Province Development
Province Development measures how built-up a settlement's surrounding territory has become — from a raw, untamed frontier claim to the beating administrative heart of an empire. It's tracked on a scale of 1 to 10, and it touches almost everything else a settlement does: how many people can live there, how fast its workshops run, how quickly armies can cross its hexes, and how long its projects take to complete.
Development Levels
| PDL | Name | Base Workshop Maximum | Terrain Modifier |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Untamed | 1 | ×1.0 |
| 2 | Sparse | 1 | ×1.3 |
| 3 | Inhabited | 2 | ×1.7 |
| 4 | Rural | 3 | ×2.2 |
| 5 | Cultivated | 4 | ×2.8 |
| 6 | Developed | 5 | ×3.6 |
| 7 | Thriving | 6 | ×4.8 |
| 8 | Prosperous | 7 | ×6.5 |
| 9 | Heartland | 8 | ×9.0 |
| 10 | Imperial Hub | 9 | ×13.0 |
A province doesn't drift through these stages by accident — Untamed is genuinely raw, barely-claimed wilderness with a single workshop slot to its name, while an Imperial Hub has a base allowance of nine, and a Terrain Modifier so high that even modest territory becomes a population powerhouse.
The Base Workshop Maximum shown above isn't the whole picture, though — a settlement's actual workshop cap also grows with how much territory it controls:
Workshop Maximum = Base Workshop Maximum (from the table above) + 1 for every 4 hexes controlled
A Heartland (PDL 9) settlement with its base of 8 slots, holding 20 controlled hexes, reaches a real maximum of 8 + (20 ÷ 4) = 13 workshops — considerably more than the table alone suggests. This means territorial expansion and development level are both genuine, independent paths to a larger production base, rather than development level being the only thing that matters.
Population Cap
A settlement's population cap is built from three pieces:
Population Cap = (combined terrain contribution of every controlled hex × Terrain Modifier) + 1,000 flat base
Capitals receive a further bonus on top of this, scaling directly with development level:
Capital Bonus = Development Level × 1,000
This is why a Level 10 capital towers over an ordinary Level 10 settlement despite sharing the exact same Terrain Modifier — a fresh province at PDL 1 gets nothing extra for being a capital, but an Imperial Hub capital gets a flat +10,000 added on top of everything else. The gap between "important city" and "true seat of power" widens enormously as development climbs, by design.
Project Speed by Development Level
Development level changes how long different kinds of projects take, and not all project types move in the same direction:
| PDL | Expansion Project Time | Settlement Project Time | Army Project Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ×0.75 | ×1.5 | ×1.5 |
| 2 | ×0.80 | ×1.4 | ×1.4 |
| 3 | ×0.85 | ×1.35 | ×1.35 |
| 4 | ×0.90 | ×1.3 | ×1.3 |
| 5 | ×0.95 | ×1.25 | ×1.25 |
| 6 | ×1.0 | ×1.2 | ×1.2 |
| 7 | ×1.05 | ×1.15 | ×1.15 |
| 8 | ×1.1 | ×1.1 | ×1.1 |
| 9 | ×1.15 | ×1.05 | ×1.05 |
| 10 | ×1.2 | ×1.0 | ×1.0 |
Settlement and Army projects get steadily faster as a province develops — established infrastructure, skilled labour, and mature supply lines all make routine work easier the more built-up a place becomes.
Expansion projects run the other way, getting steadily slower. A raw frontier claim expands into empty land easily — there's nothing there yet to coordinate around. A fully developed Imperial Hub, by contrast, is dense, established, and far more complicated to extend any further; pushing its borders out takes considerably more time and bureaucratic weight than founding a settlement did in the first place.
Movement
Better-developed provinces are faster for armies to move through:
| PDL | Movement Cost Modifier |
|---|---|
| 1 | ×1.0 |
| 2 | ×0.9 |
| 3 | ×0.85 |
| 4 | ×0.8 |
| 5 | ×0.75 |
| 6 | ×0.7 |
| 7 | ×0.6 |
| 8 | ×0.5 |
| 9 | ×0.5 |
| 10 | ×0.5 |
Properly built roads and infrastructure cut movement cost by half once a province reaches Prosperous — beyond that point, further development doesn't speed things up any further. See Movement for how this combines with terrain and rivers.
Resources and Trade
| PDL | Resources Modifier | Horses Modifier | Workshop Capacity |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ×0.30 | ×1.5 | ×0.7 |
| 2 | ×0.45 | ×1.5 | ×0.7 |
| 3 | ×0.60 | ×1.5 | ×0.7 |
| 4 | ×0.75 | ×1.25 | ×0.8 |
| 5 | ×0.875 | ×1.0 | ×0.9 |
| 6 | ×1.0 | ×0.9 | ×1.0 |
| 7 | ×1.05 | ×0.8 | ×1.0 |
| 8 | ×1.1 | ×0.7 | ×1.05 |
| 9 | ×1.15 | ×0.6 | ×1.1 |
| 10 | ×1.2 | ×0.5 | ×1.2 |
General resource production and workshop capacity both climb steadily as a province matures, eventually exceeding their baseline rate entirely at the highest levels. Horses tell the opposite story — a raw, untamed province actually produces them more readily (wild herds need empty land, not infrastructure), and that advantage fades the more developed and built-up the territory becomes.
Upgrading to the Next Level
Advancing a province to its next development level requires meeting all of the following at once, then completing an upgrade project:
| From PDL | Population Required | Hexes Required | Project Length | Stone Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 → 2 | 1,200 | 3 | 240 cycles (2 months) | 100 |
| 2 → 3 | 2,400 | 6 | 480 cycles (4 months) | 175 |
| 3 → 4 | 4,500 | 9 | 720 cycles (6 months) | 250 |
| 4 → 5 | 9,000 | 12 | 960 cycles (8 months) | 325 |
| 5 → 6 | 15,000 | 15 | 1,200 cycles (10 months) | 410 |
| 6 → 7 | 24,000 | 18 | 1,440 cycles (12 months) | 520 |
| 7 → 8 | 36,000 | 21 | 1,800 cycles (15 months) | 680 |
| 8 → 9 | 51,000 | 24 | 2,160 cycles (18 months) | 880 |
| 9 → 10 | 72,000 | 27 | 3,240 cycles (27 months) | 1,200 |
Imperial Hub (PDL 10) is the ceiling — there's nothing beyond it to upgrade towards. Every requirement climbs steeply at the top end: reaching Heartland from Prosperous alone demands 17,000 population, 24 controlled hexes, and the better part of a year and a half of construction. Pushing a province to its absolute limit is a genuine late-game undertaking, not something achieved in passing.
Development can also move backwards. A settlement that's captured loses 1 Development Level immediately, regardless of how it fell — see Sieges for the full list of consequences a conquered settlement suffers. A thriving Prosperous province doesn't reset to nothing the moment it changes hands, but losing a level on top of everything else makes reconquering and rebuilding a genuinely costly affair, not just a change of flag.
