Tax Rate, Loyalty, and Public Grievance

Tax Rate, Loyalty, and Public Grievance are three numbers which are closely intertwined. The three will always attempt to total 100, and there are different ways to affect each of them.

Tax Rate
Your Tax Rate determines how much gold you make per hour, based on your entire population (including unemployed.) Tax Rate is the easiest number to manipulate, the panel for which is found in the Town Hall. Tax Rates are affected only by Tax Policy and Adv. Tax Policy.

Addition by Roninator. If you are asking yourself "What's the best tax rate for my city?", then listen up. I will give you some advice. The highest tax rate you can set to give you the most money without doing anything else is 50%. Here are some numbers for you to look at. The efficiency of the tax rate can be modeled by the function tax revenue = x(1-x)p where x is the tax rate and p is the population limit.

Population max is 20,000.

A tax rate better than this requires constant interaction. Here's how - Start by setting you tax rate to 0 or 5%. Your population will rise fast, as long as your loyalty is high as well. (do praying to raise loyalty quickly). When its near max or at max, set your tax rate to 100%. Then do a public grievance comfort in your town hall. Then again when loyalty is at 95%. This will require a lot of food. You use 1 food for each population. I.E. 10 population = 10 food. That's not current population, that's your max population. Now if we have loyalty at 90% or higher, lets assume 100% - Population is 20,000. Tax rate is 100%. 20,000 * 100% = 20,000 gold per hour. Don't forget as well about your heroes salary.

Levies
Levies are calculated based on city population as follows:
 * Gold = 10% of max Population
 * Food and Lumber = 100% of max Population
 * Stone = 50% of max Population
 * Iron = 40% of max Population

Loyalty
Loyalty affects how many people are in your city. If you have 50 Loyalty, you will have 50% of your maximum population. Loyalty adjusts itself based on your Tax Rate and Public Grievance. In addition to being affected by Tax Rate and Public Grievance, it is affected by Disaster Relief and Praying.

Consolation
Consolation has a cooldown of 15m.

Hero Loyalty
If captured, an opponent's Hero can be persuaded to join your forces if plied with Medals and gold. This can also occur vice versa, in which you can lose an attacking hero whose loyalty has dropped to 0. However, in some cases it is also possible to lose your attacking hero if his/her loyalty is at 100.

Hero loyalty can be increased by rewarding the hero with gold or medals. However, it is not recommended for newer players to use medals for this, as they are going to be needing them for promotion quests.

Public Grievance
Public Grievance is a number whose purpose is to stymie the growth of Loyalty. It does not do anything but act as a "filler" of numbers where you could instead have higher Loyalty or Tax Rate. It is affected by losing attacks to your city, as well as Disaster Relief and Praying.

A Miracle!
If your City Loyalty/Grievance is in a very bad way, due to poor tax management, overworking or being under heavy attack, a miracle cure exists in the form of the Speech Text item. Thanks to the amazing powers of good oratory, this instantly sets your Loyalty to 100 and your Grievance to 0. Such fortune doesn't come cheap though - it's 100 Game Cents in the Shop. If the alternative is losing your main city that may seem a small price to pay.

Ticks
Every six minutes, or ten times per hour, the game will update the Loyalty, Population and Gold of each city. This moment is called a tick.

Occupancy is the percentage of a city's Current Population to its Population Limit. If the Population Limit is 20,000 but the Current Population is 15,000 then the Occupancy is 75%.

On every tick, the following things happen in each city:

Loyalty + Tax Rate + Grievance = 100, eventually. Loyalty will change by +1, 0 or -1 to make this number closer to 100.

Population will then increase, decrease, or stay the same until Occupancy is equal to Loyalty. This increase or decrease is determined by the Tax Rate.

+Population change per tick

If a population increase makes the Occupancy exceed the Loyalty, it will cut off at the Loyalty. A population decrease however will not cut off, and may correct upward on the next tick.

If you are one who maxes out your population, jacks up your tax rate and comforts with Disaster Reliefs, you should note that it takes 30 minutes for your Loyalty to drop 5 points. If you forget your Loyalty for a while, your Occupancy can drop to nearly 5% less than your lowest Loyalty, and it will barely increase until you lower your taxes. New cottages will also fail to fill their population.

Naming Your City
Award: National Flag (1), Prestige (50), Gold 500

This opens up awards for accumulating Prestige.

Population
There are several Quests that have population targets or add population to your city.

Population
Idle population is also required for the production of troops in the barracks.