Prosperity is a stat in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord that is specific to how well your town or keep is doing financially. Unsurprisingly, it is directly tied to the tax revenue generated by the settlement, as well as its citizens’ loyalty. Beyond these results, prosperity also affects how quickly your town is able to build new construction projects; how well it defends against sieges; and the success of any workshops you own in the city.
Learning how to increase prosperity in Bannerlord is key to freeing your lord or lady to travel Calradia expanding your kingdom, without worrying about if your town will fall into ruins while you’re away. Below, we cover how you can raise your prosperity score and establish your property as the blossoming metropolis it should be.
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How to Increase Prosperity in Bannerlord through Settlement Improvements
The most straightforward way to increase prosperity in your settlement is through town projects, which are improvements you make to your properties to raise their scores in various attributes. There are two types of improvements: the ones you build once that give permanent daily bonuses; and the active improvements that remain in effect until you change them.
‘Aqueducts’ is the town project that directly affects prosperity with permanent daily bonuses, providing a “+1 bonus to prosperity change” per day. The active improvement for prosperity is called ‘Build Houses’; this project will add +1 to your town’s prosperity score per day as long as it’s active. The +2 bonus may seem small, but it’s necessary to offset any daily prosperity penalties and keep the number going up instead of slowly draining.
Increasing Prosperity Through Villages
Villages affect prosperity by the loyalty of their key citizens and their ‘hearth’ ratings. Increasing villager loyalty is really a matter of completing their quests whenever they pop up since each successful quest can increase relations by 5-7 points. Beyond that, you can increase villager loyalty by making the lands around the villages safer. This includes such actions as routing bandit parties who roam the lands and especially clearing out bandit hideouts.
Using Policy to Increase Prosperity
Virtually any policy that affects settlements has a chance to affect prosperity indirectly. You should also consider that each policy in Bannerlord comes with its own penalty, and some of these penalties might take away from your settlement’s prosperity score directly. To gain prosperity the ‘Imperial Towns’ policy is the only one that you can take without concern over negative prosperity impact.
According to its description: “Towns held by the ruler clan gain 1 loyalty and 1 prosperity per day.” Conversely, you should avoid the following policies if you want to keep your prosperity score as high as possible: Crown Dury, War Tax, Serfdom, and Road Tolls. Each of these policies carries a penalty that lowers the settlement’s prosperity score from 0.2 to 1 per day.
Increasing Prosperity Through Perks
Since your player character will never act as governor in Bannerlord, only one perk affects your prosperity score for the main character. Activating ‘Nourish Settlement’ will enable 4x prosperity growth while your character waits within its walls, a boon for lords who like to return home to replenish often.
For companion governors, a high Steward rating will yield the best results, since perks like ‘Pristine Streets’ and ‘Clean Infrastructure’ both add a continual +1 daily prosperity bonus. These are both very high-level Steward perks (level 150 and 200, respectively), so it’s a good idea to find a companion with a high rating from the beginning and put all their experience bonuses in the Steward stat. Acting as governor will continually level this skill, so they should be an established prosperity generator in a matter of years.
Now that you know how to increase prosperity in Bannerlord, you should notice how each of the settlement stats feeds into the other. You’ll be able to build town projects faster, which will keep your citizens more loyal and well-fed, which in turn will contribute to greater prosperity.
