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Double, triple, and quadruple check the army costs, and remember that an army's consumption is charged weekly if the army is active.
Armies are the single biggest way to control BP in the high-end kingdom game.
If your players are like mine, they want big, well-equipped armies, and the simple fact is that they cost an absolute bomb to keep running:
500 mounted 3rd level fighters with masterwork weapons and armour = 18 BP per week. That's 72 per kingdom turn.
I think Chemlak hit the nail on the head, the major source of BP spending in higher level Kingdoms is army consumption. If you're saying that the PC's have a large enough kingdom to support going to war with Pitax, I would still run the kingdom building rules during that war.
Then after that war in book 6 add armies to the Thousandbreaths to spice up the challenge, as it stands book 6 doesn't involve the kingdom at all, only the PC's themselves. By amping up the war to include Nyrissa's realm, you can
a) challenge the PC's kingdom by forcing them to wield massive armies
& b) have a suitably awesome final stand, as the culmination of X years of kingdom building allows the PC's to stand up to an entire plane of existence - truly the epic finish that Kingmaker deserves
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First off, if you want them to have a truly epic war against Pitax, redo the armies that Pitax fields. Seriously. That might mean you taking a look at what some of the DMs here have posted on what they think is the number of hexes Pitax claims (even if they don't truly claim those hexes listed in Book 5, they still have a significant amount of other hexes). Bear in mind that Pitax has just as much time as the PCs did to invest and improve their kingdom.
Secondly, the king of Pitax can "ally" with other nations as part of a multi-front war. After the civil war, perhaps Brevoy wants the southern lands that the PCs control, and so they might decide to field armies too.
Third, fielding active armies is not cheap, at all. You're paying them by the week, and unless the PCs have raised armies in their westernmost borders and have roads/highways everywhere, marching armies to Pitax is weeks away. Furthermore, a well-equipped army is going to smite a normally equipped small army. I suggest picking up Legendary Games' Ultimate Rulership, Ultimate Battle, and Ultimate War. Trust me, you will not be disappointed - it is money well spent. You might be able to take advantage of their Fantastic Five deal that ends today, I think (right here!).
Finally, Pitax can always sabotage the PC's kingdom with espionage!
CB out.
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I was re-reading the OP and I realised that I did not really address some of the concerns you raised.
In order to prevent the PCs from having so many easy BP-generating Sawmills in practically every forest hex, I introduced the consequences that made sense in-game. Basically, the forest is full of fey and other ambulatory creatures (like treants and shambling mounds); through conversations with the fey they encountered (like the faerie dragon, the grig, the nixie, and so forth) and the witch in the forest, it was strongly hinted that having too many Sawmills would be a bad idea (think "Rise of the Angry Forestfolk and their little friends," and you'd have a pretty good image of what I am getting at).
Of course, that did mean I had to give the players other options of generating BP, albeit not at break-neck pace like the Sawmills with the Lumberyards combo. I borrowed the Apiaries from the Book of River Nations (by Jon Brazer Enterprises) and from the Ultimate Rulership book I implemented the optional rule that having followers from the Leadership feat nets the kingdom an additional 1 BP per kingdom leader with the feat because of the extra productivity these followers bring.
Like the Apiaries, I borrowed the ideas for Orchards, Peat Cutting, and Ranches. Let them have more options but keep a reasonable limit on how much of something they can have because it may have logical in-game impact upon the regions they occupy.
One of the things that is hard to remember sometimes with a kingdom-building campaign is that we (both GM and players) get stuck in this mindset that the player characters live and operate in a bubble where nothing else could possibly interfere with the way they are running things. Pop that bubble where and when it makes sense, not willy-nilly.
Unless of course, the players insist on having their characters act like jerks in-game. But that's another topic for a different thread. Back to the OP topic.
The other option I use as well is this: even though a given hex may be a specific terrain type (like plains), it may not be a very good place for a specific type of hex improvement (like farming; perhaps due to poor soil). Instead, I'd have something else there like perhaps a rare resource OR an adventure location (like some ruins) where they can gain an one-time BP treasure.
Basically, my point boils down to this: the world the player characters live in is dynamic, and not every hex of the same type is exactly the same. Make some changes here and there, spruce it up a little bit with some variety. No need to smack them with DM fiat but rather, apply common sense and inject opportunities for them to experience something different every now and then.
As an additional note: even though my players' characters could not have too many Sawmills in the forest (they stopped at 5 Sawmills, with 1 Lumberyard), I gave them the opportunities to gain an alliance with the good fey and other humanoids (like the Lizardfolk) living in the forest. Thanks to that, their Kingdom enjoys a bit more Stability in that region, and if things are dire enough, they will have allies against Pitax. Even a small army of 10-20 invisible pixes can put the hurt on larger armies with skirmishes or raids against the headquarter camps of the opposition (hit the opposition's General with an irresistible dance and laugh with undisguised glee like Invader Zim).
CB out.
Oh, there is this one other possible option I just thought of to keep it interesting for your players. Of course, this idea is actually only useful if your players enjoyed the kingdom building aspects. Basically, give each player a settlement (or two) that they get to play with in the sense that that player chooses what gets build.
If there is a guaranteed amount of fixed BP generated per kingdom turn, split that amount as evenly as possible among the players and say that is the amount they get to use towards construction & improvement in their settlement. They can inject as much details as they like (some people like the idea of doing a map of the settlement or naming the streets and inns, etc.).
If they build an university there, they might say "It's not just any university, it's an university that offers free basic education like simple math and writing to even the poorest people in the settlement. Oh, and every Friday night it's TGIF at the university pubs." Or if they build a caster tower, they could say "That tower's spellcasters are going to focus on healing magic - they will aid in research, both mundane and magical, that could potentially improve the well-being of the citizens. By the gods, we will have a legitimate AND inexpensive alchemical remedy for the dreaded ingrown toe-nail!" (I'm using humour here to illustrate how silly one can get with the idea but it's equally valid at the more serious end of the spectrum.)
The sky's the limit - but remember to have some limitations and you can use whatever they come up with to build new story ideas.
Imbuing the campaign with more intrigue (thank you, Ultimate Intrigue!) is also an option, but that may not be your bread and butter. I'd love to have more immersive roleplaying in my Kingmaker campaign about political intrigue like Redcelt had for his Kingmaker campaign, but, man, I don't know if I can handle it - it's a different kind of beast. Besides, I'm sure that not all of my players would enjoy actually doing that much roleplaying or backstabbing the npcs (in a figurative sense, not literal).
CB out.
The reason why I ask is:
My players are right now in the process of fighting a war with Pitax (Book 5), and the ONLY thing they have to worry about is rolling a 1 for economy, because they have something like 40 more economy then they need.
And also, they have something like 30-40 guaranteed income from sawmills and mines.
If they have 30 sawmills and mines, they must have at least 30 hexes of forests/mountains, is that correct?
The minimum DC for that kingdom should be at least 50, ignoring all hexes of hills, marshes and plains. Even with a +40 economy, they need to roll at least a 10, and keep in mind im ignoring every other hex type, the settlements and other modifiers.
Anyway, they arent being challenged? Throw plagues at them, monster attacks, riots, criminal fires, savage tribes. All at once.
The kingdom events can be used as you see fit.
Armies have a limit, you cannot recruit your entire kingdom as soldiers, they have 2000 soldiers? Make their enemy have 3000 well-trained fighters, that will make them upgrade their soldiers.
Hide the enemy armies behind castles and forts, give them siege weapons, give them stronger battle strategies.
I've had a thought or two, but it really depends on the particulars of the kingdom.
Would you mind providing the following:
Economy, Loyalty, Stability
Control DC
Consumption
Promotion edict level/Expansion edict level/Militarism edict level
Total kingdom population (and whether you're using UCam or URule)
Individual army sizes and levels (and whether you're using UCam or UBat)
?
Depending on that information, there might be a factor or two.
I think the kingdom rules are just easy to game. The players control the DCs of the checks that they're making by not expanding when their bonuses are too low. The DM can try and push them to expand (someone else threatens to take the land first, or they need to claim a particular hex), but I think once the kingdom reaches a certain size, smart players will manage it so that they will only fail checks on a 1. Not sure that there's much that can be done about it, aside from bringing in concerns from outside the system, like pissing off the natives or supply and demand issues.
[Edit: Oops, I just noticed that you said that you're not actually using UBattle, which explains why their army consumptions are so low. Still, I'll leave the below post just for the sake of showing how it would work. Apologies for posting without reading in full first :) ]
Using Ultimate Battle, consumption for active armies is 1 per 25 soldiers, doubled if they have mounts, paid per week.
I assume that when you say Huge, Large and Medium armies, you mean Regiment, Battalion and Company in Ultimate Battle parlance?
Assuming that's right, they have three Huge armies/Regiments (8 consumption), two Large armies/Battalions with mounts (8 consumption) plus one Large army/Battalion without (4 consumption), and two Medium armies/Companies with mounts (4 consumption). That's 52 Consumption... 204 BP per month if all the armies are in the field. That will drain their treasury pretty quickly.
However, Consumption for garrisoned armies is only 1 per 100 soldiers, so with 3 * 200 + 3 * 100 + 2 * 50 = 1000 soldiers they're only paying 10 Consumption if they're all garrisoned (assuming they have the buildings to house them).
(If instead by Huge/Large/Medium armies you mean the army sizes in the original Ultimate Campaign rules, those armies are twice as large, which would mean twice the Consumptions I calculated above)
But yes, the fundamental problem with the kingdom building rules as written is that the players control the DCs they're rolling against, as well as the bonusses they get on those rolls. Once they realise how it works, they can stop growing, build buildings to increase the bonusses above the Command DC, and then keep them there as they resume growing. That's why I designed an entirely different set of realm-building rules for my game, based on the Fate system.
RobRendell, would you mind sharing those rules?
I'm happy to share, although my players are still in RRR, so they haven't been playtested into the late game where the original Realm rules really started to fall apart.
I've posted them in their own thread. I hope they're useful (or at least interesting) to you! :)
For us, all rules based on Paizo's foundations (UCam and the like) were a fiasco.
As experimented players (but not number crunchers or power-gamers), we quickly discovered that kingdom-building is a "mini-game" the PCs are playing against the system, which requires zero input from the DM as written. If I had given them the random event tables, the players could have generated a year of kingdom turns all by themselves...
Of course, in all RPGs, it is the DM's work to throw a wrench in the well-oiled gears, but even the combat system leaves a bigger place to DM's input (where do the monsters move, what feat will they use, what spells will they cast...).
I felt that a system that is, by written, 100% predetermined was a failure. The only solution would have been to throw arbitrary events (a fire destroys half the city, because I said so!) and "out-of-my-ass" modifiers to DCs and rolls to keep the mini-game interesting (because it's so easy to succeed on anything but a 1), and I didn't want to manage that.
We finally made the switch to RobRendell's ruleset not long after.