I've just started playing after reading the manual and I'm just not getting how trade routes, the market and the goods stockpile works.

1) The manual states that assigning too many craftsmen will reduce their productivity. One of the clan ring tells me we can support 12 craftsmen with our current trade routes; is this the optimum number the manual refers to? I presume if I assign more than 12 then the extra goods just go into my stockpile, but the production efficiency is lower and some clan member s will be unhappy?

2) So my craftsmen are crafting goods, these goods are being traded through 3 trade routes and I have a goods stockpile. I think of trading as giving someone one type of resource in exchange for another, as happens in a trade mission, but I'm guessing this is not what happens with trade routes and markets. What exactly is going on here... are goods just being turned into more goods? Are the trade routes and the market a multiplier for the raw goods the craftsmen are producing and is it this multiplied value that ends up in my goods stockpile?

Or is there actually "trade" going on and the goods my craftsmen are producing are being turned into something else and if so what? And if this is the case, how do I grow my goods stockpile?

3) Towards the end of my first year, just before Sacred Time, my goods stockpile had 170 goods. After Sacred Time, it was down to 97. What are the goods being spent on? The only reference to maintenance I can find in the game is in the Magic screen where one ring member tells me we need 5 goods per year to support our shrines. Is there a regular amount of goods the clan consumes per year and if so how do I find out how much that is?

DISCLAIMER : NOTE THAT I COULD BE WRONG

Trading/crafting is not very clear, but the way I understand things, goods are created and traded for other goods with other clans. That's the reason affecting craftsmen to new materials you discovered (iron, high quality clay, gemstones...) will give you more goods overall : you craft highly sought goods that you will then exchange for more "everyday life" commodities. That's also the reason why having more trade routes allows you to support more craftsmen : Most of their production is traded at the market.

1 ) Your optimal number of craftsmen indicates that having more of them will return you more goods TOTAL, but less goods PER CRAFTSMEN. You overproduce and lose efficiency, even if you get a stronger output (and it might make your people grumpy, since they are peasants first).

2 ) Your market and traderoutes will bring you more goods (unless you have a very severe risk of starvation, in which case I think getting some food is possible). I don't think it's linked to your stockpile, which represents the supplementary goods that you don't need for your markets nor for the everyday life of your people.
Your stockpile is used for trade missions, for maintenance, sacrifices, gifts, wergilds... I don't think it's used for markets (I didn't notice a difference in my market output after a big purchase, for example.

3 ) Strange... Normally, you should pay the maintenance of your shrines and temples (you must be careful when building temples, since that maintenance cost can become really bad, especially the cattle sacrifices), but 73 goods is really much. How many temples have you got? Did you agree for an annual gift or sacrifice to some other entity than your gods? I think annual tributes for other clans are cattle only. Did you get raided that winter? (Farm-burning or buying back prisoners especially can be quite crippling to your goods stockpile)
Most other loss of goods should get you a message, or a decision : Building something, sacrifices, fines, thievery, sending a big trade caravan, buying a magic item, bribing/gifting, etc... None of those are "hidden"
Did you recruit weaponsthanes? Those are expensive, too!

Note that your clan will sometime engage in trade without asking you first (for example trading goods for food, in case of starvation), but they will send you a message about it.

An important thing in KoDP is that you will not get absolute control of every parameter, as you might in some other strategy games or economic sims. You set policies more than you push numbers, and the actual implementation is done by the people of the clan. Your choices WILL have an impact (In your case, it's rather easy to transform a clan into an economic powerhouse if you really push for that goal. Especially if you make Issaries worship a priority), but it's often difficult (and immersion breaking) to try to optimize everything. The exact effect will tend to be fuzzy.

Thanks for the reply. I'm still a bit confused though. Sorry if I'm being a pain, I appreciate the help.

1) Right, so the number the ring member quotes based on trade routes is the optimum number correct? It's beyond that that output per craftsman suffers?

2) This is still confusing to me. You say the trade routes and market are not linked to my goods stockpile. But surely the stockpile is all that matters since that's what's used for everything? Otherwise what's the passive trading good for (i.e. what am I getting out of it)? The way I imagined what the abstraction was representing was: my craftsmen produce some goods, then they trade these good along the trade routes (or the market, still not clear on the difference), for more goods than I started with, which all go into my stockpile. If this isn't the case, what are the trade routes good for, the craftsmen could just produce the goods I need to run the clan (I know the mechanics don't allow that, I just want to understand what the game's trying to represent).

Ultimately I assume the details don't matter. I assume the more trade routes and craftsmen I have, the more goods I will end up with in my stockpile. It's just that I'd like to understand at a high level what's going on.

3) This was my first year in an easy game, so nothing interesting happened... no raids, no agreements, no notifications. I built one temple (the game started with two shrines built and I expanded one into a temple) so I don't expect that much maintenance increase. I did hire 4 or 5 more weaponthanes but I believe their cost is deducted when I hire them. This drop from 170 goods to 97 literally happened from last season of the first year to the first season of the second year, with the yearly transition and Sacred Time being the only things in between. I would imagine that the remaining 97 goods even took into account whatever my 12 craftsmen produced and traded.

I do appreciate it's not like a Paradox game where you get to know every statistic, but I do want to get a general idea of how the economy works... I'm missing something pretty crucial if I can't figure out where my goods are coming and going :)

Issaries can essentially turn nothing into something at a market (think of the stone soup story). So markets (and trade routes) simply add to your stockpile of goods.

So do your crafters, in a way that is far more tangible to the average person (who can watch auntie with the loom or pottery wheel).

In a nod to actual economics, you can’t just have everyone in the clan create goods. At some point, the 100th wool sweater just isn’t worth as much as the first ten.

Of course, goods represents all sorts of stuff, not only cloth (which was a unit of exchange in pre-Christian Iceland) and fine jewelry but also raw silver or imported spices. So it’s created by crafters, profit from traders, and accumulated plunder.