I thought it was pretty straightforward that more knights meant more total gold? Who challenged this and how?
The more complex question was rather if more regions meant more total gold, assuming the same number of knights. I've argued a few times that, in many cases, taking up a new region can actually make a realm poorer. This is usually the result of a realm that is at its optimal density, or below it, gaining regions of below-average wealth value, leading to the transition of knights from high-wealth high-efficiency high-tax city estates to low-wealth low-efficiency low tax border lordship.
1) Having lands designated as "wild" is generally worse than having them made into a vacant estate
2) Having more knights is generally strictly better than having fewer, on a gold-per-peasant basis
I'm not sure if this was brought up before, but I think that worse than wild lands would be empty estates where the lord kicks out any noble that picks them up, because they are just meant to increase his revenues and aren't really meant for others, due to them being more profitable to him than wildlands would be.
