So... I really don't know why no one has discussed this. Maybe no one but me does quests for the villages.
In the beginning of the game, and probably all the way to level 6 or so, you can go to a small village and ride up to the "village elder" and when you ask to buy cattle from them they typically tell you, "Hey there sonny-jim! I gots me 126 heads of cattle. You can buy 'em fer 22 denars a piece if ya like." However, by level 15 you ride up to the same elder and you'll hear one of two responses to the same query; "WHAT!? Who are you? What do you want? Not here to raid us are you?! Oh, you want to buy cattle. We have none left. 15 Marauding lords have been through here in the last month and we're all out!" or "WHAT!? Who are you? What do you want? Not here to raid us are you?! Oh, you want to buy cattle. We have 3 heads left and you can buy them for 2200 denars a piece."
Holy Funkin' Waggles! When other villages are asking you for 8 heads to replenish their corals you first must spend days trodding around the countryside until you find a village that actually HAS cattle, and then must pay exorbitant prices for, frankly, not enough cattle. Even at level 25 it's not worth it to me to spend 10 days and 18000 denars to get +8 reputation with a village. Is this a broken game mechanic? Am I the only one having this problem? The other quests for villages are very reasonable; "Go buy us 8 sacks of wheat at 100 denars a piece from the nearest town/villiage. They always have them in stock." "Spend 2 days training us and then fight with us against 25+ local bandits." Not too easy, not too hard. Why the hell do the cattle quests become so outlandishly resource consuming? Not only that, but they increase in frequency if I'm not mistaken, likely because no villages have cows left.
One final thing, IMO the rate at which lords raid villages is too high. It is likely a reflection of "reality" but it's just an annoying mechanic which causes all the world's villages to constantly be in a state of gut-wrenching poverty. The game could do with some party-level AI enhancements.
