Yep, the Village Life cards definitely add too much stress. At the current values, the “Bereavement” card will give a new villager enough stress and coins to retire after their first year in play!
Something feels off about paying normal living costs of 1 coin per year from the Village Life card, and then paying 1 coin for tax. Maybe it’s just because it’s different from the process I’ve been using in the past. But having something good happen but the villager still losing 1 coin feels wrong. I really wanted to process each villager only once through multiple steps at the end of the year, to streamline the process. But I think conceptually it will make more sense to the players if there is one processing for Village Life, one for Expenses, one for Taxes, etc. I think I can’t have more than three times through, though. Maybe one for Stress (including Village Life and support) and one for Coins (including expenses and taxes and retirement)? And then one for Scoring.
Conversely, the rule I’ve been considering to add support and stress to each villager based on the end-of-year moral scoring feels really good. It creates a sense of community between the villagers, which I suspect will draw the players in as well.
Gah. The game feels far too long, and I keep adding things.