I would recommend taking a look at the discord channels about each of the various servers, and the kingdoms within each, to get a feel for which ones are looking for something along the lines of what you are describing. There's a lot of great people out there that can help steer you in a direction or help you find somebody whose thinking along your same lines. Good luck with your search and hope to see your dreams come true.

I honestly 100% expect you will be able to achieve that - but be warned, if you have a pretty and navigable river in a biome that is mostly forest it will be incredibly sought after! Most of a forest biome will, after all, be forest.

"Together with friends" is probably the best motto to keep in mind - especially for "hot spots". A couple of players owning an idyllic spot will be absolutely possible as the game world will be a very big place, but dozens of players working together in that same spot will be far more productive and defensible.

Well hopefully players will want to be part of my Kypiq village instead of just trying to build a random house somewhere. There will be laws in place that prevent random building or at least encourage being part of a village. I intend to charge taxes for buildings and citizens but want to see if the counts would mind a % of that going back into village improvements to aid in its development. I want to invest my own time and money into making public crafting spaces that villagers can use for free as their taxes will cover them but outsiders will have to pay to use them! It will be reasonable though. With various forms of payment acceptable. Knowledge, items, money, time, skill etc.

Apples, have you already pledged to a count/kingdom? With the way the kingdoms are chosen it might be a bit of a pain to get what you want without pledging due to rivers being highly sought after(I would assume) by those who get first pick. Though, if you pledge now, you may not even have that option given biomes are locked for kingdoms.

That aside, taxation is something currently being discussed at great length in the kingdom I am pledged to. It's a bit of a hot topic given the uncertainty in both how to do so, and how easily it could end up stagnating a community.

I am not sure how Out of Game pledging at the moment really means anything because this pledging and first come first serve system will be part of the actual game so whether I pledge to a kingdom or not doesn't matter for me because my position in the queue for village selection is fixed regardless. At least that was mu understand from a post / dev log type thing I read.

Its down to influence and when you backed the game. I backed the game within a few minutes and baron tier so my position in the queue of barons should be relatively high. I can also bump my position up based on my influence points which I can still improve on.

So I imagine that when the Kingdom selection phase comes in the different kingdoms can choose what they want, then the dukes choose what they want, then the counts choose what they want and then the barons choose what they want, each in a kind of queue or priority order based on their influence and how soon into the campaign then pledge for their package.

The hopes for my village are just that hopes and dreams and not necessarily what will come to be.

I may end up with a village somewhere not ideal but the game is very freeform and if I decide I want to build somewhere else the game will permit that. I can talk with the count and put forward my argument for establishing a new settlement and get to work! :D