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Ideal Tax Setting
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I got to wondering if there was a best tax setting. The lower your tax setting the less you are taxing per person (duh), but because lowering your tax setting raises morale you end up with more people. So, is there a sweet spot where you get more money than any other?
I tested this about halfway through a game because I wanted the test to take place under realistic conditions (several +morale and +economy projects built). During the test I made sure not to alter anything to do with morale or economy, at each tax setting I let the game run until the population had stabilized at 54% morale. I had two planets, note that the larger one had an economic capital which is why it has such a large income. Here are the figures (max population + income):
Earth (PQ 21) Hestia (PQ 19)
50% 16648 (86) 11782 (52)
45% 18250 (86) 13184 (49)
40% 19850 (83) 14586 (46)
35% 21250 (77) 15786 (43)
30% 22651 (70) 16989 (39)
25% 23658 (63) 17795 (34)
I did not expect these results. I expected either no sweet spot, or one that was between 30% and 40%. Instead, the best of the tested range is 50% tax rate, it's all downhill from there. You do end up with significantly higher population at lower tax rates, which gives you more people to use in invasions and makes you more difficult to invade, but I can't see that being worth an income penalty considering that every drop in income hurts ship building, social project building, and research.
Now I wonder: is it better to be even higher than 50%? Maybe I'll test that next time I play. 
       
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Very interesting.
The logic is very fuzzy. Some things to consider:
- Earth already reaches the income cap which is four times PQ. You can get higher values i.e. 86 but it is very limited and thus you have the same values for 50% and 45%.
- Planets have the same population growth between 54% and 99% but it doubles at 100%. But again there is a cap of 200b people per turn.
Overall it is very hard to get hard facts what to do.
Fact is that you do need population on the long term. For money, for influence for invasion troops, for Metaverse points etc.
This is what usually works for me.
- The first years until I reach the 200 b cap on the big planets I keep the moral at 100%. On low PQ planets (i.e. usually 15 and 16) I use the planet propaganda slider to beef them up until Soil Enhancement was build (I set to an otherwise unused governer to keep track of those planets, I don't want to forget to reset these slider since they are expensive.)
- After that I try to keep moral above 54% on all planets.
- I try to keep all planets on a similar moral level. I build moral boosters on the planets with the lowest moral to archive that.
        
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You don't need population for money, as my figures show. When it comes to Metaverse points, I never play the game for that (though I can understand someone who does), I'd especially never play sub-optimally just to beef up my score (if it really mattered to someone then they could wait till the end of the game when they had near total control and drop their tax rate and then hit 'next turn' until population maxxed). Whether it is worth it to run a less powerful economy (which penalizes you every single turn) to get more invasion troops would depend on just how often you invade. The influence now, that could be important, do you have the formula (or link to the formula) for it? I know I've seen it somewhere but I can't remember where. :/
The economic cap isn't a problem, remember that Earth in this example is atypical as it has the Economic Capital built. The income figures for Hestia would be what you would see for the majority of your planets.
The 200 people/turn cap is so easy to reach that it makes almost all the population growth bonuses you can get useless. I think the cap should be raised to 1000/turn to make the fertility techs/picks worth something.
Keep in mind that these are mid-game figures. There are still about 30%-40% more tech morale bonuses to get, as well as 55% more from teleporters, stock market, and stadium. I've found when I lower my tax rate to 35% that in the last third of the game my morale is so high that I have to play 50-100 turns just to get the population on my planets high enough that morale finally starts dropping below 100. Which means that I could have had a much higher tax rate all those turns and still had 100% morale.
Of course, play style makes a big difference. I'm a builder, I work on maxxing my infrastructure and running up the tech tree, then make my move all at once after I've gotten near the end of the tech tree (I usually start my end game move right after I get the Terraforming project completed on all my planets). So I don't need invasion troops, I need income I can pour into my ship/social/tech sliders.
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I just started playing the game recently, and this thread is new enough that we might actually have a discussion. I'm personally interested in this kind of information. I play a similar style to yours - keep the economy as hot as possible while snapping up anything that is available. I try to be friends with everyone, until I have the tech tree almost done, then I switch to war footing and start playing Genghis Kahn.
Another benefit of running a hot economy and having extra cash is it's fairly easy to get the AIs to sell you trade goods and tech. I haven't failed yet to collect all trade goods well before the midpoint of the game.
From another thread I copied:
Tax Penalty
10% -1%
20% -4%
30% -9%
40% -16%
50% -25%
60% -36%
70% -49%
80% -64%
90% -81%
100% -100%
This seems to imply smaller sweet spots within each tax rate group at 19, 29, 39, 49, etc. I wonder if that's true? Based on the scale above, a tax rate of 24% could either have a 4% penalty or a 5.76% penalty depending on whether the step is truly there or not.
Regards,
   
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