Quote Originally Posted by RedKnight View Post
We have all seen the threads saying that Rice Exchange or higher is broken, due to its need for rice.

So attached find a comparison of Market, versus a fully built Ninja chain. Conclusion:
  1. If you have a spare slot, always build a Market (and nothing higher)
  2. Never build slots, just for the halibut
  3. No point here. Choose Ninja line or Buddhism/Christian, as you will, if you have more slots already made.
  4. Reminder: Don't build slots for the halibut.
Discussion?
RK
TWS2_Wealth_Info.xls
I thing you are mostly right. However, there is a few complications.
Trade guilds might be worth it if the town has particularly high wealth (trade goods + decent fertility) and will have a metsuke to watch over it in any case - this would be regardless of the food effect. The food reduces growth in all provinces, but that loss of wealth is taxed with 20%. The growth boost + wealth addition in the "wealthy" town gets taxed at 35%+

It is not uncommon to get more than 2k of income out of the towns where I have maxed wealth and Metsuke sitting in them. Since you get 5 of them, the contribution is 10k+ to the whole wealth.

This effect should not be ignored since I find that often your tax is something like 40 - 50% from your top 5 income provinces when you might have 20-25 provinces in total.

I am not sure if there is an easy way to calculate these things, but I would start by assuming 5 metsuke of around 5 stars average in the overseeing towns skill, sitting in the top 5 wealth provinces (usually these would have from 3-6k wealth each depending on how far the game has gotten).