The Kingdom Management Thread

[EvilDonut]

I am writing this thread because the tutorial does not explain any relevant stuff about it, and people (like myself) might lose one or more playthroughs because of that.
All of the informations that will follow have been gathered by myself by trial and error, and by asking people's help on this board. I think that in my current playthrough i am managing things pretty well, overall, and therefore think that what i know is mostly, if not all, correct.
If you want to add or correct stuff, you are more than welcome to do it: i'd like this thread to become a discussion group about kingdom management, considering that its mechanics are all but clear. My suggested tips and strategies are:


0) Every 20 points in a single kingdom's stat, you gain a project to support that advisor's endeavor. You basically level up his/her advisor skills and it nets you a better bonus to his/her dice rolls. You should do it whenever you can.

1) Do every single main quest as soon as it pops up. This is especially important in the case of bald hills questline. This is mainly for two reasons, one of which i am explaining now and the other one will be explained later. The first reason is that, doing the main quests (such as the trolls questline) as soon as they come, you prevent bad events from piling up in your events queue. In this playtrough i addressed the trolls matter super early, and therefore the only event i got about them was ''trolls sightings'', which had a low DC and so i managed to get it right. If you wait too much, on the other hand, you will start getting a lot of ''troll strikes'' events, which you will eventually end up not being able to address because they will outnumber your advisors. This will lead to defeat soon enough. I also noticed that, doing this particular questline early, you prevent Bartholomew Delgado to bug out, and will then be able to recruit him as advisor later on. Also, doing the main quests early, get you a lot of spare time before the next one begins in which you can address the unrest issue you may have without having too much pressure put on you, you can also build buildings, reclaim regions and explore without bad♥♥♥♥♥♥happening.

2) Get a treasurer as soon as possible (which means, as soon as the trolls questline begins, head immediately to the west of your capital and get the gnome companion). I have noticed that having low BP or low BP income contributes to the increasing of unrest. Conversely, having a good amount of BP in your cash and a good income, contributes to keep it low. NEVER SPEND ALL YOUR BPS! If your funds go to 0 or under 0, unrest will rise quickly! If that happens, rush to the vendor and buy BPs as soon as possible! Generally, is good to do all the events and the projects that improve your economy as soon as you can afford them.....the treasurer should, theoretically, be the highest leveled advisor you own.

3) All kingdom's statistics contribute to unrest. Consider the combination of all stats as the general well being of your populace: the bigger the statistic's amount, the merrier your folks are. All of them contribute in the same manner (so don't just improve stability ignoring all others....it won't work). That said, stability is one of the hardest stats to push up, because you obtain its advisor pretty late, so you need to get your military up as soon as possible to get the warden very fast. This way, you will be able to efficiently farm your stability on low DC events. Yes, the more time goes by, the harder the events become, so you generally need to up your advisors as soon as possible, before you get too much further in the game.

4) Unrest. The most scariest thing in the game. It can ♥♥♥♥ up 30+ hours of gameplay in a matter of minutes. It has to be constantly kept under control: the more unrest you have, the bigger penalty your advisors' dice rolls will have. As far as i know, it's -1 for worried, -2 for troubled, -3 for riots and -4 for crumbling. If you spend too much time in the crumbling state, you will be defeated. The good news is that there are some projects that, upon completion, reduce the unrest. Those are, as far as i know, ''feast for the afflicted'' and ''address the barony''. The first one costs 1000BP and never fails (as far as i know), the other one is free of charge but it is subject to the unrest dice roll's penalty. Thus, my suggestion is to just ignore the expensive one, unless you're close to be defeated (DO NOT wait until you get crumbling, you should do this at the ''riots'' stage) and do the other one as soon as you are getting anything different from ''stable'' or ''worried'' (i think a -1 penalty is acceptable, and completely manageable....but that's really up to you).

5) The other reason for doing main quests early is that you can then upgrade your advisors in a quicker manner, because as i said above, you will get a LOT less problematic events, and so you can skip 14 days without too much troubles. This will help you a great deal later on, as i stated above. Moreover, you can focus a bit more on opportunity events which, yes, they contribute to improve unrest as well.

6) Upgrading towns and building new stuff is a good thing as well...as soon as you fulfill the requirements and have enough spare BP, upgrade the villagess/towns, so you can further improve your kingdom's stats by building new buildings and upgrading existing ones.

7) Being successful in events contribute to improve your unrest as well, but improving unrest is a process that REQUIRE TIME, it's not an instant improvement, so DO NOT wait until you are ''crumbling'' to address this issue, or you will fail.

8) At least at the beginning, BUILD A BULLETIN POST IN EVERY TOWN. It improves your bonus to solve problems in that region. The bulletin post is only available to lawful alignement barons, though.

9) Be sure to be at the capital the first week of each month. That's the period of time when you receive visits and major stuff happens. Also, it's always better to upgrade your advisors the first 14 days of the month, and not the last one, or you risk skipping out on important events, quests or companion's quests.

10) Do NOT abuse rest. This game is not nwn, it takes a lot of time to rest and you need all the time you can save to manage your kingdom efficiently. Rest only if you run out of healing spells and potions, and even then, if you can, don't hunt but use rations....It will make you save some time.

[atholk]

The advisor abilities are based on the highest stats bouns of one of two stats for each position. I forget which they are though.

Generally speaking if you boosting the highest stat on each of the companions on level up, and using a head/belt item for that stat, that's about all you can do to really influence it though.

[EvilDonut]

Nope, if you support the advisor's endeavor (a project that you obtain every 20 points in the kingdom's stat and that requires 14 days) you improve his/her bonus to the roll dice. Also, there are some projects that improve their general ability to solve problems.

[EH!]

Good tips, the thing is, it's still random, whether by design or not I don't know.

Here's my circumstantial evidence:

PT 1 (on hold due to mainquest bug in Chapter 5):
Didn't bother with most kingdom stuff in troll chapter as clueless
Built nothing as didn't know how
Didn't notice I could build a town in Outskirts or that I even had it
Didn't get a treasurer until a couple of hours before finishing main quest in troll chapter
Did multiple quests that blocked my MC and advisors for up to 6 weeks in the latter case, without paying attention to the end/Beginning of month.
Didn't understand I had to prioritise problems over opportunities and projects.
Didn't notice advisors had points (which I assume makes one choice better than another).
Didn't buy BP until in Varnhold Vanishing so could never afford much
Result: kingdom stable the entire time though somewhat underdeveloped / not in tandem with general quest progression.

PT2:
Filled all build slots in capital instantly
Assigned advisors to problems instantly
Waited for beginning of month to do the 2 week outskirts mission
Built up the town there too as much as possible
Sorted out Bald Hilltop as soon as it showed.
Spent good chunk of on BP.
Result: unrest after 3- 4 in-game weeks.

Edited to add: both times the setting is set to "normal"

[EvilDonut]

uta님이 먼저 게시:

Good tips, the thing is, it's still random, whether by design or not I don't know.

Here's my circumstantial evidence:

PT 1 (on hold due to mainquest bug in Chapter 5):
Didn't bother with most kingdom stuff in troll chapter as clueless
Built nothing as didn't know how
Didn't notice I could build a town in Outskirts or that I even had it
Didn't get a treasurer until a couple of hours before finishing main quest in troll chapter
Did multiple quests that blocked my MC and advisors for up to 6 weeks in the latter case, without paying attention to the end/Beginning of month.
Didn't understand I had to prioritise problems over opportunities and projects.
Didn't notice advisors had points (which I assume makes one choice better than another).
Didn't buy BP until in Varnhold Vanishing so could never afford much
Result: kingdom stable the entire time though somewhat underdeveloped / not in tandem with general quest progression.

PT2:
Filled all build slots in capital instantly
Assigned advisors to problems instantly
Waited for beginning of month to do the 2 week outskirts mission
Built up the town there too as much as possible
Sorted out Bald Hilltop as soon as it showed.
Spent good chunk of on BP.
Result: unrest after 3- 4 in-game weeks.

Edited to add: both times the setting is set to "normal"

Umh.....Maybe claiming regions add to the unrest as well, then....It needs to be confirmed though...
If that's true, you should only do it when you are stable or worried, or it can ♥♥♥♥♥ you out as well

[EH!]

w0lv3n님이 먼저 게시:

Umh.....Maybe claiming regions add to the unrest as well, then....It needs to be confirmed though...
If that's true, you should only do it when you are stable or worried, or it can ♥♥♥♥♥ you out as well

Maybe? However, the tutorial tells you to do it instantly and as I had no clue what I was doing first time round, I can't actually say precisely when I did it that time. I'm going to restart the chapter as I'm really not into struggling against a game that's put my Barony on worried this early on, and will report back.

Observations of other players' comments and general experience with the game thus far is making me inclined to believe it's bugged though.

[Moos]

I'm not so deep in the kingdom stuff yet, but my stats exceed 20 or 30 points on I think 3 different stats. I just upgraded one (I think community) and have quests to upgrade 2 or 3 more and the quest to upgrade my warrior advisor and all kinds of stuff that I just don't want to take care of because I'd rather go out and adventure. Must I complete all the upgrading first? Seems like only kingdom stuff is on a timer, my other quests (aside hilltop - i just finished the trolls) don't seem to have timers. It just feels that when I spend some time (each event or project, whatever it's called) takes 14 days and auto skip those, just leads to more projects that also require time skipping and it somewhat feels that I'm just sitting there and doing time skipping projects when I should be out there in the wild and slaying beasts and ♥♥♥♥.

Btw, some questions: How do I upgrade buildings and how to I upgrade to a town and can I have more then 1 village per region and should I claim regions whenever I can or wait till I have extra BP? I currently have 2 regions (capital + 1) and have filled all building slots in these. I could now claim 1 more, I have some 400+ BPs laying around because my monster slaying makes me rich.

[AVGAMER]

How do you get the mage advisor slot and who can fill it, this is quitre annoying as my arcane is quite high.

[EH!]

Firstly, you don't want to do those upgrade quests unless it's at the beginning of the month and you don't have the clock ticking on a main quest when you do them as they block your character for 2 weeks, meaning if anything comes up or the main quest times out in that time you are shafted.

As for upgrading your town/buildings, it's based on number of regions you add to your barony and adding any region again blocks your MC for 2 weeks.
You can only have 1 town per region.

[EH!]

AVGAMER님이 먼저 게시:

How do you get the mage advisor slot and who can fill it, this is quitre annoying as my arcane is quite high.

One of your advisors will talk to you to free up the slot, I forget which one.

[EvilDonut]

Moos님이 먼저 게시:

I'm not so deep in the kingdom stuff yet, but my stats exceed 20 or 30 points on I think 3 different stats. I just upgraded one (I think community) and have quests to upgrade 2 or 3 more and the quest to upgrade my warrior advisor and all kinds of stuff that I just don't want to take care of because I'd rather go out and adventure. Must I complete all the upgrading first? Seems like only kingdom stuff is on a timer, my other quests (aside hilltop - i just finished the trolls) don't seem to have timers. It just feels that when I spend some time (each event or project, whatever it's called) takes 14 days and auto skip those, just leads to more projects that also require time skipping and it somewhat feels that I'm just sitting there and doing time skipping projects when I should be out there in the wild and slaying beasts and ♥♥♥♥.

Btw, some questions: How do I upgrade buildings and how to I upgrade to a town and can I have more then 1 village per region and should I claim regions whenever I can or wait till I have extra BP? I currently have 2 regions (capital + 1) and have filled all building slots in these. I could now claim 1 more, I have some 400+ BPs laying around because my monster slaying makes me rich.

You should upgrade them, and avoid to pile their upgrade quests all at once, otherwise it will be hard to catch up....And later in the game, if your advisors are not leveled enough, you won't be able to be successful at events....
To upgrade buildings, you first need to upgrade settlement. To upgrade a settlement, you have to claim 2 regions and have all 6 buildings built in it. The first settlement you upgrade MUST be the capitol city (when requirements are met, you will receive a new project to upgrade it)

[EvilDonut]

AVGAMER님이 먼저 게시:

How do you get the mage advisor slot and who can fill it, this is quitre annoying as my arcane is quite high.

I think you need the curator to level up in order to get the arcane

[EvilDonut]

uta님이 먼저 게시:

Firstly, you don't want to do those upgrade quests unless it's at the beginning of the month and you don't have the clock ticking on a main quest when you do them as they block your character for 2 weeks, meaning if anything comes up or the main quest times out in that time you are shafted.

That's exactly right. Upgrade them at beginning of each month, 1 per month. You should avoid that the upgrade projects pile up, or it is gonna be hard to catch on later.

[BlackscorpioZ]

I cant even pick the bulletin building. dosen´t even exist?

[Sorceress]

There's also a guide in this steam community that says the same things as OP.

[EvilDonut]

BlackscorpioZ님이 먼저 게시:

I cant even pick the bulletin building. dosen´t even exist?

It requires a lawful alignment. Sorry, forgot to mention it, gonna fix first post.