question: currently my nation has about 2200 infrastructure- i tried swapping labor camps with banks, saving me about 250k a day in infra bills. when i swapped labor camps back out for banks and raised my taxes to collect taxes (10 days) i lost over 600 citizens ( needless to say- i went -1 on improvements). is this normal if so is there a way to prevent this from happening?

You should always keep your tax rate at 28% (until you get a SSS) it doesn't affect anything else.

And neither of those improvements have anything to do with population, it shouldn't affect that at all. Possibly a different trade? That would be my only guess. Did you change any trades?

Edit: not to sound like rude, just making sure you are using factories when you purchase infra and swapping a few trades. Your trade set is not ideal... for anything. Just some friendly advice.

Did you change your government? Some governments affects your environment, which in turn, affects your #of citizens.

thanks for the replies. i know my trades are worthless got left behind on my last trade circle and just fell into this one.

after i collected taxes i did change governments- and that is when i noticed the change in pop. count. thanks i did not know gov. affected pop.

so it does not hurt to leave tax rate at 28%- it seamed like my growth was faster at a lower rate.

In the very beginning, in a very few cases, it can be better to have a lower tax rate. After the very beginning, you get more by just leaving your tax rate maxed.

If you look at the wiki, next to the government names are stars. Those tell you if the government has a positive or negative affect on the environment.

Did you buy soldiers? Contrary to popular belief, more soldiers = slightly less citizens, even before the environment penalty kicks in. Your soldier count should only be 20% of your citizen count.

That's only true if you don't have enough land (as the population density starts affecting environment)

Nope, the environment remains unchanged when this happens. See for yourself.. write down your citizen count, buy soldiers, then check your citizen count again.

It does change population, but I would ask that at your next earliest opportunity to buy a little bit of land. That does not directly affect the environment number on your nation screen (the way I said it earlier wasn't quite correct), but it changes the population density, changing the citizen count.

So, it's still always better to make sure your population density is as low as possible. The OP also has nearly maxed out soldiers, so he takes an environment hit. I could see him losing 600 citizens over this.

thanks again- i was in a war at the time- dam tech raiders- so my soldier count was up- i have notice a drop in pop. when i max out, but my population density is 25 now and has never been over 30-

anyway thanks- i believe i got an idea of what happened- i do remember my enviroment being at 3 stars and now i am down to 1 1/2 stars