What Makes Feudums Tick?

In FEUDUMS, you play turn-by-turn simultaneously with other players. Each turn has two phases: a long Planning Phase and a short Execution Phase.

1. In the Planning Phase, you issue orders (ie. order your armies to move here or there, pillage on hostile land or attack another army; give build orders on settlements or terrain improvements, agree on diplomatic agreements, set focus for your feudums or change taxes, and so on). All your orders are added to your Execution Plan, which is then sent to the Server. You can modify your orders whenever you wish - until the Planning Phase is over. You can also stack orders for multiple turns. It is important to remember - things may not always go as planned; once you have made your bet, you'll soon find out who had better sense of the situation. Obviously this is crucial to your strategy, so the Game always shows you how much time is left before Plans are executed.

2. Once the Planning Phase is over, the game advances to Execution Phase - that lasts only a couple seconds - in which state the game server queues up all orders based on a couple things (ie. armies are predominantly executing orders based on their Initiative attribute) and then the orders from all players are executed "simultaneously” in this server-queued order.

After plans are executed, you and all other players are sent results, so you can watch what happened and reflect on the action.

Don't worry; this is no boring text-only log, but an animated Recap which has all movements and other changes recorded, and you can watch this over and over. Maybe you want to reflect on your strategy, or maybe you want to repeatedly marvel at your awesome success!

If you missed multiple turns, your Recap will contain all changes relevant to you since you were last online, so you will have everything you need to plan your next move.

Rinse and repeat two-phase turn execution until the game is over. These are the very basics. We have Seasons and even Years built on top of Turns.

Seasons take a few dozen turns by default, and due to being a crucial part of feudal life, will heavily influence your strategy, as a cold winter for your marching troops or a harvest time with your levies abroad can be deadlier than your flesh-and-bone opponents.

Different seasons also have different priorities. This is a living world, so the game automatically takes care of the default seasonal priorities for your servants (so peasants sow, weed and harvest on their own, gather and fix their home when there is no work on the lands, and so on) - unless you give them different orders.

Geek Minutes

Here are some additional explanations, just to show you some of the considerations that lie behind our choices - in case you're interested :)

• Turn-Based games put an emphasis on thinking ahead and analyzing your options from a wide array of choices. You don't have to be around all the time - since you can stack orders - and you don't have to click like an e-sports pro to be successful. All you need is a plan and to be ready to adapt as your opponents' plans unfold. It's considerably flexible, as the length of the Planning Phase can be set for each game.

• On slower settings, it can be hours or even days, and in speed runs, it can be a few seconds so it almost looks real-time. This gives you the chance to play at the pace you want - with others who share your preference. Ranked games will generally favour 10-60 minute Planning Phases but we'll also feature a few speed runs (ie. One Weekend Challenges), but as it's flexible, it can simply adapt to your preferences.

Also, you're free to set the pace of your private games - if you have the feature - as you see fit.