Settlement

Establishing Settlements
Settlements are established and led by the Aristocracy, the Mayors, Magistrates, and Barons. It is possible to transition from landed Gentry to Aristocracy by following a path of development for your land, growing it from one kind of settlement or another.

Exposition Settlements
Before Exposition nobility will use a web interface to select their land which has been pre-generated. The Kings will choose their Kingdoms first along with the rest of their land (Duchy, County, etc.). Then, in respective order, the Dukes, Counts and Mayors and Barons. During the selection period you will learn a bit about the land - natural resources, city and population size, neighbors, etc. The majority of the starting infrastructure will be there already; this may include, but is not limited to, roads, water supply, gathering spots (taverns/inns, town hall, etc). Existing buildings cannot be moved or replaced as NPC's and other players will own these as homes and businesses. While you cannot move or replace existing buildings, you will be able to use Exposition Points to add additional buildings and structures. This is, in fact, the goal of Exposition; that land owners will use their Exposition Points to expand and build up their settlement and not just use the points for direct personal gain. As a Mayor or Baron you will also be able to use Exposition Points to customize and expand your settlement.

Kings/Queens and other members of the nobility will choose one of the pre-generated cities as their capital. This will be where their family is originally from, where they grew up and where their seat of power is.

Creating a Hamlet
To create a hamlet you must meet 4 requirements:


 * At least 3-8 connected parcels of land.
 * One building on each parcel.
 * Enough beds in those buildings for 10 characters.
 * A well.

Once these requirements are met the owner(s) can decide to make it a Hamlet. Everyone within the three to eight parcels of land get water automatically when on the land. That means while your thirst still goes up, you won't die of dehydration. At the same time, having a house and a bed means your fatigue won’t drop while you’re on one of the three plots of land.

Hamlets are not registered. So aside from the benefits already described they provide no additional benefits. You can call your hamlet whatever you want but it won’t show up on any maps unless you mark it yourself. If you want any benefits beyond this, you have to expand

Settlement Ownership
Ref.:

Mayors of settlements (towns+) are effectively a "guild leader" with a town/city council (aka officers) who have the potential to collectively own more than the mayor's settlement ownership rights. A baron on the other hand has less potential to be overthrown compared to a mayor because they theoretically have more resources as a baron due to their increased responsibility as a military stronghold.

Mayors have a controlling interest in the settlement, but all land in a settlement is by default owned by the settlement itself or has been sold back to NPCs as privately owned land.

Land Ownership & Ownership Rights: Creating a settlement is done by "donating" parcels of land in exchange for ownership/voting rights (like owning shares in a company). The land you contribute is now owned and managed by the settlement. When land is annexed (added to the settlement), it increases the value of the settlement, and whoever contributed the land gets additional voting rights. Once the land is part of a settlement, it can be sold or leased to gain revenue for the settlement, but it remains part of the settlement.

Upgrading Your Settlement
If you expand your collective land up to a minimum of nine (9) parcels in more or less a square, build a Tavern, and grow the number of community members from 10 to 25, your Hamlet becomes a village. In addition to the benefits provided from any of the other structures you build on the land, having a Tavern on your land means that with fields, farms, or another source of raw food on your land your Tavern can begin to service the village, preventing starvation whenever you’re within the presence of the settlement. As with hamlets, villages can be named whatever you want, likely won't show up on maps, and don't have to be registered with the county. But if you register, you get certain benefits. Namely, the Count will likely want to build a road, put it on the maps, and if you build structures with crafting stations that are "open", then NPCs from nearby areas might travel and join your village. They may then purchase land nearby to help grow your village.

As you continue to grow your land, build new structures, and expand the community size it will follow a similar pattern.

Settlement Growth
As your hamlet grows into a village, into a town, etc. so too must your infrastructure grow. The well we first built only covers a 3x3 area. So as you expand, you'll need to put in more wells, fields/farms for food for the taverns, windmills, etc. Of course, any plot of land along a river automatically gets water. So no need to build additional wells there.

Once you get to the point of having a town there is a Town Charter that is filled out. The person "in charge" of the town is the Mayor and everyone else are members of the Town Council. This is similar to Guild Leaders and Officers in other games. Generally speaking, the Mayor of the town will be the person who owns the most land under the town. But it doesn't have to be that way. Whoever registers the town charter with the county is the Mayor, regardless of whether they actually have the most land or not.

Attracting residents
The residents of Elyria (NPC's) are driven to action based on their own motivations and needs. A lack of resources such as food, water, security, or work may act as an impetus for the mobilization of the citizenry towards regions and towns that can provide for them these necessities. Elyrian migration happens much in the same way as those in the real world. The creation of new industries and opportunity can bring crowds in while war and famine can drive others away. Exposition provides the players of the game to create and prepare these key infrastructures while developing their respective settlements for the benefit of the people in order to attract more people.

Responsibilities of the Aristocracy
As a hamlet/village, there's no special UI and they basically just work with their fellow hamlet or village elders to decide where to put plots of food, wells, and other small buildings. That’s it. Beyond that they can play however they want.

As a Town and above, there's a Town Management UI which lets you see your boundaries, zone parcels of land for leasing (residential, commercial, industrial), monitor settlement resources and taxes, and lets you identify where you want different types of structures to be built. This is, as you guessed, a table, much like the Count has, which goes in the Town Hall. Through this table, people can see the "town plan". And can work to bring the mayor’s vision of the town to life.

Once you hit City-level and above, and add a Courthouse, it becomes possible to customize the local laws using the desk at the Courthouse. As with the lower-level tiers, aside from defining some laws for your city, using the City Planning Table to identify where buildings should go, viewing the resource tables to ensure you’re getting the right resources into the town, and collecting taxes, you can otherwise play the game as you normally would.

With each tier of government comes an extra couple man-hours of management a week. Hamlets maybe 1-2 hours per week spent managing/meeting regarding the hamlet, villages 2-4, towns 4-6, cities 6-8, and capitals 8-10. Remember, at the point where you’re running a Capital, you’ve got 250+ people residing within your domain. These are of course estimates. Those people who prefer to be more hands-off can delegate many of the duties to others, and those who prefer to be more involved can walk the settlements making improvements themselves.

Military Settlements
Hamlets, Villages, Towns, etc. each have a military counterpart. These military counterparts work much the same, except they are defensive structures, typically smaller, and are funded at least in part via contracts with Dukes. These are currently referred to as Outposts, Garrisons, Forts, Keeps, and Strongholds.

Like their civilian counterparts, they require the introduction of different buildings such as Lookouts, Barracks, Ramparts, etc. The leaders of Forts, Keeps, and Strongholds are, as you might have guessed, Barons instead of Mayors/Magistrates. Beyond that, the functions of the military structures are much the same as their counterparts.

Like a hamlet, an outpost can be built anywhere. Same with a garrison in comparison with a village. When you go beyond that, you sign a contract with the Duke that guarantees you resources in exchange for building certain structures, keeping a minimum number of people residing there, etc.

That said, civilian establishments can have military structures as well for defense. Nothing prevents you from building those things. It’s just that lacking a contract between the Duke and a settlement leader, requires it to remain a civilian settlement.

Selling land
If a villager was to own 20% of a village's land, they could sell that land to another character without land, thus making someone else an Elder. If that land was sold to an existing Elder, they may become a majority shareholder, and would gain more control.

Similar politics apply at the town and city levels.

If you own multiple parcels, you could sell some of them. But you can't sell sections of a parcel, only lease.

The Settlement Owning Land
Ref.:

Incorporating a settlement means that land is transferred from the owner of the land to being owned by the settlement, becoming the property of the settlement. The town council generally votes on town-wide matters, with votes weighted by how much land was contributed to the settlement. The more land that is donated to the settlement by you, the more your vote counts.

The settlement can choose to hold the land or to sell it, either back to the original owner or to someone else. If it is sold to others, it is still incorporated, but is now privately owned. The settlement loses control of what happens on the property, but can collect taxes based on the sale of the land and can be used by the settlement as a source of income through property taxes.

For the settlement to grow, it can either purchase land surrounding the settlement from the Count as incorporated land, or they may purchase it from private individuals to become an add-on of the settlement. If the land is purchased in this manner, the seller may potentially get a vote on the town council.

While settlement parcels may be bought up by the mayor, doing so will cause the settlement to lose revenue through the loss of taxes.

Roaming Settlements
It will be possible, when ocean travel is possible, to have ships that can act like settlements in the same way that wagons can. This is important because it allows players to make longer voyages while not having to manually maintain thirst and hunger. Just like wagons, not all ships are roaming settlements and they aren't specific to one particular tribe.