Yesterday I started a new game on the newest beta patch with all the difficulties set to the hardest. I played for a few hours as a merchant not involved in any wars and I had two very profitable workshops: brewery at Jalmarys (300/day) and smithy at Epirocera or how-is-this-city-called (500/day). Atm workshops are a very, very good source of money if placed correctly. After a few hours of a really chilled gameplay I had 150 trade, 130 steward, 300k dinars, decent eq, 40 000 weight of goods, a lot of expensive war horses (I was buying war horses every time I saw a good prices) and over 1k of the regular daily profit (I had a small party of high tier troops, 2 workshops and 1 caravan). I have to say that it felt good. This early game was feeling very balanced and damn, I truly enjoyed it.