To respond to the actual system proposed, first I want to summarize from the prior post to make sure I understand this; there are many changes and it’s very possible I’ve missed something important for proper calibration. A typical domain is going to earn 4gp (labor) +4gp (tax collected with no net morale adjustment per change above) +1gp (extra tax to balance high morale from being a part of a senatorial realm) -1gp (tax paid) -1gp (maintenance) -2gp (expected cost of favors owed to senate and liege) = 5gp/family monthly income with no garrison, liturgies, or tithes. If he intends to have a garrison, he loses an additional 2gp/family per month per 1gp of militia raised (1gp to pay them and 1gp to offset the morale penalty from having them called up), as well as losing revenues from those families; if we generously assume he can just hire 1gp of mercenaries and skimp by with only that force in a typical month, he’s reduced to 4gp/family. Said ruler will be a full level lower than the ruler of an equivalent domain run RAW, but his income is also lower so he won’t take a greater PA penalty. He can be assumed as a typical ruler to have CHA 0, Leadership, and PA -1 to balance to net domain morale 0.
I am not sure why you’ve waived the penalty for failing to pay liturgies or tithes. Both are already the responsibility of the landowner to pay, so they shouldn’t affect freeholds regardless.
If he is in Borderlands, that model doesn’t need to change substantively (because he employs 1gp/family of mercenaries + 2gp/family of militia credits). In Outlands, he can pretty reliably expect one of the duties asked of him to involve troops, so he should avoid morale penalties there as well. Do keep in mind though that mustering a militia takes a week, so relying heavily on a militia delays response times significantly.
In terms of population growth, the only substantial difference here is that there’s a -1 domain morale penalty per 186 families per hex. This is an interesting mechanic that I do think has some potential and I will reflect on some more. Presumably this does not apply to the population of urban settlements?
Assuming it does not, Tarkaun Zeodare’s domain of 30 hexes can stably support all of 5580 families without taking a morale penalty from population; only if she is willing to take a -3 penalty to offset her truly exceptional talents could she support the normal amount that might be presumed of a domain of that size. If we look at a more typical imperial domain, of 12500 families across 16 6-mile hexes, she is going to take a -4 penalty from overpopulation which will fully offset her abilities as functionally the greatest ruler possible. The expected result then is wild population swings in core territories based on the population of the ruler - an Empress like Zeodare will see population rise to such heights over a matter of years, but a more typical replacement (say CHA +1 and Leadership) will see that population nearly halved due to more limited leadership capacity, over about 8 years before it restabilizes. This ultimately seems to create the same effect it was created to address - tons of people are appearing or disappearing based on domain morale, as driven by the ruler’s CHA and Leadership. We can accept the same solution, that on average this evens out across the scale of a continent, but in that case this seems a more complicated way of getting there. It also seems moderately more work to determine steady-state population if I want to build a large realm and then let it run at steady-state in the background. Last, it also introduces new population swings whenever a ruler expands their domain (because that drops the population density, raising their morale). I do think there’s some interesting potential in using these penalties to reflect crowding if part of a domain is temporarily occupied by enemy forces. A short term spike in population density leading to sweeping plagues is a pleasant outcome.
I do not follow precisely what you are changing for urban settlements, apart from that it is ultimately converting them from cash sinks into cash sources and inverting their role in gameplay. Under your model, greatest wealth comes from overseeing large settlements, rather than ruling vast lands, the reverse of RAW. The gameplay and worldbuilding consequences of this will be extensive; urbanization rates can be expected to rise sharply. If instead urban settlements are assumed to impact the population density morale penalty, that gets worse yet.
More generally, the extent to which this impoverishes rulers is hard to assess without working through all the details of urban settlements and higher urbanization rates (probably close to 50%, the maximum that can be supported; urban investment is strictly superior if it is made more profitable than agriculture), but initially appears to be considerable. It also dramatically decreases the viability of large field armies. These are probably a reasonable set of outcomes for medieval rulers, but I’m not persuaded it would be appropriate in e.g. the Principate.
If you do end up making a spreadsheet that runs such domains, I would be interested in seeing it. Easier to experiment and test out concepts that way.
I do think there are some issues with domain morale and associated population growth broadly, specifically if you assume long periods of peace and prosperity as opposed to the tumultuous times that ACKS is tuned for. Woad Warrior on the Discord in particular has experimented with that a fair bit and shared some good thoughts; some of that spilled onto the forums here. The conclusion there of having a natural 2 do the worse of inflicting -2 to current morale or resetting current morale to base morale has seemed a good and concise way to address that, though it is primarily focused on preventing rulers of typical CHA from maintaining high morale through liturgy spending.
I’ll continue to think on this and let you know if anything else comes to mind.