Majesty had tax collectors, a market economy, and a hands-off governing policy: You funded creation of main buildings, but they were or were not occupied based on demand for those buildings. You put up rewards for actions, but those were or were not acted on based on whatever your citizens were doing. You funded (from treasury) upgrades to goods producers, but nobody got those upgrades until they went and purchased those things from their own money.

You had a little tax collector dude (or dudes) that went around knocking on doors and collecting a % their on-hand assets (which you set). You could exclude areas if they were too far away, or too dangerous. Your tax collector(s) could be ambushed, which frankly was the primary reason to build defenses.

And, you could tolerate some thievery so that you could occasionally extort money from the thieves guild in sort of an unofficial tax collection of unreported income.

All that in a fantasy game. It can be done.

I believe there's a modern revamp version for mobile: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/majesty/9nblggh1850p