Managing a town's economy

Hey guys, I just have a few questions about what controls a town's economy and ways to make one's fiefs more prosperous.

How does tax inefficiency work? What can be done to remedy this?

Does selling loot to specific merchants in a town make them richer or more productive over time? Example: will selling all of my looted weapons to the arms merchant make him richer or a better weaponsmith in the long-run? Would he still benefit if I sold him a commodity he doesn't produce, such as horses?

Do garrisoned troops have any effect on a town's income? Do they affect the bandit spawns in surrounding areas?
Similarly, do prisoners have any effect on a town's/castle's income?

I know keeping caravans and villagers safe is important to keeping trade flowing, but what else can be done to help a town out?

I think doing quests for the guild master will help the prosperity of the town.  Increasing the prosperity of the town's villages might help too, but I'm not sure.  One way of doing that is doing quests for the village elder, and I think also building improvements in the village and keeping them save from bandits.

But I'd like to know more about this.  In fact, I'd like to know all about this, this is a good question.

Tax inefficiency is a way to prefent someone from grabbing all those fiefs for themselves. The more fiefs you have, the higher your tax inefficiency will be. But there is a max to the tax inefficiency. So there are two solutions: or distribute your fiefs to vassals, and have just a few remaining, or have really a lot of them, and top that max.

monnikje said:

Tax inefficiency is a way to prefent someone from grabbing all those fiefs for themselves. The more fiefs you have, the higher your tax inefficiency will be. But there is a max to the tax inefficiency. So there are two solutions: or distribute your fiefs to vassals, and have just a few remaining, or have really a lot of them, and top that max.

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My idea is to give my vassals the castles and keep the villages for myself.  That way I don't need to bother with defending all over the place, and just cash in.  I don't know if that will make my vassals too weak to be of any good use?  But I can always give troops to my vassals.  My idea is to keep training up elite troops and giving those to my vassals (keeping a portion for myself of course), since the AI never seems to have a good number of elite troops.

I speak of "my idea" since I don't have much experience with running my own kingdom yet.

Nikomakkos said:

I think doing quests for the guild master will help the prosperity of the town.  Increasing the prosperity of the town's villages might help too, but I'm not sure.  One way of doing that is doing quests for the village elder, and I think also building improvements in the village and keeping them save from bandits.

But I'd like to know more about this.  In fact, I'd like to know all about this, this is a good question.

Click to expand...

I've done so many quests for the guildmaster at Dhirim that my popularity rating is now 75 and the town is "Devoted" to me. Despite, yet the town's prosperity has not increased beyond "poor", despite the fact  that I've held it for two game years and no one has ever captured it from me.

Aqtai said:

Nikomakkos said:

I think doing quests for the guild master will help the prosperity of the town.  Increasing the prosperity of the town's villages might help too, but I'm not sure.  One way of doing that is doing quests for the village elder, and I think also building improvements in the village and keeping them save from bandits.

But I'd like to know more about this.  In fact, I'd like to know all about this, this is a good question.

Click to expand...

I've done so many quests for the guildmaster at Dhirim that my popularity rating is now 75 and the town is "Devoted" to me. Despite, yet the town's prosperity has not increased beyond "poor", despite the fact  that I've held it for two game years and no one has ever captured it from me.

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Well, I do know the following about town prosperity from reading TweakMB:
It decreases when it's under siege (33% chance of losing 1 point every day while under siege). And loses 5 points when it's captured.

It increases whenever you get visited by a caravan. Every time a caravan stops the town gains 0-2 points. The less prosperous it is, the higher the chance of getting 2 points.

I have no idea about how quests work, but I think it's the same village quest prosperity boosts (4).

If you're playing diplomacy, you can cut taxes, but for native that isn't an option.

Village caravans give less prosperity than town ones iirc. Defend caravans and you will get better prosperity. Also a good idea to give away castles since nobles do pretty well, however your lords get money from fiefs so the more they have the faster they'll recover from defeats with new troop hires.

Villagers actually detract from town prosperity. They have no money to buy with, so the just end up taking money, IIRC. The more villages nearby, the poorer the town.

Rewjeo said:

Villagers actually detract from town prosperity. They have no money to buy with, so the just end up taking money, IIRC. The more villages nearby, the poorer the town.

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Can anyone confirm this?

this would suprise me... since well the wealth of the villages around a town, and their productivity has a direct effect on the town. Keep the villages wealthy, the trade routes and give low taxes (only diplomacy mod) and see the prosperity rise

There was a big topic on that not very long ago. Which says something, considering that I'm pretty new to the forum. Search function.

And of course you may have noticed that the towns with the wealthiest hinterlands seem to also be among the poorest. I did.

Rewjeo said:

Villagers actually detract from town prosperity. They have no money to buy with, so the just end up taking money, IIRC. The more villages nearby, the poorer the town.

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Stop giving incorrect info. This must have been the post you are refering to, and it's much more complex than what you just said:

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,121303.msg3333539.html#msg3333539

And it's still only the testing exerpience of one player, no facts.

Look two posts below that.

Since that thread I went over most of the economy code in great detail and found plenty of support for the observations I noticed. In fact, the developers seemed to agree since they upped the max number of caravans big time in the last patch.

Here's what I found:

Villages gain wealth from trade with towns. Each 3500 gold they make from a town (or a player buying goods), nets the village 1 prosperity point. Towns will only gain wealth from caravans or a weekly bump of 700 plus prosperity times 15.

Towns can gain or lose one point of prosperity once a day depending on the prices in the town. In the "center_get_goods_availability" script function, each good's price is examined based off assumed consumption and added into a "hardship_index" for each town. This hardship_index is used to create an "ideal_prosperity" (in function "get_center_ideal_prosperity"), and if the towns prosperity is above this it will lose a point of prosperity (part of the simple_triggers 24 area).

Which is unfortunately what happens every day for towns with many villages, because the villagers are driving the prices down.

So, unless the town is visited by at least one caravan a week per two villages, it will generally constantly lose prosperity over time.

To make things worse, when you take a town all of the caravans in route to it will divert to the closest town to them. This could mean the captured town will be out of those caravan's circuits for weeks.

So basically, Towns and villages are ****ed?

Charlie Brooker said:

So basically, Towns and villages are ****ed?

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The only people making money off this war are the smiths 

@ Mallissin


Awesome work! I really needed your information.


Prey tell, what do you mean by:

Mallissin said:

Towns will only gain wealth from caravans or a weekly bump of 700 plus prosperity times 15.

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Does it mean, that you can make a daily increase by buying stuff for

B = 700+15*W ?


So to say, if it were at W = 45


B = 700 +15*45 = 1375.

And if it were 2*B, would it rise twice the point?

Apologies for the bump, but after extensive searching I have yet to find a satisfactory answer on how to raise the prosperity of my villages (Or castle, which also has a rating for some reason.) Does buying goods help or hurt the village? What about selling things? What KINDS of things? Or does it even matter? How long do you have to wait before the town will offer another quest? (I ask for quests far more often than I actually get them.) Will certain quests (Like the cattle quest) just end up hurting your village more?

It's very discouraging to tirelessly protect a village, and do everything I can think of to develop it, and then see it go from Average to.. Poor. *facepalm*

Buying their goods help, if their amount of money gets over 3000/3500 (can't remember which one) the money is removed and a prosperity point is added. In addition, make sure the Town where they travel to daily has good trade with caravans. Caravans bring goods from town to town, and villagers take the goods from the Towns to the Villages. If the Town has lots of shortages, so will the villages. Doing quests also improves prosperity a bit.

Quests have a global countdown timer, not a timer per village.

Remember that all fiefs have an "ideal prosperity", temporary buffs (or debuffs) are possible with the above methods, but it will always slowly crawl to the ideal prosperity. The only method to increase the ideal prosperity itself, is building a Mill.

In short: The economy system kinda sucks.

Captain_Octavius said:

Buying their goods help, if their amount of money gets over 3000/3500 (can't remember which one) the money is removed and a prosperity point is added.

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Is this really still the case? I thought I read somewhere that this no longer happened. I could be wrong (And so could the person that stated it.)

In short: The economy system kinda sucks.

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Now on that point, I think things are the same.