Northgard - Age of Empires, Vikings only

So does this net out to a fairly narrow path to victory?

Well, four narrow paths. It depends on which of the four victory conditions you’re attempting. Or five if the fifth victory condition appears on your map.

-Tom

I need to bump it up to medium again and see how it goes. I’ve won fame, wisdom, and domination victories in easy skirmishes now.

The strong point of the game for me is the variety given in a RTS game thanks to taking some features of other empire-building strategy games, like random maps with different resources and random events.

-Every game can be different depending of what resources you will find nearby. It isn’t the same a forest than a swamp, or a shipwreck or a field with a iron mine. Given how interdependent are some of the system (as I described before), it can have a pretty big effect.
-Same with the neutral enemies guarding some of the provinces. Some will be empty, others will have wolves, or draugs, or valkyries.That will affect in which order you conquest them each time. Some could have a ruin that helps you gain fame points, others a wolf den that spawn enemies. Some of the factions could even benefit of having a wolf den as they gain food killing critters (so you don’t destroy the den, but instead ‘farm’ it).
-Now add the random events, like blizzards, earthquakes,or draug portals.
-Neutral factions that you could find like the kobolds and the jotuns.
-Finally, having 4-5 ways to reach victory (conquest, technological, fame, trade, special map province to conquer) gives you different ways to compete.

I’m starting to see the value of the campaign more. It’s like a clan sampler pack where you get to play the different clans in scenarios specifically designed to accentuate their strengths. It can still be annoying, I had to play scenario 5 3 times to beat it, but I enjoyed 6 very much.

I’m starting to dislike this game now, for the simple reason that the peon management sucks.

I have a burning building, and a peasant next to it, but he can’t fix it without being told?

Everyone else can do their jobs but not the peasants.

one thing I like is I can convert a forester into a healer just by moving him to the right building, but if that forester is right next to a burning building, or a construction site, he has to first become a peasant…which inevitably means traipsing oh so slowly half way across the map to find a hut to then come back and do the job…

Plus if I’ve allocated a peasant to do something, and then I find another peasant nearer the objective, that 2nd peasant can’t help or take over from the first peasant.

And why can I only build one tower per sector?

Needless micromanagement that inflates the difficulty of the game and increases the frustration.

Conquering is also pretty slow. I occupy an enemy site, control shifts to me…or rather away from the owner, so it becomes neutral, and then I have to colonise it…

I’m past the refund point simply on account of everything taking so long here. 4 hrs in an I have done 3 campaign missions.

Which brings me to my last point, there needs to be a restart mission option, instead of exiting the mission and clicking to start it again, and sitting through the unskippable cutscenes. Unskippable cut scenes…seriously, f*ck off.

There is a good game somewhere here, and I started having fun, but then I found myself babysitting peasants like this was Warcraft 3 or something. When things start coming together the time just sinks away…

That’s why I could never get into. I started a non-campaign game as suggested here, and it was more challenging, but still not really fun. Mircromanging peons, and their little territories, was tedious.

Cutscenes can be skipped. Iirc, after hitting ESC a little dialogue box popped up in the corner asking if I wanted to skip the scene.

I totally get a lot of your issues, and I swear I’ve almost deleted this game 3 times now. But I keep going back into it, and somehow manage to progress. I’m on campaign 8 now.

I honestly think micromanaging your peons is one of the main gameplay elements that was intentional from the devs. You literally have to reassign workers in winter time to off-set the lower food production and wood issues.
However, that said, your points about having to tell a peon to put out a fire, or send a worker back to the home grid to make them a peon again are both valid concerns that should get addressed.

As for the restarting missions with unskippable dialogues, I’ve just gotten into the habit of creating a save game immediately after that stuff plays out and before I start putting up my first buildings. Then if a restart is necessary, I can avoid it all.

I put in about 10 hours playing skirmishes, but haven’t been back to it in the past couple of weeks. I agree that some of the peon micro is ridiculous.

This I can understand, as it simulates using your manpower. I get that. I like that. i can take a woodcutter and send him directly to the market and he’ll become a merchant.

Why, therefore, with peasants do i have to send them to a peasant building to transform them first?

Why can’t I send my merchant directly to the burning building and have him transform into a peasant?

Huh? You totally can. You may first have to stop the peon you’ve sent, if the building is full.

Yeah, I mean, mechanically, peon micromanagement is pretty much the only gameplay.

Because only peasants can repair buildings. So you have to turn them into peasants. You’re thinking about it the wrong way. The burning building isn’t what makes them a firefighter. The town hall is.

yeah that’s what i meant.

i need to find the original peasant, stop him, come back to peasant number 2, send him…

Only woodcutters can cut wood. However, I can send a woodcutter into a nearby building, and he transforms into that thing.

I have to select woodcutter, send him back to home base to become a peasant, to then bring him back to fight the fire.

It’s not fun gameplay, just tedious, and it sours the rest of the gameplay, which is fairly fun. I like that I have to think carefully about what needs to be done, pull peons away from being skalds to become firefighters for a month or 2 before winter etc. But alot of it boils down to clickity click click for the sake of it.

The idle peon button makes it pretty simple.

Exactly. You can’t just click on a tree, you have to click on the woodcutter building. Similarly, to create a firefighter, you have to click on the firefighter building.

We all get the gameplay is designed as it is, and you have to be fast, or plan ahead or whatever.
But it’s just so annoying to have some guy close to a building on fire, which really needs to be extinguished, and you have and take the guy to a house, change clothes, and then come back to the building he was close by before.

The Three Moves Ahead guys just love it. If you’re on the fence, give it a listen, it will probably push you over the edge. I disagree with them, but I think I would like it more if I could pause. I am just not a RTS fan, and despite all of the talk of it being a slow RTS, it’s still an RTS.

Indeed. This is the correct opinion on Northgard. ;)

Game is growing on me now. I got round my peasant problem by building a house in each province.

I need to build them anyway, so might as well place them near other things.

Listened to thee moves podcast, it definitely pushed me over on whether to buy this, it’s now on the list.

I started the campaign and completed the first 2 chapters on hard, which seems like is this game’s normal. It’s quite fun so far. I was rolling along pretty nicely but stretched my resources a little thin towards the end of chapter 2. I was able to get things balanced out and get my guys to clear out the wolves for my neighbor. It will be interesting to see how it goes as the game starts throwing more complicated stuff at me.