Hi folks -

I have playtested a bit more with this and have heard back from some folks about how this mod is working out for them as well. There are two issues that I would like to solve with an updated re-rebalancing of the tax rate:

1) With this mod, you don't see as big of a difference in per-turn income when you change tax rates as you do in vanilla. This makes changing tax rates less immediately impactful, which is sometimes less useful to a player (and at the very least, it's just less interesting).

2) This mod makes the game easier: Since tax rates in my mod are slightly higher than vanilla- and because it is now more rewarding to play a growth-focused "bread-basket" strategy, this means that it's easier to earn money than in vanilla.

I have come up with some new numbers that seek to maintain the benefits of the rebalancing mod while fixing these two problems. However, I want these kinds of updates to be rare and meaningful so I will be taking time to model a bunch of different tax numbers. But most importantly, I want to hear from folks who are using the mod if you'd be interested in these kinds of updates to the mod, or if you would prefer I leave the mod alone.

So far, the new numbers I've come up are less "flat" and more distributed, with minimal at 15% (compared to 10% in vanilla and 30% in version 1 of the mod), and with Normal, High, and Very High matching their vanilla tax rates (30%/40%/50% respectively, vs 40%/45%/50% in version 1 of the mod). Instead of "flattening" the tax rates higher up on the tax scale, I've accomplished the rebalancing in this version 2 update by increasing the growth boosts/penalties for each tax rate, with +140%/-90% on the extreme ends of the spectrum of Minimal/Very Hard respectively (vs. +85%/-90% in version 1), as well as a slightly increasing the static growth penalty/bonus as well.

This solves both problems: there is now a wider variation in per-turn income when you change tax rates, and the amount of income you're gaining is closer to vanilla (and even the growth-focused "breadbasket" strategy is somewhat nerfed from version 1 because although Minimal and Low taxes are providing you even more growth modifiers than the previous version of the mod, they are now also providing you less income due to a lower tax rate).

In my modeling so far, the impact of these changes to the tax rate means that it's no longer as consistent that each tax will be a meaningful strategic choice in your campaign: whether or not a specific tax rate can actually work out for you will be far more dependent on your economic strategy, and sometimes some tax rates (like "High" or "Low") will be always suboptimal for your economic strategy compared to other tax rates. In this update of the mod, a lower tax rate would become MUCH better and pays off much earlier if you are playing a very high growth economic strategy, and alternatively a higher tax rate also becomes much better if you are playing a low growth and/or high non-town wealth economic strategy.

So basically, with this update to the mod your economic strategy will influence your tax strategy a lot more; your income will be more closely aligned to vanilla; and you'll see bigger (more vanilla-like) jumps in your per-turn income whenever you change tax rates.

I won't make an update for at least a few days after this post to gather any feedback y'all have (and to give me time to tinker more with the exact numbers).