Ahh, Majesty... For those of you who are unaware, Majesty is a real-time strategy game with something of a twist... Rather than the micromanagement clicks-per-second style of StarCraft, WarCraft or Command and ConquerCraft, Majesty went in the other direction by making sure you can't directly control anybody.
Imagine your standard RPG, with you as the dashing, heroic minmaxed protagonist marching calmly into the nearest town to rent a room at the local inn, browse through the gear proffered by the blacksmith, and restock on the all-important magical soda pop of healing.
Now, imagine that instead of the hero, you were in fact playing as the town. That's what Majesty boils down to.
Construct guildhouses to attract various types of champions, build up your town's infrastructure and basic defenses, and make sure to provide your heroes with all the amenities they might require. Then, watch as they go about and completely ignore whatever it was you wanted them to do, in favor of spending all their time and money at the nearest
brothel *ahem*,
relaxation lounge...
Heroes come in many different shapes and sizes, and everyone has their own randomized stats and semblance of a personality. To make things interesting, you can name and rename pretty much anyone. ...or anything, really. Being able to call your favored archmage by the honorable epithet "Lord Bighat" is only the tip of the iceberg, as you can also "name" the lowly wandering peasants, tax collectors, city guardsmen... and buildings.
So if you ever wanted to have an entire neighborhood of houses all called "Tim", Majesty is indeed the game for you.
I will be playing the random map/freestyle game mode of Majesty, as it allows for the greatest freedom and also the most leeway for doing things the, um, "less than optimal" way. I'm a bit rusty at this ol' girl, so I'll be taking it relatively easy to start with. There are numerous different settings and options that can be set for freestyle games, but in order to get things moving along, I'll save you all the tedium and confusion of voting on the many, many options and just set up the first round myself.
And that's it. That's our lovely little kingdom. The big walled thing in the middle is my glorious seat of luxury and power, the palace. If this gets destroyed, we all lose. I will be sitting my lovely lily-white arse on the velvety pleasantness of my cushy throne while you lot are all out in the rain and muck risking life and limb fighting horrible monstrosities. Get used to it.
To the right, we have a warrior's guild, where we can recruit up to 4 warrior-type champions for our realm. More on that later.
Above us we have a guard tower, and wandering off in the northeast is the guard that this tower houses. These are your primary defense measure for most circumstances, and they're quite useful (essential, even) but have their limitations.
Now it's time to get to the fun bit, the heroes!
Majesty has a lot of different hero types available, and I'll try and give as decent a description of each one so you can pick who you'd like to be in this mess. I will try not to recruit any heroes that haven't been claimed, so we're a fully Bay12 kingdom, but if things start getting hairy or if there are only 2-3 people who sign up, I don't know if I can keep to that. Also note that some heroes prevent other heroes from being used, more on that to follow.
The WarriorYour standard sword-and-board fighter in heavy armor. He's got very decent equipment (and puts a lot of care into maintaining and upgrading it), and has all-round decent stats as far as health, attack and defense go. They tend to be a little bit on the dim side, however, so don't expect any great thinkers out of this bunch. Also, all that armor is heavy, so they're slow.
They enjoy seeking out monster lairs and engaging in combat, and buying new weapons and armor.
The RangerOne of the most common picks for an early hero, rangers are long-range combatants with their impressive longbows (boasting the farthest attack range of anyone in the game), but are primarily useful for their desire to seek out and squash the fog-of-war wherever it may be. They have the longest sight range of any character, and they like to use it by actively exploring the map and showing you what's around. They also gain experience points by doing this, allowing them to gain a few precious levels quickly and safely early on in the game.
They enjoy exploring, long walks in the woods, and getting completely &%"ing lost way behind enemy lines.
The RogueA sneaky type, these fellows are also ranged combatants, albeit with a shorter range than the rangers and with even less survivability. Rogues are notable for being cowardly, greedy little burglars who can squeeze money out of places no one else can. They have the ability to quickly and easily steal gold from monster lairs (or, if they're bored, from your own buildings...) and from the corpses of fallen enemies, and they gain experience for doing so. They're generally quite good at keeping themselves well-stocked on any sort of equipment because of how they gather funds, and with a number of levels on them they can actually stand up to deal some decent damage with their crossbows. Also, they're very easily persuaded by reward money... Sometimes without thinking.
The WizardThe thinking man's... Thinking man. These slightly senile old codgers are slow, decrepit (boasting one of the lowest health values in the entire game), and not always as bright as you'd think an INT-based hero would be. However, wizards pack an intense punch that only gets stronger as they level up. Wizards gain a new ability every single level, up to level 9, and they love nothing more than spamming these abilities like mad and making the whole screen die a fiery, explosive, boiling death. The trick, of course, is getting them to survive long enough to get those levels (something they're not very good at doing). There are ways around this, but they're for much later in the game, so an early wizard is always something of a gamble. Still though, all depending, it can pay off.
A wizard with a few levels is hands down the best crowd-control unit in the game, as they can take on vast hordes of weaker enemies singlehandedly.
There are three recruitable nonhuman races in Majesty, and they're all racists who hate each other. Once you allow one into your kingdom, the others refuse to have anything to do with you.
DwarvesWhat's a game without dwarves, eh? Nothing! Dwarves are little tanks, with very high constitution, innate magic resistance (a very rare trait), the same armor as warriors and big ol' hammers to smack things about with. Their biggest fault? They're slow as hell. By the time they've made their way to whatever it was they were going to do, someone else less-qualified has already been there, done it, and gone home to have some tea. This is particularly notable because dwarves are one of two hero types who can help out with constructing buildings in your kingdom, and are in fact the most capable constructors in the game... once they reach the building site, that is. Normally your peasants will have completed a building by the time the first dwarf makes it out there to get started.
Dwarven settlements automatically shoot ballista bolts at approaching enemies, and allow for the construction of more ballista towers wherever you please (easily the best passive defenses in the game). Each settlement can house 3 dwarves. Dwarven settlements can only be built once you have a level 3 blacksmith.
ElvesBlegh, elves... Elves are masters of long-ranged combat, and are slightly more survivable than other ranged types because of their improved armor. Elves will occasionally take after rogues and steal from monster lairs, but they're normally more involved with putting on impromptu rock concerts at inns and marketplaces in order to amass wealth.
Elven bungalows house two elves each, and each constructed bungalow automatically causes an "elven lounge" building to appear somewhere in your kingdom. These buildings attract weak-willed heroes and make them spend lots of money that will never ever be seen again, because lounges can't be taxed. If you have a rogue's guild, it will
additionally spawn a gambling hall, which functions much the same way but allows some lucky heroes to actually make money. To compensate for this, building a bungalow causes your marketplaces to generate twice as much gold as they normally do (a fairly significant bonus). Elves demand that you have a functioning inn and a marketplace that's level 2 or 3, I forget exactly.
GnomesAhh, gnomes... The underdogs of Ardania. To read the fluff, nobody likes gnomes. They're small, scrawny, dirty, warty, and have squeaky little voices and impressively large families. Gnomes are by far the cheapest "heroes" you can recruit, and they're quite speedy. However, they are roughly on par with wizards as far as their constitution goes, and they don't have the repertoire of spells to make up for it. They are fragile, weak (but incredibly difficult to actually land a hit on...), and not good for very much except building, something they are completely unsurpassed at. Although dwarves are theoretically better at building, gnomes are not much worse off and are
vastly better at getting to a building site in short order, normally arriving at and sometimes even finishing a construction before the peasants even show up. Gnomes are cowardly for the most part (as well they should be), but they do try so hard to be real heroes, frequently accompanying real adventuring parties out into the wilderness and making sure to upgrade their filthy little rags and rusted daggers in hopes of one day going out into the big, scary world and making a name for themselves.
Gnome hovels house 3 gnomes each, and as soon as you build one hovel, the other two pop up. You can never build more than 3, and if one of them gets destroyed, it will automatically rebuild itself somewhere else. Which means that once you allow gnomes into your kingdom, you're basically never getting rid of them... Once a palace upgrades from level 1 though, gnomes will assume you don't want to even consider letting them into your nice, warm settlement and will stop offering to move in if you haven't already let them.
These are the only picks we'll have available to us early on, so they're the only ones I'll mention for now (also because I'm not sure if the 8-picture limit per post is still in effect or not), but there are many more.
Note: In regards to the nonhumans and other incompatible heroes, if there are requests for conflicting hero types (say someone wants to be a dwarf and someone else wants to be a
n elf gnome, I will pick the type that has more people requesting it. If both sides have the same number of requests, I will pick whichever type was requested first.
Note2: Almost all buildings in Majesty get exponentially more expensive the more you build of them. This means that while it is
theoretically possible to have everyone be dwarves, the required costs for building the settlements would be absolutely crippling and force me to grind money for an EXTREMELY long time. As such, I'll be implementing a "soft cap" on certain hero types, most notably the nonhumans.
So, it begins! Come forth, brave adventurers... Who be ye? What be thy name?
Japa (gnome)
Japa II (gnome)
Japa III (gnome) x1
EuchreJack (rogue) x2
Robin Hood (ranger) x2
MonkeyHead (gnome)
Irony (gnome)
Deathsword (warrior)
Me (your lord majesty the king)
Sir Haspen Ironfist (warrior)
Sir Isdar the Humble (warrior)
Deathsword (warrior)
Chosaru (cultist)
Burnt (cultist)
Simmura (ranger)
Dyin' Hood (ranger)
That Idiot King (exiled monarch)
Gamerlord (warrior of discord)
Sir Isdar the Humble (warrior)
2nd Fiddle (warrior of discord) x3
Sonlirain (warrior of discord) x2
somebody (cultist) x1
Simmura (ranger) x1
Gamerlord II (warrior of discord) x1
Zieg (warrior) x1
Sir Isdar the Humble II (warrior) x1
Delta (ranger) x1
Nirur (priestess) x1
My ability to count.
The zombies. All of them.
Priestesses 2/4:
Simmura, lvl 14
Oneir, lvl 13
Monks 2/4:
Has Pan the Devout, lvl 7
Delta, lvl 7
Healers 2/4:
Raalupaxin, lvl 14
sirboomalotinol, lvl 13
Cultists 1/4:
Euchre Jack, lvl 9
Adepts 1/4:
Bouchart, lvl 6
Warriors 4/4:
Zieg, lvl 8
Gamerlord (discord), lvl 7
Tasrak, lvl 6
Sir Isdar the Pansy, lvl 5
Rogues 3/4:
Darkening Kaos, lvl 8
Sonlirain, lvl 8
CD, lvl 7
Rangers 1/4:
Krevsin, lvl 7
Wizards 1/4:
Glyph Gryph, lvl 6
Elves 2/2:
Japa, lvl 8
Jack the Useless, lvl 7
