The idea of this game is to have a bunch of countries with knights and they can fight and duel one another. The game has about 1200 knight both inactive and active combined spread over many nations. Almost half of those knights are free knights which is almost the equivlent of saying long term inactive knights from what I have seen with a few rare exceptions. Not to mention all the short term inactivity from knights in the nations. It looks as though their are only about 30 knights online at any given time.

My proposal is that we make the game more fesible for fewer knights to play as it seems there are not enough active knights to go around. To do this we need to do several things.

1. Kings should be given 50 bodyguards and each bodyguard would have half the stats and same weapons as the King that controls them.
Earls that control shires would have 25 bodyguards and each bodyguard would have half the stats and same weapons as the Earl that controls them.
All other knights would have 10 bodyguards and each bodyguard would have half the stats and same weapons as the Knight that controls them.
What does this do? It makes the game more playable for small nations. The bodyguards would only have impact in battles.

2. Knights should also be able to train their skills without dueling partners, battles or tourneys. The benefit of raising skills without such partners or other players should be less than that of a having someone else to battle or duel. But still allow you to raise your skill if you are active when no one else is. This could be done by if there is no one in your territory to duel or no one accepts your challenges you could fight a bodyguard. It wouldn't count towards victories or defeats but would count toward skills half as much as if you had found someone else.

3. Lower requirements for nations to appoint Earls to shires to 2 fiefdoms per shire. Higher limits are better with a lot of active knights, but this is not the case right now and the map is too big for the numbers.

4. Make so free knights truely are free. Free knights should not be able to be arrested. They should not be able to attack anyone by forming armies. For a free knight to battle they should have to recieve a contract from a King to fight in battle for a nation. Free knights should be able to freely move about unless a contract is signed with a King to fight for him to do so he would need to be at that nations capital. Hiring a free knight should cost a set fee (they wouldn't have fiefdoms or own land) and contract would be active for some length of time. A free knight could enter any nation and purchase any weapons/armor there, but at twice the price.

5. Lastly all weapons need to be reworked with multiple weapons of the same type improving in stats with cost. For instance there should be 1 of each weapon type available for say 20 silver. For 50 silver there should be another of all types. For 100 silver there should be another of all types. Etc etc on up to 1000 silver for each weapon with the best stats.