The easiest fix would be to simply lower the amount of available cash that each city has in a season. Also, crank up the costs for goods transport and storage and you are set. I believe that no substantial taxes have been paid so far and again, most of the money in my case at least was a years of poor trades and hoarding of money to get to the amount needed by a guild. Try fixing it by adjusting the numbers, not rules. Also, the money that nobles get should be incerased, be it by rules and an actual technological take-off with new farming methods and crops brought from overseas and so on. Also, taxes and royalties. I keep talking about my desire for monopoly, but that would give the king a reason to keep the merchants around and they would contribute with a lump sum in exchange every year.
the guilds can and should be taxed, but first you should let someone create one, and then we could adjust the profits.
One thing to be mindful of though is to not overdo it too much and make traders outright unable to make the profit. The game hs been concentrating on this issue too much though, that is true.
CG, try fiddling with the base figures, like the trade allowance in cities and the upkeep for ships. We haven't got any costs running yet, so it would be foolish to simply axe everything and then fiddle with things again when they break.
We cant. Lowering the avail of a city lessens the number of players that can be supported. Fiddling with the gains each player can make however only limits them personally.
Already i've got it down to 30/yr not including upkeeps. Increasing upkeep cant be safely done as it would affect nobles as well.
Further Proposal:Any produced good in a region is obviously being sold from surplus of the harvest/storage that season of whatever isn't used internally. It obviously comes from the lands of the nobles.
Proposal to even things out: 50% of sales to the noble(s) of the city (half of which would go to the king in taxes already. Said taxes can be 'paid' retcon as part of the normal taxes, so there's no "I decided not to pay my taxes and raise an army greater than the king's this year")
-Kings already get taxes off the profits of the nobles
--Nobles now have an incentive to sell their goods and keep their taxes less than extortionate
Businessness inside said cities need to consume the 'sales potential' of a city's goods.
-Each unit purchased by the owner, while cheaper, eats up the avail in the city, but as the business owner would likely be doing this by purchasing directly at the source, a lot of middleman is cut out, increasing the % to the nobles by 25, to 75%. The other 25% goes into the market allowance for the season as usual
Certain goods/types should be used for higher tiers
-Metals into Tools and arms
-Staples into processed foods/luxuries (grapes into wine, etc)
-Wool/Raw Silk into Cloth/silk (silk being actually a luxury, raw being an industry)
The affect of this is not only to limit the fungible goods in a city, but also to remove goods from the sales
It sounds like it adds more bookkeeping, it really doesn't. After running a few random rolls for all of this, nothing really changed in the bookkeeping.