Once your own kingdom is born or you rise in fame and renown with an existing faction as a vassal, you will have an opportunity to get fiefs. Fiefs can either be cities or castles.
Once you own a fief, you can select the ‘Manage Town/Castle’ to access the management screen.
Acquiring a City
There are two primary ways to gain a city for yourself. First one being as simple as launching a successful siege and taking over it.
If you happen to be a vassal for another ruler, it is quite likely that they will reward you with a settlement you have fought for.
The alternative way is to use ‘influence’ within your faction to try and sway your liege to handing you the city.
Usually this comes from supporting your faction in other ways, such as supplying food to armies and ‘donating’ troops to settlements belonging to other lords.
Each city has a total of 7 different stats all of which you can influence via upgrades.
| Settlement Tax | A simple number showing you the amount of taxes you will earn per week. |
| Prosperity | A number showing how well your settlement is doing economically. |
| Construction | This number shows how fast any building will build at a daily rate. You can hover over the buildable icons to see their construction cost. |
| Security | How safe your settlement is to prevent infiltration, prisoner escape, corruption and banditry. |
| Loyalty | How loyal the populace is to the ruler. |
| Food | The amount of supplies you gain per day. |
| Militia | Base amount of troops to defend against raids and sieges. |
Each stat can be influenced by other stats. Generally speaking, the vital stats are: Food, Loyalty, and Security.
A city that has a population that is well-fed and feeling safe that becomes prosperous is possible, but a starving and dangerous city would probably never amount to anything more than a drain on your resources.
Upgrade Villages (Food)
Food is a stat that relies on villages that are bound to the city, thus improvements to villages will directly improve the food stat.
Building Orchards and keeping the villagers happy will grow your stores.
It is also possible to brute-force the food stat by just buying large quantities of food and dumping them into the city you are managing to kickstart a recovery.
Garrison Troops (Security)
Security depends on the amount of troops garrisoned within the city. This stat directly influences loyalty.
Food and Security (Loyalty)
Fed and safe people are loyal people. It is as simple as ensuring the populace have bread and being able to sleep tight knowing that their homes are reasonably defended by strong warriors.
Loyalty stat depends upon the Food and Security stat. Doing quests for people inside the city can also increase loyalty.
The City’s disposition towards it’s ruler will affect the number and quality of troops available for recruitment in both Villages and Cities.
Abundance of Food (Prosperity)
Prosperity is the symptom of success. Having high prosperity means the people have money to spend and trade is good.
It also influences how profitable Workshops are within the city, which can generate even more money for its owner.
To improve Prosperity, having a surplus of food and certain construction projects such as the Aqueduct will slowly improve prosperity.
The higher the prosperity, the more food the city will consume!
Gold and Skill (Construction)
Statistically: Construction is influenced by Loyalty, but having a governor who has high skills in Engineering can get the ‘Construction Expert’ perk can have a huge effect on building speed.
Injecting gold into the reserve will double the construction speed as well.
Food and Buildings (Militia)
The Militia stat represents the amount of low-quality troops that are defending the settlement from raids and sieges.
Functionally, they are similar to Garrisoned troops, with the exception that it is not possible to remove them from the settlement to supplement your armies.
The militia troops themselves are quite terrible in combat. While it is possible to upgrade them via kingdom laws, the improvements are very marginal and it is far more efficient to just garrison additional soldiers.
Projects
All settlements have an assortment of projects that can provide powerful bonuses to each stat, with the possibility to upgrade them further.
Most projects are straightforward and should be prioritized as the situation calls for. If the city itself is struggling to feed itself, look to build Orchards.
Should the city be wracked with poor morale/loyalty, a Fairgrounds may be what is needed to raise the city’s spirits.
A primer on what each settlement project:
| Fortifications | Increases Garrison Capacity |
| Garrison Barracks | Greatly increases Garrison Capacity |
| Training Field | XP Bonus to Garrison Troops |
| Forum | Bonus to your Influence |
| Workshops | Bonus to Construction speed |
| Militia Barracks | Bonus to Militia Troops |
| Fairgrounds | Bonus to Settlement Morale |
| Marketplace | Bonus to Taxes |
| Aqueducts | Bonus to Prosperity |
| Siege Workshops | Bonus to Wall Repair Speed |
| Lime Kilns | Bonus to Village Production |
| Orchard | Bonus to Food |
While Influence is a very powerful resource to get, it is not essential to build up a settlement so it is arguably more prudent to prioritize food, security, and maintaining a healthy garrison of fresh troops.
Daily Defaults
Next on the list from settlement projects are the various edicts you can impose on a town or city. Simply put, they are small bonuses you can choose to take effect when the settlement has nothing else to do at no additional cost.
Currently there are only 4 ‘Daily Defaults’.
| Build Houses | Gives a bonus to Prosperity |
| Train Militia | Provides extra Militias |
| Festival & Games | Improves settlement Morale |
| Irrigation | Bonus to Food Production |
Normally you would not want to mismanage your settlement to the point where you are depending on tiny edicts like these to fix your settlement. However, they are still useful in the event that you take or retake settlements that have been sieged and looted.
Governors
You may choose one of your companions or your spouse as your governor.
However there are some things to consider before electing a governor to a city.
Skills
A skilled governor can provide you with amazing boons and buffs to each of the settlement’s stats.
The Stewardship skill provides the most direct bonuses with ‘governor’ tags to the traits.
Trade and engineering also bring bonuses to tax and construction respectively.
Currently it is not possible to assign specific traits to companions. This means that if you want the most out of a companion’s skill it is recommended to try and find companions who are already high in Intelligence and Stewardship skills.
Culture
Fairly straightforward but can often be overlooked easily. It is debatable if a mediocre governor of the right culture can work better than a highly skilled governor of the wrong culture, but it is undeniable that having the wrong culture can incur some bad penalties to your settlement if left unchecked.
Simply put: If you assign a governor who is a Vlandian to an Aserai settlement you will suffer settlement loyalty.
This can be fixed by electing an Aserai native as governor or raising Loyalty to at least level 3.
