Ok... so i vaguely remember playing the game way back then and being somewhat miffed at it due to the tax system.

Now mind you this is the experience of 10 year old me and more or less taken from memory... and i don't remember the manual talking about it too much:

If i set tax to 1.0 the population would experience a plague within the next couple of turns.
If i set it very low to 0.1 or 0.2 the population would grow till it hits over 2k... and then get decimated by a plague anyway.
I managed to conquer a computer town once and i remember his tax rate being 2.0.

Does anyone have an idea what were i doing wrong the whole time playing this game?
Am i supposed to change the tax all the time responding to population fluctuations?

just an idea, I don't remember much from that game and I'm now figuring stuff out... but maybe you're supposed to expand by 2000 pop point (you can send people to a new castle)

but yeah I think the game expects you to check in periodically if the population / happiness is growing or not and adjust accordingly

i'm also interested in the actual formula: 0.5 of what? 0.5 * 100 people doesn't equal 1, like it's in the game

I'm quite disappointed GoG didn't manage to obtan a PDF manual, this game desperately needs it :/ now it's a lot of guessing, though this actually tickles my nostalgia as that's how I played at a young age - by guessing "what does it do" :P

(wonder if there's a point talking in English about the game, are there any non-Polish people who are familiar with it?)
(then again we're talking about a game were half the stuff is in English even in PL version so maybe it's appropriate!)

EDIT: I just found a pretty informative website that also has the manual to download!
http://clash.y0.pl

I've just read in the manual that you can send some plagued citizens from your castle to enemy's castle causing a plague in there - cool! (if gruesome)
the chance of plague is determined by the castle's population, the hospital reduces it (both the chance of plague and the population decrease is reduced)

The pdf manual is in the instalation folder or you can check it through windows menu bar start and go to clash there is also a manual in english.
Well the manual said you should keep your population at 1000 maximum or else a plague will hit if it goes higher though not sure now maybe i mixed something up. A plague only lasts 5 turns i believe and a hospital can reduce the damage it does and reduce the chance to get a plague. If i want to lower population i just tax them more. Though i am only at the 3rd left campaign mission.
One thing that i think is important to know in mission 2 is that you need a builder to create a bridge by simply building a road where the dirt road ends and the water is a little yellow below. Needed to get to a shrine in that mission, but i actually conquered the enemy and didn't know where to find it until i searched the whole map

that's weird, usually you download manuals through "goodies" section in Galaxy

The manual doesn't explain this, so I'm just guessing based on my gameplay:

1. Plagues are randomized (like the loot from digging / shrine rewards), with two additional factors: if infected peasants are sent to a castle, they will infect the castle (guaranteed, as per the manual) and if the village population exceeds 1000 the risk of plague increases significantly. The tax rate itself doesn't affect the plague chance. You’re just unlucky (or you’ve taken someone else’s infected peasants).

2. It seems that the game expresses the tax rate in "parts of normal taxation". So 1.0 is "normal taxes" – the peasant population will increase slightly, contentment will rise slightly and the stream of money should be relatively stable. Numbers below 1.0 represent lower taxes (more population and contentment increase), and above are higher taxes (up to “4x normal”).

3. The actual amount of money generated seems to be a function of both the population and contentment, though I can’t figure out the numbers right now.

4. Any tax changes will take effect on the next turn so, when setting a new tax rate, I have no idea what the actual population and contentment change will be. The system is both absurdly precise (“I want exactly 160% normal taxes”) and absurdly imprecise (“I have no idea what that will do, compared to 150% normal”).

5. My strategy: I keep the taxes low/nonexistent for the initial turns, if I can, using shrines and digging to generate income (they’ll generate way more than the peasants at that stage); if I need a shot of money “right now”, I raise the tax rate significantly above 1.0, knowing that I’m trading the population and contentment rates to get it; I also increase the tax rate above 1.0 if the population getting too large and I have nowhere useful to send them; otherwise I keep it at 1.0.