Terrain Improvement Limits?


Kingmaker


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My party is trying to determine if there is any RAW or RAI limit on terrain improvements.

There is a decent post about it on rpg stack exchange.

So questions:
1. Is there a limit of Asterisk Terrain Improvements (such as Farm, Fishery, etc) stacking with themselves?
2. Is there any limit to having a mine/Quarry/Sawmill a Asterisk Terrain Improvement on the same hex?

My party disagrees on #1, but agrees that there is no limit on #2.


My group had the same questions.

On a single hex you can have
1 farm
1 fishery
1 road
1 watch tower
...and so on all co-exsisting. A single farm on the hex represents an entire network of farms, so you can't have 2 farms on 1 hex.

That hex can also have 1 mine OR 1 quarry OR 1 saw mill.

One thing that was never clear to me is what improvements town hexes can support.

I ended up ruling that city hexes can have farms, fisheries, and asterisk improvements, but they could not have mines, quarries, and sawmills.

If a mine can't share a hex with a sawmill, I can't imagine how it could share a hex with a city.


I've found the post on the rules forum from the author of UCam kingdom rules:

Jason Nelson wrote:
It can share the same hex as OTHER improvements. It cannot share the hex with other iterations of the SAME improvement.

Source: Ultimate Campaign terrain improvements

There are also several other threads about it:
Terrain Improvements (Kingdom Building) question
Ultimate Campaign- Settlements and Terrain Improvements in the Same Hex?
Ultimate Campaign, What does the * mean on Terrain Improvements mean?


There is also another post by Jason about farm saying that his RAI it should not be in the asterisk group:

Jason Nelson wrote:

I'm pretty sure that the Farm should *not* have an asterisk. Basically, the idea was that you could create any one of the following in a hex: Farm, Mine, Quarry, Sawmill.

Then, if you wanted, you could also add other things running through the hex, like an Aqueduct, Bridge, Canal, Road, etc., or a smaller improvement like a Fort or Watchtower; any number of these could stack with the one basic improvement listed above.

The operating principle is that improvements of the first four types (Farm, Mine, Quarry, Sawmill) really represent the sum total of the economic use of the land in that hex. It's not one farm, it's 100+ square miles of farmland; not one mill or mine or quarry but lots of them.

The other improvements are more concentrated in terms of their physical size, which is why you can combine them in hexes with other things.

Cities themselves are much the same. A city doesn't fill the whole hex. An official-sized city district is a bit less than a square mile, so even a huge multi-district city occupies only a tiny fraction of a hex. IOW, there's no problem putting a city in a hex that already has other improvements (or vice versa).

P.S. The deletion of the asterisk from the Farm is not official errata, though; it's there in the final text, so if you're playing RAW then by all means use it. If you're interested in RAI, I intended for it not to be starred. Typos happen. :(

Source: Ultimate Campaign Book Comments


Good to know on the city hexes.

I played in a kingmaker campaign and am GMing one now. I will say that both groups had a slow time getting their cities off the ground.

Neither group was close to the recommended kingdom size at the end of book 2.

If we treated farms the same as mines, sawmills, and quarries progress would have been a lot slower.


There are adjustments that can be made at the necessary points:

Varnhold pg 9 wrote:

Depending on the size of their kingdom, you might even wish to let them take a year or two to expand their nation until it reaches a respectable size of 50–60 hexes or so (perhaps even extending into the Nomen heights to the west of the Tors of Levenies) before beginning this adventure.

Remember that once a kingdom reaches a size of 81, its rulers become Kings. This event should coincide with the next adventure, if possible—so if you can time things so that the PCs are finishing “The Varnhold Vanishing” with a nation that comprises 75 to 80 hexes, that’d be perfect.

My party isn't too fond of the idea, but I think I'm going to run with the author's RAI and then let them run for extra time if they're not at the right points.

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