Complete Guide to Governors

This guide aims to put all information regarding Governors into one easily accessible place. Information in this guide is subject to and will change as the game does and new information is found regarding them.

Overview

The land of Calradia is extremely difficult to tame and maintain, however you don't have to do it alone. With the help of a few good governors, you can change every backwater village into a metropolis to rival the capital.

This guide aims to put all information regarding Governors into one easily accessible place. Information in this guide is subject to and will change as the game does and new information is found regarding them.

To start, governors are clan members and/ or companions that you put in charge of a castle/ town and its associated villages. They then apply bonuses, depending on their skills, to the settlement. For a more in-depth look, keep scrolling.

Basic Stats (of the settlement)

In order to fully understand what a governor can do upon being assigned to a settlement, you must first understand the different factors that constitute the settlement. Also it should be fully noted that a governor can only govern ONE settlement. This one settlement also includes the surrounding villages as well. For instance, you place someone in command of a city with 4 villages. They will govern ALL of that but you can't assign them to another castle as well.

Walls - As the name suggests, it is the level of the walls. Upgrading the walls makes it more of a pain in the ass for attackers to take your castle.

Prosperity - The wealth of the settlement. The settlement will start to produce more, boosts tax income, and increases happiness. However, this comes at the cost of increased food upkeep in the settlement.

Loyalty/ Morale - Makes your people more loyal as the name suggests. If it is high, you'll get boosts to security and prosperity. If it gets too low, you take a hit to pretty much every stat and tax income. When it gets EXREMELY low, your citizens will refuse to build things and will actually damage your constructions, making it take longer to finish them. And in some cases (may not be fully implemented yet), your militia or part of it will actually revolt.

Militia - These are the people from the city that have volunteered to defend it, they consist of local culture troops. They aren't actually loyal to you but to the city. You don't have to pay them or feed them (they can still starve if the city runs out of food but food isn't consumed by militia), they replenish passively, but they can rebel against you if loyalty drops enough. They make up the majority of a town/ castle's defenders and tend to have worse gear than the garrison. (but still better than T1 and sometimes T2 of the actual army)

Garrison - Your actual troops inside the city. You have to pay and feed them but they will never rebel. (Note: if you don't have enough food coming into a settlement; both the militia and garrison will start to starve) Too small of a garrison will lower security and a larger garrison will raise security.
(Every 20 men in the garrison consumes one additional food per day, stopping at 79 for instance will only consume 3 food per day but adding one more will make the garrison consume 4)

Food - Feeds your populace and garrison. Not having enough food will cause every stat to drop and will cause members of your garrison to die. MILITIA DOES NOT CONSUME FOOD.
(You can help your starving populace by ensuring that villagers and caravans make it to their destination or by dumping food in the city marketplace)

Security- How well guarded your city is. High security raises prosperity and will raise relations with notables every once in a while.

Production- How fast things are built in the settlement. Every building requires a certain amount of material to build. This number is how much the castle/ town produces per day. This can be boosted with gold if you don't want the town to passively build on its own.

Hearths (Only in villages) - How many families are in that settlement. Boosts tax income, production, and militia size.

Governor's Culture

The very first thing you should look at when choosing a governor is their culture. If you put someone into a settlement as a governor that does not match with the culture of the native populace, you will take a hit of -2 to the settlements loyalty EVERY DAY in addition to the negative one that you get for the player being a different culture normally. This leads to less tax, lower prosperity, less militia, less production, and even outright revolt in some cases.

Instead, if you don't have one of the correct culture, leave the spot open for now. You won't receive the benefits of having a Governor, but you won't receive the -2 loyalty hit for leaving the spot open (you will still receive the "culture" penalty, just not the "governor culture" penalty) You can still build in the settlement, but you just won't get the buffs that a governor would provide. Focus on building up fairgrounds and other structures that improve settlement morale. When you get enough per month for it to not matter if you have the wrong governor culture, then you can place them in the settlement.

Also, governors of the correct culture type provide a +1 boost to the settlements loyalty and remove the negative effect of the player ruling clan being a different culture.

Traits

It is currently unknown if traits actually impact the settlement. i.e. cruel, generous, brave, etc.

Skills

For the most part it, it is unknown whether or not the skill number itself actually impacts the settlement. However, perks in each of the following skills provide bonuses to settlements that the governor is assigned to:

Charm improves relations with notables in associated villages and in the center itself, and gives a security or loyalty boost.

Leadership improves the garrison and militia by training better troops, increases loyalty and security, and makes fair grounds and morale boosting structures more effective. Also, the skill number itself increases the max garrison in the settlement.

Trade can allow the governor to toll caravans or villagers that enter the settlement, increases production or trade income, and increases resource production in nearby villages.

Steward improves tax income, farm production (villages that produce grain and livestock produce more), prosperity, village growth, mine income (villages that produce ore get this buff), siege holdout time, and decreases the amount of time it takes for a village to recover from a raid.

Medicine improves prosperity or village growth and can either increase loyalty or make sanitation buildings provide a prosperity bonus. The skill number decreases the time it takes for the garrison to recover from wounds.

Engineering makes construction finish faster, makes walls stronger (more resistant to artillery), and makes default projects more effective. I.e irrigation provides more food.

Two-handed improves garrison size or reduces garrison wages

Polearms improves morale of defenders in a siege.

Crossbow decreases the hiring cost of crossbow units.

Leveling These Skills in Governors

Before you try to make someone a governor, you should first try to level up that person's melee and ranged stats. That way, they level up and you can assign the focus points they gain into stewardship, engineering, and others. In addition, there is a perk in the two-handed skill. While minor, it saves you 5% on garrison upkeep. Later on, when your garrison consists of quite a few max tier troops, this will save you hundreds per day.

The most important skill to level (IMO) for a governor is stewardship. Luckily, leveling it is easy. You will need quite a few denars as you will basically purchase a large quantity of every type of food that you can get your hands on. Then you will assign the one you want to train as clan quartermaster. In the bottom right, you should see the "food variety" morale boost. When it is +6 and +7, your quartermasters stewardship should go up daily. Within a year, their skills will be over 100.

The other skills are a lot harder to get, so I would prioritize choosing someone to train that already has high leadership and charm (and engineering, if possible). In order to get these other skills leveled, assign that companion to lead a party. As they lead it, they will slowly gain leadership skills passively, tactics from winning battles, medicine for having wounded troops and healing them, roguery for selling prisoners, engineering if you bring them into a siege, and trade as they sell gear to cities.

This last part will be extremely slow and tedious, you can get away with just having a steward if you want.

Best Governors to Recruit

By far the best character to recruit as a governor is extremely easy to get. This being your brother in the main questline. In order to have him join your clan permanently, you must rescue him and your other 2 siblings in the main questline after Neretze's Folly.

Although he is not the best in any particular field; what makes him great is that he is a blank slate. Where as, other characters in the game will have spent many of their perks on something that isn't related to governing. You as the player can spec your brother out in any way you see fit. Moreover, he has a pretty high skill rating in almost every important skill for governing. Thus making him a jack-of-all-trades.

Other than him, you should place any companion with the title "the Engineer" in charge of your settlements if they haven't been built up. They will basically double the construction speed and allow you to build up your settlements so much faster.

Lastly, a good governor can be earned through marriage. Target unmarried nobles that are actually in charge of armies. They typically have higher stats than the nobles that are sent to govern settlements by the AI.

Closing Remarks

I hope you found this guide to be helpful, I will be updating it whenever I can as new information is discovered and new updates are made public.

If you did find this helpful, please leave a rating and a favorite; it took me a very long time to compile all this information and every rating makes it worthwhile.

If you have any questions or anything to add, feel free to comment!

[Fact Checker]

Even if the game has updated , your guide gives a great large scale overview. For anyone finding this in modern times , Korte of the Khuzaits makes a great governor and apparently is hard coded to have her hand offered to your brother. Out of 10 campaigns she married my brother 8 times. So if you make it happen upon getting your brother from the quest line , she should be available for marriage

[✪︎DΞ︎AD_iwnw]

@K Lou no it is not currently up to date, thank you for taking an interest though. If I do update this guide, it will be after full release. I stopped updating it as I got busy IRL and the game updated too frequently

[K Lou]

is this guide currently up to date?

[✪︎DΞ︎AD_iwnw]

I will be updating the guide for 1.5.2 soon. A lot has changed since release and this guide is out of date currently.

[✪︎DΞ︎AD_iwnw]

@Kurt No, I imagine the perks will change in the future but players with governor perks have no effect. This is because clan leaders can not serve as governors.

[Kurt]

When the governor position is vacant, are governor bonuses NOT applied, or are YOU the governor and YOUR skills are used for the bonuses?

[Veltjens01]

Very Helpful one could only hope that someday alliences can be made within the game..

[✪︎DΞ︎AD_iwnw]

Updated

[✪︎DΞ︎AD_iwnw]

Thank you to everyone that has left a rating, shows me that you guys found the guide useful

[YoungPontiff]

thanks bro! was having trouble with this.