MF FAQ

Here are some frequent asked questions about Might and Fealty:

If you have enough resources (food) so that your people won't starve, is the optimal method of construction assigning a small number of workers to every single available building option?

Building a reasonable amount of projects in parallel is going to be better than putting everything on just one thing at a time. Basically, there are only so many people who can work on building a house before they get more in each other's way than help. It's mostly for the large projects, or when you try to rush something by throwing half the population at it. Until you assign more than a hundred workers, it doesn't make much of a difference.

What do you mean by the game can do everything?

Please make a difference between "the game tries to not artificially restrict you" and "you can do everything". Those are not the same things.

What I mean and try to code is that the game does not say "you can not do this" unless there is something like a physical law you'd violate. Example, you can loot your own settlement. You can make trade deals at absolutely any exchange rate, even 100:0 - yes, zero. You can attack any other character, including your superiors. The game will never say "you do not have enough soldiers to conquer this settlement" - it will give you the information, but if you insist on trying, it will let you run against the wall all you like.

That doesn't mean you will not come up with ideas that the game simply doesn't offer. I do not intend to create a perfect simulation. I intend to create a game engine that for the actions it supports only evaluates what you do, not stops you from doing it. With reasonable exceptions. If constructing a wooden tower takes X amount of wood then you simply can't do it without.

What existing game is most like this?

If any existing game, I would compare it to EVE online, though there are also many differences. But they share the core philosophy that the players should be the source of conflict and story.

Will this situation happen in Might and Fealty? "my neighbour had played one month longer and therefore had time to build more stuff and produce a bigger army and this means he can kick my butts as soon as he wants to"

It's not like that at all, be assured of that. While the game does have a bit of a tech tree and building system, it is much closer to BM in that respect.

Early on, there will probably be a bit of a build rush, just because everything is unsettled. But that'll be over very quickly.

What will be the new country protection time for attacks? 3days? One of the other problems I have seen in several similar games, people just create many feeder settlements which they can keep looting for resources. Have you thought about this scenario?

Yes, I have.

There is no new country protection, because there is no such thing as a new country. The problem those other games suffer from is that they have exponential resource growth. I don't have that. Feeding off other places (and there are better ways to do that than looting) will just yield you their resources, not start an exponential growth in your own place. You just shift resources around. The enemy moving in and taking your feeder settlements will undo most of the gain. If you can't defend what you conquer, it won't be much good for you, neither in the short nor in the long run.

It's a totally different game than other strategy or social games.

What about, if, say, a new player unwittingly creates a character in an especially dangerous zone?

We can not give people total protection. We can give them information. But mostly, since characters start with nothing, they don't have much to lose.

Any idea when the alpha version will come out?

I'm working on it every day. I plan to launch a Kickstarter project in February, and open the alpha to the contributors when it is complete, which would mean mid/end of March.

Will trading/tax changes be automatic?

You guys are assuming trade would work like it does in BM. :-)

Don't worry. Trade works differently and you will NOT have to do something like go back to your estate to send out the agreed-upon shipment of wood every week. That would be stupid. I don't want to give away too much while I'm still working out the details. Let me just say that by "not automatic" I mean that you can not click a button to have SOMEONE ELSE's estate send you stuff. The owner of the estate really is the owner and unless he sets it up, it won't happen. But if he does, it's a "fire & forget" mechanics.

So if you, the king, decide that you want to raise the tax from 10% to 12% then your announcement alone doesn't do squat. If you really have the authority will become obvious when your vassals start raising their tributes - or not. What will you do with knight John who keeps his at the old 10%, inventing more and more reasons why he couldn't change it yet?

But even for John, those 10% will keep coming in - unless he specifically changes it to something lower, or cancels it. It is NOT the case that he has to manually send it every week (or whatever). He sets it once and it will happen. But any changes require the owner of the estate to change it. You can not raise the realm taxes by pushing one central button.

Am curious how do you put a rival character out of business in this new game.

Kill him, for example. Or take all his land. Or all his power. Or imprison him, or, or, or...

Does this game have multiple languages being used on the same server?

Bingo.

The feature is that the game is fully translatable. As long as I can find people to do the translation, I can offer it in pretty much any language.

And one planned feature is that realms can declare an official language. When playing a character in such a realm, the game interface will switch to that language, creating a deeper immersion and simulating language barriers.

Of course there will be code to prevent you are stuck in an interface you don't understand, and you can change the language at any time.