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We just hit the 2-year anniversary of the founding of the PC's kingdom, and I'm not sure what we should be at for growth. I know by VV it should be @50 hexes, curious how others went.
Note: we're taking a role-play approach to building, so players know the cost but not necessarily the mechanical benefit to each building. E.g. they don't know in advance a castle halves the cost of a town hall, so they built the town hall first because that made sense to have a seat of government in a Lawful kingdom. The players wanted it this way to keep some mystery to building. The NPC councilors offer their input from time to time as do locals.
After two years, kingdom is 7 hexes, 1 city with almost every square full in one district, no unrest or consumption costs, and bringing in on average @6-7 BP a month. Moving too slow, just right?
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We just hit the 2-year anniversary of the founding of the PC's kingdom, and I'm not sure what we should be at for growth. I know by VV it should be @50 hexes, curious how others went.
Note: we're taking a role-play approach to building, so players know the cost but not necessarily the mechanical benefit to each building. E.g. they don't know in advance a castle halves the cost of a town hall, so they built the town hall first because that made sense to have a seat of government in a Lawful kingdom. The players wanted it this way to keep some mystery to building. The NPC councilors offer their input from time to time as do locals.
After two years, kingdom is 7 hexes, 1 city with almost every square full in one district, no unrest or consumption costs, and bringing in on average @6-7 BP a month. Moving too slow, just right?
I guess everyone's game is different but it seems a little slow. Just 7 hexes?
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They don't see an overwhelming advantage to expansion (they did build a mine on the gold vein) and have been focusing on building up the village. Using the River Kingdoms guide, so there's economic benefits for the wilderness hexes. But they don't like the idea of the Kingdom's DC going up, though right now most checks have about 10% to fail.
I think a lot of it has to do with BPs, that they'd like to expand, but with only 6-7 BPs a month rolling in (sometimes a few more), that's not much to build with.
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They don't see an overwhelming advantage to expansion (they did build a mine on the gold vein) and have been focusing on building up the village. Using the River Kingdoms guide, so there's economic benefits for the wilderness hexes. But they don't like the idea of the Kingdom's DC going up, though right now most checks have about 10% to fail.
I think a lot of it has to do with BPs, that they'd like to expand, but with only 6-7 BPs a month rolling in (sometimes a few more), that's not much to build with.
Hmm how have they done with the random events?
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My group had made friends with a couple of farmsteads to the east of Oleg's and had protected them from attacks a few times, so storywise it made sense to make Oleg's the starting city and take the farmstead hexes. Now they are adding hexes in a direct line to the Stag Lord's fort in order to make that their new capitol. So I am guessing they will see steady growth up to about 10-12 hexes if BP and events permit. At 24 months they will likely be about 12-15 hexes assuming they also target the mine for absorption into the kingdom.
My group knows the mechanical value of the buildings, but some of the kingdom building optimizing is offset by story events that have awards tied to them. For instance, the group was going to build a barracks and the farmers complained that harvest was one month away and they had no granary to store the grain and stores in for winter. The baroness relented and built the granary, and was rewarded with free festivals that year sponsored by the grateful farmers and +2 loyalty for the entire winter. Other future storyline buildings may have BP, loyalty bonuses or political advantages ("I know a guy who knows a guy..."). It helps keep the Kingdom turns fun for my crunch hating RP focused players as well.
From what I have been reading in reviewing all the older archived posts on kingdom progression lately, it seems like most kingdoms grow steadily up to a moderate size (10-15) in the first few years, and then build up their scores with buildings before expanding landwise again. How fast each transition happens I think depends a lot on how conservative your players are and how the luck of the dice falls.
7 bp's a month? Yea i can see why they would expand slowly. Did you remove the magic item market and not replace the lost income with anything? While it is possible that a kingdom can function with no magic item economy it will grow much slower and you may be well into year 5 or 6 before you reach the recommended size for starting book 3.
For example in our game we expanded to 4 hexes by month 4 then stayed there for another 8 months while we built up our main city. After that point we have expanded at maximum speed every month since then (almost to the end of our 4th year). We also made at least 1 city a year with more later on as we were able to build more per turn. All kingdom stats have stayed pretty consistent at control dc +5 with economy always being out front.
None of our expansion would have been possible without the magic item economy or something equal to that as even now we only gain about 25bp from the economy roll itself.
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The town's first (and only) district is nearly full, and we do have one shop contributing to minor magic items. The party had a real problem filling the NPC slot for "magister," which tanked the economy early on.
Further, unrest spiked heavily when they expanded quickly and failed some stability rolls at the startup. Suppose maybe we're more reflective of a 1 year growth than a 2 year growth due to the struggles early on.
I've considered removing the magic item economy and replacing it with a game mechanic of a trade agreement (exclusive rights to the exotic wares, for example), same mechanics. Since it's minor items, doesn't add much at this time, but I like the idea (from another thread) of role-playing out some negotiations.
As to random events, we do one each month and there hasn't been much to the extreme. Given the kingdom's low Command DC, there's little chance for failure on those rolls. Slow and steady it seems.
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We just hit the 2-year anniversary of the founding of the PC's kingdom, and I'm not sure what we should be at for growth. I know by VV it should be @50 hexes, curious how others went.
Note: we're taking a role-play approach to building, so players know the cost but not necessarily the mechanical benefit to each building. E.g. they don't know in advance a castle halves the cost of a town hall, so they built the town hall first because that made sense to have a seat of government in a Lawful kingdom. The players wanted it this way to keep some mystery to building. The NPC councilors offer their input from time to time as do locals.
After two years, kingdom is 7 hexes, 1 city with almost every square full in one district, no unrest or consumption costs, and bringing in on average @6-7 BP a month. Moving too slow, just right?
Maybe you can throw more bandit lairs or something and they can get as their loot more BPs. -Just sayin.
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Maybe you can throw more bandit lairs or something and they can get as their loot more BPs. -Just sayin.
Hmmm, intriguing idea, and encouragement to secure those wild hexes. They cleared the elven keep and hired some adventurers to haul out the heavy stuff; with an elven delegation wanting to investigate (once the route there is safer), might be worth tossing some BPs into the mix if they can accomplish this.