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OK, some exaggeration in the title, but I could use some advice here. My players finished Act II with a little less than half of the Greenbelt settled. By the beginning of Act III, they're supposed to have settled almost the entire thing! This represents at least a dozen or two kingdom rolls, for which I said they could take 10 on all of them.
Skimming ahead, though, it seems to me there are two reasons to keep bothering with the kingdom rolls:
1) The mass combat in Act V
2) The fact that many of the rewards/hazards in the AP are expressed in BP and bonuses/penalties to kingdom rolls
So, question to those who have gotten through the whole AP, or at least Act V: Do you think it was worth it to keep up the kingdom rolls? How well do the "kingdom in the background" sidebars cover what's going on?
IMO, I'm leaning towards getting rid of them. My players seem to enjoy exploration and divvying up leadership roles more than the actual upkeep involved with calculating economy checks and whatnot. However, I'm concerned that unless I come up with some kind of alternate system, half the sidequests will be pointless, and I don't want to deprive my players of mass combat fun. Help!
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My 2 cents:
I think the general consensus lately seems to be getting into kingdom building in Book 2 and 3 along with hexploration. Then easing out of it and going more high level, like what are we emphasizing in our kingdom, economy, trade, military, and where do we put settlements in book 4. By Book 4, your party probably is hiring folks to do most of their hexploration, which is a good thing because it lets you and them focus on the bigger things that should be requiring their attention, like people wanting to stomp on their kingdom.
There definitely is a point of diminishing returns in kingdom building, and unless your players are eagerly demanding more kingdom turns, I suggest moving away from that to more high level politics, army building, and critical kingdom threats.
Grab the spreadsheet that Brad and Chemlak have been keeping updated for Ultimate Campaign, and let it do the calculations for you. Much easier to keep track of your kingdom that way.
If your players seem blasé about building stuff, you can always do what I did and move enemy armies in Brevoy and the River Kingdoms around along their borders, threatening them and making them have to start throwing together defenses and military much earlier than they might otherwise. Armies and walls suck of kingdom turns and BP to sustain, and if you have to focus on these in the mid range of kingdom building, it does add an extra challenge. Normally in the early to midrange, kingdom building would focus on economy bonuses and consumption, not military units and defenses.
I wrote this thread at the end of my Kingmaker campaign. Some of my posts in this thread dwell on the issues you mention and how we dealt with it (dropping the hexploration rules after book 2, dropping the kingdom rules after book 3, etc).
Hope this helps!
My 2 cents:
I think the general consensus lately seems to be getting into kingdom building in Book 2 and 3 along with hexploration. Then easing out of it and going more high level, like what are we emphasizing in our kingdom, economy, trade, military, and where do we put settlements in book 4. By Book 4, your party probably is hiring folks to do most of their hexploration, which is a good thing because it lets you and them focus on the bigger things that should be requiring their attention, like people wanting to stomp on their kingdom.
There definitely is a point of diminishing returns in kingdom building, and unless your players are eagerly demanding more kingdom turns, I suggest moving away from that to more high level politics, army building, and critical kingdom threats.
Grab the spreadsheet that Brad and Chemlak have been keeping updated for Ultimate Campaign, and let it do the calculations for you. Much easier to keep track of your kingdom that way.
If your players seem blasé about building stuff, you can always do what I did and move enemy armies in Brevoy and the River Kingdoms around along their borders, threatening them and making them have to start throwing together defenses and military much earlier than they might otherwise. Armies and walls suck of kingdom turns and BP to sustain, and if you have to focus on these in the mid range of kingdom building, it does add an extra challenge. Normally in the early to midrange, kingdom building would focus on economy bonuses and consumption, not military units and defenses.
I feel a bit bad I didn't get to explore all sides of kingmaker. There were so many problems the group and myself solo-ing just went around solving them before it got to mass combat and enemies could muster into truly large forces. The town only grew a little, and it was a more typical game with the group of players and some npcs keeping things safe.