Zorion_no
Sergeant
I might have better luck if I can engineer a situation where I have a safe corner, such as the Aserai lands, to be a part of or rule since I find wars are far rarer and tamer if your country has a good position. At any rate, I expect to have to shut them down if I want to join, say the Northern or Southern Empire, and wait until I or they have the northeast/southeast secure before setting them back up.
Then again, I remember, last December, playing for Battania before breaking away being gentler than I read about so I have no idea what the real normal is. Maybe people's kingdoms being at constant war isn't the norm but happens often enough to be complained about. I didn't have that problem last time until I had conquered 1/3rd of the constant since, at that point, everybody who could declared war on me as if I tripped over an invisible threshold.
Thank you for the clarification. I'll have to make sure I don't leave a lot of uncollected stuff in the Warehouses since I assume they'll be gone if my properties get sacked by the victorious army. I've made a habit of building my workshops in Vlandia since Galend, Jaculan, Ocs Hall, etc. are very safe cities as far as war is concerned and Warehouses let me dump whatever they need into their pockets so they don't need to rely on local resources. Combined with shutting down the competition, I'm averaging 700-1,200 per monopoly per day (I have 3 Velvets but they're making half to one third as much as the single Oil Press and Pottery Shop, indicating I'd probably make more passive income if I shut 1 or 2 of my Velvet Dyeworks down) so I'm now a multi-millionaire with as much money (and more passive income) then I had when I was a monarch ruling half the continent lol. I have screenshots I took over my past 1.5 playthroughs which shows how well I'm presently doing as a mercantile-focused character, so I feel like I finally figured out Workshops in Bannerlord.
That depends on your patience. At the moment, I agree with you if your intent in Workshops/Caravans is as a supplement to sustaining a professional army like in Warband, because you'll make practically nothing from Workshops and barely enough to cover daily costs with Caravans, but if you dominate the markets so you're the sole product maker (or have no more than 1-2 shops competition, globally) you'll make insane amounts of money (not as insane as smithing, of course, but comparable to winning battles as a warlord/monarch without the risks) and can casually throw cash around after a few years.
I'm tempted to lay low and wait for my 4 kids to grow up so I can send my daughters off running caravans while my son and his bride-to-be get busy making grandkids lol. I may do that if getting Eveything Has a Price takes that long since I love the idea of buying my way to power and prestige.
It's gratifying to be wealthier as a merchant prince than I was as a sultan ruling the entire continent lol. At the moment, my 5 Workshops are producing over 3,000 per day on average (3 Velvets averaging ~350 per day while the Oil averages ~900 and the Pottery ~700) while 6 Caravans average 500 per each or 3,000 per day (usually at least one of them has a bad day but it can spike up, now and then, leading to insane profits both per individual caravan and in total) for a gross average income of 6,000 per day by year 1092.
However, I do think average profits for Workshops in particular could use a boost--maybe by a factor of 2 so that 100-200 per day is the bare minimum passive income you can expect and 1000+ if you're doing what I'm doing.
Try to get profitable workshops in Sturgia without micromanageing them(read some will be, like linen in Omor, and again while they have dips, the Wine will get 200+ atleast on its own roughly).
And thats the problem you touch on though with 1/3rd as you describe it with wars and endless wars.
Bascially if you look at the Kingdome clan you will notice that there is a "powerlevel" where say they all is at start 5000, but decline or grow pending on how they fare in war.
Roughly speaking if you have 10000 power, which means you've taken a fair chunk of the world - you will be locked in war most of the time.
This can start as low as 7500, and beyond 15000 you will know nothing but war.
Basically if you start to loose power on the other hand, and your back to the starter lands more or less, you may see dips in war.
Anti-snowball effect they made, but it works well in AI vs AI control, but vs player it gets annoying/frustrating/tanks the fun as you got no downtime to do other things if you want to keep the current power level, not to mention that player agency also have too big an effect, so it is counterproductive and ends up just speedballing the snowball..(this is a rant for other threads).
Overall for war, I think that Aserai in general is "shieleded" much more from war though, due to the way the land is initally, so if they loose some land, typically the other factions stop after awhile, then Aserai come back with a vengance and take all the lost and then some.
The issue of the constant wars also hurts makeing profitable workshops just isnt enough trade comeing in delivering the mats needed, and there is no profit in the good they naturally produce, or not since Taleworld hit some workshops like smithing and its conssumption of rawmaterials way too heavy handed(I still cant belive no one raised concerns about that in testing internally and how it just ruins it).
No doubt you got the mechanics down by the way you describe thing, so what I think you should do though, is just make hardsaves and experiment, see what works or not and how the fallout is from things.