The leveling system for crafters, while reasonable for town progression, can occasionally be an annoying roadblock. Specifically, for those jobs which are required for later ones (trapper, herbalist, mason, blacksmith), One alteration I feel would be useful is a mentor system: perhaps the lower-level crafter can be prioritized when picking who should craft the item, and they could also get a boost to their exp leveling, as your town already has knowledge of higher-tier crafts. This could even be used for soldiers as well, although it is less necessary and more possible to grind exp for them the way it is.
Just so you know (as I didn’t think of it for a long time ) is to turn OFF the job selection for your higher level crafter during the time the low level one is trying to reach a certain point.
It works well, although once I just demoted my level 6 crafter to a worker temporarily, until the other was high enough. It seemed that the job selection unchecked box didn’t turn him off enough that time, but that was an earlier version of the game.
I would love to see an “apprenticeship” system where an experienced crafter (level 4+) takes a new crafter (level 2 or lower) under their wing – it would be an investment in the new guy since the more experienced crafter is busy working with them on low-level projects rather than building high-level stuff, but it would pay off for those of us who want to get another high-level crafter more quickly.