Alternate Building Stratagies

[Carnox]

Alternate Building Strategies

Gamers agree that building a Casters Tower and push MIE right off the bat is you basic optimal plan to fund rapid expansion. As far as role playing, that sort of cheeze is distasteful.

It looks like a viable, though much slower strategy would be to tightly constraint hex expansion, building numerous small stat boost buildings to assure decent BP generation via income rolls. Assuming no particular time crunch on kingdom building, I suppose that's fine. Lots of brothels, smiths, tanneries, etc not as hard to stomach.

Other than that I see my PCs just sort of running amok in character trying to build a balanced, realistic sort of city and kingdom, but winding up the woeful victim of the rules and events.

Am I missing something?

Thanks.

[Erik Freund]

MIE is obviously distasteful for a few reasons, but even with it removed (either by houserule or by ignoring it) the kingdom building rules, are, unfortunately, still broken.

As you pointed out, the trick is to claim hexes slowly. If you can keep all of your bonuses at least 18 points higher than your Command DC, there will be no friction in your kingdom. Then continue to build your bonuses even higher, and make sure your hex growth stays firmly below the threshold of 18.

It's boring, but it's the "right way" from a player's point-of-view. It's sad that it encourages highly urbanized, small countries, instead of sprawling hinterlands (which I think the latter would make for a better theme).

I don't think your players will wind up the "woeful victim of rules and events." The event table is fairly forgiving. Especially when you can only fail on a 1.

[Major_Tom]

Actually, I think the kingdom building rules are quite inspired. Best I've ever seen. Do they have flaws, sure. But they have some built in safeguards as well.

For instance, one of the criteria for starting adv. #5 is to have your kingdom as 80 hexes or more. Preferably at least 100. The armies you can recruit are severely limited if you have a small kingdom.

Another method I found that kept cities in balance was to turn a city over to one player. While they understood the metagaming involved, no one wanted to do that for THEIR city. In general, they tended to strive for a balanced city. "I'm out here in the grasslands, I need a mill, a granary, and a stable." "I'm only two hexes from the capitol, so I'm going to build a city for the rich to retreat to." And indeed, that player insisted on spending more. Instead of docks, she had a marina. Twice the price, same effects as a dock.

The MIE can be troubling, but when it comes to paying for armies, it's almost impossible to do it without MIE.

[Erik Freund]

Major_Tom wrote:

The MIE can be troubling, but when it comes to paying for armies, it's almost impossible to do it without MIE.

I want to push back on this. This is a common myth and needs to be put to rest.

How do you arrive at that conclusion? Have you playtested it?

With 80-100 hexes, you have 16-20 BP flowing in per turn from an Economy roll. Armies have to pay half their CR in consumption every week. However, armies move at a rate of 2 hexes per day, persumedly more of there are roads. You are not supposed to keep armies feilded indefinately.

War of the River Kings spoilers:

The entire war will likley be over in 3-5 weeks.

Let's consider what the enemy has:
Pitax fields: CR 10, CR 5, and CR 6
With backups: CR 7, CR 6, CR 9, CR 9

Meaning if you wanted to match them army-for-army, you'd need 42 to 104 BP. However, you don't need to match them army-for-army. With two armies of CR 9 (meaning only 36 BP) clever players can win the day. Then you disband your army.

The war is meant to drain your coffers and be difficult to sustain. It's supposed to eat through your savings. It's supposed to eat through your savings faster than your income is coming in (like wars always do in the real world). If you remove MIE entirely, you still get that dynamic.

With MIE, you can keep dozens of armies fielded indefinately. Which is silly and removes all challenge.

[Major_Tom]

Yes, we have played through the entire AP. And my players had considerably more than 16-20 BP flowing in per month. And yes, if you're willing to go with the cheapest possible armies, your consumption is not terrible, but it's also not much fun. I don't remember all the exact figures, but they saved up for their armies, and had well over 500 BP when they started, and it melted away like sugar in the rain. Remember the BP cost for an army is per week, but BP income is by month. Also, 1/2 their CR is only if you take a plain vanilla army with no enhancements whatsoever.

So I will yeild the point, it is probably POSSIBLE to wage the war with no MIE. It's just not nearly as much fun (for my players, at least), nor do the players have as many options.