Pathfinder KingMaker adventure path thoughts

Well we have been playing in our Pathfinder Kingmaker game for some time now and, while I have written of it, I wanted to throw out a few thoughts.  Generally the idea is strong, you are building up your own kingdom, that's fun someone gets to rule again fun.  But for me a lot of the kingdom building rules are far from the mark.  Other aspects of the campaign while fun seem to fall in a pattern that makes the game more rushed than it needs to be.

The kingdom making stuff is sort of goofy.  It seems designed work where you are slowly building a small town, perhaps from Olegs' trading post.  When you invert that idea and build the higher cost items you are often screwing yourself.  Our party took this high cost approach and started from the Stags fort which gave us a decrease in price of a castle.  The group seems to favor this style as it decrease the cost of lower cost buildings.  This would be good except we have in effect stalled our economy buying higher cost crap.  We seem well insulated from unrest and have solid loyalty but only seem to build every so often and are never really flush with build points.

There are several factors in this Kingdom building that sort of leave me cold.  The first is you seem to have very little drive to build fortifications, i don't know if those rules come in a later module but for now we really don't have much need.  Also you are encourage by the rules to only have a single city which you build to a metropolis, and then later work on other stuff.  Really the rules make building on off structures nearly impossible as you need to develop the land turning it into something other than farm land.  You need the farms to keep your upkeep down so you need them too.  Basically it makes adding a cross roads inn or guard tower out of the question. 

Really I think that is my problem in a nutshell.  Buildings positioned for Role playing reasons are discouraged by the kingdom building rules.  You may want an Inn and shop for resupply points but you are going to need to invest in a complete town.  A row of guard towers along the Kingdoms main road has no roll in protecting the kingdom, its just stability points. Perhaps and even greater thorn in my side is I actually like the early supply of a kingdom phase.  I like capturing weapons and armor for the armory and slowly building up coaches and people allied to the kingdom.  I like doing it by roleplaying.  With the Kingdom Building this happens Poof you expend build points. 

Really if I know how the game was going to change from module one to the second, where kingdom building kicks in, I would have preferred to stay in the first as long as possible.  Working to capture items for the kingdom that would come.

Really this does inspire me to change up some of my game mastering a bit.  I think I would ask a whole bunch of question to players when starting a module series like this.  I would get to know what they like so I could work on including more of that.  It's not just the GM's story it's every ones in roleplaying.

Today the image is stolen from the obsidian portal , they have a much better campaign write up on their site.  I am not playing in that game but I think you should check them out its pretty awesome.