Likely World Area

[TH - The Hunt]

The examples:

A dwarf starts in the mountains. They have high and low mountains. They build a road and have all they need for the indefinite future. Eventually they can trade for grain, but they don't need it for anything until their province is level 3. It turns out the whole thing was effortless for them.

An elf starts in the forest. They have hills nearby, but not in an adjacent province. They can't build a road to the hills without crossing the plains first. It takes them more than twice as long to have the resources they need, even if they have help. They don't really need help, though. While they can't get iron easily, they can build whatever they want, right from the start.

A human starts in the plains. They have hills nearby, but nothing else. They can't build anything, not even roads. It'll take them more than five times as long to gain resources, and there's nothing they can do on their own.

A human has hills, forests, and plains, all adjacent to each other. They can build two roads, have all three resources, and become very rich. But they can't build anything until they find stone. They don't need help, though, because they have all they need to build an army and take it.

[WB - Water's Blessing]

SK: They weren't wars for strategic resources, though, and the corporations weren't more powerful than the kingdoms.

Corporations were in no way more powerful, though. In a conflict between the King of Anuire and Kragen, for example, the guilds would be completely at the former's mercy. Guilds might have been stronger in, for example, Poland, but that was more an extension of a weak crown than a strong guild. Furthermore, the strength of a nation being dependent on the good luck of geography is pretty much the core argument Diamond makes in Guns, Germs, and Steel.

[DM Juan]

Resources and chained trade are probably the only reasons why anyone would want a guilder, and why you don't automatically tax foreign trade to shit, and ban trade routes, and generally run roughshod all over guilders. If there are no resources, in a "create your own domain" game, there is absolutely 0 reason to ever allow a trader to do anything in your lands. You control all trade yourself. It is too profitable, and too easy, to do that.

[DM Juan]

Also you know the map this time, from the start. So the happenstance of not having access to stone... frankly, you could turn 1 - create guild, rule guild, create smuggling trade route (sea) to Low Mountains X

[TH - The Hunt]

What's wrong with any of those things? I feel like those should all be part of play. Someone who lets a guilder in is taking a risk in hopes of a reward--tax income, and an ally. Regents who don't allow guilders will have less risk and less reward. In the long term, landed regents could try to control all the trade themselves, but that has an opportunity cost, and it would make trade between realms more difficult, which would reduce their total income. Plus, a character can specialize in army warfare or naval warfare, but they can't do both at once.

It's less unbalanced if all the races need all the resources, but... to really make it work, all the races would need the same favoured terrain, or resources would have to be disconnected from terrain, or they'd have to be equally useful. Grain is useless at the game start, while wood and stone are by far the most important. Not for buildings, but for being able to build roads to allow early trade.

[TH - The Hunt]

I guess it's odd that there's no particular explanation why rulers don't control the guilds in their own provinces in Birthright. I don't remember seeing any realms that do that, except for Innishiere, which had a special rule that the guilds represented ranger networks, and provided no income. Maybe it's just taboo because it amounts to slavery or communism or whatever.

[DM Juan]

You don't have more income with a guilder. Honestly, they have no actual functional role. You have less income, because needing a second court, and the way domain upkeep works... you are strictly better off not having them. You are even better off offering the Wizard to control all trade, because then he self-funds, and Mr Guilder doesn't need to take his 20% for personal use...

The only theoretical cost to the team is:
1) RP generation
2) Less people on your team, which means less action, but I'd trade a dedicated guilder for 2 wizards, because wizard actions are better than thief actions.

Can be mitigated by having a Ranger potentially control the guilds, or fracturing them between everyone for beneficial Bless effect, with minor RP loss.

[TH - The Hunt]

Less income from mines, and a disadvantage when building or fighting with ships. Hmm. There's still that extra, free espionage action for thief regents that hasn't been made available...

Wizards can already create trade routes using source 7s; they don't need guilds for that... and would have to compete with guilds for trade route slots.

I don't have a great idea for how to ensure no one controls all the guilds in the province as well as all the holdings of another type. Having the guild's income drop to 0 if 'the people are being oppressed' would do it, but multi-class rogues are still a thing, and probably should be allowed to have more than one holding type.

[DM Juan]

Anuire though has the feudal system that frowns on state controlled guilds. Didn't Brosenghae control their own guilds? Endier of course, did as well. Dhoesone had some guilds as well.

[DM Juan]

I will say, on a large scale, the RP loss of not having a thief regent would probably be very big, and wouldn't make sense on eg. Boeruine/Avanil scale. I mean more on the small scale of a colonial game, if you had to cut out 1 character, the guilder/thief is the party to cut... especially in a low population world, where there are probably lots of source-slots available for RP generation...