What do you like to see in Kingdom building stories?

[Lloyd]

What parts of Kingdom building draw you in and what parts are boring? Military, politics, religion construction, government policy?

 

[RepresentingWrath]

When a kingdom 'builder' doesn't rely on a single freaking thing to somehow magically change the entire world. Also, when kingdoms feel like kingdoms, not a freaking modern state with president\prime minister swapped by a word king\emperor.

 

[GodlyKamui]

I really like tree things. Goverment politics, construction of infrastructure and military grow. The religion part is not so boring, but I wouldn't mind if it wasn't a focus on the story.

I really enjoy diplamacy with other kingdoms/territories.

 

[NotaNuffian]

How the improvement of the kingdom is reflected by the lives of the common people getting better, ie scenes like a couple of commoners commenting about a good king and how things are getting better.

Because to me, that is actual kingdom building, to see the increase in standard of living and perhaps the quality of life.

"No matter if the kingdom has prosper or wither, the citizens are always the ones who suffer."

You can also throw in a few real life situations for them as well; in the Sword of Dawn, a worker is seen trying to destroy the machine that has taken his job due to him unable to keep up with the times of improvement and thus losing his livinghood in total and hating the progress. One man is seen at the side lamenting about how improvement of the kingdom has improve the lives of many while at the same time, leaving behind in ruins of those who cannot keep up. This example serves to me as a reminder that not everyone is under the umbrella and not everyone can be saved; a stinging reminder that time and tide waits for no man.

 

[Lord_Drakonus]

The construction of things and how it affects people. I always love when the people react very baffled.

 

[Mechaphobic]

I don't like the term, kingdom building, I dislike Monarchies in general. I also hate how the MC is always a noble, and they start off with everything they need on a silver platter. They also run into almost no problems with their populations and they don't have any kind of arguments. I feel like this discrepancy is only made worse when you add other races to the mix.

I started writing a Kingdom builder to explore the creation of other governmental structures. My main series I plan to build a modified democracy based off of ancient Athens that did not use a king or elected officials to run the government. I also want to use it to explore the concepts of oligarchies, and monarchies. I wish that kingdom building wasn't just about a kingdom and that it branched out to try new things. I just feel like the entire genre is filled with authoritarianism and dictatorship.

I haven't seen a kingdom builder that actually tried to break away from this, and I feel it is very strange. I think that Release that Witch almost defined the entire genre, and almost all other works seem to be based around it's development structure. I almost become sick when I read that book now, because I can just see all of the holes in his production, the research was so poorly done. I want to learn something when I read these kinds of books, things that make the world feel more real and fleshed out.

I want to see the genre expanded to country building, and for more people to explore and try to do something different. I also hate how everyone follows the exact same development path, it is almost sickening how much it has been done. Blacksmithing isn't even necessary, and it actually harder to do then casting. The only reason we reduce casting in the modern world is because machining the items is faster. I don't even see them bring this up in their books, it is the same with oil.

It is impossible to enter the industrial era without the ability to refine oil. It is like they think a semi automatic rifle is like a woman, and it can produce it's own lubricants. As someone who works with metal, I can tell you it isn't possible to even think of creating any kind of industrial machine without the proper lubricants and seals. We had steam engines for a while before we entered the industrial revolution, and this was mostly because they were worthless and leaked everywhere before we could make the proper seals and gaskets.

 

[AryaX]

I like Isekai and OP protagonists, and I like it when the protagonist overwhelms the puny natives... Like how Ainz and gang in Overlord just massively overwhelms everyone with their ridiculously OP combat abilities... or how the protagonist in Release my Witch, overwhelms the natives with his OP "modern" tech...

And I especially like the parts which are written from the point of view of the puny "ignorant" natives who are getting stomped, and haven't got a clue about what they're really dealing with, and their often sensible, yet hilariously wrong judgements...

Also... While I don't think the OP abilities really need to be "earned"... For example, the protagonist asking some "god" for some cheats, and being granted said wish for no reason in particular, with which they then stomp the puny natives, is just fine... As is some gamer getting mysteriously isekai'ed as their OP video game character, with its OP abilities intact... I hate it when some random nobody gets isekai'ed, as their random nobody self, and then start displaying some distinctly non-nobody abilities, which it turns out, they actually had all along...

Like some guy from our modern world, overwhelming some warriors in a medieval world, in a sword fight, because they had practiced some kendo as a hobby at some point in the past... OR how in Release that Witch, the protagonist was an impossible "know it all", even before he got his "cheat".

 

[atgongumerki]

I like the evolution and growth of policies and seeing how that affects the overall structure of the nation, its population and how the surrounding nations react

 

[RepresentingCaution]

I don't like seeing infodumps. I recommend revealing things as they become relevant to the story.

 

[Mechaphobic]

Like some guy from our modern world, overwhelming some warriors in a medieval world, in a sword fight, because they had practiced some kendo as a hobby at some point in the past... OR how in Release that Witch, the protagonist was an impossible "know it all", even before he got his "cheat".

No, Roland was an idiot who barely would of passed the introduction to engineering. I think he was more than likely a mechanic. Mercury Fulminate was something he went on and on about and how he was just too stupid to make it. He even had to train a chemist, and he used all this information he supposedly had to train this chemist. Sichi or whatever his name was. In reality Mercury fulminate is made by just adding mercury to nitric acid to make mercury nitrate, then add it to ethanol to produce Fulminated mercury. They didn't even go into how toxic it was to produce or anything else.

The moment Roland would of left, his entire kingdom would just rip itself apart. He did nothing to ensure it would last after he went. Even with the witches begging him because they knew that if he died, what would happen. He did nothing for them even till the end of the book.

 

[LinXueLian]

I like business policies, personally. Building a merchant hub for a kingdom, discussing shop rows, defining taxes, etc... yeah, my thing

You can tell I really like making money! Remember, if you want a wealthy kingdom, please consider BOTH your importers and exporters!

 

[Hathnuz]

More moralistic choices and complex issues. It's boring when the mc makes the obvious right choices every time or gets praised for doing anything right without suffering from any consequence.

What parts of Kingdom building draw you in and what parts are boring? Military, politics, religion construction, government policy?

Since I like action, I like reading the battles whether it's all out war or guerrilla warfare that involve tactics (or utter domination, that works too). I guess politics is more prone to be boring than others if it gets too info-dumpy -- I often don't care about the situation of neighbouring countries or kingdoms.

 

[Ellieporter]

Women, draws me in. Like a bath scene in the kingdom where they soak and talk about how boring their life is when they suck dick all the time.

 

[gaylolis]

i want the kingdom to be built in the weirdest place possible.

like atop an earth-sized amoeba and the house were basically sponges. or something in the lower layers of made in abyss, like the narehate village.

i also love if their tech tree is also surreal as fuck. i don't like politics, foreign relations and all the complex shit, i just want to see a dreamlike pioneering.

aside from that, i also like the concept of hidden kingdoms. like they developed without revealing themselves to the world and self-sufficient. it's also interesting if they end up being the strongest of all.

 

[BenJepheneT]

i want the kingdom to be built in the weirdest place possible.

like atop an earth-sized amoeba and the house were basically sponges. or something in the lower layers of made in abyss, like the narehate village.

i also love if their tech tree is also surreal as fuck. i don't like politics, foreign relations and all the complex shit, i just want to see a dreamlike pioneering.

aside from that, i also like the concept of hidden kingdoms. like they developed without revealing themselves to the world and self-sufficient. it's also interesting if they end up being the strongest of all.

Endless Space 2 would be a good game for you to play

 

[Mysticant]

Really depends on what I am looking for in a kingdom-building novel. The kingdom building part is usually not the focus of the genre but like a sub-genre per se. Examples will be OP MCs like legendary moonlight sculptor, overlord etc. Cunning MCs like dungeon defense and other dungeon metas are pretty similar to kingdoms with politics and such also rank pretty highly for me. The genius prince selling out the country and getsugisha or whatever it is called would be a nice example of the premise of an interesting kingdom build with strategic focus.

Pure policies and such are pretty boring to me. You must be able to utilize them in action like in a romcom novel for them to function properly. The best examples are war policies. I am not one to read a novel with the only god knows how many time skips and generations passing. If you really want kingdom building to be the major genre, it probably needs a lot of things going on, many neighboring enemy countries, a lot of dungeons or events happening, and such. I feel that the genre itself rarely holds on its own. It is pretty hard to develop suspense and deliver it when you are talking strategies in the third person as well.

 

[Snusmumriken]

Frankly, I am not sure discussing a specific aspect of kingdom building is really that relevant, and many of them overlap extensively between each other.

What you want to have is impact.

Make sure that decisions have consequences. Good, bad, and neutral. And not just immediately. You implemented a law A - some stuff happened right away, maybe got a group of people pissed at you, but then return to this decision in few chapters and highlight the progress (or the lack of thereof)

Not all policies or decisions are only good or bad. Many have trade-offs. Did you allow dwarves to established an embassy? well, elves are pissed but you have discounts on ore/metals. After some time you might have gas lamps on every corner, but elvish crafts are a luxury and have a high price in your society - the posh started to fawn over the expensive goods and now there are elven weebs so you got a complaining element out of nowhere simply because they are rich and bored.

Just like any other character the kingdom itself can be written as a living breathing thing, and just as you can have readers invested in a character you can do the same with the character of a kingdom (or specific groups of people it represents/protects)

Imagine every decision like a huge flying sledgehammer. a very few of them will be aimed right and do exactly what you need them to, but many will have a huge radius of impact and it is your decision in what direction is to throw your word-hammers.