| Did you say a Kingdom Sim? What do you mean? |
| Majesty is a unique kind of
god sim. Instead of playing a god manipulating the lives of your
followers, you are the sovereign of a kingdom in the mythical land of Ardania.
You, as sovereign, dictate the layout of your kingdom, managing how and
where you erect special structures. From these structures you recruit adventurers
who have their own unique behavior. They are, at no time, under your direct
control, but they are under your influence. You have to
determine what personality these characters have and discover what inspires
them to complete your quests. |
| What was the inspiration in creating Majesty? |
| Settlers II, Heroes of Might
& Magic II, Warcraft II. |
| How do I influence my characters? |
| As your treasury grows, you
place reward flags for heroes. These flags are bounties that you offer
to complete a given task. There are a wide variety of possible tasks, including
eliminating a monster, or even finding a lost relic. |
| Can the player ever take control of the heroes? |
| As with most sims, players
can't ever take direct control of the heroes. One of the main features
of Majesty is that the heroes are intelligent and able to choose and carry
our their own actions. You can attempt to influence them by using rewards
placed on key locations or creatures. |
| What other ways can I support my heroes? |
|
As the Sovereign, you have access to the abilities of all of the Temples and Guilds in your kingdom - for a price. Some of the guilds give you spells that you can cast to hurt your enemies or help your heroes in one way or another. Some Guilds and Temples provide you with other powers that you may invoke for a price. One example of this is the Warrior's Guild. The special ability that this guild has is called "Call To Arms". When you invoke this ability (at a cost of 500 gold pieces) all of the Warriors associated with that guild are immediately teleported to the guild. This is a good way to help defend your kingdom when it is under attack, or get a Warrior out of harm's way. Another way that you can
support your heroes is by providing them ways to improve their equipment
or abilities. Marketplaces can sell Healing Potions, but only if you have
done the research to add them. Build a Blacksmith and your Heroes upgrade
their weapons and armor. If you have a second level Rogues Guild some
of your Heroes can poison their weapons. |
| That's cool, but how do I pay for all of that stuff? |
|
Well, that's one of your biggest jobs as Sovereign. You have to make sure that there is enough money in your coffers to build all of the buildings and make all of the improvements that you need. Not to mention recruiting Heroes and casting spells. You always start with a little
gold to get you going and most of the buildings that you build will generate
some taxable income. Your Tax Collectors go around to each of your buildings
collecting the taxes and bringing them back to the Palace. Some buildings
generate more money than others and any money that your heroes spend to
improve themselves or their equipment is taxable. This means that the
more Heroes the better off you are. You spend money to make sure that
they can defend your kingdom, they spend money that they get from fighting
monsters in your Kingdom which you can tax and put back into your coffers
and to build up your Kingdom and support your Heroes. It's a good arrangement
for everybody. |
| Are all heroes essentially good? Can the player deliberately opt to build an 'evil' town? |
| There are no good or evil
heroes per se, but each hero class has things which it is aligned with,
such as death or life, or the wilderness, etc. The characters in the game
are all defined as either heroes, henchmen or monsters. Heroes are the characters
that you influence during the game, monsters are your enemies. Heroes may
sometimes control monsters through the use of special abilities. |
| Can I have races other than humans in my kingdom? |
| There are three different
races that may join your kingdom. Gnomes, Elves and Dwarves. Each one has
their strengths and weaknesses and once you have brought one of the races
into your kingdom the others no longer wish to be a part of your kingdom.
Check out the World section more information
about the various races. |
| What about monsters? Can they join my kingdom also? |
| Some heroes have special spells
that allow them to charm or summon creatures to fight on your side. For
example, the Priestess of Krypta can summon skeletons. Of course, if the
controlling Hero is ever killed, the creatures are no longer being controlled
and may attack your kingdom or its inhabitants again. |
| Are all heroes friendly to each other? |
| Some classes don't get along
with each other and you can't have them in the same kingdom. Adepts and
Solarii are an example of this. |
| Can your town be attacked by monsters from time to time? |
| Your town will be attacked
occasionally by wandering bands of monsters. You can defend yourself by
building guardhouses, auto-firing ballista towers (if dwarves are present)
or wizard's towers to cast spells at marauding monsters. Also if you have
a Wizard's Guild, you can blast the monsters yourself using the spells that
this guild provides for you (for a price). |
| Is there any form of random map generator, or only pre-build maps? |
| All scenarios are semi-random
by design, so that they can be replayed many times. For example, if you
play 'Hold off the goblins' the objective and many map items will be the
same, but the layout and the geography varies from game to game. In addition,
there is a freestyle game editor which allows you to choose from a number
of options such as Starting Force, Enemy Force, Map Style. The computer
uses your selections to create a new quest. This gives Majesty an incredible
amount of replay value!. |
| What about a storyline? |
|
Each of the quests in Majesty is meant to be a story unto themselves. They can each be played in any order that you choose. There are a few quests that are "locked" until you complete certain other quests but what order you complete those quests in is up to you. This means that you don't have to keep repeating any quests that you might be having problems with simply to be able to play the next one.
|
| Cool, how will that all work in Multiplayer? |
When a multiplayer game begins
the the objective is chosen at that time. It could be destroy all monsters,
amass the most gold, destroy your opponent's kingdom(s), etc. The game itself
is symbiotic and as competitive as the players choose to make it. When you
place reward flags, any character can respond to the call if they are:
|
|
Any form of co-op multiplay (more players playing the same 'side')? |
|
The basic form of the multiplayer game is styled to be symbiotic and cooperative. Your heroes can use the other player's buildings if appropriate. At the same time there is nothing forcing you from being aggressive to your neighboring kingdoms if that is your style. You can also play the game as a "Last Palace Standing" game in which all of the kingdoms begin the game at war.
|
|
Can players attack another players' kingdom? What if I put a flag in the middle of another player's town? |
|
Players can
put attack flags on each other's pieces, thereby trying to influence heroes
to attack. Again, when you place a flag you are leaving the reward there
for ANY hero to claim. A hero with a low enough loyalty to his sovereign
might just choose to attack his own kingdom's palace if the reward were
great enough. |
|
Majesty runs
at 800x600 resolution in 16-bit color. |
|
Yes, there is. You can grab it from our site here. It's a little over 45 megs and contains a level that is not included in the final release version of the game. It should give you a good feel for what the final game is like without giving away all of the surprises that we have in store for you. When the demo was released, Majesty was still in Alpha (which is a pretty early version of production). It's very stable but still has some quirks. If you like the demo then you're going to LOVE the full version of Majesty. Make
sure that you have updated your video drivers recently. Some older video
drivers will not be able to run the demo properly and you will get a direct-draw
failure - Go to http://www.3dfx.com/ and download the new Beta driver
for Voodoo 3 2000/3000 if you are having this problem. Also, the demo
can experience choppy gameplay if you are running it with an AWE64 sound
card. If you disable this sound card the demo will play as it should.
|
|
FOR THE PC: Operating
System: Windows® 95/98 (DirectX 7.0 [included] required) FOR THE MAC: Operating
System: Macintosh OS 8.6 or higher or OS X in "Classic" mode. |
|
Check out the
link on the main page for a list of online sources. Most computer game
stores carry Majesty as does Walmart. Bottom line is if you can't find
it at your local store, ask. It's quite possible that they're just out
of stock. |
|
Majesty is now available for the PC and the Mac. The Linux version will be produced by Linux Games Publishing and is currently in beta (July 7, 2002). An Amiga version is also in the works. |
|
Cyberlore® is a registered trademark of Cyberlore Studios, Inc.
Majesty and the Majesty Logo are trademarks of Cyberlore
Studios, Inc.
All images are ©2000 Cyberlore Studios, Inc.
Microprose is a division of Hasbro Interactive