Kingdom Management Guide and reference. – Steam Solo (2024)

Overview

This is a basic guide to understanding kingdom management, along with some reference about regions, artisans, and advisors.

General Tips on Kingdom Building

• Kingdom events run off timers, so you’re always operating under a certain amount of time pressure.
• Events come in two flavors- problems and opportunities. Problems take precedence because failing them reduces kingdom stats. Events will always auto-fail on the first of the next month if an advisor has not been assigned to them. Be careful assigning an advisor to an opportunity if they will not complete it before the end of the month- as a problem could pop up late in the month and you won’t be able to assign an advisor for it. Each event has a DC (difficulty class), and each advisor has a bonus for dealing with events based off a stat- which stat depends on the advisor role Advisors who are also party members can boost their bonus with equipment that improves the stat. So, you may have an event DC 14, and your advisor has +5 bonus, meaning at the end of the event a D20 is rolled, and if D20 result +5 < 14, the event will fail. There are also triumphs and catastrophies. If you beat or miss the roll by more than 7, the event will have a larger effect on your kingdom stats.
• Projects generally stick around until you choose to do them. Be careful with projects as many of them are long term, preventing you from using that advisor for any events for an extended period of time. Some projects require your main character- they’ll have your character on the project card- meaning you cannot go adventuring, assign advisors, or do anything else while working on that project.
• Kingdom stats- there are 6 primary stats, 4 secondary stats, and 1 tertiary stat. Primary stats have “ranks”. Each rank adds a +1 bonus to dealing with events. Getting a primary stat to 60 and rank 3 will allow you to assign an advisor to the associated secondary stat if there is one. Espionage requires Rank 4 relations. Ranking a stat up is a project requiring you and the associated advisor for 15 days.
• Kingdom stats affect build points gained per week, with economy being a special case. The formula is SUM( MIN(stat rank, economy rank) ) / 2 + 30. The 30 build points is a subsidy from Restov, and the / 2 is a tax from Restov. Once you declare independence, you will no longer pay taxes to Restov, nor receive the 30 point subsidy.
• Claiming regions – Once you’ve completed the prerequisites for a region, claiming it is a 15-day project requiring your main character. Once you have claimed a region, you can build a village in it. Scroll the large map around, there are small gold signposts scattered around the map (located at the empty nodes). Click a signpost to establish a town. You can have one town per region. Each town has one or more artisans who will build things for you from time to time once you complete their quest and build their workshop in the town. Building near a river is good when available, as that allows you to build ports/marinas in the towns.
• Town growth is tied to claiming additional regions. Your main village will be able to upgrade to a town once you claim two additional regions and build towns in each of them, and you’ll be able to upgrade a second village to a town once you’ve claimed 6 regions. The sizes are village -> town -> city.
• Vendor inventories are updated each chapter. New items will ONLY show up when you get to a new chapter.
• You can do some kingdom management in any region you have claimed and built a town in by clicking the button in the bottom right corner from the map. Some events require you to visit the throne room, however.
• No character is available to fill the “Treasurer” position when you first get your kingdom, however one will become available early-ish in chapter 2.
• Some later characters which can become advisors may be locked behind alignment-restricted dialog choices. All adventuring companions (except Nok-Nok) can be advisors, though not all advisors are adventuring companions.
• The blue kingdom resource nodes provide bonuses to your stats, but you have to visit each one after you have claimed the region it’s in.
• Buildings which take two slots to build cannot be rotated reliably. There doesn’t appear to be a key to rotate them, though the orientation they take on appears to be affected by how you move them into the building grid (from the side vs top/bottom) and the pattern of open building squares. It doesn’t always seem possible to get them oriented in the direction you prefer.
• Unrest reduces the bonuses for solving problems. The level of unrest is displayed on the left side of the banner across the top- left of the time wheel. As unrest increases, the bonuses applied to rolls for resolving events/projects decrease. Unrest can be reduced by completing events/projects with the Warden.
• If your main character shifts alignment, your kingdom’s alignment does not change, and alignment-specific buildings continue to function (and remain available to be built).
• Each advisor role is affected by one attribute. If a character can fulfill multiple advisor roles, they will use will be determined by the role they are assigned to.

Kingdom Stats

Advisors

Regions

Artisans

Unrest

The unrest level modifies the success rate for dealing with events- the higher your unrest level is, the more difficult it is to complete events successfully. What isn’t clear is exactly how you improve the level of unrest; I dealt with the Trolls within about 2 weeks of the event start, and afterwards my unrest went from Stable to Worried, and hasn’t gone back up 2 months later, without any significant hiccups. I’m also a bit fuzzy on the formula by which it modifies event success. I hope to figure that out soon. If anyone has figured out how to reduce unrest, please let me know.