Isn't this already the case? Or is it just restricted by food production.
I was wondering about it in other post.
And yeah, if I understood the concept correctly, this is also a big problem because it causes fluctuations in food availability reducing prosperity and creates problems like loosing garrison, as discussed in this thread.
Afaik there isnt a hard cap on it, but a softcap, so once you get higher up there, there will be some debuff to it, I belive its called something like "rent prices"? (I dont have a save where I can actually see what its called).
There is several things that cause prosperity to rise.
You can boost it by the settlement buildings, by governor perks etc.
However a huge factor is "market goods" so if the town have surplus of that(this includes items that arent food aswell, so horses, pack animals, iron, wood, tools etc etc, but those dont impact the town as badly as lack of food though).
The problem with alot of the cities is that they dont have grain produceing village attached to them(and those will typically suffer alot, cause they can replenish the lack of grain that visiting lords buy up, "fast enough") and thus you get the dips.
This is a total nitemare if several of those "free lords" from rebelfactions that survived, but lost their lands, decide to stay in your towns.
As they will help vs looters, yes, but they will also buy "all the food".
But yah overall ideally they "rework" it abit so its less of a micromanage task, or that it wont result in tanking loyality etc as hard as it does.
So that it can "recover" over time on its own.
Example I often try to be "clever" with what cities I get, so I pass up on or give back fiefs I get.
So I can instead get Seonon/Marunath or Epicroeta(close to my "homelands" - Sturgia)(so its less likely to be raided to pieces if we are at war with someone on the other side of the map(Khuzait).
All of theese towns have 1 or more grain produceing or several nearby grain produceing villages nearby(attached to castles).
While sometimes I've had dips where an army buy up all the grain resulting in a -50 food --> before it reaches 0 from haveing a granary with 700 -> it is replenished.
Meanwhile if I have Amperal instead on the other side of the map, when this happends, 0 villages nearbye is grainproducers(not counting the Tyal and Baltakahnd villages) it will not recover and I actively have to go to it, and buy grain from the nearbye villages and dump it in the market.(often for profit mind you).
Ideally the function of the granary would work different, that "instead of it being" an invisible buffer as it is, also count as a "cap" on how much the visiting lords/armies can buy of grain. Thus preventing this issue.
Cause in 90% of the time a city is starving is lack of grain(some other goods aswell of course, but it dont have as sever an effect).
Go into the town management, look at the "basket" you'll see how much units each town consume pr day.
1 tool, 1 horse, 1 wine , 1 oil etc you get the idea.
But then you see the amount of grain it consume vs the others, its alot.
Thats why dumping the grain is so "needed" and good to counter this issue.
The problem though is that the caravans will see "oh cheap grain!" and buy it sometimes..
Dont get me wrong its fairly decent system they have in place, but it could be abit less "annoying/Taxing" for the player when they are in the warpace(or for those of who get locked in eternal battle at one point, where there is 0 peace, just endless wars(ok you get peace with 1 faction, but then another declare etc, so its a chain of wars(to balance it out I get it, but its annoying, and it dont feel "fun" over time.)
Thus we cant focus on fixing theese issues, cause then well all the progress in the wars is lost in days typically, which we had spent "years" to get etc.
There needs to be a "fatigue" added or some mechanics to counter warmongering overall(given that initiating war is easy, but getting peace is almost impossible).(for players who get locked in chain wars, up until that point the game is awesome)
But since we got not time to micromanage villages and towns, cause of war, well then this is an issue.