my max National Morale bonus for Luxuries has been +50 (6x) which reflects 2x each of the other three commodities.
this sounds about right... the best clarification yet. [&o]
Clearly part of the problem is the over burdening of the word luxury. It's used at least 3, and probably more, ways. In Labor Allocation we see that "Luxury = Spices + Luxury". So Luxury the trade item, Luxury the labor allocation and Luxury the morale bonus all very different inclusiveness. [X(]
Simply, I think the manual could have used more professional technical writing. Even though it's 94 pages, for a game this complex, that scales down to about the 6 page flyer that comes with an ordinary RTS. Before you even worry about the hidden mechanics, there are even many screens that are woefully under explained. [:(]
OTOH, 3 cheers for a game that's deep enough to provoke this complaining. [:D]