Are Buildings Pointless?

[thelebk]

I've come to wonder if there is any reason to build buildings in the town screens save for area benefit buildings like bulletin board/hospital, teleportation circles, and craftsmen workshops. Buildings cost BP and provide a trivial one time boost to a stat or two. Events, which are never in short supply, cost no BP and on resolution provide a 3x the benefit (or more) of a building. While the higher level buildings offer slightly better benefits, they take up much more space (prohibitive) and cost much more BP. Again, a single event, will outstrip many of the higher level buildings as well for stat boosts. In the current build if you complete the minor Pitaxian influence problem in Act V the text states you get +23 to about 5 different stats. Perhaps this is a messaging bug, but the point is buildings in the game seem insignificant in value versus the generic problems and opportunities which spawn in droves.

This is a balance issue that will take careful thought to fix. Simply toning down event resolution stat boosts may have the unintended side effect of making kingdom levels too low for advisors to have a reasonable chance at event success by chapter. Thoughts?

[InEffect]

there is little reason past X in each stat. before that they influence masters along with master town level and affect different aspects of the game like arcane for more scrolls/wands. Also easier checks for your advisors.

[thelebk]

Sorry not tracking. Level X is stat level not stat number. Buildings are inconseqential for stat number which in turn drives eligibility to raise stat level. Aside from plot progression to build a town and a city, and the special purpose buildings I mention above, events which cost no BP are vastly more important for raising stats and stat level.

[InEffect]

Depends on how fast you want top tier master goodies. In my experience you do need to invest into town building to get all to level X in a timely manner.

[Lightning]

Depends how long you want the game to run for while in the last chapter all that matters is to the buildings i believe, even though they look cool as well

[InEffect]

well I prefer getting stuff like redeemer by tournament give or take, so there is that.

[thelebk]

Yes the buildings look cool, but they are not properly balanced. Either buildings need to be more powerful or event cards less so. In other case player progression and balance may be affected.

[Hobocop]

Most of them feel superfluous besides artisan shops and things like the teleportation circle or aviary. The vast majority of your kingdom stats are going to come from solving event cards besides maybe the espionage stat since it unlocks so late in the game so you have very little opportunity to rank it up through events which encourages you to spam build things like goblin and kobold quarters instead of making any kind of sensible building decisions.

[haplok]

Yeah, I needed to spam Noble Villas, Embassies and goblin quarters before end game to reach X in Espionage. But other then that... Bulletin Boards, Teleportation Circles and Aviaries. Not much else needed.

[Nero]

The kingdom mode needs several changes, yes.

Each tier 1 building should provide 0.1 BP per week, tier 2 0.2 BP, and so on. (rounded down at the end).
To counter that the base income should be lowered over the course of time (less money from Restov).

Each category of the kingdom should provide something.
For example military gives you a 5% discount for mercenaries each rank.
It's not much, most people won't use mercs, but it's at least something.
Arcane could be used as limiting factor for the teleportation circles, etc.

There should also be projects like building a bridge, eg at the gap between candlemere and tusk water, that provides BP each week once build.
There should be roads too for faster traveling and toll each week.

The possibilities are endless.

Then there needs to be the option to buy BP directly in the kingdom mode.

[Drunetovich]

I could also mention, that most economic projects are questionable in value, getting +1 BP per week for 100BP means you will only get your investment back in 2 years, and most of them are set up this way. It seems more beneficial to ignore them.

[Nero]

Originally posted by Drunetovich:

I could also mention, that most economic projects are questionable in value, getting +1 BP per week for 100BP means you will only get your investment back in 2 years, and most of them are set up this way. It seems more beneficial to ignore them.

AFAIK some of them are relevant for the ending slides. If you are on good terms with XYZ, etc

[haplok]

Originally posted by Drunetovich:

I could also mention, that most economic projects are questionable in value, getting +1 BP per week for 100BP means you will only get your investment back in 2 years, and most of them are set up this way. It seems more beneficial to ignore them.

Not so sure, considering that the game time is much longer then 2 years and most of those benefits scale (with number/level of towns, certain stats).

[Grifta]

Important for stats at the start, and then only important for effect later.
Teleport circle, Bank, anything that generates BP or has some other effect.

[thelebk]

@Grifta Concur. Too bad though, as it makes the majority of buildings pointless. Most trade treaties cost too much, and take too long to break even, though that is a different topic.

[Red]

buildings are only good for promotions to tier 3 (+/-). Then it is all event cards after that. You wont even have enough time to upgrade all of your ministers later on.

and the game loves to hit you with unexpected 100 BP (up to 250 BP) yes/no options during postupgrade conversations with your ministers