This article will outline the most important and reoccurring points in Majesty single player games. While each individual quest has its own commentary, most quest and freestyle games involve the same concepts over and over again, only that they are applied differently.
General Gameplay
The simulation gameplay of Majesty conveniently spares you the task of controlling heroes. However, you are still responsible for the planning of your city - the key element in the game. In general, the goal is to build a city that can generate enough gold to carry out the mission. When there is gold, the kingdom may recruit heroes and construct new buildings to further strengthen the kingdom. Therefore, the most basic strategy in majesty relates to operating an active economy. As a strategy game, Majesty is not very demanding in terms of management. However, unfamiliar players may run into the error of not developing their town rapidly by not placing the optimal buildings, or in a related manner, by not placing buildings fast enough.
Components of the Economy
The most important components of the economy are:
- Marketplace: The marketplace is arguably the most important part of the town's economy because it generates significant amounts of gold. If your town does not start with a marketplace, it is important to build one right away. Later on, it is often optimal to construct one, two, or even three more marketplaces to generate even more gold. Upgrading your marketplace increase the amount of gold generated. A level 3 marketplace generates gold at over twice the rate of a level 1.
- Goods and Services: Besides automatic generation of income from buildings such as the marketplace, a very important component of the economy consists of goods and services such as the sale of healing potions from the marketplace, the sale of armor and weapons from the blacksmith, and lodging services offered by inns. Therefore, it is highly necessary to have a marketplace with healing potions researched, and a blacksmith with weapons and armor available for purchase. Later on, magic bazaars and fairgrounds also serve as important income-generating sources. When you expand your "goods and services" component of the economy, it is important to consider that the more heroes you have, the more income the markets will generate.
- Monster Loot: Monsters carry gold which may eventually end up in the hands of your heroes. This gold then in turns is used by heroes to purchase items or report in taxes.
- The Palace and Taxation: The palace is very important for two main reasons: 1) upgrading the palace gives access to more buildings, such as the fairgrounds at palace level 3. 2) Upgrading increases the number of tax collectors which speeds up the process of collecting gold. An additional tax collector is enlisted for every total of five of any combination of marketplaces, blacksmiths and inns.
- Elves: Since elves double the amount of income generated by the marketplace, elves can be useful when gold is needed.
- Trading Posts: In certain cases, it is advantageous to build trading posts which generate caravans bringing gold to your martketplaces. The amount of gold generated by trade caravans increase as the distance to the marketplace increase. When not using elves to increase direct marketplace revenue an alternative is to build trading posts in remote locations guarded by dwarven towers.
When developing your city, it is important to consider the list of components given above and develop them to the furthest extent at all times. Whenever there is a reasonable amount of gold in the treasure and monsters are not resigning the palace, it is often a good idea to build even more economic buildings to expand the economy. Again, the economy is usually the most important aspect of the game.
Choice of Heroes and Temples
Basic Guild heroes
Your basic guilds for rangers, warriors, wizards, and rogues all have a role to play in your kingdom. Rangers are especially important early in the game due to their exploration. Warriors are basic fighters which is surprisingly good for their cost even if you have stronger temple-based heroes available. Rogues are unlikely to contribute a great deal in terms of raw military. However, the Rogues guild is useful for providing poison for your heroes weapons and rogues can be easily motivated to attack lairs.
Wizards are a particularly stand-out class. At high levels, (level 7 and above with all spells) wizards are by far the most destructive heroes in the game. They can decimate foes within seconds. Unfortunately, it is not easy to keep them alive to reach level 7, since wizards are fragile. For this reason, it is vital to keep the wizards guild as protected as possible with buildings such as guardhouses and Temples to Lunord nearby.
Choice of Temples
Once you've reached palace level 2, temples become available. Temple heroes are crucial to your kingdom because they bring a variety of magical and military talent into your roster. Unfortunately, certain temple choices are mutually exclusive.
Agrela and DaurosChoosing Agrela and Dauros is a very defensive and steady approach to building your heroes roster. Healers are extremely adept at keeping the rest of your heroes alive, especially warriors who should still be recruited in some amount even with Paladins available. Paladins will likely provide the bulk of the fighting force. Since Paladins have very high defense values, they require minimal attention from the player to survive prolonged combat. Agrela and Dauros both provide defense-oriented spells which augments the sturdiness of your force. In summary, this temple choice is ideal for players who prefer to minimize casualties.
Krypta and FeruvsAs opposed to Agrela-Dauros, Fervus and Krypta offers swarming numbers of units and ranged firepower to your kingdom, as well as spells which hamper the ability of the enemy rather than enhancing those of your own heroes. Due to such differences, a kingdom deploying Fervus and Krypta temples must operate on a strategy different from what is utilized by Agrela-Dauros. While Paladins form the main fighting force of an Agrela-Dauros kingdom, the Fervus-Krypta kingdom must generally rely of Priestesses (not the rather underpowered Warriors of Discord). Priestesses are in fact very powerful units whose heavy firepower surpasses the Paladin in terms of damage dealing. They generate skeletons, which along with animals from the cultists, help swarm the enemy with sheer numbers. The sovereign spell "wither" should be used to slow down enemy attackers to allow the priestesses to defeat them from afar. Players used to using Agrela and Dauros may be dismayed to find that the healing and reanimations spells from Fervus and Krypta are more expensive than the Agrela-Dauros counterparts. However, this not a deficiency but something that highlights the difference in strategy between the two temple choices.
KrolmBuilding a temple to Krolm is the third possible choice at the second palace level. While temples to Krolm can only support four barbarians in the original Majesty, the ability to support six in the Northern Expansion makes Krolm a lucrative choice. When using Krolm, the obvious fact is that the more heroes you have, the more advantage is given by Krolm, since the "Rage of Krolm" ability affects all heroes in your kingdom. Therefore, when using Krolm, it is essential that the kingdom has a strong economy to be able to recruit as many barbarians, warriors, rangers, and wizards as possible. A Krolm-based kingdom with a strong economy can bulldoze enemy units and structures far more quickly than can a kingdom with a different temple choice.
Lunord vs. HeliaKingdoms which have a level 3 palace while not having built a temple to Krolm may make a choice of either Lunord or Helia. Due to superior equipment and offensive spells, Helia's Solarii are generally more powerful fighters than Lunord's adepts. However, the defense-oriented nature of adepts make them useful if defense is the primary purpose.
