Popularity

Popularity is a key concept for peasant acquisition and castle management.
==Overview==
Popularity is a metric that governs how quickly or slowly peasants will enter or leave your kingdom. Many varying factors can increase or decrease popularity, which are added up to determine the pace of monthly popularity gained/lost.
If the current popularity is above a threshold value, peasants will spawn to fill in vacant housing, else they abandon their workplace and the castle. A maximum of four peasants are however unaffected by popularity, meaning they are always available.
==Default factors==
Popularity is mostly affected by the following aspects:
*Food: every peasant must eat, and therefore must be supplied food. Higher rations are welcomed by the peasants, at a cost of faster consumption. Conversely, lower rations mean negative popularity, while people eat less or no food at all. Normal rations are the default size, having no effect on overall balance.
*Taxes: every peasant had to pay tax for the lord, and they were never fond of it. The populace can be forced to pay you gold, making you less popular as taxes are raised. It is possible to reverse this and pay the peasantry gold as a gift from the treasury (called 'bribes'), gaining popularity this way.
*Religion: people can be provided church services in order to strengthen their faith, increasing popularity.
*Ale coverage: operating inns can make your peasants hang out and consume ale, increasing popularity.
==Additional factors==
These aspects are present in only part of the Stronghold games.
*Fear Factor: building all types of entertainment and/or punishments can sway the productivity of your peasants and your popularity. Determined by the numbers of good and bad things built, the former motivates people to rest, thus slowing down production, while the latter forces working and making the player more fearsome for them.
*Crowding: if more peasants are present than the population, the castle suffers crowding and popularity loss, depending on the homeless peasants' number.
*Scripted events: various programmed events on a non-skirmish map may occur randomly or conditionally, which may affect popularity. Welcomed events include marriages, arrive of a jester and travelling fairs, while unwelcomed ones are lion attacks, plagues, bandits, etc. Some bad events have an immediate drop to popularity at once.
*Rats, gong and crime: these unwanted nuisances appear with the everyday life of a medieval castle. Gong can randomly pile up and spread disease, while criminals are occasionally converted from the workers. They continuously decrease popularity until dealt with.
*Entertainment: some events (like the travelling fair and the jousting tournament) are periodically organized in order to entertain the populace. While they are on-going, they grant you large popularity. These must be built to take effect.
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Category:Mechanics