Town and Village Prosperity

[Seekster]

Im starting to pull my hair out trying to find out exactly what factors affect the prosperity of towns and villages. It seems obvious that one factor is that villagers and caravans make it to the towns safely. I have noticed that villages that are close to bandit hideouts for example do seem to struggle a bit. However there are the periodic changes in prosperity must depend on far more than that because keeping the roads safe doesnt seem to be the only factor.

For example in a game I am playing right now I have made sure that the area around Tihr is safe. I have killed off all bandits, looters, and deserts I can find and I periodically escort villagers and caravans to their destination. Also the Nords are not currently at war with anyone. After about 3 in game months of doing this it still says Tihr is struggling.

I looked at the game concepts in the Notes and it talks about economy. In one paragraph it says buildings like tanneries and such can help with prosperity (though as the note at the end of this paragraph says these buildings have not yet been implemented which by the way looks really professional in a non-beta game.)

Also it says something about Villages needing grain, meat, tools, and fabrics to prosper. I did once go and give some tools to a village and its prosperity did seem to improve a bit (the description of the village did change, it no longer said tools were broken) but it was a really small change and might even have just been random.

I am curious about what everyone else has found out about how to increase the prosperity of villages and towns. I am really close to just writing it off as mostly random.

 

[original]

Hey dude,

Here is nijis' post about how posperity works. He's a developer.

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,102876.msg2577645.html#msg2577645

But according to him, he deliberately made it hard for the player to affect the economy.

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?action=post;topic=104550.0;num_replies=0

He does plan to add more options to improve prosperity like tanneries in a future patch.

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,102876.msg2577577.html#msg2577577

But what he didn't mention is whether or not giving tools to villages will really improve villages. The village descriptions also seem more descriptive than M&B1. Do the descriptions really mean anything, or are they just expanded text that don't mean anything?

Do the villagers really need food to improve productivity?
Do they really need tools to improve their productivity?

 

[original]

I will give you some of my data.

I am currently a vassal of the Rhodoks, and I have tried my best to increase Veluca's prosperity from Poor to Average by helping the shortages. Jelkala and Yalen are also Poor. It never increased despite my best efforts.

But all of a sudden, Jelkala and Yalen reached Average! The only thing I did was buy fish from both of them to sell to Veluca, since fish is an item shortage. Both Jelkaka and Yalen have 10k gold in the goods inventory.

So does gold in the inventory play a part in prosperity?

 

[Seekster]

Thanks for the info. From what I was able to gather its really hard to get prosperity above average due to this hardship index thing. It sounds like to keep all villages from eventually becoming rich the hardship index tries to make it so most villages will drift back towards average. I guess the most I can do really is to just keep the roads safe.

As for the dialog with villagers and elders/guild masters, it seems like most of it is meaningless, a bit like a placeholder for something that was never implemented and seeing as how for the most part the dialog hasnt changed since original M&B I doubt it ever will mean much. Every now and then you will get a rumor about how you can buy a certain item cheap at place x but those are rare and I question their accuracy.

Really the only reliable money making schemes I have found in trade is to buy flax from Sargoth, Iron from Curaw, or Date Plants from around Shariz and sell them pretty much anywhere.

 

[Psykobob]

As for the dialog with villagers and elders/guild masters, it seems like most of it is meaningless, a bit like a placeholder for something that was never implemented and seeing as how for the most part the dialog hasnt changed since original M&B I doubt it ever will mean much. Every now and then you will get a rumor about how you can buy a certain item cheap at place x but those are rare and I question their accuracy.

Yeah their tips are useless. Last time I tried to follow one with salt and I made about 10$ profits on a 250$ items....