I'm really new to the kingdom bit and my main question right now is "what is the benefit of claiming more hexes?" I can see where certain hexes may give you a bonus to one stat, but EVERY hex increases your DC against all three stats, so it's a big net loss. The occassional free building you might get is a bit of an offset, but once you have a few farms going, I don't see the real incentive to claim further territory. No doubt I'm missing something crucial.
What makes it really worth it to claim dozens of hexes instead of the bare minimum you need for cities and farms?
I'm really new to the kingdom bit and my main question right now is "what is the benefit of claiming more hexes?" I can see where certain hexes may give you a bonus to one stat, but EVERY hex increases your DC against all three stats, so it's a big net loss. The occasional free building you might get is a bit of an offset, but once you have a few farms going, I don't see the real incentive to claim further territory. No doubt I'm missing something crucial.
What makes it really worth it to claim dozens of hexes instead of the bare minimum you need for cities and farms?
More hexes eventually lead to more money which leads to more buildings, and more money, and better stats. It is not so easy at first, but it eventually balances out, and the rolls can become trivial if the players do it right.
Real life nations start off weak also, but the growth makes them stronger. The game works the same way.
Can someone elaborate on the more hexes leading to more money? That seems like it might be what I'm missing. I can see where a mine will give you a +1 Economy, but the +1 to the control roll DC offsets that and then some. I also see the chart where a larger kingdom lets you build and claim more suff each month - but that just means you can dig yourself into a hole that much more quickly...
The point about event rolls is a good one as well - I haven't looked over that table too much yet.
Can someone elaborate on the more hexes leading to more money? That seems like it might be what I'm missing. I can see where a mine will give you a +1 Economy, but the +1 to the control roll DC offsets that and then some. I also see the chart where a larger kingdom lets you build and claim more suff each month - but that just means you can dig yourself into a hole that much more quickly...
The point about event rolls is a good one as well - I haven't looked over that table too much yet.
More hexes leads to more cities. More hexes also allows you to discover things that boost kingdom stats. In the long run they pay off. Hexes also allow roads, which builds loyalty, IIRC. That comes in handy later on.
One big thing is you really need certain sizes of a kingdom for your kingdom to support an army. It's something like size 50 for a militia, and goes up from there.
You can possibly get armies from allied creatures, but if those armies are destroyed or you haven't allied with anyone who could provide one, you're in trouble.
I don't have anything about armies in the rules I have, but I'll trust that's important later on.
Hexes also allow roads, which builds loyalty
You need 4 roads (and thus 4 hexes) for 1 Loyalty and 8 roads (which is 8 hexes) for 1 Stability. Each hex increases your size by 1, which increases your Control DC by 1.
So say I follow your advice and build 8 roads to increase loyalty.
That gives me +2 Loyalty and +1 Stability. Heck, assume I grab a couple mines along the way for +2 Economy as well.
Now I get +2, +1, and +2 on my controls checks (which is nice) BUT, the DC for those checks has gone up by 8! That is a huge net loss.
Each hex you gain pushes up the DC on three checks (Econ, Stability, Loyalty) by 1 point each. It would take three +1 bonuses from each and every hex just to break even.
I can see why a kingdom would grow to half a dozen hexes or so for farms and (maybe) another city. What I'm missing is the incentive to claim huge tracts of land. I know there must be a reason, but the math isn't making sense.
Mechanically aside, your charter and whole purpose for being in the stolen lands is to claim as much of it as possible. Hexes controlled by you are explored, safe now, and settled, thus no longer 'unknowns' or 'hostile'. A territory of 7 hexes is barely a city-state, and more likely a fortified village then anything else. You need 50 hexes to be called a Kingdom.
"Go forth, and claim the lands in the name of the crown!"
"well, we got these 20 square miles, i think our job is done now."
Unfortunately, there are not a whole lot of mechanical reasons to claim hexes that the players are going to be aware of. It's a weakness of the system.
For fluff reasons, as Rathendar has said, the "quest" of the AP is to get a kingdom, so the PCs should go forth and "get a kingdom" not just "build a city." If you look in RRR on page 56, under "Ruler", it says your don't have a "kingdom" (and thus aren't a "King") until you've claimed 81 hexes. Before that you're just a Barony or a Duchy. The game's plot assumes the PCs will naturally want to be kings, and will fight the fight to get there (even if it's not to their advantage).
Your question is somewhat similar to "why go and kill a dragon? there's less risk to be had conjuring walls of iron and selling them for scrap!"
Now, there are mechanical reasons to expand your kingdom-size, they just aren't obvious to the players. (Again, I consider this a weakness.) I can't tell if you are a player or GM, so I'll put the reasons inside tags:
- there's ways to lose hexes (ie unrest), and it would suck to be forced to lose a hex with a city on it
- there will be free towns (not just individual buildings) that pop up in every module 2 through 5 and the only way to annex them into your kingdom is to have your hexes run adjacent to them
- if an enemy army moves through a hex, you lose it, and if your kingdom is ever "cut it half" you automatically lose all of the smaller portion, so you don't want to have "tendrils of hexes" reaching out, but rather grow in a big blob
- creating armies (in book 5) requires you to have a kingdom of a certain size (as mentioned by Geistlinger)
- book 6's plot involves the kingdom hemmoraging hexes (and oftentimes in secret!): you want to have lots to spare, or else you will reach the gameover state very quickly
Interesting question! The group I am GM'ing just started their kingdom during out last session and are about four months in. So far they have not expanded hexes at all and have instead focused on building their city. So far unrest has not been an issue and their stats seem pretty reasonable for the DCs they are rolling against.
I believe they have every intention of expanding, but for now they feel they are building a foundation to grow from and were not looking to expand too quickly initially. I am curious how they will grow the kingdom at our next session.
I don't have anything about armies in the rules I have, but I'll trust that's important later on.
Hexes also allow roads, which builds loyalty
You need 4 roads (and thus 4 hexes) for 1 Loyalty and 8 roads (which is 8 hexes) for 1 Stability. Each hex increases your size by 1, which increases your Control DC by 1.
So say I follow your advice and build 8 roads to increase loyalty.
That gives me +2 Loyalty and +1 Stability. Heck, assume I grab a couple mines along the way for +2 Economy as well.Now I get +2, +1, and +2 on my controls checks (which is nice) BUT, the DC for those checks has gone up by 8! That is a huge net loss.
Each hex you gain pushes up the DC on three checks (Econ, Stability, Loyalty) by 1 point each. It would take three +1 bonuses from each and every hex just to break even.
I can see why a kingdom would grow to half a dozen hexes or so for farms and (maybe) another city. What I'm missing is the incentive to claim huge tracts of land. I know there must be a reason, but the math isn't making sense.
Buildings also provide bonuses, and so do in game quest. I am not saying grab land on every turn. You can build your cities for a while, and then grab more land. My group saved up money to buy the magic item producing buildings, which in turn provided BP. The BP was used to buy other stat improving buildings.
edit:Another reason to build is because the more hexes you have the more you can afford to lose if bad things happen.
There is a benefit to claiming more hexes but it is certainly subtle (and I don't think any poster above has mentioned it yet).
Eventually, the bonuses to your kingdom rolls will be higher than your control DC if you do nothing but stick to a few hexes and build up your cities. At this point, by claiming a new hex with a mine in it, your average BP gain at the end of each month goes up by 1/5. Since you'll still only fail your rolls on a 1, the increase to your control DC has no adverse effect on your kingdom.
Even without the mine, you can eventually claim hexes that will increase economy and stability by building roads. As long as your bonuses are already higher than the control DC, you again end up with a net gain. There are other small things that work in the same way, like moving from Baron up to King and gaining bigger bonuses to your rolls. You can also build more buildings and roads per month in a larger kingdom allowing you to grow faster as time goes on.
There are other useful benefits that are specific to the campaign as well. For one, claimed hexes are considered to be patrolled by your citizens. So, random encounter chances go down and it's possible to get advance warning against things like opposing armines or other nasty things before they show up on your doorstep. There's an obvious tactical advantage to that.
You need 4 roads (and thus 4 hexes) for 1 Loyalty and 8 roads (which is 8 hexes) for 1 Stability. Each hex increases your size by 1, which increases your Control DC by 1.
I thought 4 roads gave +1 Economy, not +1 Loyalty, or did our DM change it?
Yes, 4 roads give a +1 to Economy not Loyalty
I was wrong about the roads. They boost economy and stability, but they are still boost that are needed.
In short without giving any spoilers a small kingdom will have big issues later on.
Two other benefits of claiming more hexes:
Your leader's title goes up (who wants to be a Baronness forever?).
You can build more buildings per month, which can net you with higher income and stats, offsetting the reduction through claimed hexes.
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If all you are doing is expanding your kingdom, then there is little reason to do so.
That being said, all the posts above expose some great mechanical reasons for expanding:
- Including resource/landmark/cave hexes for outright bonuses, and building/ruin/town hexes for cities
- Farmland in plains/hill hexes reduces consumption
- Road hexes increase Economy and Stability for every 4/8 hexes respectively
- (Optional rules given on these boards by Jason Nelson include a consumption reduction in city districts for forest hexes, and an Economy bonus for every 4 river hexes)
- All the other non-direct advantages given by posters above, etc.
Now, in the “big picture,” these bonuses do not add up to much when compared to what you get for building in your cities. There is a reason for this: Most of your stats are meant to come from building in your cities!
However, Kingdom Building is a “balance” game. If you spend all your time only building a city, you’re missing a big part of the game. Your stats will go up and up and up, but you’ll have a very lopsided kingdom for your game.
The observation that expansion causes DC increases without consummate benefit is accurate—but expansion on its own is not balanced either! That’s why you need to build in your cities—to balance your expansion!
So my advice to you is to find the balance. Build and expand as feels comfortable. Eventually your bonuses will so far outweigh your DC you won’t think twice about expansion. You probably could expand far before you get to that point, though. :D
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.
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.
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So you want RULES that encourage BELIEVABLE expansion? You can’t just WANT to do it?
I suggest trying it as written, then. You’ll find that you reach the status of “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.” very very quickly.
Your Economy/Loyalty/Stability statistics (assuming all leadership positions are filled) will reach your DC within a few turns, thus leaving you open to expansion! Hooray!
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A good point. And one that has been met in this thread, I believe. Immediate and sudden expansion can tax a kingdom and be undesirable. The rules reflect this.
Expanding gradually, in concert with building your cities and the general economy of your kingdom, along with its stability and the loyalty of your citizens, is favorable. The rules also reflect this.
Being stuck in a strategic situation unprepared with a tiny kingdom will find you effed. The rules reflect this as well. :D
Kingdom building isn’t about the short quick kill. You can number crunch it, but expect it to be a balance game over time.
There is very little reason to expand unless your stability, economy, and loyalty are so high that you can never fail a roll.
You'll find that if you start building a small kingdom, this will happen very quickly. I agree that there is little incentive to expand before this happens because the hit to DC hurts more than the benefits. On the other hand, when you do get your bonuses up to (DC-2), there is no downside so it becomes strictly beneficial.
Expanding too fast is detrimental, yes. But
1. you can only build 1 building per city, not per city district. This means that in order to take advantage of it, you need a second city and to be at least size 11. Expanding every month until you are size 11 is not optimal, but having controlled growth to that point is very benneficial. Smaller buildings are more cost effective than larger ones, so once you are in the 12BP per month area you want to be able to build multiple buildings every month for fastest growth. This can happen by 18 months easily.
2. Various bonuses from claiming hexes, combined with roads, make expanding one of the most cost effective ways of getting bonuses. From the starting hex at oleg's, you can claim 7 hexes (7BP), build roads (7BP), and get +4 economy, +2 stability. For 10 BP you can get farms to eliminate the consumption and become negative, allowing you to increase your edicts thus going from -1 to +1 in loyalty or stability. 24BP for +8 stats is one of the most cost effective ways of increasing stats in the game (assuming you fix the dump, brothel, and graveyard). Most of this can be done using left over money that would otherwise go to waste that month.
3. As far as the arguement of only being good if you can only fail on a 1, this is not true. Ecconomy is the only thing that matters if you only fail on a 1, because the downside to failing the others is not as significant. Ecconomy is also the easiest one to get to that point thanks to rulers. Stability only gets you unrest if you fail by 5 or more, so if you keep it at needing a 5+ you are only losing .25 BP per month. Loyalty checks are very rare in the early game, and a year in my group has yet to make one. Random eventscan hurt you, but if you have reasonable chances of success the likewise do not hurt you much. This is all ignoring the fact that it is trivial to get bonuses up to the point where you cannot fail except on 1 relatively soon, especially if you do not expand every turn.
Overall, its not optimal to expand every turn. From what I can tell, getting to ~8 hexes by the end of the first year and then expanding to 11 and claiming a new city by month 18 seems to be the ideal. After that, controlled expansion that keeps your DCs low relative to your kingdom scores. But your DCs wont grow at nearly the rate of kingdom scores, especially if your not dumb, so you are fine.
Cos it amazingly cool to watch the areas you have explored grow under your pcs control......
expand the hex count slowly cf to building stuff in your city. Dont claim hexes every turn,
Eventually the city will yield lots BPs. My players took forever to get past 12 hexes or so depsite the urgings of the parties Baron
once your economy kicks in, you will expand hexes pretty rapidly
after game session 27 they are just finishing the 3rd mod, and around 9th level and have 66 hexes or so