Intro:
Hello, Pawel here, welcome to our second blog of 2026!
This one is very exciting because we have some big questions that we want all your feedback on: which factions should we feature in game? This is your chance to really shape development over the upcoming months, so make sure to check the Faction section down below.
But first, let us cover what happened over the last few months. Since our last round-up blog, Leif has been responding to some of you in our forums which I will recap below. We also had our second Building Medieval III stream focusing on settlements and sieges, followed by a segment in the Total War Show and Tell stream where we discussed the Holy Roman Empire roster and our approach to roster design in general.
As always, thank you to everyone posting and engaging in our Total War: MEDIEVAL III community forums. We're continually impressed with the level of engagement we're seeing, and the amount of thoughtful and constructive feedback being generated. We read every post, even if we can't respond to all of them.
Over the last few months, we’ve posted fewer key topics, and have instead focused on responding to existing threads to clarify our intent or provide our view on the given topic. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but here’s a recap of some of Leif’s main thread responses as well as discussions we’ve had on various livestreams:
Thread Discussions:
Map size clarification: Post addressing some misunderstandings about the size of the map we’re aiming for, reaffirming our intent for it to be roughly around the same scale as Total War: Attila’s.
Feudalism: Expanding on previously discussed approach to feudalism, layers of governance and the interplay between internal and external vassals.
Representation of Religions: Discussing our approach to representing religions in game, a balanced view, that pushes authenticity further than previous titles.
MK 1212 Coverage thread responses: A series of responses across the thread to direct questions posed by the MK 1212 Mod team, covering a wide range of topics from vassals to heraldry, tech osmosis, our research sources, recruitment system, unit types and many more including questions relating to content in our streams.
War Council proposal: Our response to a great proposal and pitch of a war council\espionage system, and how it is very much in line with our thinking and intent, to represent a lot of the information within the campaign map.
Clarification on Replenishment: We clarify our thoughts on replenishment, and we call out some key intentions; action\stance, cost, no map travel of replenishing pieces etc.
Siege Tower Runways: We responded with our current thoughts on runways for siege towers, which is something on the table to investigate, though not currently the favoured approach.
Army progression: A note on progression from feudal armies to more persistent professional troops, and what gameplay choices and situations this can create.
Castles, Settlement and Castle Sieges: A post show and tell stream thread clarifying the difference between different siege types and ongoing investigation work in pre-production.
Character Skill Trees: Our thoughts on the feature in relation to MEDIEVAL III and why we’re instead leaning into more emergent character development opportunities for the game.
Playable Factions Vote
Hi everyone, Leif here.
Paw and I are very excited to use the opportunity of this blog to talk about factions – specifically playable factions. We all know how much you care about which factions are playable at launch, so we and the team were excited to give you all the opportunity to let us know what you think, and to directly vote on the priorities. But before we get into that, we want to explain how we typically decide on playable factions, which factions we have settled on so far, and how you can influence development from here.
When we think of a good set of playable factions, we think about:
- How well known is this faction known among the public and among fans of history? What factions do people expect, and which factions would be missing for most people if they weren’t part of the playable set? Everyone knows England and may want to play as England, whereas other realms are less known.
- How unique is the starting situation, and how interesting or varied are the paths that a faction may take throughout a campaign? A faction with a unique starting situation may rise in priority a bit compared to a faction that has a more generic starting situation or limited paths through a campaign.
- How unique or compelling would potential mechanics of this faction be? If a faction lends itself to interesting unique mechanics, then that can move the needle to include them as playable factions.
We also look at overall historical significance of course, and generally we want to make sure that we have the overall extend of the map covered in a balanced fashion. Speaking of which – we should briefly touch on our current thinking with regards to the playable area of the map on launch. Since our announcement, we have talked about focusing on the European Mediterranean area, reaching from Iberia in the west to Bagdad in the east, and from southern Scandinavia in the north, to northern Africa in the south.
Given these criteria, we have settled on several starting factions that we consider ‘locked in’. These factions are:
- Kingdom of England
- Kingdom of France
- Sultanate of Rum (Anatolian Turks)
- Byzantine Empire
- Kingdom of Jerusalem
- Holy Roman Empire
You could not really imagine a game about the medieval era without England and France as playable factions. They are very iconic – possibly the two most iconic medieval factions, certainly in the west, and tied to each other’s’ story through the Hundred Years’ War.
The Holy Roman Empire is the stereotypical feudal giant, a realm struggling under its own political machinations, fuelled by large ambitions, and engulfed in a century-long power struggle with the Catholic Church.
The Byzantine Empire is what ties medieval history to its Roman roots. Perhaps the most sophisticated realm at the start of the game, it grasps at straws for survival, while being beset on all sides by potential enemies.
The Sultanate of Rum embodies the small beginnings of the mighty Ottoman Empire and would emerge as the dominant power in the Middle East.
Finally, the Kingdom of Jerusalem – the iconic crusader state; at the heart of Christian ambition during the medieval era, and at the core of the many crusades that defined this era.
We do believe that all six of these fulfil our core criteria strongly. They would certainly be among the more well-known and most significant realms of the period, would allow for interesting and varied playthroughs, and invite very compelling unique mechanics and content. This set also means that we generally have a good spread across the core European theatre that will certainly be part of the map for initial launch.
While we do not know exactly how many playable factions we will have on launch (we are certainly looking at past historical titles for reference points here), we expect that with six factions locked in, it would leave several additional slots to be assigned.
This is where you come in. We have created a shortlist of additional factions that would be added to the playable roster on launch, and we would love to get your feedback on the priority of these additional factions. Your vote will influence how we prioritise and approach the rest of the playable factions. Your feedback will directly help shape our research and conversations during pre-production, and will be taken into consideration as we balance the playable roster for launch.
Note that for these additional options, we are looking at playable factions for our initial start date at launch, 1140, and for factions within the general geography of our intended launch map. The shortlist of 23 additional options is:
- Italian City States and Merchant Republics: Champions of mercantile and communal tradition, and counterpoint to Imperial ambitions in Italy.
- Republic of Venice
- Republic of Genoa
- Republic of Pisa
- Commune of Milan
- Realms of Eastern Europe: Budding kingdoms between worlds; combining Christian, Cuman, and Orthodox influences.
- Duchy of Greater Poland
- Kingdom of Hungary
- Theme of Bulgaria
- Northern European Kingdoms: Aspiring young realms that rose to great power by the end of the medieval period.
- Kingdom of Scotland
- Kingdom of Norway
- Kingdom of Denmark
- Kingdom of Sweden
- Iberian Powers: Christian kingdoms in the melting pot of the medieval world, and exposed to a variety of cultures, religions, and influences.
- Kingdom of Castile
- Kingdom of Leon-Galicia
- Kingdom of Portugal
- Kingdom of Aragon
- Sicily: Norman legacy continued through the unrelenting kingdom in the south of Italy.
- Kingdom of Sicily
- Muslim Empires: Great dynasties with even greater ambition that forged lasting empires across large parts of Europe, the Levante, and the Near East.
- Almohad Caliphate
- Fatimid Empire / Ayyubid Sultanate of Saladin
- Zengid Atabegate
- Crusader state of Antioch: A multi-cultural bastion of Orthodox and Catholic Christianity at the Levante.
- Principality of Antioch
- The pan-Caucasian empire: Georgia reached its golden age throughout our timeline and maintained a stronghold at the edge of Europe.
- Kingdom of Georgia
- Balkan realms: Resilient realms that resisted throughout the centuries and forged their own path through medieval history.
- Grand Principality of Serbia
- Kingdom of Croatia
On this list, you will notice several important omissions. For launch, we are prioritizing and focusing the work on the broader European geography; and any faction that would not be covered fully by this map extend is not something we want to focus on at this stage. Examples for this are the Great Seljuks (Mesopotamia towards the Hindukush), the Mongols (naturally way out of reach in 1140), and Russian Principalities (not covered entirely.
We are also very aware of the general want to play as the Papal States; but we discussed internally that this playstyle would be so unique and special that it would reduce focus of development too much.
Please keep in mind that even if a faction is not on this list, or if a faction is ending up on the lower end of the community vote – it will likely still be on the map as a political entity if it is part of the indicated map area. This vote is purely to inform the priority of factions we intend to be playable at launch, including all bells and whistles that we consider to be part of it (unique mechanics, rosters, and campaign setup like missions and objectives).
Naturally, we would love to add all of these (and more) factions over time. For now, your vote will heavily influence and drive the priorities and will increase the chance that your favourite faction is included on launch.
However, while the results of the vote will be an important point of reference, they should not be taken as a guarantee of what will be included in the final game. Final decisions will take into account development scope, game balance, production requirements, and whether we can represent each faction with the level of quality and depth it deserves.
Now, how can you vote? Just follow this link: https://survey.sega.co.uk/en/med3-factions
Next up:
Thanks for reading! We really appreciate you taking the time and can’t wait to see how the vote turns out! We intent to keep the vote open for the rest of the summer and will announce the results on one of our later live streams.
Speaking of which, please join us for our next “Building Medieval III” live stream on the 25th of June, where we will be talking more about the faction vote, covering any questions that you may have as a result of this blog, as well as showing some new live in engine developments!
Thanks again!
Pawel – Game Director