The closest game to this design is indeed Dungeon Keeper 1 and 2. You therefore have ways to motivate your troops (i.e. In effect, it's somewhat like DF or Rimworld, but without the expectations of disaster or just seeing what happens. It's really hard to make a Majesty-type game because Majesty still expects you to win the scenario as if it were an RTS. The addition of walls in your kingdom means that you can feel relatively secure from external threats while you build your kingdom, recruit heroes, and prepare them for forays into the wilds. In Majesty Legends we want to give players a chance to really get to know their kingdom and play it at their own pace. It became a little like watching an ant farm (of course ants don't periodically launch a meteor storm at an offending rat man). You could continue on from there if you chose to, but there wasn't much for you to do. Just when your kingdom had a feeling of stability and you had a chance to really play with it, the scenario would end. While it was sometimes exhilarating, it was also frustrating. In Majesty there was, at least early in the game, a sense that you had to protect your kingdom quickly or else the forces of evil were going to overwhelm you and destroy the kingdom. This will change a number of things but most importantly the relationship you have with your heroes and the pace of the game. Majesty Legends is placing a lot more emphasis on the sim side of things. One thing that has been very clear to us is that while we had been building a 'Fantasy Kingdom Sim,' what we ended up creating was really a hybrid RTS where your units could rise in strength like an RPG, and they didn't have to do as they were told as with a sim. We wanted to completely reevaluate all of Majesty's strengths and weaknesses to see what we could learn from them, then design the sequel from that perspective. Jay Adan: Early on we decided that we didn't want Majesty 2 to be a small step forward. There is an old interview about the game here: I almost want to cry when I read about the sequel that died in development, because it sounds like they had exactly these thoughts. The focus would need to be on the sim part, and expanding the scope of the RPG that the computer is playing for the player. If you set out to make an RTS you will not recreate Majesty 1. I believe anyone else that tries to make a game like Majesty 1 could easily fall into the same exact trap.

By doing so it ruined the one thing that made it special, and became just a slightly more frustrating than normal RTS game where you don't control your units directly. The main reason that I think Majesty 2 doesn't have quite the same feel as the first one is that it more heavily leans into the RTS aspects, and leaves behind the simulation aspects. Majesty 1 has an RTS that the player plays, and an RPG that the computer is simulating for them. The computer's role in playing the RPG is the 'sim' part of the title. You are playing the RTS game, and the computer is playing the RPG for you as all of the heroes that you have recruited. And the RTS game that I have been describing. A traditional role playing game, where a hero levels up, gears up, and fights monsters. Whats happening in Majesty is actually two games being played simultaneously. Investing in bounties, or heroes can feed gold back into your economy, but spell gold is gone forever. In fact spells are even worse because they are a gold drain. And any gold they earn from looting monster dens/corpses can be fed back into your economy. So a spell ends up being a short term one-off fix, but heroes only require the initial recruitment cost of gold. You can use spells to take out some enemies, but spells require gold. What makes the game interesting and fun is that in order to win most maps you have to shepherd a group of heroes from weaklings into powerhouses. You can influence where they go by placing bounty flags (only an explore and attack flag in the first game). They go about fighting, exploring, leveling up, and upgrading their gear all on their own. Instead these units have personalities and goals. Where it diverges from most other RTS games is that you do not directly control the units you have recruited. Those spells include, single unit attacks, AoE attacks, healing, resurrection, map reveals, etc.That is the standard RTS part. Some of these buildings unlock spells for the player.

You manage your economy and recruit units to win against the enemy. There are recruiting buildings, defense buildings, money making buildings, and some specialty buildings that might have multiple functions. Majesty is a real time strategy game, and many of the elements will be familiar to anyone who has played an RTS.

Majesty 2 reddit