A deep dive into Presidential Governance and dCity taxes

So there are a bunch of levers at the disposition of the president of dCity, some environmental controls, so to speak. Many things have been tried over the years, and new layers and levers have been added. Today I want to give an up to date discourse about these levers and my opinion on them.

The first and biggest tax in the game is INCOME TAX, and its the one that the president has no control of. This is controlled by the price, that is, the players of the game. There is and maybe always has been some hope within the game that someone or some multiple people will come and invest some small amount of money that will pump the price of SIM and lower our Income Tax burden.

If this ever were to happen, it would be up to the president to use the other tax levers at their control to hopefully mitigate the flood of new inflation, or likely we end up as low or much lower in price than before.

Things a president can 'switch':

When reviewing these taxes, it might seem like there are a lot of options. Which taxes are better than others? Let me discuss quickly here

Basic Tax

The Basic Tax is the most flexible lever, it can be set between 1 and 20 percent, I have it on 1% right now. Basic Tax is just a tax, technically it does determine (over time) the level of the presidential salary, I haven't noticed it yet let's see what I am getting:

Woop, nothing to squawk at, but I just think there are taxes with better effects than sending some minimum number of SIM to the president's desk. If we want to trade SIM inflation for useful stuff that does not cause SIM inflation, what are our other options?

Police Tax

I really like the Police Tax, at just 1% tax, it makes Police Stations more effective at lowering crime. While crime does take SIM income away, meaning this tax might technically raise inflation, I definitely support this tax being on at least sometime to play around with the crime numbers.

Jobs tax

This is my second favorite tax, especially now with human experimentation, opening this tax and allowing job centers to train homeless and immigrants faster is a way to support the citizen mining loop, which is one of the main SIM sinks right now.

Education and Art taxes

For me, these two are exchangeable. Both give a 10% boost to their respective stats, Education and Creativity. Since both mining chances are capped, this is a pretty great tax that only can benefit smaller cities. They both cost 5%, likely I will change the current education to ART shortly.

WAR Tax

War is an interesting one, it is one of the main mechanics of the game. Now that the citizen mining loop contains both soldiers and super soldiers, all strategies have reasonable access to war shares. This is a constituency that must be served, but there are two ways to do that.

Adding to the war tax by a president reduces the level of citizen mining (raises the popularity required for each percentage 'tick'). Adding to the War Tax Lobby does not.

There is a secret here, that is, only War Mongering by the president scares away new citizens. War Mongering by the lobbyists does not. I would like to encourage everyone to consider and reconsider their lobby options, WAR lobby is a really good place for your lobby vote:

ECO tax

Even though this tax is named after me, I think this tax has very little use. It raises INCOME on wind turbines and solar plants. The only use I have seen for this tax is to boost War Shares payouts, which is a convoluted one but does work.

Summary of Tax Policy

There are three main income streams to cities in dCity, and several minor ones. The three mains are SIM Income, War Shares, and Citizen Mining. All of these need some expression over the course of the game (and changing conditions is one of the main features of this game).

I know the war shares contingent is popular, and I have made the recommendation above about LOBBY so that we can get a higher War Tax without hurting the citizen mining as much. I doubt the citizen mining contingent has a large SimPower backing, but let's think of it this way: they are the ones burning SIM.

Every citizen mined is 300 SIM burned.

Well, not exactly...and not necessarily right away. Young Citizens and Students can't be experimented on until they transform, and even then the high value transformations don't make that much sense to experiment on just yet. But all homeless and immigrants, and whatever they turn into, will likely be experimented on at a cost of 300 SIM each, whether it is sold to someone who will do it or not. We should support this mechanism with our levers, which leads us into our non-tax levers:

These are mostly new, and haven't been paid much attention or analyzed very deeply from what I can tell. But all 4 of these levers has to do with our 'Citizen Mining Loop', that has been so successful because its sinking SIM in several ways.

Presidential Options:

First, the Daily clowns and politicians are a bit of a lucky draw sort of deal. Random Young Citizens from across the whole dCity universe have a chance to transform into these, I have maxed this out to 3 of each per day. This is an incentive to deal with citizens, as I see it, so we can maximize that benefit.

The politician gives -40 to income and -20 to popularity in exchange for a +25 SIM tax rebate, and the clown gives +50 popularity and +10 creativity. This is just another hidden mechanic that can bring joy to players through randomness.

I am open to discussions about daily clown/politician, but my feeling is that these are all positive for the game and should be maxxed.

Aging rate

The aging rate is an even more serious concept. On the one hand, it controls how many new Young Citizens enter the game in a day. On the other, it controls how many OLD citizens 'retire' each day.

All dCity cards have ids. The smallest numbers are the oldest cards. It doesn't matter what a citizen has become, they could have started as immigrants, trained into workers and then experimented into a sick citizen, or started as a Student, paid their debt, turned to homeless trained into a scientist and then experimented into a super soldier.

When its time has come - they all become Retired Citizens. This turns population (and any and all special abilities) into popularity. @gerber has discussed a new combine for these cards several times in the #citizens-longterm discussion channel of the SIMclub. Tower ruins were just released, but I think we can assume that by turning up this dial we are turning up the heat on @gerber to release that 😅

I honestly don't know how many citizens are in the game, I would like more stats and I would like to see if @scriptioner could make a lookup where I could see the lifetime of my oldest citizens - what were they, where did they live over their lifetime?

With some of the oldest citizens in the game in my own collection, I don't relish losing my super powered people. But as this also controls birth rate, I think a setting that accelerates this pace is better than a super slow setting. 85 might be too high, I am interested in discussion and possibly some data about supply (interested @dalz?)

Funding Experiments Rate

This is the level of tax rebate that Sick Citizens will see. It is hilarious to me that just like the real world its up to the government to somewhat arbitrarily decide on a level of support for their Sick Citizens, and be able to move that lever based on elections. Just another way that dCity is also a fun commentary on civilizational issues.

The Tax Rebate mechanic is really coming into fruition. This was developed, starting with churches, precisely to work into the high tax reality we are living in within dCity. The sick citizen is the ultimate example, giving -3 income and -3 popularity just to sustain its 1-3 tax rebate.

I will be doing a more complete analysis of the Sick Citizen and how to value it in my upcoming ARMERO release post. (Send sick citizens to @armero and get ARMERO tokens!) Right now sick citizens represent the current meta of burning SIM to boost tax rebates and climb the INCOME ranking ladder. Having a changing meta-game is important, and I want to tell you why.

While I have been more involved in LABFUND and @superlab, studying the stock of citizens on which to conduct experiments, I have come to realize that many cities in dCity might be inactive! Now this is a passive game, fun to just stop in every once in a while. But the benefit to having a changing game meta, is that the more active players benefit more. The changes come slowly and over time, but if you don't keep up with the changes, your city loses profitability in favor of players who do keep up and keep playing.

This is EXACTLY what a game should aim for. The way @gerber is building the Citizen Loop as a 'game inside a game' is really smart, and so far seems to be working quite well. I encourage all feedback and discussion here, and would like to encourage all future presidents to consider these thoughts when setting levers.

Freedom and Friendship!