Poochie*
says "Tax them to the Max!!!"
After i had typed in a nice long one, my machine crashed, so you are
now left with an abridged version of my tax tip.
taxing your populations (native and colonist) affects a few things,
mostly how much money you have, population growth, and happiness.
if your population is displeased, you will not collect tax from them, and
they may even start burning down your factories and mines.
if you are taxing them (period), their growth rate is affected.
if you don't tax them, you get no money out of them.
"How can i maximize my return on money and population?", you might ask.
The answer is to tax them heavily for one turn, then don't tax them at
all for the next few turns. The heavy taxation will make them unhappy
very quickly, but they'll give you the money. With no taxation, they
will grow happier and happier, and reproduce as much as possible.
When they're very happy again, you start the cycle all over.
-
With the VGAPlanets interface, this is a murky matter. With the VPA
interface, you can see exactly what the happiness value is, and how much
taxing will affect it.
-
Tax the population so that in the next turn, their happiness will drop
to 70%. The actual tax rate will vary from race to race and world
to world.
-
In the following turns, do not tax them again until their happiness reaches
100%. The speed of recovery will typically be 4 or 5 turns later.
-
Tax them back down to 70%. Repeat Ad Infinitum.
Modifications of this strategy:
-
If you're on a colonist world with no natives, try to not tax them at all
unless their numbers have become large. Get your money from supply
units or milk runs.
-
On worlds with natives, the amount of tax you can collect is limited by
the number of colonists you have. Don't bother taxing the natives
past the point of your ability to collect money: it doesn't get you anything
except annoyed natives.
-
Don't use this strategy if you can't budget your money. By definition,
this will leave you with no money generation for a few turns.
-
If you don't know what i'm talking about, don't try this strategy until
you do.
Overall, it can be shown that the amount of money produced and the amount
of population growth , while not producing quite as much money as consistent
taxation, and not producing as much new population as no taxation, it is
a very good tradeoff.
Offensive Tax Tip:
Sneaking through enemy territory capturing native planets you have
no hope of defending? Capture it and tax the shit out them to make
them useless for money collection for a few turns. A resource i can't
have is a resource i shouldn't let my enemy have, either.