It should default to zero tax. It always annoys me when I realize I have hit turn a few times without setting zero tax.

I like that lowering your taxes to zero and using all your initial mana income on city buff spells is A strategy.

I quite dislike that the above strategy is a so much better plan than any other path that it is essentially not a choice. I mean, turning your taxes to zero on turn one get you a ~23% BONUS (essentially) to both research and production at the expense of 0.4 gold a turn, and that compounds with the enchant spells that give you +2 bonuses compounded with the unrest reduction bonus.

Get a champion with Merchant 1 (or 2, or 3) at first level and you can stretch this bonus out for WELL into the early game.

I think it's a perfectly good strategy, and I don't really think there needs to be any alternative.  The AI just needs to learn to do it as well, and, as someone mentioned, taxes should default to none so new players don't get the penalty to unrest.

There are a decent number of alternate strategies in the beginning of the game based on things like starting location, faction, and sovereign stats, the decision to tax or not isn't really a big one.  What would a viable alternative be?  Tax the populace to get money to rush things?  There's not enough money in the city yet.

I certainly wouldn't object to an overhaul of the tax system so there's more of a benefit, but I think that different tax levels being appropriate for different game periods is ok also.  None at the start.  Low once you build a prison or some town halls.  Normal when you need money for something.  High + when you're absolutely desperate. 

The tax rises are massively punishing on production and research so it makes sense to drop tax to zero until you have things like gallows and bless city - I don't think much of the currtent tax system and an looking forward to the changes they will make in beta 4

Synopsis: The gildar must flow. Gildar is distributed far to scarcely by tax given how expensive stuff is (wages for heroes, troops, costs for heroic equip, rush costs ect.)

Fully acknowledged!

Multiply the income by taxes times 10 at the start (not joking here) might make for a way better balance and more interesting choices with the slider from start to finish (maybe 5 times as much as currently is enough but lower doesn't seem well). Maybe shallow up the progression a bit (still guildar-gains in 3-digits area should be reasonably attainable mid- endgame at normal tax which aint. Compare to mana where mid 2-digit income per turn is achievable and costs for spells are comparatively far less. The balance for Mana-income seems at a good spot right now. Contrast to gildar)

So far other methods of cheesingly acquiring Guildar (by selling tech knowledge which accumulates in value partly faster than straight guildar even at normal, rushing already build nodes which connect to a city or pioneers / simmilar units after 2 turns of accumulating production) or merchant champs(multiple) are neccessary to gain sufficient guildar to actually buy stuff or sustain a sizable army are neccessary. That needn't be.



There is a way around the unrest problem: Gallows and simmilar buildings. After testing i now find those buildings by far the best ones (especially since the unrest penalty . Especially the Onyx-Throne. I find that Level 5 building nearly mandatory to aquire reasonable slider-levels at mid-endgame ~Turn 250)

I agree that the current implementation is clunky. One different way of implementing tax that might be more obvious is to tie it to buildings, like a "tax office - generates 1 gildar for every 10 citizens, +20% unrest". Would achieve basically the same thing as the slider but might feel less "tacked on".