The Sims Medieval Kingdom Aspects Guide

How Security, Culture, Knowledge, and Well-being Affect Your Kingdom

The four Kingdom Aspects: Well-being, Culture, Security, and Knowledge In this Guide to Kingdom Aspects, you'll learn of the four Aspects and what they'll do for your Kingdom when they're high or low. Your Kingdom will not really flourish and roll in bonuses until late in a campaign, but this information can help you to choose the direction that's right to allow you to meet your Ambitions.

Kingdom Aspects Overview
Kingdom Aspects represent the overall state of your Kingdom. You can see how your Kingdom ranks in each of four categories by clicking the little drop down arrow in the box with your Monarch's picture in Kingdom Mode. There, your Well-being, Security, Culture, and Knowledge are ranked. There are a maximum of 12 points in each. The rating of Low or High for an Aspect seems tied to how many renown you've accumulated. Try to strike a balance between the aspects as you go, but at least pick one type to excel in. Knowledge is a good one, as it will boost the XP gains of all your Heroes, leading to faster levelling.

Each building you place will increase one or more of your Kingdom's Aspect capacities. These all make sense: Barracks will increase Security, a Wizard's Tower knowledge, and a Lighthouse a little of everything. We'll get into the specific details of ramping building costs in the buildings guide. Aspect point rewards from Quests are wasted if you do not have enough capacity. You won't get them later if you add on the capacity after finishing the quest. If the tank's full, you can't expect to store the extra gas, right?

Completing Quests is the only way you can raise these Aspects. If you want high Security, place a Barracks and do quests that feature Security gains. For Well-being, place a Physician. Knowledge primarily comes from Wizards and Culture religion (Jacoban or Peteran). That's not to say these four hero classes are the only ones to gain these points, they're just the most focused. Your Quest selection is random and you have a finite number of Quest Points to spend, so focus your efforts on the Quests that provide the aspect points you need and skip those you don't have the capacity for.

Aspects are featured in some Kingdom Ambitions, but are favored most in the 'Best in Show' Kingdom Ambition, in which you are tasked with maximizing each aspect at level 12 for the Platinum Medal. To maximize your aspect gains, complete quests at higher rankings, like Platinum and Gold. You'll often see bonus points, and occasionally a negative to an aspect can be taken out of the final aspect point reward.

Well-being

Well-being represents the happiness, wealth, and health of your Kingdom.

Low Well-being:

Sickness is common in your Kingdom and may run rampant, although Sims are not likely to die. They'll be in horrible moods due to the hard-hitting and long-lasting focus debuffs of illness.

High Well-being:

Illness is a thing of the past. Sims in your Kingdom will rarely, if ever, get sick.
All Quests give about 40% more income upon completion. A very hefty bonus, indeed.

Security

How secure are your lands? Are bandits discouraged from roaming the land mugging people? This represents the amount of guards in the land and safety of the populace.

Low Security:

The lower this gets, the worse off your Kingdom will be. Muggings and burglaries will be commonplace. Non-fighter heroes will have no way to protect themselves. It grows very annoying any time you leave town and head toward the outskirts like the Village Shoppe. Occasionally, muggings will happen closer to town when this is very low.
Prices don't seem to go up at the shop, but you'll sorely miss the discounts

High Security:

Depending on how high the security is, you'll get anywhere from a 10-30% discount on purchases at the Village Shoppe.
Muggings will stop altogether

Culture

Culture represents belief in the watcher and the propagation of the arts.

Low Culture:

Sims will occasionally get a 'Feeling Unrefined' debuff

High Culture:

Sims in high culture Kingdoms have much more intelligent conversation options. Here are a few that come up. You'll have all of them at Very High culture: Discuss Religious Philosophy, Praise the Watcher, Discuss State of Kingdom
Sims can levitate by clicking the self action Chosen by the Watcher. This will give them a nice +25 focus buff for 6 hours. There is an achievement for using this on all your heroes at least once. It seems to work about once a day.
Sims can donate money to the watcher and will receive a Watcher's Charity buff proportional to their donation

Knowledge

The availability of education in your lands. High knowledge has a dramatic effect on the learning rates of Heroes.

Low Knowledge:

'Smart' Sims like the Physician, Wizard, and Priests will occasionally get a debuff from not feeling very smart.

High Knowledge:

The occasional 6 hour +10 Inspired buff for high knowledge will appear
Heroes receive a massive XP increase from their everyday duties. Getting this one early will help immensely with your Kingdom income, as all heroes will level faster.