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Hi all.
As part of my own AP prep, i was wondering if any of you fine ladies and gentlemen had put any thought into adding a seasonal overlay into the Kingdom Building system.
I have considered a few rough ideas, and figured it would be nice to hear if anyone else had thought of anything themselves. (parallel design and all)
One of my ideas was to increase farm output for the fall quarter, while reducing it in the winter quarter. If spring and summer were left 'standard' you would end up with a theoretically decent cycle.
How would Graineries and other city improvements impact this type of change? Stockpiling for winters was a fairly standard perception in society. Maybe make available new structures? A Smokehouse for example? Going along this track, what structures would you suggest? what type of impact/bonuses would you consider?
Does anyone have any other ideas on a type of overlay to have seasonal effects? I'm quite interested to hear from anyone interested in sharing their thoughts.
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I came up with a different approach -- farms can only be built in the spring months. This gives me just enough realism to make me happy while keeping the calculations simple. And it adds a certain rhythm to the kingdom year, with the most expansion happening in the spring.
(I've been playing around with kingdom rules variants and running test kingdoms for months even though my players are still only on book 1... the kingdom system is too complicated and fascinating not to fiddle with!)
Your ideas do sound interesting, though! I would think stockpiling food would contribute to stability if to any of the stats. If you wanted to play up the survival element, you could impose stability penalties in the winter if the kingdom lacked enough granaries or food stockpiling improvements.
Hi vivificient!
thanks for the thoughts.
1stly, i hadn't considered the building restriction by season idea. Interesting and i will definitely mull on that.
There was an old pc game that had a kingdom/army premise called sword of aragon or some such. (horribly outdated graphics, trust me on this) but it had a few seasonal aspects that have stuck with me over the years which have inspired this train of thought.
Cities had multiple resources...farming, lumber, mining, and fishing. farming had large seasonal variations, logging would slow in winter and shut down completely in the last month, and mining/fishing was generally year round.
Stability as a stat makes sense following your line of reasoning. People starving in winter would also have Unrest i would assume.
The Civ player in me is still trying to come up with structural types that would feel appropriate. In addition to things that would be better of as hex Improvement options and City Options. Mundane and Magical.
Since the Lots represent multiple buildings of a type, i wonder if things like 'Butcher' etc would be too small in scale to be needed as an improvement.
Granary.
Smokehouse.
Food Storehouse.
(hex)mushroom farm(underground)
(hex)ranch
some of the brainstorming so far. Mmm. i need to reread my kingdom books again.
Since the Lots represent multiple buildings of a type, i wonder if things like 'Butcher' etc would be too small in scale to be needed as an improvement.Hiya, just a quick comment - like your thoughts, but need to point out
that the first incarnation of the rules did indeed have all sorts of
different kinds of buildings, but the devs pulled back on this & they
are now all just called 'shop' or something similar...I guess all I'm suggesting is 'call it what you will, but currently a
single name covers a multitude'... :)
Different name - same stats... You can do that for heaps of buildings &
over the past few years there have been multiple threads discussing that
idea.Cheers & looking forward to what you come up with.
That's a fairly good point. Thanks for putting that out there.
The Book of the River Nations from John Brazer Enterprises adds several new building such as the Butcher, Baker, Town Commons, Apairy, Keep (treat as Fort), Weaver, Witch's Hut and a few more.
In our game I also change the name of some buildings for example, a Butcher in the Waterfront District is called a Fishmonger, Piers on the river become Boathouses.
Granaries include more than just grain storage in their description. I believe they are also required to be in the same district as a reserve army if you are using that rule.
The Book of the River Nations from John Brazer Enterprises adds several new building such as the Butcher, Baker, Town Commons, Apairy, Keep (treat as Fort), Weaver, Witch's Hut and a few more.
In our game I also change the name of some buildings for example, a Butcher in the Waterfront District is called a Fishmonger, Piers on the river become Boathouses.
Granaries include more than just grain storage in their description. I believe they are also required to be in the same district as a reserve army if you are using that rule.
Ohh, i think i have that book squirreled away in my downloads. Thanks i'll take a look.
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There was an old pc game that had a kingdom/army premise called sword of aragon or some such. (horribly outdated graphics, trust me on this) but it had a few seasonal aspects that have stuck with me over the years which have inspired this train of thought.
Cities had multiple resources...farming, lumber, mining, and fishing. farming had large seasonal variations, logging would slow in winter and shut down completely in the last month, and mining/fishing was generally year round.
I loved that game!
I do like this idea. It makes sense given where the Riverlands are located. The winters would be similar to Minnesota or Wisconsin. The kingdom rules can be fairly forgiving to players. This would give them something to more to consider in their planning and building.
Another idea is to increase Build cost or to increase the time to complete a building during the winter months. This would simulate construction halts due to poor weather and resource taking longer to arrive at the build site.
There was an old pc game that had a kingdom/army premise called sword of aragon or some such. (horribly outdated graphics, trust me on this) but it had a few seasonal aspects that have stuck with me over the years which have inspired this train of thought.
Cities had multiple resources...farming, lumber, mining, and fishing. farming had large seasonal variations, logging would slow in winter and shut down completely in the last month, and mining/fishing was generally year round.
I loved that game!
I do like this idea. It makes sense given where the Riverlands are located. The winters would be similar to Minnesota or Wisconsin. The kingdom rules can be fairly forgiving to players. This would give them something to more to consider in their planning and building.
Another idea is to increase Build cost or to increase the time to complete a building during the winter months. This would simulate construction halts due to poor weather and resource taking longer to arrive at the build site.
Hail to another grognard who remembers that game. Heh.
I like your ideas for increased/slowing effects as well.
I've been slowly working on organizing what i have from the legendary games UK and the normal rules as well as Brazer's book. Once i have that master list chosen and compiled, i can run a few simulations for my 1st couple ideas on seasonals.
Probably a simple way to account for seasons is to modify farm effects by season. Here's a quick idea:
Winter: x0; no farm effects
Spring: x1; normal farm effects
Summer: x1; normal farm effects
Fall: x2; double farm effects
or maybe:
Summer: x1.5; enhanced farm effects
Fall: x1.5; enhanced farm effects
It adds up to the same overall reduction of consumption over the year, but makes granaries especially important in winter time. As things currently stand, granaries are mostly useful only if there's a sudden Consumption surge that isn't offset by immediate farm construction.
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Probably a simple way to account for seasons is to modify farm effects by season. Here's a quick idea:
Winter: x0; no farm effects
Spring: x1; normal farm effects
Summer: x1; normal farm effects
Fall: x2; double farm effectsor maybe:
Summer: x1.5; enhanced farm effects
Fall: x1.5; enhanced farm effectsIt adds up to the same overall reduction of consumption over the year, but makes granaries especially important in winter time. As things currently stand, granaries are mostly useful only if there's a sudden Consumption surge that isn't offset by immediate farm construction.
I did something like this when I was testing out a homebrew variant for my own game.
I did it this way:
Winter: no revenue from farms or fisheries
Spring: normal
Summer: normal
Autumn: +1 BP per farm
Overall it was pretty balanced but it turned out that Granaries become immensely important. To keep it from being necessary to build a half-dozen granaries per district, I upped the storage amount to 10 BP per granary.