Ultimate Campaign - downtime / exploration game

[Arcus]

So I'm planning on starting a new Pathfinder game that will focus on the new downtime and exploration rules in Ultimate Campaign. The idea is to use the hex system in the exploration rules to have the players set out in a new frontier. They will embark on simple one-off adventures. They will be able to choose the pace of the game, what adventures to go on and when. When they have enough resources from adventuring they will be able to use downtime actions to create buildings and organizations.

I just have a few questions for anyone who has used these rules or knows more about them then I do.

1. The prices to purchase buildings seem pretty low. Small buildings like taverns can be created for under 1000gp. This means using the recommended treasure value per encounter (page 399 CRB) a party can pay to buy a tavern outright from one encounter at level 5 (slow progression). The most expensive building - a palace, is just under 20,000gp. A 10th level party gets 3650gp per encounter. So after like 6 encounters (about 1 or 2 sessions for my group) the party could build a palace.
This seems a bit cheap to me. Has anyone else seen these prices work as is? or was it a problem? do you just have to more tightly control how much money the players get?

2. Does anyone know a good source for pre-made adventures designed to be completed in one or two sessions? All of the ones from Paizo seem to be part of big epic adventure paths which is exactly what I want to avoid.
I would love a product that just includes a whole bunch of small adventures, like a book with an adventure every two pages or something. Back in the days of second edition there was this package by TSR of 16 adventures, each one was just a couple ideas for hooks, a few encounters, and a little map. That one product kept me going for a whole campaign.

3. Anyone with experience in this kind of game have any advise or ideas?

[Psion-Psycho]

I know its an old 3e book but check out Iron Kingdom Building rules. I use them to today.

[TGMaxMaxer]

From running a long term sandbox style game, the most important thing to have in place is the world. You also need to know what kind of playstyle everyone is gonna get behind. If you have a couple social players, and a couple charge! players, they'll expect a different feel for kingdom building.

If you know what's happening in all the fiefdoms/countries/areas around, and on what schedule, you can pretty much run anything.

Also, stat up half a dozen different "wandering monster" groups at each CR tier, 1, 3, 5, 7 etc. as your players get to them. If they are in a certain type of environment, they'll run into the same kinds of monsters regularly, you don't have to throw darts at a chart of bestiary entries. If it starts getting slow, or you don't have any idea where they're going next, you can just have those wander into the PC's. (For immersion, as long as you have intelligent players, you might also want to have a few that are double the normal CR, so that at low levels they have to run away sometimes. It makes later levels fighting those same monsters and winning seem more like the characters have grown.)

You could always look at some of the PFS scenarios, they're set for levels 1-12, and just re-fluff them to important cities/NPC's in your world. They're fairly cheap, and you'll have all the basics right there for encounter balance/maps and such.

As far as your first question, most "fantasy" settings Kings/Princes/Local High-Muckity Muck is around level 12, has a palace, a small army, and several cities.

At 12th level, each PC is expected to have 100k+ gold.

Minimum wage is around 1sp/day.
So 2g/month.
So they are expected to have 25,000 months worth of decent wages. Around a 1000 years worth of normal wages, for each PC.

A tavern, costs 500 months worth of minimum wage labor.
A palace, costs 10000 months worth of labor (more like 3-4000 since you'll want decent craftsmen).
The building costs, are about right, if you put it in perspective.