(I read through the first two pages and didn't see something specifically addressing this, so apologies if it has been a thread in the recent past.) 
 
Before I get into this, I would like to say that I have never been a huge fan of this series. Mr. Peter is great at weaving up our hype and anticipation yet the games always fall flat. They are too short, too easy, and not a lot of meat to stories or quests. I believe I have beaten all three Fables in less than 20 hours a piece, and I did all the major quests I could. Yet, even when I say the series isn't good I have played all three because I like what they can be and what they represent to developers wanting to do something new and fun outside of the regular mold (but sadly never living up to their expectations). 
 
My question is this: How did Brad and Ryan only have between 100,000 and 400,000 people left at the end? I didn't do nearly half of the things that would constitute killing a lot of Albion citizens to make life better for everyone involved in the present time and I still had over three and a half million alive at the end.
 
Maybe they just sucked at the game, or didn't play the last part right? I understand the frustration with the choices you have to make; they are very counter-productive to what you want to do as a Hero. But... dunno, I usually side with the staff. Except for this time. I think they all got too angry at it.

If you tried to be nice and didn't go out of your way  to have a crapton of cash their experience seems easy to replicate.

I managed to save everyone with all the Good options, and it wasn't that hard. I had to wait a while for money to pile up, but I decided to hunt all the Gnomes and the 51 keys I could get before the ending, along with wrapping up a few other side quests and opening a few Demon Doors. Didn't really even feel like I was waiting for the money.

As long as you buy a few businesses at the beginning (or near it), you should be pretty well set by the end if you don't rush through it. I can see how they got what they got, but eh...I guess it's just my style of playing that made it seem so smooth.

" If you tried to be nice and didn't go out of your way  to have a crapton of cash their experience seems easy to replicate. "

" I managed to save everyone with all the Good options, and it wasn't that hard. I had to wait a while for money to pile up, but I decided to hunt all the Gnomes and the 51 keys I could get before the ending, along with wrapping up a few other side quests and opening a few Demon Doors. Didn't really even feel like I was waiting for the money.As long as you buy a few businesses at the beginning (or near it), you should be pretty well set by the end if you don't rush through it. I can see how they got what they got, but eh...I guess it's just my style of playing that made it seem so smooth. "

They had the issue because they invested nothing in a properties empire.  If you played Fable 2 and remembered that no properties = no money, thought "hey I might want a good bit of money down the road so I don't have to worry about it", or even just wanted to score some achievements you worked on buying houses and shops.   They simply didn't care about any that, put no effort into it, did not play anywhere close to completion.  Heck you get something like 4 mil gold just for being king and having all silver/gold keys.  Ultimately they did what 90% of all people who don't like Fable but play it anyway do, put in the minimum possible effort just to speed beat the game and say "I did that" then complain about what they didn't like.

I had to let my dude sit doing nothing for the time it took me to watch The Good The Bad and The Weird, and Macgruber, before I had enough gold to fill the treasury all the way, just because I wanted to be good.

Maybe they had a lot of gold on their character and reached the point of no return before they could add it to their treasury.

"They had the issue because they invested nothing in a properties empire.  If you played Fable 2 and remembered that no properties = no money, thought "hey I might want a good bit of money down the road so I don't have to worry about it", or even just wanted to score some achievements you worked on buying houses and shops.   They simply didn't care about any that, put no effort into it, did not play anywhere close to completion.  Heck you get something like 4 mil gold just for being king and having all silver/gold keys.  Ultimately they did what 90% of all people who don't like Fable but play it anyway do, put in the minimum possible effort just to speed beat the game and say "I did that" then complain about what they didn't like. "

I'm pretty sure from the way Brad was talking on the podcast that he had the cash on his character but didn't realize that he passed the last chance to move the money from his personal account into the kingdom's account before it's too late.  I was replaying for the undieing achievement (I had stupid deaths on my first play through when I was trying to power up weapons) and while I was intentionally evil, I was paying strict attention to the fact that when you have 120 days left, you really only have one window to transfer the funds and can't do it on the "hey, tomorrow is when we celebrate you're 1st year as king" day.
 
I was also shocked that doing pure evil choices as King, you still only get about half the money you would need to save the kingdom.

" I'm pretty sure from the way Brad was talking on the podcast that he had the cash on his character but didn't realize that he passed the last chance to move the money from his personal account into the kingdom's account before it's too late."

" @Karkarov:   Or maybe there are some people who like Fable and have no interest in bullshit economy and business-owning gameplay... for example people who played the first Fable which had none of that (aside from one house in each village).  Crazy, I know.  Some people want to play the Action-RPG like an Action-RPG. "

I was buying property as soon as I was able to and re-investing money into it right through the game.  The only way you're gonna end up saving everybody if you make all 'good' choices at the end is by a) knowing where the cut off is, and b) wasting a load of hours to let money pile up.  There isn't enough actual content to kill that time (other than perhaps scavenger hunt bullshit), so I bought most of the property in the game and then left it on overnight.  Any game that ever makes you consider doing that has already failed as far as I'm concerned.  If I'd known how awful the end of the game was going to be then I wouldn't have bothered.
 
Structurally, Fable 3 is a trainwreck of a game.  Most of the content is merely bland.  The mission where you get shrunk down just made angry - you don't get to mock the rest of the genre by making reference to 'spawning a standard hollow man encounter' when your own game consists of nothing but standard hollow man encounters.