One of my players has asked whether you can build multiple towns in a single domain. Can you? If so, what are the limits? I told him that one per hex seemed reasonable to me, but he seems to want to be able to build multiple towns, but have restrictions on where they can be placed.
Also, do towns have their own leaders for morale purposes or do they always have the same base morale as the domain they were built in? (They clearly have an independent current morale score, but I’m unsure about base morale/leadership.)
If towns have their own leader for base morale, do they need to have only the town leader, only the domain ruler, or both to be actively adventuring to get the “actively adventuring and secure” growth bonus?
Finally, is the “actively adventuring and secure” growth bonus a percentage of the current population or a percentage of the population increase? e.g., If a village with a population of 150 rolls 10 new families, does the population increase to 190 (150 + 10 + 20% of 150) or 162 (150 + 10 + 20% of 10)?
IANAA, but the wording of the urban settlement rules would suggest that you can only have one settlement per domain. Adventurers can only manage one domain and a single urban settlement within that domain, anything else has to be held by vassals. If he wants to build towns in every hex, each hex has to be held by a different vassal who also controls the town within the hex.
The leader of the town is the same as the leader of the domain it is built in.
I am not sure if the land held by vassals benefits from the top ruler adventuring, I would go with whatever motivates your players to keep adventuring.
The growth bonus should apply to the current population, i.e. the 190 example.
For simplicity, you can only really manage one domain and one urban settlement in the domain. That isn’t to say that lesser towns aren’t sprinkled through the domain (which might be practically a necessity for a region to be “civilized”), but limitations on the rulers time and attention prevent more direct rule, so they’re rolled up into the land income rather than separate urban settlements unless a henchman is assigned to rule a sub-domain. One could also define a number of close settlements as a single urban settlement, I guess.
Nerdnumber1’s assessment of the abstraction is spot on. There can be lesser towns which are rolled into the land income (this is how all hamlets are treated), or there could be several smaller towns which are represented for game purposes as one larger town - e.g. “the greater metropolitan area”. (In ACKS terms, I would probably be described as living in the urban settlement known as The Triangle even though there are actually Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh as three separate towns.)