Sometimes a player place 200 tier-5 elite troops to a castle garrison which has less prosperity. Then he want caravan or workshops to pay his daily wages somehow. When this does not happen and when he goes bankrupt he gets anger. However player should not stack 200 elite troops to a castle garrison or should not upgrade his troops if has no money enough also out of topic I accept castles should be more strategical fiefs because their economical benefits are already weak. They have no military or economical benefit currently. This is something we need to fix. If we make general game economy balanced and if we can offer player alternative solutions to his problems then there will be no need to increase caravan workshop profits, daily 200 average (workshop)- 300/400 average (caravan) will be reasonable.
I had to make a new account but I've been a fairly long time Warband player (just Warband but jeez that was 10 years ago so it's been a little while at least), in fact I'm amazed I don't already have a Taleworlds forum account. I might on an older email but I digress.
I just want to give you my perspective after playing around 100 hours on 1.5.6 in regards to income. Something about me, and I imagine other players like me, is that I love the end game fantasy. In Warband, one of the best parts was rolling around with an extremely well trained elite group of soldiers and just crushing stuff. And Warband didn't have a complex economy, fiefs payed really good money and you could set up a laughable number of workshops.
1.5.6 has been my best run in Bannerlord yet, and your balance work has been absolutely tremendous so far, I'm really loving it. But there is an issue with my end game fantasy.
Currently I'm running a sort of nuts clan. I have three parties on the map as a clan tier 5 king. I have a personal retinue of around ~210 fully or close to fully upgraded noble units. I realize this is absurdly expensive, but I would be
more than willing to do whatever it takes to pay for this and everything else.
The problem is that I don't have too many options. I currently own two towns and a castle (with 8 villages total) with above average prosperity but growing. My villages also have insane hearths, some exceeding 1000. The issue is that the garrisons (consisting of very random troops, no nobles or anything) costs about as much as I get from the town. I would reduce the garrison size (which already isn't all that big), but my clan parties keep restocking it which isn't particularly helpful. I also have the maximum number of workshops (6) of which I tested many to get the best ones I could reasonable find in my kingdom, and 2 caravans in operation. With all of that said, I'm running -3000 to -5000 deficits a day. I feel like I'm doing the best I can (I can set up more caravans but even with 3 more caravans, my deficit would only budge by 20% at best) but I simply can't effectively balance my budget if I want to keep what I have. My only viable option is to just sell loot from parties and armies that I manage to beat until I collect enough money so that peacetime won't bankrupt me.
Now it seems your response would be that I shouldn't upgrade my units, that I should remove some of my clan parties, and that I should balance my army. While that's honestly a reasonable thing to say, it's just not how I like to play the game. I love being that end-game god with a massive party and maximum clan parties out on the map or in my army. In Warband, if you really wanted to go all out, you had to put in some investment into many many workshops, and it wasn't super easy (albeit probably not hard enough but the money investment was high). I love the complexity of the economy system in Bannerlord, but it doesn't feel like I can effectively utilize that complexity to my advantage by enough of a margin to satisfy my end game goal of being an absolute chonk lord on the battlefield. I know I could remove my clan parties, I could balance my army, I could reduce my garrisons (and hopefully they won't be continually restocked with my clan parties off the map) but that's just not what I want as an avid Mount & Blade player.
My first recommendation is to decrease the overall costs of garrisoned units. It makes a lot of sense that a unit that doesn't have to travel, that has free housing, and the potential to meet women, go to the bar, etc. would get lowered wages. Perhaps not 50%, but 30 or 33% reduced wages would go a long way (I know that a perk exists but I think it only applies to castles and it's only a 20% reduced wage and of course I have it). Furthermore, introducing more systems into the game that can reduce wage costs (high charm could potentially reduce wage costs, or high leadership can lead to perks that reduce wage costs in more ways). I know a few perks already exist, but they don't do enough to change the tides of my insane deficit.
This may also lead to increased garrisons for AI, which would be a good thing in my book. Castles and especially cities feel a
bit too easy to take for me personally. It's a bit nuts that in one war, a faction of equal power can capture up to three cities in a single campaign (even when both factions aren't at war with anyone else). The comeback mechanics solve this in a lot of ways, but it's still a bit nuts. Territory should shift a bit slower in my humble opinion. Or if you didn't want that, you could just make garrison limits more relevant. Currently, the default garrison limits are so insanely high that the buildings don't feel rewarding at all. If my garrison limit increases from 400 to 450, that's great and all but I only have 150 people in there at the most. I don't think the militia applies to garrison limit, if it does you can correct me. But this is all a side point.
The only other recommendation I could give you is to think of new passive systems that can potentially increase revenue. Allowing workshops to artificially limit supply, or being able to coordinate your workshops and caravans to maximize the profit of goods produced would be really interesting. Reintroducing village buildings in a simpler way that could increase income as well as increase security and other things might be a good feature for the long term to implement eventually.
I don't think it should be easy to build an income system that could pay for what I have. In fact, I think it should require a lot of monetary investment and a lot of time. But it should be doable, so that I can play the game the way I want to.