Being an empire lets our resources potentially grow to 12.
HOWEVER, even when as a kingdom we could grow to 10, our army asked for more budget at 7:
Right. So, we can go up to 12, and we had the option to increase spending to increase that to 14, which we took, but then dropped down to 12 to lower spending. It doesn't seem super likely that we'll be stuck on 8 after all that, even if we have to pay more money to go up (but that seemed to be connected, potentially, to being a kingdom) that sounds fine to me.
I understood that request to imply that the Professional Army rules capped at 7 or 8 regardless of how the other resources went. I see why you might interpret it differently; since we've not ever been told clearly that we're stuck I can hardly say, "Aha! There's the cap!"
Then of course, if you do not believe we are near the cap you will have far less urgency to repeal recruitment. Nevertheless my opinion is that we don't need it when the army is in moderate shape and that we can spend that money more profitably or just more interestingly elsewhere.
+1 Population
+2 Silver mine
+1 Gold mine sharing (x remaining years - got to look this up again)
+1(avg) Mixed metals
+1(avg) Glassware - also has about 50% chance of 1 happiness
We agreed to profit sharing on the cloth trade route back in 1131 but I can't remember ever seeing a report on getting it. Since one of the parties completely reorganized their kingdom and the other proved to be fratricidal, it may be that the deal was never carried through. It wouldn't fund an annual program anyhow.
-1 Bureaucracy
-1 Army (more to increase cap)
-1 Recruitment
-2 Fireblood court
-2 Dwarf tribute
We might also still be constructing a big new palace (-1), I don't recall the exact wording whether that was canceled or only suspended for a year.
Even after the dwarf tribute expires and we enact a passage tax, we will hardly have enough money to sponsor all the interesting things on the edict list. The army will always grow, if more slowly, but some of those benefits we can't get otherwise.
Depends. It is hard to make long term plans in this game, but now that we have Leath the Peacemaker to bail us out of any wars that go bad, I'm not opposed to just fighting until our army is depleted, resting until it is restored, and repeating for as long as Cyl lives and we have good excuses to fight.
That sounds reprehensibly irresponsible to me. I doubt we ought to count on Leath as a hard counter to every threat: what of beasts, dragons, people with negotiators of their own, or who just refuse to talk? And again, our army does grow without it: to the extent that Leath-leveraging would work, it does just as well with a bit more delay between conquests.
We should promote more innovations than fireblood designs. Do you wish to be known as one who understands only the words violence and money, but with less money? New territories rarely contain notable resources right away. They suck resources from rebuilding and discontent instead. We need decently sized periods of peace for the people to prosper and create new opportunities for investment and discovery.