Ok so you cheated your self some money, and started three caravans under absolutely ideal conditions - start of the game so bandits are low, no wars. You had 12k left over. So after 84 days under ideal conditions you had made... 30k profit from three caravans. That's not even enough to buy a helmet. 120 profit per caravan per day, worse than a workshop but with added risk, and added annoyance of having to reform them all the time. And it ties of one of your companions that could be doing something else. I could make 30k from one transaction trading manually, this is such a small amount of money over 84 days it is just not worth the effort and risk.
And again this was under ideal conditions, with minimum bandit numbers. Literally impossible to do this in game without cheating.
Try again after a couple of years, with multiple wars, swarms of bandits everywhere, big looter parties.
I really do not agree with this at all. They tie up one companion which means -80 army size for you. They can and will die when at war and there will be a long downtime until you can find time to reform them where they are not making any money. You can't defend them like you can defend a town with workshops in it. And then they only make about 1k per day which is nothing in this game, when a helmet costs 1 million. From the whole length of my game with 4 workshops, three caravans, four fiefs, and all the profits from battle, I finally saved up 1 million to buy the helmet. Entire life savings of a powerful lord just for one helmet. If I want to get the helmet for all my companions too that's another 7 million. 1k per day is not OP.
What is the difference between a party and a caravan? My companion can lead 80 men unless you give him a camel, now suddenly he can only lead 30? Makes no sense. And you left AI caravans with party size 50, so clearly you saw it as necessary. If caravans are "so OP", why not nerf AI caravans too? You don't believe your own words.
If you thought they were bringing in too much money, there are so many better ways to fix that.
- Keep original party size but make them go slower. They were really fast to begin with, impossible for most lords to catch. They are supposed to be a big herd of pack animals right? So with a slower speed and bigger party they would get into more battles, but would survive most of them. They should be slightly bigger than big bandit parties, so bandits will still try their luck but are at a disadvantage. Only bad luck with string of battles in succession would kill them. Also moving slower would mean less profit because less trades per hour. Bigger party = more wages = slower movement = less profit = more battles.
- Make the whole economy more stable, with less wild fluctuations. Sometimes I buy goods from a village, then go to the nearest town and sell them for double. Sometimes certain things are massively overpriced for no apparent reason. To fix this needs more trading, not less. Let the caravans carry and trade more items at once. They buy and sell 5 units of fish or 1 horse at a time. You don't need a herd of camels and guards to carry five fish. Make neutral merchants so trade doesn't dry up during wars. The more trade there is then there will be less difference in the prices and so less profit. Right now I can buy fur for 40 and sell for over 200. Or buy hardwood for 11 and sell for 45. Over 300% profit, caravans are not doing their job properly so there are big shortages/oversupply and huge profit margins. If trading was this lucrative there would be more people doing it until it was not lucrative anymore.
- Just return less of the profits to the owner. Again I don't think they were OP to begin with but if the amount of income was the problem in your mind, then make it less, easy. You don't need to put this artificial cap on guards so that they die every five minutes, that is just annoying and obnoxious. At least let us reform them remotely if you insist on doing this.
There are probably a hundred other ways, these are just the first few that came to mind.
No businessman would invest in these defenceless caravans that die so easily to bandits. If bandits were a big threat then prices would rise until they were high enough that paying a huge army to protect your caravan was still profitable. Or taxes would fund bandit hunting parties. Or the caravaneers would pay protection money to the bandits. Or any of a million other things. You have reduced the value of human life to zero, as if people would throw their lives away on a super risky venture with very low payoff. Nobody is this stupid that they would fill 100 camels full of jewellery and beer, then go off into bandit infested mountains with only a handful of guards.
