I'm not really happy with the way the stronghold works.
Some stuff happens in it via the passage of time, like sleeping or wandering all over the world. And other stuff happens in it via turns, which happen every time you finish a quest, I believe. That means there are a limited number of turns in the game, eventually those turn events will stop happening.
You collect taxes on turns, not every turn, maybe every other turn. And you can collect more taxes based on the prestige level of your stronghold. However, the guards you've hired to protect your coffers during tax collection are paid every week.
So if you spend a lot of time in-game going around traveling, making small progress on quests here and there, fighting, resting, you might end up paying your guards multiple times between getting any money out of the stronghold. Just a drain on funds for no reason. And someday when you run out of quests but want to keep spending time in the world, the guards will be useless and should be ditched.
Even early in the game it might actually be worthwhile to fire all your guards and go out exploring, getting quests up to the very last step before completion, then hire a bunch of guards and turn all the quests in at once, triggering a bunch of turns right away.
I get that logically it makes sense for guards to be paid weekly, but then, it doesn't make any sense that you would go collect taxes multiple times in the same day. They should all be operating on the same time system. And I understand that if taxes were collected based on the passage of time, players would cheese this and travel from one side of the map to the other to rack up money...essentially I think the guards should be paid on turns as well.
Besides that, there's other weirdness too...I think events that let you deal with prisoners happen on turns, but prisoners can escape at any time, based on the passage of time. So it's possible to capture a prisoner and lose them before you even have a chance to do anything with them. I just had that happen to me.
Also, given that:
a) there are a limited number of turns in the game
b) you earn more money per payday turn with more prestige
c) you gain prestige by restoring stronghold buildings, which costs money and time
If you want to get the most money out of the stronghold, the best thing to do is to unlock it and then complete no quests for a very long time, just go around getting as much money as you can, do the Endless Paths of Od Nua, etc. Pay for a stronghold upgrade and wander the map back and forth until it completes, pay for the next one, keep doing that until you've gotten as much prestige as possible. Then you hire guards and start questing again.
Weird, weird system.
