| peterrco |
I'm looking for advice on a strategy for running a Kingdom.
The GM has told us that he is using the John Brazer Enterprizes Book of The River Kingdoms for these mechanics, which I understand are very close to the rules in the Kingmaker Rule Books (which I don't have, and as a player don't want access to).
****Please avoid putting spoilers in any answers to this thread****
So where are we now?
We have placed our capital at the Stag Lords fort.
We have just started playing Rivers Run Red, and have 12 months of building under place after we dedicated a session to building up the kingdom.
We crafted a Lyre of building prior to setting up the kingdom which gives up 2BP reduction on the cost of one building per month. (We'll probably make more of these as we get larger and have the option to build more buildings per month)
To boost our starting BP we made some serious commitments to the High Priest of Erastil, some wizards, who want an academy built by the end of the second year, and the green faith who give us benefits in exchange for a limit on how fast we can expand (9 hexes per year at the moment)
We built a Caster's tower in the first month, as selling magic items looks to be the only way of paying for our commitments. The tower has already paid for itself and we have 45bp at the start of the second year, but have yet to move past one district or build a castle or the academy. We have been a number of economicly useful buildings but nothing major as yet.
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Before the Kingdom building session I had read the Kingdom building chapter, but I have now had the opportunity to read the Mass Combat Rules. I'll leave the war gaming tactics to those in the group who have more interest in that sort of thing, but I'm likely to be the only member of the group who has an interest in the actual Kingdom building side of things, so I want to make sure that when war comes the war gamers have the tools they need to win (and given the costs involved I want them to win fast and cheap).
So I'm going to present what I think are reasonable strategies for the Kingdom, and then invite more experienced players to rip it apart in a constructive way.
Here goes:
1. Maximise income:
First let's confirm my understanding of the rules:
I get three types of income:
Normal income: D20 plus economy, less unrest vs control, success give me BP's of the result/5. I can put these BP's in my treasury for later use.
Magic item income: I can try to sell one magic item per district per turn. I need to make an ecomomy check vs 20 to sell a minor, 35 to sell a medium and 50 to sell a major item. I can put these BP's in my treasury for later use.
"negative consumption": My consumption is kingdom size in Hexes, plus Districts, plus Edict/promotion costs, plus costs of maintaining a standing army. I can set reduce consumption (gain negative consumption) by building farms, Royal Reserves and having a forest hex within five hexes of a city. The most efficient way of paying for this consumption is by building farms but I can only do this on grassland or hills. If my negative consumption is lower than my consumption charges, I have to make up the difference from my Treasury. If my negative consumption is higher than my consumption, I lose the benefit of the excess consumption as it cannot be put into my treasury and can't be used to build permanent things like roads or buildings. This is strictly use it or lose it. The big benefit of this is that you don't need to roll. Once you have the development build you get the income every month without chance of failure, and without having to divide it by five.
It seems clear that the best way to improve income is to:
Have a major magic item source in every city district, and to have a large number of city districts.
To use my cities to increase my economy and only use open hexes to build mines or camps where there is no opportunity to build a farm or reserve. (Bonus for building a mine is +1 economy on a successful roll, against 2 BP negative consumption for a farm without chance of failure. 10 times the benefit at least)
Build lots of small cost (plus 1 economy) buildings to increase the economy, as well as lots of roads to also increase economy.
Claim as few non farm land hexes as possible, to reduce the number of hexes that cannot contribute to negative consumption, even if this means having a kingdom made of clusters of farmable hexes linked by one hex wide roads.
2. Military Spending
I'm going to use the following assumptions
Standing armies should be funded entireley out of negative consumption. I recognise that armies are priced by the week, so this means a lot of farmland.
Small countries don't work because restictions on army size means that you can't get the economies of scale on larger units. To benefit from economies of scale standing armies should be as large as possible
The cost of additional abilities is so high that you should only add them to armies once war has started or once it is imminent. Standing armies should therefore not have any special abilities as standard during peacetime.
That a standing army unit of the largest size available should be able to withstand a surprise attack if stationed in city with reasonable defences. Standing armies should therefore be based in cities, and each city should have at least one standing army unit stationed in it to prevent it being lost to a surprise attack.
That each city should, as soon as practically possible, have firstly enough defences to allow an army a reasonable chance of survival if surprised, have garrisons/caster towers/temples to allow training and recruitment of new armies quickly to meet any emergency. Each city should have at least a fletcher and a stables to allow for cheap and effective upgrades of troops in the event of war.
I would expect that some border cities would be set up more as a staging post for armies to be created and improved on than as major population centres. I would expect armies from interior cities to be marched up to the front as regular troops and then upgraded at the border cities to save BP's in time of war.
I think as part of my general strategy it is essential that a war chest is built up in peacetime. I'm intending to mark off 50% income from magic items into a separate account for this purpose.
So my peacetime military stance would look like this.
1. A standing army of basic troops all based in cities.
2. All cities would have defences at the earliest opportunity to give the basic troops a fighting chance against a surprise attack.
3. After defences have been built, recruitment and training builds will be put in place to allow rapid recruitment and upgrading of troops in an emergency.
4. There will be a large fund of BP's ready in the treasury to pay for a war, the longer the wait for this the bigger the fund.
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Ok so that effectively covers my strategy for building a kingdom up to be able to withstand an attack, and efficiently fight a war as either the defender or the aggressor.
I'm not sure that there would be many resourses left over after this to do anything else, but would love to hear peoples ideas to add character to a kingdom as the strategy I've come up with seems to lead to a pretty utilitarian military state.
| Gentleman |
You are absoloutely correct on the economy part - the best way to gain large income, and the best way to break the economy of the game very quickly, is just to get as many magic items as possible.
You'll need the income to be able to make the DC rolls, but get enough cheap low cost buildings and you can write that DC off very quickly.
It's not really hard to break the system if you really try(you don't really have to try even), which I do not suggest for the sake of your DM. He'll have to houserule things to make the game more balanced, in my opinion.