberian and ruthenian areas.

This is of course beyond all elements correctly pointed out by Papa.  

Not sure if it applies to all Spanish positions or just G7 but my particular "National" problem is getting merchants from abroad to pay tax.

Absolute lowest rate for people with a trade treaty with Spain is 5% while standard rate is 10% and emergency rate for people being mean to Spanish merchants (you know who you are!) is 50%.  So why is return to Spanish Treasury just a tad over 3% and can anyone suggest a solution to this problem?

So far I have considered:

a) Its down to smuggling and tax evasion by foreign merchants.  Attempted to crack down on this problem via the Guarda Coastal and got a pile of complaints from foreign governments, only surprize was I did not have a Captain Jenkins saying the Spanish had cut off his ear.

I'd be inclined to remove the 50% tax rate as foreign merchants would just trade elsewhere. Smuggling only an issue if the goods taxed at 50% or banned are not available conveniently via a different route.

Stuart Bailey wrote: b) Its corruption and/or ineffeciency in the collection of taxes which has resulted in over 40% wastage of income from customs.  Do have tax inspectors but have never actually gone for the total overall and root and branch reform of the way Spanish taxes are collected.  Partly because I suspect Richard would charge a fortune for a not very large gain.

Have you got customs and excise officers on borders? This should help regulate the trade over borders and give a better understanding of what goods are coming in to be taxed.

Stuart Bailey wrote: Like with Russia above I suspect Spain may work best if you assume that by the time a direct order from Madrid has got too Milan, Lima, Manila etc its going to be viewed as a "polite suggestion" and best option to get anything done is try and find out what the various bits of the Empire would like to do and "order" them to do that.

Not sure the Tsar would be happy with anything he says be taken as a polite suggestion, though suspect some would ignore it until he found out so the gamble is keeping it out of the Tsar's view!

In Game 9 I have increased the French population by just over 4 million in the last four years. This is partly due to the acquisition of Flanders (1.5m) but I have also invested heavily into national healthcare. The increase in population has not brought the benefits I thought it would…..yet !

Marshal Bombast wrote:

Stuart Bailey wrote:Not sure if it applies to all Spanish positions or just G7 but my particular "National" problem is getting merchants from abroad to pay tax.

Absolute lowest rate for people with a trade treaty with Spain is 5% while standard rate is 10% and emergency rate for people being mean to Spanish merchants (you know who you are!) is 50%.  So why is return to Spanish Treasury just a tad over 3% and can anyone suggest a solution to this problem?

So far I have considered:

a) Its down to smuggling and tax evasion by foreign merchants.  Attempted to crack down on this problem via the Guarda Coastal and got a pile of complaints from foreign governments, only surprize was I did not have a Captain Jenkins saying the Spanish had cut off his ear.

I'd be inclined to remove the 50% tax rate as foreign merchants would just trade elsewhere.  Smuggling only an issue if the goods taxed at 50% or banned are not available conveniently via a different route.

For information, Marshall, the 50% rate Stuart imposed is just against English merchants and levied not just on trade to Spain/colonies, but passing in/out of the Med ... since there is very little if any English trade with Spain, the rate was basically an illegal charge on ships sailing past Spanish ports (without even docking there), designed to make English trade with the Levant and Italy uncompetitive.  And people wonder why there is a war going on?

Marshal Bombast wrote:

Stuart Bailey wrote: b) Its corruption and/or ineffeciency in the collection of taxes which has resulted in over 40% wastage of income from customs.  Do have tax inspectors but have never actually gone for the total overall and root and branch reform of the way Spanish taxes are collected.  Partly because I suspect Richard would charge a fortune for a not very large gain.

Have you got customs and excise officers on borders? This should help regulate the trade over borders and give a better understanding of what goods are coming in to be taxed.

I've had mixed results from customs men.  In theory I agree with you Marshall, but in practice it has not really stopped smuggling. That was only reduced by road patrols and targeting key routes through intelligence, finding illegal buildings/missions and shutting them down.  In G7, other than Spanish subsidies (and theft/fraud), HWIC's main declared income was from smuggling.  And it was on an industrial scale ... don't know how they do it, but probably through setting up legitimate businesses and mislabelling cargo (e.g. importing 'white fish' (officially), but smuggling 'Spanish wine' instead, labelled as something different), suspect bribing customs officials is easier than bribing patrols.  Setting up a coastguard service might also be a way to crack down on smuggling - gives you 2 chances to catch them, at sea and on land?  In G7 it isn't in Spain's interest to stop smuggling because it is all one way - from Spain to England, so the expense of catching smugglers might simply show in reduced trade margins, hidden in the figures.  An 'ask advisor' question?

count-de-monet wrote:In Game 9 I have increased the French population by just over 4 million in the last four years. This is partly due to the acquisition of Flanders (1.5m) but I have also invested heavily into national healthcare. The increase in population has not brought the benefits I thought it would…..yet !

That does seem very odd since the tax take is driven by population. Perhaps it is a typing error in the spreadsheet? It does happen sometimes, so perhaps worth checking with 'advisors'?

If your population expands then unless your £/head falls, your tax take should rise.

Papa Clement wrote:

count-de-monet wrote:In Game 9 I have increased the French population by just over 4 million in the last four years. This is partly due to the acquisition of Flanders (1.5m) but I have also invested heavily into national healthcare. The increase in population has not brought the benefits I thought it would…..yet !

That does seem very odd since the tax take is driven by population.  Perhaps it is a typing error in the spreadsheet?  It does happen sometimes, so perhaps worth checking with 'advisors'?

If your population expands then unless your £/head falls, your tax take should rise.

Aside from the gain of Flanders. The question would seem to be does you increase in population = increase in tax payers or increase in population as in more births than deaths due to your improved health service. If the later enjoy warm fuzzy feeling about Franch being a happy and productive country full of young mothers and proud fathers. But its probably a bit much to expect all of these extra babies to pay much in the way of tax before they are say at least 12 years old.

In G7 Spain has done a fairly effective job at increasing its long term population base while lowering its tax income by provision of Church and other schools with free schools meals inc Sunday school meals provided for the little mites (which costs a fortune!) and doing away with taxes on parents with 4 or more legitimate children in school.

Hope these good deeds for the future good of Spain reflect in my characters honour score and they clearly have no effect on tax income but sadly still less popular than a Ottoman diplomat who has been a NPC for almost a decade!

Sad to say, i think.

But Building economy and healthcare for years will not do for your honor as much as insulting or declaring war against an historical enemy.
Don’t know about taxes.

Nexus06 wrote:Sad to say, i think.

But Building economy and healthcare for years will not do for your honor as much as insulting or declaring war against an historical enemy.
Don’t know about taxes.

So your recommendation to the Swedes, Poles and Ottomans is to insult the Czar and wage war on Russia?

Is this in all games or just G9?

Stuart Bailey wrote:

Nexus06 wrote:Sad to say, i think.

But Building economy and healthcare for years will not do for your honor as much as insulting or declaring war against an historical enemy.
Don’t know about taxes.

So your recommendation to the Swedes, Poles and Ottomans is to insult the Czar and wage war on Russia?

Is this in all games or just G9?

Well,

For Bavaria it surely worked