My group is running Kingmaker with a very large party (7 players!) each of us with "Council Positions" (which I will use to refer to the players). I am one of the players, the general, a LN Fighter. We are on Book 3 I think (beginning to look to moving west, I did not read much out of the books to avoid spoilers).
The King is a LG Paladin by the way and our main way of dealing with unrest is assassinating people. He also threatened to declare war on Cheliax when they sent an ambassador (note: we have no army). I am slightly frustrated with this.
Our Kingdom is kind of suffering for lack of direction; we are failing stability checks frequently, and are having trouble affording fixes due to poor economy. I was formerly trusting the others to mostly deal with it, particularly the spymaster and the king. As the general, and so expected to mainly concern myself with armies, but I find now that we need them, we cannot even begin to afford them.
I am learning the system now and trying to figure out how to fix things. I think the main problem is we have been trying to claim the maximum number of hexes whenever possible until fairly recently. I don't know the exact stats for the Kingdom but I'll see about getting them tonight to get a more solid idea for patching it up. I know our stability is not nearly high enough; we have been "assassinating dissenters" to keep it down. Stability checks require us to roll like a 17 to avoid unrest.
One thing, for example, that I had us do was build a stockyard in a settlement surrounded by farms to get consumption down fast. (Went down from like 18 to 12 or so.)
Does anyone have any suggestions for getting stability up fast and consumption down fast? It seems there aren't a lot of places we can build farms right now, so I was trying to think of things to maximize the ones we already have. I am trying to do a crash course since it seems I'll need things running smoother to have an army operational.
We have about six settlements, I am a bit fuzzy on the names (the capital Waterford, Varnhold, the old trading post settlement, another incorporated settlement [Tazleford?], and a new one down by the silver mine). I'd say at a guess we've claimed roughly half to 2/3 of the first area and roughly 1/3 of the map with Varnhold. Originally we were going to have the kingdom info posted online to make planning easier, but the other players didn't feel it was worth maintaining.
Yikes, well there are a lot of problems here. First off, alignment issues aside, assassinating people is probably not the best way to promote stability and contentment. My guess would be that assassinating the dissenters is actually adding to your problem, not the reverse. Of course, you also have to get a hold of the exact rules that the GM is using (to the extent that he is willing). There have been a couple of versions of kingdom rules though I think they are fairly similar (this assumes using published material and not a homebrew). For stability, look at ways to allow the people to have fun. IIRC (been a while since I read the rules) fun = happy people = more stability. Consumption will always be an issue though. Almost everything has a trade off. My guess though is that the assassinations are a pretty big problem though.
I'm not as knowledgable about the original Kingdom rules as I am about the ones in Ultimate Campaign, so I'm going to answer based on the UCam rules.
Build sawmills in forest hexes. 3 BP pays for itself in 3 kingdom turns, and each on adds 1 to stability (more if it's a resource hex). Build houses in your settlements to reduce unrest to manageable levels. After a few turns, you'll basically be fine.
Sorry guys, I forgot to mention, we are using Ultimate Campaign rules. I am still learning them myself. I also only just started getting involved in the "big picture" planning of the kingdom so there's a lot I am fuzzy about. We aren't using the ones from Kingmaker, we are just using that setting.
I like the sound of sawmills. I wasn't reading the improvements carefully enough, I think I am overfocusing on settlement development. I'll look into it! :)
Excellent. I know you said that your fellow players thought that hosting the kingdom details online was a pain, but I would suggest Drop-box and THIS to manage it. (Shameless self-plug - I'm the one currently developing the sheet. It currently only works properly in MS Excel.)
I got some of our kingdom stats; I didn't have time to learn the breakdowns of where everything is coming from, though. The sawmills look like they're going to work nicely so far, though. We were only able to build two so far and have limited forest hexes we can build more in though (most of our claimed forest hexes appear to have landmarks).
Size: 41
Control DC: 67
Economy: 46
Loyalty: 45
Stability: 52
Consumption: 12
Unrest: 0
BP: 20
It seems we were able to move the Spymaster's bonus to apply to Stability to help us make checks, and we had gotten something like +4 to checks in the last Kingdom phase from some event, so we scraped by the most recent month alright. But it looks to me like we're not out of the woods yet, since it seems all of our checks require high rolls to beat the Control DC. From my understanding it still looks like we need to roll a 15 to make stability checks.
One of the players suggested filling most of the large amount of empty space in Olegathorpe (the trading post turned settlement) with nothing but houses and shops to try to crank up Economy. I'm still liking the Sawmill strategy since we seem to have one or two more Forest hexes we can build them in. There's no way we can afford defense buildings or armies right now, though.
Incidentally, we apparently have roads in nearly all possible hexes.
Apparently the roleplay explanation for how the "Royal Enforcer" (recruited kobold NPC) is keeping unrest down is because "executing the unrighteous" is practically a monthly festival everyone in the capital attends. I just realized that my DM gave me a magic item with undectable alignment after I butted heads with the Paladin over things like this and wonder if that's to keep me from being targeted by him if my LN turns LE (it has threatened to do so at times).
Holy....
Stop claiming new hexes!
What you essentially have there is a hugely expansionist kingdom that cannot support itself economically.
Spend some time on civic improvement projects (buildings) in your settlements. You need to get all 3 kingdom stats up, fast. You want low-cost buildings that improve any of them. Think of the stats like saving throws, and the control DC like the save DC - as it stands, you're basically screwed. You can't earn anything from taxes without a natural 20. Without something to offset it, you'll gain unrest way faster than you want, which will only make things harder.
Economy is your biggest problem, right now. You need it to be at least 57 for your current control DC. Library, inn, mill, shop, smithy, tannery, trade shop (no particular order) are good bets to help. Build houses to offset any unrest increases. Put farms everywhere you can to reduce your consumption. You'll need to throw cash at the treasury for a few turns to keep your balance up to let you build things. Until your economy is, on average, zero sum (outgoings equal to incoming), don't even THINK about claiming new hexes.
Oh, and there's nothing stopping you building sawmills in forest hexes that have landmarks, so do so.
From the position you're in, you'll need luck, but you can recover.
We recently switched to the UCam rules when we became aware they were available, and we’re currently experiencing a problem with Loyalty since Parks stopped providing a bonus to it. I’m looking at Aqueducts as a potential way to boost Loyalty. However, I’m not sure whether the listed bonuses are once per hex of Aqueduct or once per completed "path" between a city and water. I’m also not sure which cities qualify. Does a city need to be adjacent to no water to benefit from an Aqueduct, or can you build an Aqueduct to a city which is already in a hex with a river or lake? Depending on how Aqueducts work they might really help the OP as well since they give a bonus to Stability too.
@nobu- Make sure you're getting credit for any Lairs in hexes you've claimed as those boost Stability. I agree that Sawmills are great for boosting income and Stability. They literally saved our kingdom. In another thread it has been decided that they also probably produce BP even when your Economy check fails. That could be really helpful for your situation.
If you can afford a Lyre of Building and have a PC who can play it you should find that the 2bp discount it provides when you’re constructing a building should pay for itself many times over in the course of time. If multiple PCs have the Perform skill multiple Lyres would be even better. In our campaign my PC plays a "magic guitar" with the same function which has probably saved us several hundred thousand of gold pieces worth of BP so far (8,000gp per turn). It might even be worth investing in a headband to give one or more PCs the skill to play a LoB. Since Kingmaker has a lot of downtime it would be nice if somebody in the party can craft such wondrous items at half price.
Aqueduct bonus is per hex, but must connect a hill/mountain to a settlement. Any city that is in the same hex as an aqueduct can build water-dependent buildings (there aren't many of those).
I would rule that only the shortest pathed aqueducts provide the bonus: you don't get extra by building one in a straight line to a settlement, and then another in a HUGE arcing loop to the same settlement. You could, though, just build the big loop one and see a sudden massive boost when it is completed.
Since the rules are silent on aqueduct bonuses to cities that already have water borders, I would say they still function: they are an impressive engineering feat, and that drives at least some (if not all) of the bonus.
Wow, the Lyre's incredible. I'll have to talk to our GM to see if we can use it, he hasn't been too keen on having the PCs directly responsible for settlement improvements very much. He tends to want to remind us "you can claim X hexes, you know" all of the time, which I think is how we got into this situation. I also would have run it by the Bard, I'm not sure which perform skills he has, and the DC for succeeding is an 18. He'd probably also have to craft it (we have limited ability to import things right now due to poor diplomatic relations).
King Lawful Stupid Paladin hasn't threatened anyone in awhile luckily so we probably aren't looking at mass combat soon. I'm taking measures with the Spymaster to try to keep him out of audiences with diplomats as a safety measure.
I need to check about the Lairs. I'm not sure what the breakdown is for where all of our scores are coming from at the moment. I didn't know about them providing +1 stability, I'm pretty sure no one else knew, and I know we've claimed several, plus we even have their locations marked on the map. I can figure it out next session.
I like the look of the aqueducts, we might be able to place some without too much trouble, but it depends on how our budget ends up looking. There's not much point in building them unless we can complete them all at once.
Thanks guys!