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Preamble:
So, I'm contemplating starting up a Pathfinder Campaign, which would make heavy use of the Kingdom Subsystem, and the Downtime Subsystem.
I may try to merge the two in some ways, to allow the players to found and build up large organizations, such as the pathfinder society, the harpers, the cult of the dragon, the red mantis assassins, etc. I would argue those groups are closer to the playing field of a kingdom, but without all the centralized land, and cities and settlements and whatnot.
Significantly different than "I run a bakery with 25 employees."
Since I'm looking into a new subsystem, I'm doing that thing I do.
Anyways, where I'm going with this is:
What are the problems with the Ultimate Campaign rules?
I'm looking for things that don't make sense, things that are under-priced/over-powered, things that are over-priced/under-powered, and any other complaints people have about the rules.
While I want things that are problematic from reading the rules, I particularly want to know what to look out for when I go to actually run it.
Bonus points for Critiquing Ultimate Rulership as well.
My players tend not to try to break the game, so I've not really noticed much wrong with either the downtime or kingdom rules.
Having said that, the one thing to be really clear on is that the PCs don't own buildings constructed under the kingdom rules, but do own the ones they make using downtime. I allow downtime-constructed buildings to provide their full benefit to the kingdom, as well as their downtime benefits to the PCs, but construction uses the downtime rules for how long it takes, so building a palace takes a lot more than a month.
Then there's fun things like not assuming a civil organisation exists in a settlement unless recruited under the downtime rules - in my current game, the Kingdom's Warden is frantically trying to recruit teams of Mercenary Companies in downtime to act as the city watch and as secret service teams to protect the other rulers. (Use the kingdom rules for armies, though, it's a lot easier.)