Three months ago you couldn't have pried that gold out of the Dukes with a crowbar, because 1. the game didn't say the Crown could, and 2. it took weekly effort.
This is not really true. The Crown could tax dukes, and do it automatically. But it required the duke to consent to the tax, and set up the automated transfer himself. i.e. he had to tax his own region with a decently large duchy share, then the realm would tax that duchy share. The duke could completely avoid the entire issue by just not setting a duchy tax on his region. From what I understand, Riombara used this method of duchy taxes to generate a rather large realm share, didn't it?
The new system does not add automatic taxation, it adds unavoidable enforcement of the crown's right to tax a duchy.
Weekly effort doesn't happen in this game if there is any way to avoid it, it's just that simple.
I agree. Any system which requires players to do some trivial thing on a regular basis will be something that soon fails to get done at all.
