Ultimate Campaign: Giant holes in kingdoms / organizations

[Sothas]

I have found two holes so far that I need help figuring out.

1. Trade - Holy crap this makes no sense. In a nutshell, the longer the TRL, the easier the trade DC. Likewise, the larger the Kingdom, the harder the trade DC.

Let's look at it.

Here's the stats we need for our mock trade route.
Control: 66
Size: 46
TRL: 20
Corruption: -5
Productivity: 10 (making it -10)
This gives us a total trade DC of 89.

Let's use the same everything, but change the TRL to 40. According to the book's fluff this should increase the DC, but the DC ends up being 61.

Now if we decrease the size of the kingdom size to 26 and in turn the control to 46 we get a DC, using the original numbers of 39.

Conclusion: It is harder to trade to your neighbors, and it is harder to trade the bigger you are. Now, I understand increasing the DC when you get bigger because all your other numbers are bigger... but a big enough country has zero ability to trade with its neighbors, but could potentially hit a DC of 0 if trading around the world... Sense: it makes none.

Personally I think the only change needed should be LM = TRL - kingdom size instead. What say you?

2. BP cost compared to organization cost.
Even at its cheapest, 1 BP = 1,000 gp, but "in general" 1 BP = 4,000 gp.

Let's look at the castle costs.
Castle - 54 BP, cheapest it could be is 54,000 gp all the way up to 216k.

Alternatively, you can purchase one which is 7,390 gp according to the organization rules.

Double you tee eff anyone?

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

Because the farther the trade route goes, the more likely it is that you're trading for something your country cannot make on its own, like exotic artworks?

[Odraude]

And with the castle, you are probably buying a castle with all of the bells and whistles, while the Building version is more basic and bare bones.

[Sothas]

I get the exotic thing, but it basically is saying that it's impossible for USA to trade with Canada. It also says word for word "longer trade routes are harder to maintain," and yet the DCs are lower.

For castles: I thought of that too, but it bugs me that all the buildings that you can get have identical names in both sections making it quite obvious that they were intended to be the same thing, but the pricing is significantly different.

[Albatoonoe]

Sothas wrote:

I get the exotic thing, but it basically is saying that it's impossible for USA to trade with Canada. It also says word for word "longer trade routes are harder to maintain," and yet the DCs are lower.

Well, back in the day, I'm sure Canada would just go like "We have that stuff here, too." This is a "time" (yeah, anachronistic fantasy universe, whatever) where trading was very different. And, I haven't taken a look at the book, but I imagine it takes a lot of time to run these long routes, so a slow return could certainly make it difficult to maintain

[Solomon Kane]

When we saw the trade routes, my group just assumed it was a typo (-LM instead of +LM) in the formula. Basically the same idea you have.

For kingdoms, the buildings are constructed in 1 month. I'm guessing the increased cost is for getting it done that fast. The simpler buildings that could actually be built in that time with the room construction rules seem to have a much smaller 'price gap' with the kingdom rules.

[Epic Meepo]

Sothas wrote:

2. BP cost compared to organization cost.

Even at its cheapest, 1 BP = 1,000 gp, but "in general" 1 BP = 4,000 gp.

Let's look at the castle costs.
Castle - 54 BP, cheapest it could be is 54,000 gp all the way up to 216k.

Alternatively, you can purchase one which is 7,390 gp according to the organization rules.

I that same initial reaction to building costs, but then I realized something...

In addition to the actual building found there, every city lot increases the population of its settlement by 250 people. For a castle that occupies 4 city lots, you have to add the cost of recruiting and housing 1000 people to the the cost of the castle, which can easily equal 54 BP.

You can still choose to build a castle for 7,390 gp, but nothing about that castle improves your kingdom stats; none of the Rooms listed in the Downtime chapter says anything about affecting kingdom stats. It's only when you combine your castle with four city lots that it takes on the properties of the 4-lot castle listed in the Kingdom chapter.

[nightflier]

To be honest, I think that the old Birthright rules for trade and kingdom-building are excellent and it is a pity that setting was discontinued.

[voska66]

Sothas wrote:

I get the exotic thing, but it basically is saying that it's impossible for USA to trade with Canada. It also says word for word "longer trade routes are harder to maintain," and yet the DCs are lower.

For castles: I thought of that too, but it bugs me that all the buildings that you can get have identical names in both sections making it quite obvious that they were intended to be the same thing, but the pricing is significantly different.

Canada and the US didn't trade very well in the past. Too many regulations, subsidize, tariffs and such. It took 100 years to settle that out to the trading system we have today.

[Alexander Augunas]

Have you played with the Downtime Rules yet? Because its actually sort of a hassle to build buildings outside of the Downtime system. Here's a comparison:

Capitol Cost: 165 Goods, 31 Influence, 148 Labor, 2 Magic (7,390 gp)

BP Cost: 54 (about 216,000 gp)

I was TOTALLY the same way when I read this. "Oh man! This is ridiculous! Why am I not buying all of these buildings myself?!"

Here's why. Capitol Generation Limitations.

Now, the Capitol GP cost listed above is the Castle's price if you buy the capitol instead of generate it naturally. Let's assume that you're going to spend the full 7,390 gp to make your castle happen. You go out and you purchase all of the capitol you need and life is great! Except for that annoying little chart in Ultimate Campaign called the spending limits chart. The spending limits chart limits your spending options based on the size of your settlement. Now, if your settlement has 1 building, it is automatically considered a Village, which means you can spend up to 10 capitol per day, which means if we're using the above list, it will take you 33 days and a half to build your castle. More than a month, while Kingdom Building allows you to complete that castle in one kingdom turn (or one month). This becomes even more of a hassle when you remember that constructing a building requires Downtime, meaning that if you aren't directly there overseeing the construction of your castle, then no progress is made without you. You literally need to be there for 33 days to watch the labors make it.

Also. you aren't spending any of your character's Wealth per Level building a castle if you build your castle out of BP.

[Riveos]

Alexander Augunas wrote:

This becomes even more of a hassle when you remember that constructing a building requires Downtime, meaning that if you aren't directly there overseeing the construction of your castle, then no progress is made without you. You literally need to be there for 33 days to watch the labors make it.

It's actually worse than that, though for different reasons

Ultimate Campaign p. 92 Time: wrote:

You must be in the settlement at the start of the construction or recruitment period, but don't have to spend any of your downtime days to begin construction or recruitment. In effect you have to be present only to give the order to begin.

This seems to imply construction doesn't take your downtime days, though it does only specify "to begin". On the other hand, the construction time for each room is additive for the building, so the example castle would take 408 days, or about 13.5 months to build. The gatehouse alone takes 40 days, so even if your GM allows every room to be built concurrently(which isn't provided for by RAW), that would be the minimum, without spending multiples of the Capital required.

[Sothas]

Taking longer and paying for all the extra stuff (like people) makes more sense now. Thanks all.

I still don't think the trade route stuff is right. Our kingdom we're running has a 26th level God as king and a 28th level general, both with leadership, plus two a 24th and 25th level wizard using their Int... with a trade route we tried to set up with 1 hex TRL we can only make 1 check for certain, , we have a chance of failing one, and have zero chance of making another in a 46 sized kingdom. If we weren't epic, there would be no possible way of making it. I think we're just going to end up flipping the equation. When your kingdom gets bigger, it should be easier to trade huge distances (like across continents), not harder (in comparison to smaller kingdoms).

[relativemass]

People have talked about the difference between a kingdom building castle and a downtime castle costs being from time and labor, which is partly true, but I think the big difference, that 200K gold difference, is mostly because the downtime system and the kingdom building system were set up separately and simply not designed for compatible. The downtime system is set up to make building easily affordable compared to player wealth, while the kingdom building system is set up to be un-affordable compared to typical player wealth. I don't think there is an easy fix. I would play it that if players want a castle for personal gain then they can build one with the downtime rules, and if they want one for national gain then they can build it with the kingdom building rules, which may mean that a castle will be built twice so that it can function for both purposes. Those are my thoughts on the matter.

[rknop]

Were I GM (and I am GMing two different Kingmaker campaigns at the moment, so this isn't entirely hypothetical), I would say that the players might be able to use kingdom-built buildings for non-capital-gaining ancillary benefits without having to pay any personal downtime. For instance, if they build a castle in their capital city with BP, they should all be allowed to use it as a base of operations, and as a base of operations for relevant teams. After all, the castle is where the rulers live, and they are the rulers.... If you build a caster's tower, you could decide that it's the Magister's casters tower, and let him use it as a base of operations for his Apprentice and his Scribes or some such. And so forth.

I would rule that Inns, Taverns, Artisans, and so forth, generally aren't owned by the players, but the players could then pay the gp cost to buy it and run it themselves... if they have time.

[Tryn]

Also BP aren't equivalent of Gold.

BP are more "Kingdom Worksforce worth around 2000 to 4000 GP" (this means Workers you can use, Tools, suppliers, base materials, tradeshops, workshops etc.)

Also the downtime system and the kingdom building system are two different systems, designed for two total different circumstances.
It's near impossible to design such two systems which will then perfectly match/fit at each other.