As I was reading through the Ultimate Campaign I had some thoughts and questions.
Page 212 mentions that magic, such as a Lyre of Building gives a 2 BP discount on buildings per month. If a Lyre of Building costs 13,000 gold, then it could be purchased with 7 BP. Since the Lyre costs 7 BP and saves you 2 BP per month, is there any reason to not just load up on Lyres of Building?
Foundries gain extra bonuses the more mines they are connected, and stockyards gains bonuses for the more farms they are adjacent to. Do bonuses from multiple foundries and stockyards connected to the same mine/farm stack?
Because foundries increase the affects of mines but not quarries, is there there any reason to make a quarry rather than a mine, aside from +1 Stability?
Historically small town tend to form around mines, called mining towns. Am I reading the rules correctly that towns cannot share the same ~150 square mile region as a mine?
A cistern provides +1 Stability because it is a supply of fresh water. Since an everflowing spring (page 216) is also a source of fresh water, is it just assumed that it also provides +1 Stability? If not, then what good is an everflowing spring?
The price of a monastery looks kind of fishy since it used to be 6 BP and now adds less kingdom bonuses than before while taking up double the land. As they are currently printed, why would you ever get a monastery, other than for the favor?
While doing a search on kingdom building topics I noticed that this one had never been answered.
Page 212 mentions that magic, such as a Lyre of Building gives a 2 BP discount on buildings per month. If a Lyre of Building costs 13,000 gold, then it could be purchased with 7 BP. Since the Lyre costs 7 BP and saves you 2 BP per month, is there any reason to not just load up on Lyres of Building?
This is one of those "talk to your GM" things. Obviously if you could do this you would end up getting free buildings every round. If I was your GM I would probably say you could only get a bonus from one, for balance reasons.
Foundries gain extra bonuses the more mines they are connected, and stockyards gains bonuses for the more farms they are adjacent to. Do bonuses from multiple foundries and stockyards connected to the same mine/farm stack?
A stockyard grants bonuses to all farms in the same hex or in adjacent hexes. The bonus does not stack with bonuses from another stockyard.
A foundry provides a bonus to a single mine that is connected to the foundry, technically at any distance. The bonuses do not stack; i.e. you can not use two foundries to give bonuses to the same mine. But you will probably have lots of mines and it is good practice to build a foundry for every single one.
Because foundries increase the affects of mines but not quarries, is there there any reason to make a quarry rather than a mine, aside from +1 Stability?
The stability is the main point. Other than that there is not a lot of reason to build a quarry. A mine is almost always better.
Historically small town tend to form around mines, called mining towns. Am I reading the rules correctly that towns cannot share the same ~150 square mile region as a mine?
Villages of less than 250 people are assumed to dot the landscape but do not count as settlements, since they occupy less than 1 lot. So your mine probably does have a village nearby to support it, which is factored in.
A settlement is not a terrain improvement (even though it is constructed at the same time) so you can certainly have a settlement in the same hex as a mine.
However, the rule for which improvements can be built in the same hex as other improvements is really muddy, since you can't build a road in a hex with a mine, which is probably not the intent, and you basically need to fix this.
My fix is that any land-use improvment (i.e. Farm, Mine, Quarry, or Sawmill) cannot share a hex with any other land-use improvement. Talk to your GM and he will probably be ok with that.
A cistern provides +1 Stability because it is a supply of fresh water. Since an everflowing spring (page 216) is also a source of fresh water, is it just assumed that it also provides +1 Stability? If not, then what good is an everflowing spring?
It is weird that no benefit is listed for building an everflowing spring. It may be a typo. A +1 to Stability is perfectly reasonable.
The price of a monastery looks kind of fishy since it used to be 6 BP and now adds less kingdom bonuses than before while taking up double the land. As they are currently printed, why would you ever get a monastery, other than for the favor?
It's pretty silly to build a monastery in a city, since the whole point of them is that they provide an isolated place for priests to live away from society. They really should be terrain improvments.
I certainly agree that they aren't worth a lot. There are much easier ways to get +1 stability. However, if you are trying to improve your law and lore scores for the settlement I could see this one being an option.
Peet
Note that in answering these questions I'm going with the material used in the 'Ultimate' series of books from Legendary Games, mainly Ultimate Rulership. So it's only useful if you use 3rd party material, but if you do then they are GREAT for the kingdom-building rules.
As I was reading through the Ultimate Campaign I had some thoughts and questions.
Because foundries increase the affects of mines but not quarries, is there there any reason to make a quarry rather than a mine, aside from +1 Stability?
There are buildings in Ultimate Rulership like Brickyards and Lumberyards that provide extra bonuses for quarries and sawmills in or adjacent to the hex they're located in. Indeed, since they provide it for every two such terrain improvements, you have every reason to build 4-6 of them nearby.
Historically small town tend to form around mines, called mining towns. Am I reading the rules correctly that towns cannot share the same ~150 square mile region as a mine?
Again, there's a rule in Ultimate Rulership that you can build a town and a terrain improvement in the same hex, given how much ground the typical hex covers.
The price of a monastery looks kind of fishy since it used to be 6 BP and now adds less kingdom bonuses than before while taking up double the land. As they are currently printed, why would you ever get a monastery, other than for the favor?
It does provide for the Law and Lore scores as Peet said. Also, from the 'ULtimate' series, it allows you to recruit monks for your army, provides a sizeable boost in population to your community and according to Ultimate War is rather well fortified in case you need it for defense.
That said, yeah, given how little it provides to the kingdom's scores it seems overpriced.
Historically small town tend to form around mines, called mining towns. Am I reading the rules correctly that towns cannot share the same ~150 square mile region as a mine?
A settlement is not a terrain improvement. No limit.