Medieval Europe

[Sunchaser]

But there are only Italian cities  I couldn't spot even a single english description on the whole game.

There are london, norimberga, edinburgh, paris, Monaco. In monaco some germans are starting a community

Out of curiousity, payments from italian or non italian players?

Italian, (and i tell you i was surprised)

However, i understand what you mean, i will speak with my partner, i guess we should force english language in government announcements and so on, and let original language spoken only in rpg boards.

[Chris]

But there are only Italian cities  I couldn't spot even a single english description on the whole game.

There are london, norimberga, edinburgh, paris, Monaco. In monaco some germans are starting a community

You mean in London there aren't those pesky Italians mafia? If I'm a new/existing player how do I know where I can find fellow speaking players? How to check it?
Maybe put a big "recommended starting location" depending on GEO on the character creation page?

The price for city change is prohibitive. Make it even "you lose everything but can start in a new city" but not such huge amount of gold. If you made a mistake and choosen a wrong city you are stuck. You can only quit or create a new account which is against ToS. Maybe make level 1-2 player change cites as many times they wish for free?

Out of curiousity, payments from italian or non italian players?

Italian, (and i tell you i was surprised)

That's what I though... In such games the non english players are the driving force.

How exactly you obtained these italian players? I see you only on two english toplists. Did you made some other promotion?

However, i understand what you mean, i will speak with my partner, i guess we should force english language in government announcements and so on, and let original language spoken only in rpg boards.

I'm not sure it would be a smart move. What if Italian players do not know English? It is very probable. You will lose majority of players.
Maybe make the goverment announcements allowed to be only in the language of that country?

[Sunchaser]

You mean in London there aren't those pesky Italians mafia?

No there aren't, but just because mafia wasn' t still existing in 1310 . Italian players are concentrated only in italy.

The price for city change is prohibitive. Make it even "you lose everything but can start in a new city" but not such huge amount of gold. If you made a mistake and choosen a wrong city you are stuck. You can only quit or create a new account which is against ToS. Maybe make level 1-2 player change cites as many times they wish for free?

You are right. up to the 31st october however it costs only 200 d. but yes, we will lower it for sure and we could make it free for the 1st week.

How exactly you obtained these italian players? I see you only on two english toplists. Did you made some other promotion?

I have an Italian toplist too (http://www.topwebgames.it) but the magic link was posted here: http://www.gdr-online.com; It seems we attracted from there some hard role playing people. Up to now, the active players like the game very much because they are also contributing with ideas. Similar more famous games are of course Renaissance Kingdoms or Europe 1400, but we hope to find our little space.

I'm not sure it would be a smart move. What if Italian players do not know English? It is very probable. You will lose majority of players.Maybe make the goverment announcements allowed to be only in the language of that country?

I will discuss with my partner on the possibility to add a rule that the government announcements must be in the country original language and english. Some Kings are already doing it, by hiring (off-line, but paying with currency) translators in other Kingdoms.

[Chris]

add a rule that the government announcements must be in the country original language and english.

Why both? Why not only in original language?

"To access the room, you must know the access password" what's that?
Is there a way to see who is a king of a region/city (OK found it, but I will leave the question to show the initial problems of a lazy player)?

Is there any interaction between players? It feels to me like a singleplayer game.
Some tutorial would be nice at the first glance and even at the second glance it looks very lifeless and not knowing what I'm supposed to be doing.

What's the difference between the gold and silver coins icons (OK, I know this, but I'm a dev and I know how it goes, players might not know it)?

"The Kingdom needs urgently a King. If you would like to be crowned, you should donate at least 1500 coins." - How the system works? The first players will become kings and then no one else ever will have a chance for that post? And there is a problem of no kings in low populated areas...
Shouldn't it be: you get nobility for a low price. Then you auto get crowned if no king present. Then you can donate cash to treasury. The noble who donated most is the current king. When you are king your "donated for king" variable is being reduced each hour so others have easier time to decrown you and more players can be kings (in turns, sort of). You can not be a king for more than 30 days in a row, after 30 days you have to be a commoner for 30 days (or number of days you were a king).

[Sunchaser]

Hello Chris, please find below my answers. Don't forget that this is my first game heh ...

Why both? Why not only in original language?

You told me in a previous post that you saw government announcement in italian. Anyway this seems to be not a big problem, as the players took a decision, to publish the government announcement in the local language, and eventually translate them.

"To access the room, you must know the access password" what's that?

Some chat has been made private, and the owner can set a secret password

see http://wiki.medieval-europe.eu/index.php/En_US_Chat

Is there a way to see who is a king of a region/city (OK found it, but I will leave the question to show the initial problems of a lazy player)?

Good observation. We should show some general info about 'the world' but atm i am the only coding, and i am tackling other issues.

Is there any interaction between players? It feels to me like a singleplayer game.

I think it's mainly an interaction game, but interaction is made with internal emails and within roleplay boards. we have a problem though, as some city are active while others are dead.

Some tutorial would be nice at the first glance and even at the second glance it looks very lifeless and not knowing what I'm supposed to be doing

I cannot say is the most alive game of the world, but we are still lacking one basic features (revolt). the tutorial (of course) and then we can try to get more players. Words is spreading around in some game like ours.
Don't forget we are in beta and went live for 1,5 months... Anyway you are right and i would dedicate myself to a tutorial after we ship the revolt system.

BTW, i registered to gameforce devlounge, and maybe i will try to get my game published. Did you know it? What do you think about it?

What's the difference between the gold and silver coins icons (OK, I know this, but I'm a dev and I know how it goes, players might not know it)?

silver coins are normal coins (game currency)
gold doubloons can be acquired for euros and can be used to buy some in-game bonuses.

"The Kingdom needs urgently a King. If you would like to be crowned, you should donate at least 1500 coins." - How the system works? The first players will become kings and then no one else ever will have a chance for that post? And there is a problem of no kings in low populated areas...
Shouldn't it be: you get nobility for a low price. Then you auto get crowned if no king present. Then you can donate cash to treasury. The noble who donated most is the current king. When you are king your "donated for king" variable is being reduced each hour so others have easier time to decrown you and more players can be kings (in turns, sort of). You can not be a king for more than 30 days in a row, after 30 days you have to be a commoner for 30 days (or number of days you were a king).

Well, this is another option, but we decided for the following: If there is no king, you can become king by donating  1500 coins for each city that the Kingdom owns. Once King you can be dethroned by a revolt or conquered by another Kingdom.

[Chris]

Don't forget that this is my first game heh ...

I don't know if players will accept such excuse Zynga, Blizzard, you, me... We all play in the same league. There is no separate "easier" league for those who have less skill, experience, funding, staff, infrastructure, time. Your game has to be better than WorldOfWarcraft, at least in some aspects. You have to steal their players. There is no other path to victory in this race

Language... This one is a hard issue, I would not underestimate it. You could go three ways 1) One language only, which would be Italian in your case 2) Make separate language worlds, but there is still problem with forum 3) Make all languages in one world which causes several problems, especially if you want to make it roleplaying since this require communicating.

Some chat has been made private, and the owner can set a secret password

Write that this is "chat room", I never knew it was about chat

I think it's mainly an interaction game, but interaction is made with internal emails and within roleplay boards. we have a problem though, as some city are active while others are dead.

Ugh... emails + roleplaying boards make it extremely language dependant. If the fun comes from these, then the game is barred for non italian players right now, at least that's how I see it...

after we ship the revolt system.

Well, you could describe how it would work. I'm very good at finding weak points in gameplay implementations, you know Better to deal with my annoying critiques that highlight real and imaginary problems beforehead than to find out something does not work after coding it. But tastes differ

BTW, i registered to gameforce devlounge, and maybe i will try to get my game published. Did you know it? What do you think about it?

What's that? Can not google it... It's the bluepoint integration maybe?

What's the difference between the gold and silver coins icons (OK, I know this, but I'm a dev and I know how it goes, players might not know it)?

silver coins are normal coins (game currency)
gold doubloons can be acquired for euros and can be used to buy some in-game bonuses.

Tooltips

[Sunchaser]

I don't know if players will accept such excuse  Zynga, Blizzard, you, me... We all play in the same league. There is no separate "easier" league for those who have less skill, experience, funding, staff, infrastructure, time. Your game has to be better than WorldOfWarcraft, at least in some aspects. You have to steal their players. There is no other path to victory in this race

All right, but you are a professional and this is a job for you, for me it's an hobby (I have a job in IT).
Blizzard has lots of resources, i have to do almost everything... how can we compete with that, actually i would pack tomorrow and leave to Irvine, california if blizzard has a job for me

3) Make all languages in one world which causes several problems, especially if you want to make it roleplaying since this require communicating.

I will go for this option., i wil found a way; I think they should communicate in English and in their original language in their 'local' boards, exactly how it happens in real life.

Ugh... emails + roleplaying boards make it extremely language dependant. If the fun comes from these, then the game is barred for non italian players right now, at least that's how I see it...

I am not saying it depends and the fun comes from this, even mechanics will have their part...
i am saying that the game is depending on organization, common goals etc. actually in the game German, Albanian, and English communities are starting. I guess in italy italian language will be spoken, in Germny deutsch ecc, and english will be spoken in international contacts.

What's that? Can not google it... It's the bluepoint integration maybe?

It seems very interesting, but of course my game must be complete and i have to consolidate the staff before the jump.
http://devlounge.bigpoint.com/

Well, you could describe how it would work. I'm very good at finding weak points in gameplay implementations, you know  Better to deal with my annoying critiques that highlight real and imaginary problems beforehead than to find out something does not work after coding it. But tastes differ

Ok, but see, i try also to design game mechanics to avoid complex implementation and adapt to the core engine, so maybe you can have different and very good ideas, but that will be very costly to implement. Btw, for me critics are ok, all depends on how they are communicated, and yours are ok.

Before doing the revolt, we have to make the King more powerful, I can post here the doc when it will be more consistent.

[Chris]

Blizzard has lots of resources, i have to do almost everything... how can we compete with that, actually i would pack tomorrow and leave to Irvine, california if blizzard has a job for me Smiley

Fighting spirit. You lack. Bad thing
There are literally hundreds of ways you can do better than Blizzard. No downloads, can be player on iPhone, no monthly subscription, no fantasy RPG, no ugly green orcs, incomparably lower costs, can survive on much much smaller piece of the cake, availability to cater to niche audiences.

actually in the game German, Albanian, and English communities are starting. I guess in italy italian language will be spoken, in Germny deutsch ecc, and english will be spoken in international contacts.

So like english being "medieval latin"? Could work if done properly...

It seems very interesting, but of course my game must be complete and i have to consolidate the staff before the jump.
http://devlounge.bigpoint.com/

Actually, this makes a lot of sense. Bigpoint has multilanguage audience, your game support multilanguages. This gives a good combo. Much better choice than Facebook in your case.  If you go that route you definitely should immediately extend to at least 5 most popular languages.
The problem is that they are mostly casual players, so focus on roleplaying might be not so good... Also here "international english" might not work (suggested stronger focus on inner country activities rather than international).

Bigpoint scenario:
- each player is LIMITED to the starting country according to selected language (confusion avoidance). Maybe some tiny hidden option at the bottom to join another country, but not sure if it's needed.
- in order to get any position in a country you have to pass a language check (so no French only speaking ruler in England). You get separate "language certificate" after each language check (sure, can be avoided by translators, but it gives the proper message "you need to know language X to rule here" also powerful noobs are weeded out)
- a rule, if you speak another language in a country (except for international section, diplomacy, etc) you can be banned.
- not sure what to do with US, Canada, Australia...
- some assets are movable only inside a country (can change a region, but moving to another country is expensive and troublesome) to make players dedicate to a country also to avoid takeovers via mass immigration (common problem in such games).
- per country based ranking rather than international, for international maybe rank only whole countries not players?
- much more enchanced solo player features

[Necropunk]

Add Lithuania. It was important country in medieval Europe.

[Chris]

Nice new homepage, now it looks almost perfect (where have you got the people's pictures from?)

How I would do it
I was thinking how I would make such a game if I was coding from scratch, some of these might be compatible with your design, feel free to steal these in such case

The game would be multilanguage everlasting simulation (no resets).

Kingdoms are created by game staff only (each kingdom has their primary language). Each kingdom starts with 1 city (which is capital city) and 1 NPC high noble (needed for startup of vassal system). When a certain thereshold of active players is reached in ALL cities in a kingdom the king gets the option to erect a city (king is not free to choose the city name through, these has to be historical, for convenience it would be probably best if staff was able to create villages (with predefined names) and the king can select which one to promote to a city). In addittion kingoms can have any number of castles which are erected and owned by high nobles.

Players are always nobles. Each and every player is supposed to be always a vassal of someone (for consistency and the medieval mood the king would be the vassal of "Divine", which is how it was perceived back then anyway). There are 3 kinds of nobles:
* High nobles (lord, baron, count, duke, king) - can have vassals, are vassals of other high nobles or direcly of the king, can own castles.
* Mid nobles (knights) - basic player rank, earn money depending on the sovereign, have troops.
* Low nobles (courtiers, squires) - you start as a courtier of the royal court, you are supposed to quickly find a high noble and become the vassal which will promote you to knight; squires are vassals of knights, it's for roleplaying only.
When you start the game you can become a knight (high noble have nothing to say about it and always instant accept all vassals). Each high noble have several vassal slots (and unlimited number of lowest quality slot) which determine how much income the knight gets, high nobles can select which vassal get which slot. After paying a certain amount of money you can buy lord title. Lords have very low income (until they are promoted to baron or count), so starting as these is not the smartes move and being a knight permanently or for a while is not a bad choice.

Each player can do 3 "ongoing jobs" at once. This can be guarding a castle, serving in a standing army, patroling the kingdom to catch robbers. At least 1 of these jobs has to be dedicated to their sovereign and 1 to their kingdom, the remaining 1 is their choice. None of these bring any benefit to the player who do these.

Knights can challenge other knights and earn fame (high nobles are not allowed to do so). All players have their personal troops, most gold is probably spend on this. They can also upgrade challenge equipment (swords, armours, horses). Players can donate real money to hire additional troops (with progressive price, so it balances itself).

Each player, in addition to kingdom affiliation and sovereign affiliation, belongs to one city. These can be switched quite easily within same kingdom.
Players get "contribution points" that can be spend on various projects (building a university in a city, upgrading the sovereign castle), these points are useless for anything else. Any player can donate real money for "bricks" and give bricks to a project. Bricks can speed up the project but no more than twice.
Each city has several offices (capitol have the most), these can be obtained by players.

Income. High nobles get income from land and castles they control. Knights get income from the vassal priority assigned by their sovereign (villages? acres of land?) and from adventuring and from kingdom wars. Everyone get income from city offices they hold.

Each king can start a war with any kingdom (a king that has not started a war in 30 days is auto overthrown). The war changes influence of the kingdom. High influence of a kingdom grants additional city offices within that kingdom. A war can bring also spoils of war which are divided among knights (not high nobles).

The king is selected partially by players voting (only baron or higher can vote) and partially by political points they have (to be more precise, by voting players "lend" 25% of their political points to a selected player, the player with most political points become a king - so a player with high political power can rule against other players, at least for a while). Anytime you can buy "royal blood" trait which has both positive and negative sides (3x political points, but other players (probably the current king ) are allowed to do nasty things to you like assasination attempts, you are also forbidden to leave the kingdom). You can discard the royal blood trait anytime but you won't be able to reclaim it or be elected a king for the next 6 months. Anytime you can claim to be "usurper" which gives you 2x political points but other players are alowed to do very nasty things to you (much more severe than royal blood trait). The primary source of
political points are castles and offices.

[Sunchaser]

Hi Chris, the home page was designed from scratch from a graphical artist following our suggestions.
He also draw our new clothes / weapon images:





It's fast and ok guy if you need some graphics i can give you his contacts.

Your ideas are very nice, but unfortunately the game is structured now in a different way, maybe in a next game i can
'steal' them.

Atm we are working to a big version 2.0 that will change the map logic from a node-based map to a regional map like this:



Each region will have a particular resource so we think this will cause some wars

After that release we will introduce a structure professions engine. After that release we can consider the game complete and out of beta.

[Chris]

It's fast and ok guy if you need some graphics i can give you his contacts.

Sure! Give it.

Your ideas are very nice, but unfortunately the game is structured now in a different way, maybe in a next game i can
'steal' them.

Yeah, even if two people talk about exactly the same thing, when it comes to details it turns out that they meant something completely different

Atm we are working to a big version 2.0 that will change the map logic from a node-based map to a regional map like this:

Each region will have a particular resource so we think this will cause some wars

Be aware of players number, you have 300 active, it will be around 1 per region as it is now... Also, they are saying that there is problem with some cities being abandoned already.

I'm curious if you reached some conclusion about Romanian players already, will you split them into two nations? The current "60 per city cap" will be insufficient in a long run...

[Sunchaser]

Be aware of players number, you have 300 active, it will be around 1 per region as it is now... Also, they are saying that there is problem with some cities being abandoned already.

I'm curious if you reached some conclusion about Romanian players already, will you split them into two nations? The current "60 per city cap" will be insufficient in a long run...

I know, we will have around 350 regions with a potential of 350*25 = 7500 characters, but we plan to publish the game with Bigpoint.

About abandoned cities, there is some retention now because the game lacks the professions system and many other things (that's why we are not advertising it yet).

When we release 2.0, most regions will be empty. If a Kingdom wants to host more players will need to conquer the independent regions.

[Chris]

I know, we will have around 350 regions with a potential of 350*25 = 7500 characters, but we plan to publish the game with Bigpoint.

If a Kingdom wants to host more players will need to conquer the independent regions.

This is not the best solution since most of the time you will have either not enough or too many... Why do you need the limit in the first place? If it is only for the purpose of kingdoms waging wars over regions it can be done in many other ways (farms efficiency = number of regions / number of kingdom citizens; each region provide "NPC peasants" they pay taxes to the kingdom; each region provide 3 "estates" that produce some income, king can give these to worthy players; etc).

Interesting observation, there is no player in Paris with set "French nationality"... The France is run by 2 US and 1 Italian players

Another observation, judging from national flags set by players and languages used by kingdoms on the forum I would say, the kingoms that have national players switch to their national language and players of other nations (without the ability to speak the language) simply can not play in that kingdom... Compare France and Duchy of Nuremberg, the former has not French players and the use equally 2 languages, the latter is hugely German players and they use only German language. I would say, that once there is enough players all kingdoms will switch to majority of national players and will dump translation to English making it impossible for players from other nations to play there (with partial exception of Kingdom of England since English is spoken as foreign language by many nations).

Have you though about using some google auto translation tools to make player created contend translated on the fly? I recall google had such tools no clue about their efficency through (I used it for a short while in my game, but not long enough to evaluate it properly)...

I wonder, why have you not provided more translations? Since you use gettext wouldn't it just be a hassle of adding a new flag on the interface and uploading incoming translation files from volunteer translators? Or is there some other problem I overlooked?

[Sunchaser]

About the graphic artist who made dresses and home page of Medieval Europe, here is the contact email

oscar_celestini [at] hotmail [dot] com

[Sunchaser]

Another observation, judging from national flags set by players and languages used by kingdoms on the forum I would say, the kingoms that have national players switch to their national language and players of other nations (without the ability to speak the language) simply can not play in that kingdom... Compare France and Duchy of Nuremberg, the former has not French players and the use equally 2 languages, the latter is hugely German players and they use only German language. I would say, that once there is enough players all kingdoms will switch to majority of national players and will dump translation to English making it impossible for players from other nations to play there (with partial exception of Kingdom of England since English is spoken as foreign language by many nations).

Yes, a multi-language forum it's a problem; we are figuring out yet how to solve it.

About translation: it is not a technical problem but an organizational ones. I am developing a tool that from the translation scripts generates an excel that can be used to translate the language and another tool that from the excel sheet generates the translation files.

Until i don't complete this tool i won't add new languages.

[Chris]

You mean you don't use gettext!? That's ultra crazy and inconvenient I would say Check it, once you see it you will love it (there are several topics on this board with evaluation of various translation methods which was discussed a year ago, gettext won).

Multilanguage communication... Yeah, it's troublesome. Currently in your game there are 3 chats per city and boards for some kingdoms (but there is no link from the game there, so very hard to find) plus several general purpose boards. Overall, there are two communication purposes, one is for players to interact with you (bugs, suggestions) and the other is to interact among themselves. For communication with you there is not much choice, max 2 languages possible. Personally, I would scrap the whole non EN suggestion boards, no matter how many IT players you have, and stick strictly to EN for all communication with players. Then I would make in-game forums for each kingdom, these would allow various combinations of languages (maybe decided by the king?) Generally every solution for communication would be more or less bad here, but that's the nature of this kind of game...

BTW, what is your current ratio of IT players to all other players?

[Sunchaser]

gettext could be super, but i use an internal library of kohana that just works fine and has a caching system too. This saves a lot of time. From what i read even with gettext i should edit/prepare different files for each language, so there is still the organizational problems to manage [number of files ] *  [number of languages] that i think i am addressing fine with the tool i am doing.

About the multi-language, an idea could be to substitute smf with phpbb. With phobb you can create n subforums for each roleplay board and then give full permission to the king, limited to that forum.

Why i should reinvent the wheel and code a forum IG?

[Chris]

With get text you won't need to make *ANY* tools, there is this super ultra cool PoEdit... BTW there is a GT module for Kohana http://forum.kohanaframework.org/discussion/5710/gettext-module-for-ko2/p1
Anyway, if you have time I would join our http://community.bbgamezone.net/projects/radiation-shelter-translation-project/ and do the IT translation. Once you notice how convienient it is you might wish to change your current translation engine (actually, I think that rewriting the current one to support gettext would be much faster than finishing your tools).

Multilanguage forum - yeah, you could go for premade one but don't forget you need like 6 subboards per language (like the current IT board, you don't intent to go for 1 subboard only per language?). It think it would be too much for a single page to scroll down, so separate ones would be nicer... Plus I think setting king as an admin for a whole subboard is giving too much power. They are turning too much into game staff than players (also, what if the king do not know English and can't use the interface of the forum panel?)... Also, what about translation of the forum interface? Currently you assume all players have at least basic understanding of English. With such level of complexity and the diversity of players languages making a custom forum is not reinventing a wheel (there are no really forum software aimed at serving multilanguage communities).
I'm not sure about that one, maybe, anyway, I think the current forum integration you have is no good (too hard to find, too disconnected, untranslated, focused on other languages that the player's language, require separate logging in, misleading password reminder (I changed mine 3 times because the old one was not working for some odd reason )).

[Sunchaser]

gettext

I have seen shortly the gettext thread. Kohana translation mode is very similar.
If one has a big game, I suppose he will have more than one .po file like:

character_actions.po
global.po
errors.po
...

If you have to translate 10 files, you should distribute 10 * n translator files to the translators and they should edit them with po editor.

Now if at one point in time (and this happens if you are constantly changing the hgame), you have to change how strings are distributed in file, one is in a big trouble.

Kohana translation system works on the same principle as gettext.
The translation is based on arrays though:

'tag' => 'translation'

My tools:

1) scans all the .po files, match the tag and put in columns (italian, english, german etc) the translation or blank.

Example:

Code: [Select]

file                 tag    italian   english   german
num.php              one     uno      one                

2) the xls file is published on google doc and translator fills the blank fields of their column in parallel.
3) from the xls file, the tool generates back the translation files.

It seems efficient to me and i can run the tools many times he want, as it works with delta.

Forum
Don't know what to reply because i don't still have clear ideas on what to do. I am sure I want a forum in-game, because I did it already and despite the effort, SMF or PHPBB were just better and more fun.

Sure the forum can be more integrated in the game, but this seems to me a change with a lower priority. On the contrary, we should find a solution about how to handle different languages in forum before opening or advertising the game.

[Chris]

Google Translate
Maybe use Google Translate somehow? Looks very nice at the first glance...
http://code.google.com/apis/language/translate/v1/getting_started.html
http://blogs.sitepointstatic.com/examples/tech/translate/index.html
http://coderscult.com/javascript-ajax/2008/03/22/google-translate-working-example/

Maybe it could be used for less critical stuff like translation of staff/kingdom announcements and player private messages and text inside chat?

Communication/Forum
Yes, that's a tough one to bite Maybe start with listing and evaluating the importance of your current communication needs.
- How are you going to provide players support? Like payment problems (this can't be really solved by posting on the forum).
- Do you think the game would work if you had no forum? How important the forum is for gameplay?
- Do you think the game would work if you had no chats? How important the chats are for gameplay?
- Where players organise and coordinate their kingdom needs, via forum or chat? Or maybe only kingdom announcements and private messages between kingdom officials?

[Chris]

I was reading the 2.00 design doc and stumbled upon the map. It looks utterly cool and appealing but... you overlooked one thing. It is not how the game map will look like in practice. You allow players to take over the terrain, so the map you drawn will be valid only during first months after you implement it, later it will stop being even remotely similar to historical medieval map (for example I can bet England will swallow France considering the current ratio of players real nationality). In short, new players that come later will be confused since this won't be a medieval map of europe. Also some kingdoms might be simply totally incinerated.

The best solutions would be disallow of stealing regions or periodic resets, but you won't choose any of these So to more realistic ones, you could try mechanic from Here I Stand http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/17392/here-i-stand. Each region there has an original nationality, if a kingom lose too many terrain they can use option "Sought for peace", which will give them back all their national territory but for a price of VP, the kingom who is forced to give back these terrains receives tons of VP and other perks in exchange.

I also checked buildings (region structures) and I noticed a dangerous trend. You don't have any mechanics for long term gameplay. A kingdom can build all structures and... that's it, no progress available later. To make it worse the poorer and less populated kingdoms will need eternity to reach the same buildings that the rich one reached in a flash. So, the game will be playable only for a short while and then you will face serious problems on kingdom level.
I posted more about this type of problem here: http://community.bbgamezone.net/game-design/inflation-of-team-assets/

[Sunchaser]

Thank you, i will read it later

[Chris]

I got the forum login bug. Every time your character die it changes your forum password (you reinitialize forum bridge upon character creation instead of upon user registration).

The "you die out of hunger" email makes no sense. You should send it before "you will die in X days, login to prevent it". Email after the fact is pointless.

[Chris]

I love reading your design docs, especially enjoyed the part where you counted bees not as hives but as separate animals

- fertilizers - this word is bad, fertilizers were invented around industrial revolution, not in middle age; also your version of some magic done by herbalists to make fertilizers from manure is unrealistic. Manure really should be just dropped down on the fields by peasants, no herbalist needed
- coke mine - coke is not mined but produced (it is a process of smelting/burning coal to give it more power which is later used for smelting of steel or brass and once again it industrial revolution level technology). Perchaps you wanted charcoal (burning of wood; used as halfproduct for black gunpowder)?
- hay overproduction - don't fix it, it is realistic, hay was always considered almost free, since it is a byproduct of wheat production.
- salterns - I think salt mine would fit better, these were introduced in 13th century.
- fantasy religions - I guess you already got enough of hate mails because of this feature But I will add my share too Your former religion was OK, it was realistic and historical one. It was accepted by religious people, it was accepted some atheists too by the rationale that it is historically accurate and adds some political secular/religion power struggle layer to the game. Now, when you introduced fantasy sects you turned both these groups against you. Religious people dispise it, historical accuracy maniacs loathe it, atheists don't have the rationale to accept it anymore. You only catering to fantasy gamers now, which is not a smart move for a game that is marketed as "Medieval Europe".

I'm also slightly disappointed that you are not stealing any ideas from my Europe1300 project, sure, it's nowhere near your game's completion stage and have some core design decisions different but it is still a game of the same genre.