It begs the question, though: if it never was a problem for all these years, why is it now?
I'm not sure I understand. Why is
what a problem now?
I have to say that, while I supported the change back in the years, with hindsight, I think it was a huge mistake. The communistic system is a lot more fun. The new system creates way too much income disparity, with most knights not having the funds to recruit as much as they could, a good portion of nobles depending on a meager income from a border/unpopulated region for months if not years before said regions become productive, and city lords that gain ridiculous incomes, way more than they need, and that often hoard it even during war time. Overall, armies are funded much more poorly than before, which limits the potential for war, and makes a lot more wars into stalemates as realms have a hard time funding large enough mobile forces to counter enemy militia in fortified locations.
While I agree with your premise (the income disparity created by the estate-based tax system), I disagree with your conclusion (junk it and go back to communism).
I believe that the estate system is fundamentally a good one, and creates the right feel of medieval feudalism for the game.
However, I do believe that we need to provide more ways to allow
players to balance the system out more. One of the big ones is part of the "duchy infrastructure" concept I came up with years ago, before we had gotten rid of the (disastrous) previous estate system: basically, create a pool of income for the duchy, which is then divided evenly between regions come tax time (or even just between regions that don't choose to contribute to the pool, instead—thus allowing rich regions to only give, and poor regions to only take), thus allowing a generous Margrave to subsidize the Counts in his duchy. That gold would go straight into the tax pot of the receiving region, and thus be distributed among its knights in proportion to their estate sizes.
It's not the same thing as the communistic system. But I don't think that's a bad thing.
