For clarity sake, I believe was referring to late game, when caravans loose their profitability. You're correct that caravans are great early game when your level is low - especially if you're Asari.
The figure of 25K refers to the 5K insurance payout for each of 5 caravans.
If you outlay 100k on 5 caravans (Imperial $$ + the companion fitout), and you can expect 25K back in insurance... those 5 caravans need to make 75k to pay for themselves. At your rate of 300 per day, that's 250 days combined in the field - each caravan needs to survive for an average of 50 days minimum - late game, they rarely survive a week, let alone a month.
Of course, if you cheapen out on the fitout and select a good trade/steward companion it can moderate things. But my guess is you'll still end up short. My inkling is that at this stage, companions are better left in cities where you might want to either recruit troops from, or recruit into your kingdom - the relationship gain they can earn can bring the cost of bribery down by tens of thousands.
Ok, thanks for the clarification.
On the other hand, some people have been discussing in another thread if TW should balance all income sources together, keeping in mind that the players will use all these sources at the same time or not.
For example, if devs balance income sources thinking that all the players will buy caravans, workshops, do manual trading, smithing, get money from loot, and get fiefs, then this is a pretty bad thing for players who do not want to play in that way. But at the same time, devs should be thinking on avoiding the players’ money inflation, and keeping the game somehow hard for people who enjoy playing challenging games. So, as I see it, there are only two options:
- Balancing all income sources together and making all of them weak for avoiding money inflation.
- Balancing each income source separately without keeping in mind other ones.
The problem with the second option is that the players getting all income sources at the same time will be swimming in money pretty easily. So, I am ok with some income sources being incompatible with other ones. For example, if you like to be constantly at war fighting everyone, then caravans and workshops are not for you, but fiefs and battle loot will provide you enough money. On the other hand, if you want to play as merchant doing manual trading, then your workshops and caravans will be pretty safe, but you are not going to get money from fiefs or battle loot. This is for me the best way for balancing all income sources, and this is the reason because I find correctly balanced most of aspects about economy (except smithing which is totally broken, fiefs’ income which is a bit weak IMO, and battle loot which is still too high, especially if you spam ranged units for getting easy victories).
(Bandits scaling with player’s level should be removed in my opinion)