Having to pay agents in advance is spoiling the game for me a bit.

[invi]

I'm at a stage where I really need to be careful with me gold, and income is minimal so it means cutting back on agents where possible.

It just seems weird that you have to choose at the *start* of the week which agents you will pay, regardless of whether they do any work for you or not.

It means that each week you just have to guess which skills will be in demand. If you chose not to pay your witch and then someone asks for a witch's help, you're out of luck. It would feel a lot more natural to choose to pay those agents once you assign work to them?

I realise that 'tough decisions' is the theme of the game, but this doesn't feel like you're managing a kingdom -- it's just pure guesswork, and missing out on important benefits because you guessed wrong doesn't feel good.

Just a bit of feedback in case anyone is listening.

[Rooty Tooty]

So wile the pay option is of course a different difficult choice that has obvious consequences. And this game is about making tough choices. However we have to assume that these generals wont even listen to the king unless he pays up front. What garbo world building honestly.

If I had to guess the reason was to encourage you to utilize the generals more, as you do need them to be going out constantly anyway. But it is very obvious that making players choose big monetary decisions before knowing what you will use the generals on is an unfun one.

[Nick]

This was what annoyed me the most. I'm in a bad spot because I have little money, so I have to gamble on which agents will be needed (I got them wrong most of the time). And If you get it wrong you're punished with a contentment reduction, which makes you earn even less money.
Once you have to gamble on which agents will be needed, it's all downhill, you will most likely never recover unless you savescum to know in advance.

[paerarru]

Think about it not so much as paying your agents but as funding them.