orangefruitbat's page

Yes, know that. What I'm asking is whether 'consumption' from armies is the same as consumption from hexes/city districts. So, if you build enough farms, could you field armies at no BP cost?

Cv cannot go below 0.

If a kingdom has a 'negative' consumption value due to farms and the like, can those spare points be used to pay for an army's recruitment/consumption?

Thanks for the ideas. I don't think that Drelev is in a position to launch a sneak attack since his army has pretty much been pummelled twice (and his city is heavily damaged)- first by Armag (pre-adventure) and then by the PCs (at Tatzlford).

This is what I'm thinking, inspired by your suggestions. Stroon keeps tabs on the PCs by scrying on them. Once he finds out that Armag is dead (and the hostages rescued), he will liberate Terrion (incidentally, Terrion is the father to one of the newer PCs), depose Drelev and install Terrion as ruler. Terrion will bend the knee (thanks Azmyth), and leave Stroon as Magister.

The PCs get to expand their kingdom, but are forced to keep Stroon (whom they know to be treacherous) as an ally (and wild card in the events to come).

Azmyth wrote:

[I love Neil's idea, but I don't think it will encourage a smooth annexation of the city!) ;)

Who wants a "smooth" annexation? I want blood for blood! ;-)

I've got a bit of a problem with my game. The party has never been aggressive about expanding their kingom, resulting in it being only 34 hexes in size (ranging from Tatzleford, to Oleg's to the Staglord's keep to Varnhold). Before starting WoRK, I'd like their kingdom to expand considerably (but without overt metagaming) so that they can build the larger military units needed. (Our group likes to play RAW, so I don't want to modify the mass combat rules signficantly).

I thought that the logical way to encourage my players to expand their kingdom was to arrange events so that when the PCs complete BfB, they would annex Fort Drelev (and all territories inbetween). This would ahve placed their kingom over 50 hexes, and a decent starting place for WoRK.

To my surpise, the PCs have decided that they want to keep Baron Drelev in power (I suppose they felt sorry for him?). I even had the wizard Stroon secretly approach the party and try to sell the baron out (and set them up for the sudden-yet-inevitable betrayal). Rather than confront the weaselly Collin Farrel-wannabe (look at that pic!) or his trecherous wizard and liberate the suffering people of Drelev, the PCs snuck out of the city and headed out to find Armag.

Our last session concluded with the PCs wiping out his campsite followers, and entering the cairn. Since the PCs will soon remove the barbarian threat, destroy the cultists and rescue the hostages, their plan will almost certainly work. What should I do? Should I arrange events forcing the PCs to annex Fort Drelev? (and if so, how?) Or should I just let things happen and let the events of WoRK happen?

Of course. The whole PF/D20 system is based upon having RULES, that while abstracted and simplified, encourage simulationist behaviour. Flanking provides a mechanical bonus to hit because it seems apparent to players that flanking should. The rules encourage the desired behavior. Nobody says that you should just WANT your PCs to flank their foes.

Kingdom-building should also have rules that yield logical results (without excessive detail or complexity). Since we associate expansion with increasded power and wealth, it is only natural to want the rules to reflect this.

So you want RULES that encourage BELIEVABLE expansion? You can’t just WANT to do it?

Yes, I have read this entire thread.

The rules are quite clear. At most, the rules might suggest eventually establishing a smallish kingdom (9-10 hexes)to minimze consumption (with maximum edicts). This number is certainly less than the 50+ hex kingdoms expected in the Varhnold Vanishing, and the larger kingdoms expected in KM 4 and 5. The mechanical benefits gained from expansion (roads, valuable resources, etc.) are significantly inferior to keeping your kingdom small, i.e., a small number of farms, at virtually all stages of the game. There is very little reason to expand unless your stability, economy, and loyalty are so high that you can never fail a roll.

From a mechanical perspective, it also is preferable to have a single city with multiple districts, rather than multiple sites, even though they might offer a "modest" bonus. T

From this entire thread, I can glean three reasons why expansion might be logical from a mechanical perspective (beyond simply, "it can't hurt"):
1) there are rules in Kingmaker 4 or 5 relating to armies (which I admittedly haven't read yet), which are keyed off of kingdom size. This strikes me as valid, but there's no indication in KM 2, for either the players or DM.
2) as your kingdom gets bigger, you can build more than one building/turn. That strikes me as useful, but only once my kingdom attributes are high enough to only fail on a 1.
3) Existing villages (which will supposedly appear in KM 4 or 5) offer to join your kingdom. Again, this is attractive, but won't appear in the game for a long time.

As DM, I can appeal to the PC's sense of manifest destiny, or the player's metagaming interest in garnering experience points, or maybe some sort of role-playing "spirit". However, I think our group will be more satisfied if we have rules that encourage believable expansion. Hence, my humble presentation.

Have you read the rest of this thread? Not expanding your kingdom early on is akin to shooting yourself in the foot. It's certainly not obvious from the rules at first glance but based on all the reasons presented here, no further incentive is really required.

That said, making it obvious to your players by enforcing other restrictions as you outline will only help them out in the long run. I let my players figure it out on their own and they realized a little late that expansion was important but they've now started the road to recovery.

Our group has just started building their realm. Being serious number-crunchers (and veterans of many board-games), I'm sure they'll quickly realize that there is little point in claiming more than a small # of hexes, other than the XP bonus. I could cajole them to expand more, but I think we all would appreciate mechanics that logically reflect the benefits of expansion, even in the abstract. Of course, the mechanics should still reflect the hazards of over-expansion.

My thought on "encouraging" expansion is to limit the total number of cities in the realm and the size of each city (# of city districts) by the number of hexes controlled. Something like:

Hexes # Cities City Size
----- -------- ---------
1-5 max 1 1 district
6-10 max 2 1 district
11-20 max 3 2 districts
21-30 max 4 2 districts
31-40 max 5 2 districts
41-50 max 6 3 districts
51-60 max 7 3 districts
61-70 max 8 3 districts
71-80 max 9 4 districts
81-90 max 10 4 districts
91-100 max 11 4 districts

This is just a rough estimiate, as I haven't tested the numbers, but they look reasonable to me. Thoughts, suggestions?