Northgard - Age of Empires, Vikings only

The $12 price (with black friday voucher) at GMG got me to bite.

My luck it will be in a humble bundle in 6 months. :p

It’s been a few months since I played it and I may be mis-remembering, but I’m pretty sure I could give orders when paused.

Did they add it later? Last I heard the devs were against it.

No, as I posted, I’m probably remembering it wrong. Age plus a pretty heavy cocktail of painkillers (for my hip) mean my memory isn’t what it was.

Yep, no pause and give orders.

That’s OK though, because this isn’t a frenetic RTS for the most part. It’s a careful, build-em-up.

And the game’s mechanics make every one of your villagers and every single building you have a precious resource. To that end, in Northgard one of the strategic keys to doing well is to be willing to tear down buildings in an older province, where perhaps a resource isn’t optimized, and build a new version in a new province where it is.

There’s definitely a smart balance to be struck in expansion and growth.

The game’s pace is almost leisurely, especially at first. Most of the time, the only units you need to be actively controlling are your fighting units…and it’s unlikely you’re going to have more than a handful of those throughout most of the game. Hence the lack of pause and give orders isn’t much of an issue, even for us deliberative gamers.

What I love about Northgard is the way the tactics of the immediate are married to the strategy of your long-term plans within the game. They interact seamlessly, but there are plenty of times where a tactical necessity impacts your strategy…and where you recognize a strategic opportunity that impacts your immediate tactical plans.

They’ve done a nice job in their first year of EA to build out the factions and mechanics of the game. They do like their multiplayer, but…this is a game really rich in flavor and theme. It feels viking-y, and that, along with the skill of the AI (who I think play fair, and don’t cheat) makes the single-player game really satisfyingly challenging. The various clans are all asymmetrical enough that they create different ways of playing, so that adds some additional layers of single-player goodness.

And, they’re building out the campaign. Their current roadmap shows that they’re planning to release the first four chapters of the single player campaign in January, and then try to come out of EA by March of 2018.

Even as an EA title, though, this is a very polished, fun, and interesting game that plays in interesting and unique ways. There may be other games like it…but I’ve never played them.

I was watching this and Spellforce 3.

Your post has me leaning heavily towards this.

does this game support 1920 x 1200 ??

getting ready to pull the trigger if it does…thanks

I honestly don’t know. There’s no specific resolution choices or a slider.

Just a way to select “automatic” which maybe refers to you default selection in windows.

It does also have UI scaling.

@Bangorang2003 , it runs great at that rez, they use some kind of dynamic scale, so it just looks good at whatever your display size is.

See here:

I am enjoying what I see so far, well worth the $12.

MOAR pics because I decided to play this for 2 more hours…

That sure is pretty.

Not sure how I feel about it so far. It’s not really grabbing me and making me want to play more. Not that I don’t like it, just that it doesn’t have it hooks in me.

Played a few short games so far. Still learning as I keep expanding too quickly, and then getting myself in a spot where the game is probably savable, but would take forever. I think I need to expand my city center quicker next time. Looking forward to a campaign mode which may ease you into how to start off a bit better.

Yeah its really about slow methodical growth, I almost lost half my people one winter, ran out of food.

Has anyone that has played this also played Kingdoms and Castles? I know they aren’t the same, but just wondering if anyone has a preference. Does Northgard have a little more city building to it than many RTSs? Does it play a bit like Settlers 7?

I get a VERY mild Settlers 7 vibe from Northgard, the town building is very limited, each map zone you discover holds 3-5 buildings. And I think there are like 12-13 buildings in total. There is a skill tree you unlock as the game progresses, you have to recruit a lore master who generates points. There is no campaign yet, its coming early next year.

I am pleased with what I’ve seen for the price $12 ish.

Settlers 7 played like a board game, very quick, strategic choke points kind of thing. Is it like Settlers 7 or is it more like the games before 7, more leisurely and slow and an open map?

Yeah, Settlers 2 and 3 are a couple of my all home favorites. Anything that scratches a similar itch piques my interest

Honestly, this game and Kingdoms and Castles are completely different from one another in play and scope. It’s like asking if Rocket League is like The Witcher 3. ;)

Well you are playing for map control vs the AI so you can’t just sit back and hope to win, but I haven’t felt rushed, other than not having enough food saved for one winter.

I loved these games so much, Serf City was one of my first full introductions into City Builder genre outside of Sim City. They always got knocked for being slow, but I loved the slow leisure, just watch my little serfs grab a piggy an walk it over there. Oh and the people that like to go after MP players, yeah Serf City was MP from the start and co-op, that’s what Joy Sticks were for, not this flight sim stuffs :-).

I do like Settlers 7 too though, it’s just very… different from the rest of the series.

Well I don’t require it to be exactly like the previous Settlers games, it’s just 7 is, I really don’t know how else to describe it other than it’s more like a board game than the free open map and kind of slower pace of the other ones.