This is the discussion thread related to kingdom events. The first decision that will have to be made is what role each player will play in the kingdom. The second decision is which hex the capital city will be located. The third decision is what to name both the kingdom and the capital city.
Note that Restov will be providing you an initial shipment of gold, tools, craftsmen, laborers, and colonists to assist in starting the new nation - which amounts to 50 build points (BP).
Check!
Really been looking forward too this, a huge fan of Civ esque games so yay!
Looking at it here's the roles we need to fill, P means this role has a penalty if left empty, V means it's okay to leave empty. This is just my initial idea, just give everyone a framework to wrap their head around:
Ruler (P)-This should totally be Connor
Consort (v)
Councilor (P)-Based on his notes Aldarion would be a good fit
General (P)-Maybe Akiros?
Grand Diplomat (P)?
Heir (v)-We don't need to worry about this yet.
High Priest (P)-Veronica? Erastil is probably going to be our nation's religion. Though I wouldn't mind some Abadarians showing up.
Magister (P)-Seres is the man with the magic hands, seems like a good fit.
Marshal (P)-I'm looking at this one
Royal Enforcer (v)
Spymaster (P)-Ezekial?
Treasurer (P)?
Viceroy (P/if we have a vassal state)
Warden (P)-Maybe Jax?
Also do we want to build tall or wide?
We should put the Zonka in here, maybe as a Councilor
Then move Aldarion to warden or treasurer?
|
Ezekial should so be the treasurer. <--- Joke. :P
I suppose having a rogue as the spymaster is pretty iconic. I am good with that but wonder if Ezekial has the intellect to do the job well. Hmm, looks like he can use Int or Dex for that roll. He could also cover some of the martial roles if needed.
Oh, what about Svetlana for treasurer? She was running the trading post before...
Also maybe we can reallocate some skill points from leveling based on our new jobs?
Seres can take magister, though as a sorcerer, his views on magic are not very scholarly.
Svetlana as treasurer is a great idea, if she'll take it.
|
|
OK. I have reviewed the Kingdom rules. I am curious about what we have to start with.
What hexes are completely explored?
What structures exist at the fort? I would think a Barracks and maybe a Temple. Maybe counts as City Walls? Do we have a graveyard? An Inn or jail? Do the towers count as watchtowers? If not can they be upgraded to do so?
And how many build points do we start with? The "grant" of 5k is not that much to start with. But we also have lumber and the fort and people that I think should be valued as some number of build points.
We could use some of the other named bandits if we wish as well.
I posted in the other thread about not using the fort as our base. I think we should leverage it in our kingdom, but maybe hole up somewhere less well known to our enemies that are still out there.
-Posted with Wayfinder
And how many build points do we start with? The "grant" of 5k is not that much to start with. But we also have lumber and the fort and people that I think should be valued as some number of build points.
50,it's a the top of this thread.
-Posted with Wayfinder
|
|
Ah, I see that now. That is a reasonable number. So does that include the 5000 gold the envoy brought, or was that for the PCs to spend?
I'd like to hear what structures the fort counts as before we decide to never use this as our capital. By the rules I think we will need a capital immediately and we have not explored enough to know where is the best site to build from scratch. So I propose that we use the fort as the initial capital and add what we must have to it while we explore and annex. Long term that may be better places but we just don't know yet, right? If we get walls and towers and barracks and maybe a temple and tavern from the fort (even if we have to repair or shore them up) then it might be too good to walk away from.
Why not use the remains of Olegs trading post as our initial location?
|
|
I think we need more info to make a decision. Seems like it would be good to be on or near a hex with water. I am unsure how much remains at Oleg's trading post, or what the hermit claiming it will mean. Plains make the best farmland (cheapest to create anyway). What about existing roads? Could be handy/valuable to incorporate existing roads and even bridges?
I was thinking something more central to our land... shortest road to all points, etc.
Speaking of, can you please bring up our area map on Roll20?
The hermit has turned it into a trading post again, so we can't just take it over. Is our way of selling and buying gear.
These are good questions, Zeke. Gonna read the rules again tonight and respond with my thoughts later.
Also, need to see the map and know if we need to finish exploring.
-Posted with Wayfinder
Yeah, it'd be good if we could get the hex map up. Be good to take a look at the land scape, see what we have to work with.
From a straight mechanical perspective the fort gives you major starting bonuses if you use it as the center of your new kingdom. I don't know if our DM plans to use that, though.
Having water nearby is useful because there are some structures that have to be on a waterfront, but it's not necessarily a dealbreaker.
Economy is necessary to be able to make BP before you run out of the starting cash. Stability is important after that because you have to make Stability checks to do all kinds of things. Also the bigger the kingdom gets the harder the checks get so you have to really plan for growth by making the right buildings first before you expand to another hex.
Depends on how detailed we wanna get. It looks like we're doing the whole shebang so for the very first kingdom turn a good choice is to claim hex, build a House, then a Mill or Smithy or something 6 BP with +1 Economy and +something else.
We also need to establish a Kingdom alignment. I think good is a foregone conclusion ... the prefix may take some voting ... think there is a case for all of them.
Need the DM decision on whether the Stag Lord Keep counts as a FOrt. That's 24BP worth of free stuff for now.
Recommend an inn, house and mill as well as fishery if we stay in this hex for now.
From a straight mechanical perspective the fort gives you major starting bonuses if you use it as the center of your new kingdom. I don't know if our DM plans to use that, though.
Having water nearby is useful because there are some structures that have to be on a waterfront, but it's not necessarily a dealbreaker.
The Stag Lord's fort is in ruins, but still has value. The cost of building a fort on this hex is half the normal cost.
If you build on Bokken's trading post hex, you can can incorporate the existing trading post as a free Shop, Stable, or Watchtower in that city grid.
There are no other pre-existing roads or bridges - everything will have to be built by you.
The wilderness map is back up on Roll 20.
The 5000gp from Restov is meant to be spending cash, but you always have the option to convert gold to BP.
Assume the NPCs will accept whatever position you give them - Svetlana will be more than happy to be Treasurer.
Ezekial, you are welcome to re-position your recent level-up skill points.
I'd vote for infrastructure over economy to start. We have to clear lands to make farms, which will take time. I suggest we re-build a base at the Stag Lord's fort location to start, then a road up to Bokken's to facilitate traffic/trade. Then start clearing land for farms when people come in.
Game-system-wise that's undesirable because each hex you add to your kingdom increases the Control DC to do stuff, so getting too many farms early on is a problem. Roads are OK because they improve Economy and travel times, but you have to control hexes to build roads through them, which means you're back to the Control DC problem...
But having a base at the fort and blazing a trail (with no mechanical benefits) is a good goal, and adding farms is useful when the kingdom grows because you can then support a larger population. We need to get some buildings under our belts first. :)
So, in order of priority:
1) build a new fort / town
2) augment with shops, etc
3) fan out farms in surrounding hexes
4) road to Bokken's
Whether farms can share the hex with a settlement is a GM call. The rules sort of imply that they can, because the Stockyard improvement says: "Farms in this hex or adjacent hexes reduce Consumption by 3 instead of 2," and since a Stockyard must be built in a settlement, the implication is that settlements can have farms in their hex.
It would make sense anyway since a settlement with one district is a town of about 9,000 people but a hex is 12 miles across, so there's plenty of room for farms around the countryside.
We have to claim and clear the hex to make the settlement first but we could in theory turn it into a Farm next month (or whenever the next kingdom phase is) in addition to building a settlement there.
Forts are pretty expensive so we may want to put our settlement in the hex with the old fort but not actually rebuild it until we've gotten a few Economy-boosting buildings done (you can only make one new improvement per settlement per turn, though you can make a single set of Houses in addition to one other improvement). Then we can build up the fort later when we have surplus cash to finish it!
A new fort is half-price if we build on/around the Stag Lord's, so we should defiantly take advantage of that. I don't mind if we pay now - in character, Seres would prefer to rebuild it sooner rather than later.
Half price is 12 BP, then we turn the hex into a settlement and it turns into a Barracks and a Stables... the Stables give +1 Economy so that's useful and it will give us some Defense right out the gate. It's a chunk of our starting 50 BP but probably works out in the end!
I think we should look at being a Lawful Good kingdom, the bonus to economy seems really good at the start. Maybe we could take the kobolds on as vassals?
Looking around we have access to forests for sawmills and lots of nice grassland for farms. Our priority should be scouting the immediate hexes around our capital and finding out what else we have, and establishing a farm as our first expansion to counteract the consumption of our city.
Okay, so I've just spent some time digging into the rules. From my understanding out first turn and expenditures will look like this:
Starting BP 50
We have no hexes so skip upkeep phase, proceed to Edict phase.
Edict Phase
Step 1-Assign roles
Step 2-Claim our fort hex (-1 BP)
Now that we have one hex We can construct 1 New Settlement or Raise/Upgrade 1 Army Unit, 1 New Building, 2 Terrain Improvements, and claim 1 hex a turn.
Step 4-Repair fort (-12 BP)
Step 5-Prep Fort for settlement (-1 BP)
Step 6-Skip, we've already founded a settlement
Step 7-Issue Edicts:
-Build a house One house a turn doesn't count toward the limit (-3 BP)
-Build an Inn My recommendations (-10 BP) OR
-Build Watchtower (-12 BP)
BP remaining 23 OR 21
My recomendations for what we set our Edicts to.
Holiday Edict
None -1 Loyalty, +0 Consumption
Promotion Edict
Aggressive +3 Stability, +4 Consumption The idea here is that we aggressively expand into the good farm land around the river to pay for this, winding it back over the next three turns while we get established.
Taxation Edict
None +0 Economy, +1 Loyalty
Income Phase
Step 1-We shouldn't make any withdrawals ATM
Step 2-If we want we can invest some money, 4000gp=1BP
Step 3-We don't have any expensive enough items to sell
Step 4-Collect Taxes, roll economy, divide the result by 3, get that amount of BP If our kingdom is lawful and builds an Inn, with the free stable we have a +4 to this roll before modifiers
Event Phase
Step 1-DM cackles maniacally
Step 2- We cry
Step 3- ???
Step 4 -Profit
After all of that we go into the next turn with:
BP: 23/21 + Taxes roll
Control DC: 22 (20 + 1 Hex + 1 District)
Kingdom size 1: construct 1 New Settlement or Raise/Upgrade 1 Army Unit, 1 New Building, 2 Terrain Improvements, and claim 1 hex a turn
Consumption: 6 (1 from size + 1 from # of districts + 4 from Edict)
Kingdom Modifiers before leader stats:
- +4/+3 Economy (+2 Lawful, +1 Stables,/ +1 Inn)
- +4/+3 Loyalty (+2 Good, +1 Stables, -1/+1 from Edict/ +1 Inn)
- +3/+4 Stability (+3 Edict/ +1 Watchtower)
Settlement Modifiers:
- +2 Defense, +1 Law (Barracks)
- +1 Society (Inn)
OR- +2 Defense (Watchtower)
- 1 District (4/9 Lots used)
If you just want economy I would lean toward 6 BP economy-generating buildings, but an inn is a good RP choice.
I did think about that but it didn't really make sense RP wise, that and I wanted to have pool of BP to feed the edict for more stability for a few turns while we build up our city control.
Actually, idea, instead of an Inn we could build a smithy or mill for +1 economy/ +1 stability and 6 BP. Don't know how I missed those.
Having an inn is pretty iconic, even if its a small "loss" on economy. Maybe Svetlana can run it or something?
|
|
That is some well done homework Larisa. I followed most of it.
Here are some observations:
First the Stag Lord's fort is on a water hex that is also planes. Best I can tell is that we can create both a farm (Farms on plane hexes only cost 2 BP) and a fishery here if we want to. That is in addition to making it our first settlement. If that is right then that is more reason to choose this hex.
Oh, while I love finishing the fort, we could wait until we have some unrest, as finishing the fort lowers unrest by 1.
I think we need to also declare this settlement our capital but that might be done as a default.
The best deal for Economy is a Dance Hall. It only costs 4 BP BUT comes with a point of unrest. I suspect this is more a brothel than just a dance hall.
After that the best deals are:
Smithy 6BP
Tannery 6BP
Mill 6BP
Library 6BP
Then the Shop at 8 BP.
When we do want to expand and annex a new hex I think it needs to be adjacent to a current hex. That means we have to annex a minimum of 5 hexes to eventually pick up the trading post. And we should prioritize exploration of hexes adjacent to us first, as those are the ones that we might annex.
And only after all these are built should we build the Inn for 10 BP.
I believe we are gonna need a spreadsheet to track and figure all this.
There is a spreadsheet already built on the campaign tab. It's pretty sweet
-Posted with Wayfinder
I did think about that but it didn't really make sense RP wise, that and I wanted to have pool of BP to feed the edict for more stability for a few turns while we build up our city control.
Actually, idea, instead of an Inn we could build a smithy or mill for +1 economy/ +1 stability and 6 BP. Don't know how I missed those.
Those would be the ones I was talking about upthread when I said 6 BP +1 Economy buildings.
While you can easily identify the stuff that works best "by the numbers" these are also the places where our characters will be living so there's something to be said for making choices that fit what your character wants, which is why I mentioned that Seres' notion of building an Inn has some RP value. Another KM group I'm in built an Inn early on because they wanted to foster the notion that this is a central hub for travel where people come and go and that the town will spring up around that.
I've done this part of KM before. :)
|
|
I have not done this before, despite starting book one at least 4 times. This is the first time I had a character even see the Stag Lord's fort, much less finish the book.
I agree that starting with 50 BP gives us some room to play with and we do not have to optimize this part of the game. But I also sorta feel that that is the point of kingdom building - to do as good a job as you can. And resource management games are fun to me so my natural tendency is to maximize.
Yes, I'd rather put points into the keep rebuild and an inn up front, even if its not the best ROI. This campaign is a long-haul, so the points we're spending now will be a drop in the bucket down the road.
Right - I like thinking in my head about "what does the town we're building look like?"
50 BP gives us a little wiggle room, not a lot but as long as we don't splurge it all in two turns and try to expand super-fast we can maneuver a bit. Getting out +Economy buildings early will help because that will be guaranteed extra BP that will pay dividends for as long as the kingdom survives.
I've heard that much later in KM you wind up having a war, so we have to get there eventually, but for now we can think about "What kind of medieval settlement are we building?" with an eye toward stuff that will make it self-sufficient.
Ultimately we need to make a decision, either we talk it out until we agree, or we vote, or we let the Ruler make the final call.
The kingdom management spreadsheet should be editable now. Please go ahead and start entering in your character's information.
Just trying to wrap my head around something, can settlements share terrain improvments?
Could we rebuild the fort then build a farm on that tile?Because if yes then we should build a stockyard as soon as possible and grab farms and fisheries in our tile and surrounding tiles for alot of cheap BP.
Just trying to wrap my head around something, can settlements share terrain improvments?
Could we rebuild the fort then build a farm on that tile?Because if yes then we should build a stockyard as soon as possible and grab farms and fisheries in our tile and surrounding tiles for alot of cheap BP.
I already addressed this one too!
Implicitly, the kingdom-building rules allow it. Whether it's "actually" legal is of course up to the GM.
Wow, reading comprehension where did you go.
Well I think that covers everything, so about those Kobolds? Shall we take them as vassals?
That may be a bit far. Likely allies or trading partners.
-Posted with Wayfinder
So, Connor, oh glorious Ruler, what do you think? :D
I would go with a Mill or Smithy, personally, but other options are fine!
I liked the idea of a mill on the water here.
We absolutely need to explore the hexes concentrically around us before we invest too much in this hex.
-Posted with Wayfinder
Just had a thought, there's fey in them there woods right, so while I don't see it being too much of an issue in the early game once we get the kingdom going we should considering building parks and setting aside some forests for protection.