It's pretty much identical to what I've been doing. Simply setting shops in towns corresponding to their village ressources but it still result in 160 average gold with the exception of wool workshops whom is in the 300+ range at all time for whatever reason.
So can we stop pretending being geniuses god gamers and just say as it is? Wool workshops are out of the line there's nothing more to it.
Even if workshops would give 150-200 as much, it is more than enough to say that workshops are balanced and pretty useful. Workshops are pretty much 100% safe and give you invested money back in about 70-80 days, and after that you are getting money for free during all the game. You can easily get 1000 denars daily with 4 or 5 workshops which is enough to pay wages for a really strong party able to defeat almost any lord party in the game, including kings.
Plus you have settlements income, and you can easily get +3000 daily from towns with high prosperity. You can also do manual trading and get a lot of money.
I am currently role playing a campaing as vassal without getting any workshop, caravan or doing any manual trading. Just with two castles I can pay my main party (500 daily or so), and additional clan party (wages cap at 300) and these castles garrison wages (200 denars wages cap).
If you want to become king at day 500, and pay wages for an 200 fian champions party, have 400 fian champions per settlement garrison, etc, then you are going to have financial issues (it is still possible and doable if you know what you are doing).
So, nobody here is pretending to be geniuses god players, and people are just telling you that you maybe should explore more options because if you are having financial issues, you are for sure doing something wrong because getting rich in this game is fairly easy.
