Optimal kingdom building

[Sabi The Worst Player Ever]

I guess I should had select "effortless" rather than "easy" but Im a bit confused about this part. I just started chapter 2, appointed advisors (except money one since I could only apply custom here and devs hate customs) and now Im a bit unsure what should I do next. Priests mentioned waiting a month for local curse event and I already did two weeks project on claiming northern region. Now I either spend 14 days on rising rank on one stat or I travel to Oleg Post. Aside from mentioned curse thing, do I need to value my time or Im pretty much unrestricted after that, to explore and have fun?

Also, I heard from some people that building anything is pointless, except of bulletin boards and teleportation circles. Is that true?

How do I not screw up kingdom in the future, basically?

[mk11]

1. You can buy BP for 80 gold each. You get lots of gold from loot, as long as you keep expenditure on consumables and gear under control you can supplement your BP.

2. You are probably going to expand to towns and a city eventually and that needs a certain number of buildings but mostly think carefully about building more buildings than needed.

3. Apart from the artisan's shops (such as Bokken), Mage towers, bulletin boards, stocks, the only value of buildings is to provide a one-off boost to a kingdom stat. Therefore, I would hold off building buildings until that boost will push you up a rank.

4. The curse thing constantly drives your time. There is enough time to do all the questing you want as long as you don't waste lots of time. However, the time is short to do all the kingdom things you are offered so you need to be selective about that.

5. You'll be wanting to do rank-ups eventually but be careful when you do them. If you do them in the last 14 days of the month you risk having a Problem pop-up while you are busy and failing to assign someone to it before the end of the month. For the same reason, be careful about tying advisors up over the end of the month.

[dwarner]

The months are numbered. Very rarely will a problem pop up and expire during rank ups.

The most important thing you can build in each Village is a Teleportation Circle. Those require Arcane 40, and Arcane requires Divine 60 to unlock, and that required Shrines surrounding a Monument.

I rushed Divine this playthrough and had Circles up in Ch 3. Huge impact. Currently have 1500 BP trade agreement in progress with 130 days left on Curse part 4 (just started 4712).

Aviaries let you manage your kingdom from adjacent zones. I put a town in Silverstep so I can manage my kingdom anywhere on the east side of the map, even in the mountains. They require 40 Relations, which requires 60 Community so Windmills and Granaries and Breweries are also good early. Inns adjacent to Town Halls give 4 Relations each.

Different stages of the game make different buildings important.

[dwarner]

The whole point of the game is to screw up, learn from it, and improve. Improving is fun.

At the beginning of Ch. 2 the only thing to worry about is the Curse. How much time is left on it?

[Mork]

For now save and try to upgrade a advisor. Community or Loyalty advisor if you can. If you want to know what happen if you skip days after that point(14days or less on the ancient curse timer) SAVE and pass a few days... reload


Building are not totally useless. I normally start by building a town hall in the middle of the village and go from there.

Espionage: the hardest stat to increase making watchtower + wall combo a really good start in all village.

Divine: A good stat to increase fast, building a shrine + herbalist shop(arcane) is good choice
in every village. Once it reach rank III become less important except for specific artisan.

Arcane: Every points in it count, a good stat to improve at at steady pace when you have the chance.

Stability: A game ending stat if go to 0 for too long. All building with stability are great bonus(like town hall). Keep a eye on this one, if drop try to build some stability building.

Culture/relation: to unlock regions, not a priority.

Community/loyalty: The easiest stats to level but also the first ones to rank III to unlock regions and advisors.

Military: A easy to level stat, not very important but need rank III to unlock a adivisor spot.

Note: Almost all new settlements come with artisan(s). Try to visit them as soon as one is build (except the first one, The Outskirt where Bokken is in Oleg) and build the specific named workshop for them in the specific region you found them.

region: https://pathfinderkingmaker.gamepedia.com/Regions
advisor: https://pathfinderkingmaker.gamepedia.com/Advisors
artisan: https://www.neoseeker.com/pathfinder-kingmaker/loot/Artisan_Items_Crafter_Masterworks

[Kurosu]

You will need the artisan building in your new regions to progress their quests. Beyond that the only really important ones are boards and circles like you said ( the circles are simply OP ). The rest are simply there to improve stats.

[Marcos_DS]

Originally posted by Sabi The Worst Player Ever:

Also, I heard from some people that building anything is pointless, except of bulletin boards and teleportation circles. Is that true?

Regular buildings give you improved kingdom stats, which can allow you to get additional advisors and regions earlier:

* The additional advisor slots are unlocked by getting Rank III and Kingdom Stat 60. (E.g. Divine 60 + Rank III triggers the Magister Advisor option). Later in the game there is a region unlocked by Arcane V.

* Several Regions can be added to the kingdom earlier: Northern Narlmarches (Community III +Stat 40) and Kamelands (Loyaltiy III + Stat 40) - which unlocks more fast travel

* Teleportation Circles can be unlocked by arcane II and Stat 40 - so buildings getting there faster are a huge timesaver

Also, the artisans buildings are very important - good artisans means more gold income and/or good items.

That said, when you have unlocked all advisors, the buildings give diminishing returns: You get enough points from events to unlock the other ranks and the limiting factor is time, not stats.

How do I not screw up kingdom in the future, basically?

Never let your BP drop below 100 in CH2, i would suggest min 500 BP in later chapters. Prevents you from going negative from events (which drops your stablity). You can trade 80 gold for 1 BP at the capital city merchant merchant, I would suggest to do so to give your kingdom an early push.

An early economics decision allows you to raise no taxes (reduced BP income), which will change kingdom from "stable" to "serene". Good buffer for later events, and also gives you +1 to resolve all events which is most useful early on.

Also, shameless self promotion:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1529701697

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by Sabi The Worst Player Ever:

Also, I heard from some people that building anything is pointless, except of bulletin boards and teleportation circles. Is that true?

The main reason for building out your towns is increase your point total in each of the kingdom stats each month. This achieves two things:

a) it allows you to level up your advisers which in turn means they get a higher bonus on their rolls for problems/opportunities. Which is good.

b) it provides a buffer against the stat loss penalties associated with failed rolls and other bad stuff happening. It used to be the case that if a stat fell beneath a certain threshold for the the current adviser level for that stat you'd get a kingdom stability hit (stable->worried etc). I don't know if that is still true. Either way, the bigger your points total in each stat the less problems you will have in the end.

Basically the more points you can get in each category thee better, and way to do that is build out your towns choosing buildings that boost scores in the stats that are currently low. Try to even them out with your building selection. This means concentrating on economy, military, community etc for your first towns and concentrating on relations, arcane, divine, espionage etc in later towns. Towns don't need to be self-sufficient in anything, it's OK to specialise them in certain stats.

Originally posted by Sabi The Worst Player Ever:

How do I not screw up kingdom in the future, basically?

1. Spend all your money on BP in the early game and most of it in the later game. You need to buy a few important but expensive scrolls, diamond dust etc, but aside from that there's virtually nothing worthwhile to buy. You will also be swimming in gold from mid-game onwards, so don't sweat it. Invest in your kingdom. That's the point of the game, the clue is in it's name.

2. So long as you have built out your kingdom's towns (gaining you healthy stat increases each month) it doesn't matter if you fail a % of your problem card DC rolls. So long as you succeed in more than 50% of them you will be in a net positive situation. Don't fret too much about failed problems (unless success rate falls below 50%). Just plod on through adviser level ups to improve success rate over time when possible.

3. The exception to that is problems associated with chapter main quest lines. The game is not explicit about which these are, but it is usually fairly obvious if you are paying attention. Once identified such problems should be attended to immediately (drop anything else you are doing temporarily) by a) using your crisis points to help pass the DC checks and b) deal with the associated main quest as quickly as possible (thus killing off these problems at source). If a problem card has a high DC then it is probably a bad problem maybe associated with a main story line and may cause a kingdom stability hit if not dealt with effectively.

4. You priorities should be 1) main quests stuff (including Bald Top Hill curse attacks), 2) problem cards, 3) adviser level ups, 4) opportunity cards/projects you want to do. In that order.

5. When doing 14 day time out actions (levelling up advisers, claiming regions etc) avoid these period going over month ends. Sometimes you get problems coming up at the last minute just before the month ends. You can still get two 14 day stints in during one month by starting the first one on the 1st and the second by the 15th (except month II which like IRL has only 28 days - you need to watch out for that gotcha). Plenty of time for that.

6. There are two game time scales at work in-game which are disconnected with actual play time. Adventuring and dungeoneering take very little in-game time but a lot of actual play time. Kingdom management work is the other way round. It's important to realise this because often when you are dungeoneering you intuitively feel like your kingdom might be going to rack and ruin in your absence whereas in fact only a handful of days are actually passing. Conversely when doing a lot of kingdom management stuff you intuitively feel like no time at all is passing (which by the play time clock it isn't) whereas in fact a lot of time is passing and your kingdom may well be going to rack and ruin if you are missing attending to something important. The wise player will always try to remember this.

7. I would say a reasonable plan for each month might follow these principles:

a) If a main chapter quest is active (including Bald Top Hill etc) drop everything else to deal with it except making sure you assign advisers to deal with all problem cards. If a main quest is active nasty additional problems ca suddenly crop up and it's good to have plenty of advisers on hard to allocate to them. Don't leave you kingdom borders unless it's to deal explicitly with a main quest line mission and then do it at the beginning of the month so you can get back before month end to deal with any residual problems.

b) If have just or recently finished a chapter quest line and you have a number of side/companion quests to do divide you month into one 14 day project, e.g. level up adviser, and a 1-2 week adventure/exploration expedition. Preferably the adventuring trip for the beginning of the month, the 14 day project starting on or before the 15th.

c) If you have just claimed a new region schedule an exploration trip to find and claim all the bonus resource nodes in it and map out all the locations and roads immediately rather than do any side quest stuff as in b). This gives you stat bonuses and also a lot of extra loot and XP which is always nice. As is getting to kill something already which you may be itching to do by now.

d) If you have cleared your side/companion quests (or all the one's you want to deal with now anyway) and there is no main quest related disaster afoot yet, schedule two adviser level ups/region claims etc for the month. Levelling up advisers and claiming regions is never a bad idea if there is no reason not to - you should do it as much and as fast as possible. After you've completed a main chapter quest line there is usually a lengthy period of relative peace before the next chapter kicks in. This is an ideal time to prioritise adviser level ups.

8. There is one decision you can make when your economy adviser gets to level 6 (maybe level 5, not sure) which is to set taxes to zero. This is incredibly beneficial as it gives you an overall kingdom stability boost every month. I would strongly advise building plenty of economic buildings in your towns (paying attention to adjacency bonuses etc) in the early game so as to level up your economy adviser to this level as a priority to get this decision. Trust me you won't need the money and it will replace panic and paranoia with a warm fuzzy feeling for the rest of the game.

The stronger your kingdom is the more resilient it is and the more likely you are to win the game. Don't neglect it. Look after it and it will look after you. Don't listen to anyone who suggests otherwise.

[dwarner]

All great stuff. You can use Aviaries to manage your kingdom outside its borders. I put one in Silverstep this game and am managing my kingdom just outside Vordokai’s Tomb. Kalikke’s Mountaineering training has made that less important, but it’s still a worry reducer.

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by dwarner:

All great stuff. You can use Aviaries to manage your kingdom outside its borders. I put one in Silverstep this game and am managing my kingdom just outside Vordokai’s Tomb. Kalikke’s Mountaineering training has made that less important, but it’s still a worry reducer.

Jesus, you learn something every day. WTF are aviaries?

[dwarner]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

Originally posted by dwarner:

All great stuff. You can use Aviaries to manage your kingdom outside its borders. I put one in Silverstep this game and am managing my kingdom just outside Vordokai’s Tomb. Kalikke’s Mountaineering training has made that less important, but it’s still a worry reducer.

Jesus, you learn something every day. WTF are aviaries?

Unlock with Relations III, buildable in towns. From Wildcards DLC.