How are you supposed to mobilize all of your party capability if you can't afford to use them as a money making operation and you can't afford to keep troops for them in garrison? Just from a gameplay perspective, this sounds miserable. Every time my kingdom randomly declares war, I am supposed to drag around companions and recruit a party for them? That's tedious.
Call the workshop 250 per day then. It's still years of operation to make enough profit to afford a helmet. Something is out of balance.
"How are you supposed to mobilize all of your party capability if you can't afford to use them as a money making operation and you can't afford to keep troops for them in garrison?"
Ever heard of a war chest? build up your finances, sell loots, ransom lords, use more caravans, trade ect there are means to make money you're just overly relying on passive income to maintain 4x your party at all times.
"Just from a gameplay perspective, this sounds miserable."
Im trying to imagine the game giving us so much money that we dont need to actually do anything after building 4 workshops, that sounds very boring..
" Every time my kingdom randomly declares war, I am supposed to drag around companions and recruit a party for them? That's tedious."
It is tedious which is why they can recruit soldiers themselves.
I'm not saying it's perfect but in my current games in 1.7 I've been finding it pretty good, in the past i'd easily get into the 1mil mark and money just becomes a joke but in my current campaigns im actually having to balance and work for it and im more often than not ransoming lords rather than hold them because I'd like the short term money gain, it seems to be working as intended and I wouldn't want to go back to having infinite money.
Edit: They're introducing party templates eventually, perhaps at that point we could maintain max parties but with a lower average quality troops to keep a tidy profit.