There has been a certain amount of confusion regarding the rebalance numbers that are now showing up. The dev team would like to officially dispel some of it.
First of all, the primary purpose behind the rebalance has been to give the gold and food values for all the regions a basis in logic and the inherent statistics and other aspects of the regions—things like region type, population density, and such. Before now, every single region had its values assigned manually and arbitrarily—numbers were just made up on the spot. Not only does this make sure that every region on a continent follows the same rules and gets to both the same benefits and the same disadvantages, it makes it vastly easier for the dev team to readjust values overall when and if we detect a systematic problem. We simply need to adjust the algorithms behind the rebalance, and rerun the part of it that actually sets the updated values to the regions. As an example of this, it has allowed us to significantly increase the food produced on Dwilight (which was too low) and decrease it on Beluaterra (which, with the loss of several cities, was much too high) without much trouble.
Second of all, the dev team has been concerned that the rebalances in the past have moved the game much more toward homogeneity. There was becoming too little difference between being Lord of a city and being Lord of any other region—particularly with the separation of Dukeships from Lordships of cities. This may make people feel more equal, but it's not good design for a game of medieval nobles and knights. Inequality is an inherent part of the system, and should not be played down to the extent that it was. We believe, for one thing, that the general homogeneity has led, in part, to the apathy of rural region lords in selling their food. They make plenty of money already, and mostly don't have knights to fun: why shouldn't they just sit on their piles of food forever?
Third, it is important to note that all these changes are being made based on nominal population—the maximum population of a region, not its current population. So any attempts to compare the changes in two particular regions based on their state right now is pointless unless they are both at maximum population.
We understand that these are, in some cases, some pretty drastic changes. We also understand that, in some cases, they are leading to some undesirable situations—such as regions that, even if they sold their entire food production for 50 gold/100 bushels, would never make enough to even support a Lord with any serious income. We are working to find good solutions to these situations that do not involve breaking the system. In some cases, regions of this nature will simply have their populations adjusted so that they can support a real economy. In others, we may have to find other solutions. However, rest assured, we do not intend to leave any region useless.
Furthermore, there are other changes already either in discussion, in development, or otherwise in the pipeline that should help to fix or ameliorate a number of issues related to this. For instance, there is a general consensus among the dev team that we need to lift the food price cap—at least to 100 gold per 100 bushels, and possibly higher, or removed entirely.
