Village/castle/town improvements

[Vigil80]

I was wondering about improvements, and wanted to see what others' experiences were.

Do improvements persist if a location is conquered by another faction? If you re-conquer, will they still be there? Any way to tell if improvements benefit the AI as well?

Do AI lords ever build improvements that you've noticed?

Have some of the original M&B improvement issues been addressed, such as the mill only providing a one-time bonus to a village? (Hardly worth it, in that case.)

 

[SPD_Phoenix]

The improvements persist after they are built. Some improvements do benefit AI such as the windmill and watchtower. I don't know about others since AI may not need or not subject to some of the effects such as messenger post warning, prisoner tower, manor, school.

AI lords don't build improvements.

The windmill gives 5/100 prosperity boost when it's finished. Then, it raises the ideal prosperity by 5/100 every time the prosperity is calculated for that village. In effect, it does give you a permanent 5/100 boost. This is based on both the original M&B code and WB version 1.1105 code.

 

[Sevrun]

umm, could you put that in terms a non-programmer understands?

 

[TuranianGhazi]

AI lords don't build improvements.

This is the single largest problem for me with fiefs because I want to, ideally, have mill and watch tower built, and in villages where I've done harm, ahem, a school built ... that takes time however ... and prolongs the terrible tax inefficiency. But otherwise, just handling it out to the AI Lords who never build any improvements is no go either.

So my strategy so far, although expensive and time-consuming, is to have at least a prisoner tower in every castle before I give it away as a fief and have at least mill and watch tower in every village before i give it away as a fief ...

However my lords get rowdy (I'm looking at your Belir, you ungrateful SOB who already has 3 more fiefs than anybody else and is still complaining!)

 

[SPD_Phoenix]

umm, could you put that in terms a non-programmer understands?

Windmill always gives you 5 points prosperity bonus.

 

[kefka95]

umm, could you put that in terms a non-programmer understands?

The game performs an internal calculation on a regular basis for the "ideal prosperity" of every center.  This is important because the game does a number of things that cause the prosperity to continually "gravitate" toward that ideal prosperity level.

So while a mill only gives a one-time immediate bonus of 5 prosperity, it also permanently increases the ideal prosperity by 5.  Since the game is continually adjusting toward that ideal prosperity level, over the long-term a mill really does increase the overall average prosperity by about 5%.