Kingdom Management Issues

Hello there, Pathfinders!

As you all know, forging a kingdom of your own is what Pathfinder: Kingmaker is all about. Building up settlements, defending the realm and dealing with the occacional disaster, be it trolls falling from the skies or all the furniture suddenly coming to life, - such is a ruler's burden. However, as developers, we want to make sure that these burdens do not outweigh the joys of being a monarch, and an adventuring monarch at that.
We've been tweaking the balance of kingdom management ever since release, and while we think we've taken steps in the right direction, we're still closely monitoring the situation. Right now, we'd like to pinpoint some of the remaining issues, and you can help us with that! To do so, just take part in the poll and tell us: which of the issues with kingdom management you find the most frustrating? Feel free to elaborate in the comments!

The results of the poll, as well as all of your comments and feedback, will be forwarded to our dev team. Thank you very much for your participation!

EDIT:
Whoa, folks - thanks for all the comments, and keep'em coming! I just wanted to make sure all of you have seen this update written by the people who designed kingdom management in the game. It has a lot of info and may help those who want to better understand how to best rule your land:
[url]https://owlcatgames.com/forums/showthread.php?5981-Dev-Spotlight-Kingdom-Managementhttps://owlcatgames.com/forums/showthread.php?5981-Dev-Spotlight-Kingdom-Management[/url]

Well, I have voted for the fourth option (3 candidates for each role is not enough), but I must say a very close second would be that projects take too much time. The other options do not bother me overmuch.

Thanks for asking!

Out of the seven options, I would say in order 1 and 4, then perhaps 6 but by lack of information and 2 (mostly the ones blocking your MC; I can't believe s/he's so busy s/he can't take 2 minutes off to tell an advisor "take care of this problem please!").

It still manageable though, I did won my first game on Normal.

Perhaps some detailed options for the kingdom management would help beyond the current ones? I don't wan't to hand the control over to the game, but I don't enjoy starting a 14 days blocking event and then something urgent show up without warning and I'm screwed...

Still - I enjoy the game nonetheless, kudos :-)

I voted "It is too hard to decrease your kingdom's Unrest levels", second place "Having 3 NPC candidates available per each of the 10 advisor roles is not enough", love to see new advisor with related quest :P

Great game!!!

I voted 4 as well, because it is somewhat easy to end up with a missing advisor slot or an advisor that has a completely different alignment than you.

I will also agree with Melkhior about the events that take up the MC's time. I'd suggest tying the upgrades that halve conquering/ranking up time with something else which the player can rush a bit earlier (not too early though), instead of a standard number of rank-ups and incursions (e.g. two expensive trade agreements, with or without additional/combined requirements, which lower the time needed to, say, 10 and 7 days).

As for the rest, I think you already achieved a good balance:
1) Number of events feels good too me, not too many to overwhelm you or too few to bore you.
2) I think events and projects take enough time for the kingdom managment to feel like actual management. If their duration was lower, would there be any risk involved or at least some thought required when assigning a advisor to an event/project?
3) Same as above - I feel the number of advisor slots is just right.
4) As said above, considering some advisors' behavior, it's risky to end up with empty or "incompatible" slots.
5) This may not be a problem after a while, but it certainly is true for new players. Not everything is explained thoroughly (and if everything was, the player might get too overwhelmed with info xD). The current modular tutorial is nice, but it can use some additions.
6) Wouldn't know - in three playthroughs, unrest never got out of control on normal kingdom difficulty.
7) Definitely not - I ended up overflowing with BPs at around 6th chapter (in all my 3 playthroughs), without thorough exploration that is, which is imo a good time for that to happen. Early enough to enjoy and spend the BPs and late enough so that earning BPs does not become trivial for the largest part of the game.

Notes: Would be nice if a BP vendor was placed in the throne room (say, a builder's guild representative) and some extra money sinks on him wouldn't hurt.

You would be better off putting this poll on steam as well this forum is like a ghost town sometimes but the steam forum is not much better

Yeah not having enough NPC for filling the positions is at the moment the most annoying thing but i would point out that also the time for researching the curses is way way too long and block your religion/magic advisor for too much time.

Lack of advisors for each role is definitely the biggest issue, as missing out on some characters or having others leave / be killed in one way or another in the progress of main quest can end up permanently crippling a blind playthrough if you're unlucky, with certain alignment options very easily getting the shorter end of the stick. [URL="https://owlcatgames.com/forums/showthread.php?6089-Lack-of-advisors-potentially-gamebreaking-amp-suggested-solutions-(SPOILERS)"]More on that here[/URL]. I think this goes above all other issues due to it potentially leading to an unrecoverable losing spiral.

As comparison, for general BP and unrest management to become issues they require frequent failures to get that far and the player also gets communicated about their own fuck ups beforehand so if it happens it's a gradual slide down, whereas permanently losing out on an advisor as a part of quest or other player choices can sometimes come as a total surprise, potentially leaving the player with only one advisor (that can be contrary to their own character's alignment) or in worst case scenario no advisors at all for a specific role, making the player permanently unable to solve all events requiring that type of advisor.

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[U]Buying BP[/U]

Two QoL issues regarding this.

First of all there really needs to be a way to buy BP directly through kingdom management screen, or at the very least through some sort of buildmaster NPC in the throne room, preferably the former or both. First of all this massively cuts the number of needless loading screens since the player doesn't have to switch instances between town build screen > kingdom management screen > throne room > capital's market square > throne room > kingdom management screen > town build screen. Way too many situations where I've thought to myself "oh right, I need to go buy 15 more BP to build everything I planned to" only to be hit with all those loading screens in a row.

As far as I also recall no tutorial in the game mentions about the possibility of buying BP with gold either and it's very easy to miss for a first time player, so aside from cutting down loading screens I think the game could also actually mention about the possibility itself. A buildmaster NPC in the throne room could function for that role as well.

[U]Building new villages is somewhat vague[/U]

This is another more minor issue, but I feel it's very easy to miss the map prompt to place and build a new village. On my first playthrough I had already expanded to several regions before noticing the tiny map markers that let you actually build a new village. I'd suggest either making the spots blink / different color / bigger or something else, so they're easier to notice, or alternatively have a "you can build a new village" message in the kingdom management UI whenever the option becomes available.

[QUOTE=hera35;37971]

[U]Buying BP[/U]

Two QoL issues regarding this.

First of all there really needs to be a way to buy BP directly through kingdom management screen, or at the very least through some sort of buildmaster NPC in the throne room, preferably the former or both. First of all this massively cuts the number of needless loading screens since the player doesn't have to switch instances between town build screen > kingdom management screen > throne room > capital's market square > throne room > kingdom management screen > town build screen. Way too many situations where I've thought to myself "oh right, I need to go buy 15 more BP to build everything I planned to" only to be hit with all those loading screens in a row.

.[/QUOTE]

This so much. I'd prefer a button to convert money to bp on the kingdom management screen.

This is a "hard" poll. I feel like a lot of these issues compound on one another and are not entirely by themselves a part of the frustrations some players feel towards kingdom management.