cropsford

Cropsford will never actually become a thriving town in the game, as much as that would be amazing, to see your actions have consequences, a la Fable II, you never actually see anything happen.

All the characters in the game continue a linear path that they most follow as directed in the actual encoding package within the game that the creators made. Those codes are processed and make said path. In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the people inside the game are constant unless you kill them, some only become unconscious because they are needed for certain dialog in the game, while others can be killed on command, but they will not return. So say, in a hypothetical sense, you kill Master Trainer of Heavy Armor, Pranal, at any point in the game. You kill them, they will not return in your game unless you start a new save. The character is completely dead by your action, so since you killed Pranal, you can no longer use him to train in the Master Heavy Armor stat.

With that being said, the towns you help will not elevate to greatness or decline into darkness, it is on a linear path to do nothing, unless the game has a written script to change said town. The characters in Cropsford will continue to mill around for eturnity, never hitting the jackpot and getting rich or hitting rock bottom.

Perhaps that is something we could ask for from Bethesda Studios in the next Elder Scrolls chapter.