I believe this was a Lethal Weapon reference. ;)
They have DLC planned but it looks to be free as part of content patches.
Excellent!
I really love the way this game looks, sort of a blend between Settlers 7 and what I wanted Clockwork Empires to be (but set in a cool Norse setting). $22.50 seems like a more than reasonable price to me, though I wish I’d grabbed it when it was $15 of course. Anyone played it? Steam reviews are very positive (literally) so far. I should watch some streams/videos today.
Scroll up?
It’s a fantastic game, even simply playing it in skirmish mode with one of the different player factions you can choose against the AI. I haven’t touched the campaign mode myself, but this is one of the most interesting takes on a genre I thought I was familiar with in a long time. Some of those interesting design decisions may not work for people who are looking for a nordic version of AOE, but if you’re looking for a game with some fascinating, interlocking systems that work in concert with each other, I can’t recommend it enough.
False advertising in the thread title?? ;(
Cool. I’ve been waiting for official release to really dive in.
Some of the things that really stand out to me with Northgard are the way each game is fairly unique regarding how I play it.
Typically, in an RTS there’s a build template you follow. “Oh, I need to make this first, then this, and then this right after. And these are the units I need to make, and in this order.”
Now, I typically have a build order I use for my first small opening territory in Northgard, but then…all bets are off. Each territory you discover and take over will have different features, and in each one there will be hard limits on the numbers of buildings you can build and units/people it can support. And that means that you can’t just jump into a new territory you’ve gained and just start plopping buildings down. You’ll lose that way.
Instead, you have to think about optimization at almost every turn. For instance, in a game I played over the weekend, I did my typical opening territory start by building a logging camp. Need wood to make buildings, right?
But then the first territory I discovered to take over was an old forest with designated terrain especially meant for increased wood production.
And so…once I had enough of that resource, I destroyed the logging camp in my initial territory (getting back one building slot there) and built a new logging camp in my new territory and sent my worker there. In the short term, it cost me money and resources and time. In the long term, it worked out OK, because it allowed me to optimize my resource production better and gave me a precious, precious spot to build in my initial territory.
The game constantly presents you with decisions like that to make. They get more complex not because the rules of the game get more complex either, but rather because of the size of your growing Viking nation.
Sorry, I should have clarified - I meant since launch. I can’t seem to find any videos or impressions since it launched out of Early Access. I suppose I could assume not much has changed though, which is probably the case.
Ah, yeah. I have no campaign information to offer. I know that there was some beta access offered, but I studiously avoided so that I can bury myself in it tonight!
Why couldn’t this have won Request Wednesday? :(
-Tom, champing at the bit
It’s surreal to see this post, as I was just explaining the expression is in fact “champing” at the bit to my wife and daughter and they refused to believe me!
I bought it in EA, but only played 30 minutes or so. Can’t say it grabbed me then, but I figured I would wait until it was officially out to dive in. I played again tonight. Outside of the campaign, I didn’t notice any changes in game play.
I just finished the first campaign mission. The tutorial guides you in what you should be doing, but doesn’t explain all the mechanics. The game is pretty easy to figure out though, so that isn’t a huge deal. I do really think it needs a pause and look around mode, but in that first mission, nothing is going to attack you and it moves slow enough you can take all the time you need. Just a preference, I like to pause and read everything and find it annoying when I can’t, no matter how slow the game may be.
Basic game play is you have an area that can build so many buildings. The more houses you have the more people you can have. You assign villagers to buildings to do jobs and the rest gather food. In the winter you get less food, and use more wood.You need to keep expanding to new zones after a scout explores them. If no monsters are there, you just pay food to colonize the new area. Then you move a villager there who will build and gather food for you. Repeat. It felt a bit tedious as my area grew, since each zone needs to be managed separately (not that it takes a lot), instead of just having one big area where everyone can move freely. If you try to build something in a zone with no free workers, one from a neighboring zone won’t go build it, you have to find a free worker first and move them to that zone.
In zones where there are monsters, you can move your soldiers and/or hero in. Nothing to do but watch and tell them to retreat if need be. If you have a healer he will heal units in surrounding zones, but won’t heal if he leaves the zone where his house is.
It might be fun once I get used to and get farther, but I still feel like I did after my first 30 minutes. It’s fine, but I am not excited to play again.
Played the first couple of campaign missions last night. I’m definitely getting a strong Settlers 7 vibe, with the clearly delineated sectors, each with a dominant resource type. Supply chains seem to be simple/non-existent so far, though. It’s more been a question of managing expansion to ensure your highest priority need is met. It seems they’ve transferred some of that optimisation complexity into the lore tech tree.
How are you liking the campaign? That’s the big thing I’ve been waiting for to see how interested I am in this. I may play some skirmish, but no multiplayer. If the campaign is well done is kind of the deal maker for me.
This is on sale for $18 at GreenManGaming
Like most RTS games, I think that for single player that skirmish is where the fun and value of this lies.
So far it’s basically been an extended tutorial (one true tutorial mission, one put it into practice one). Can’t really comment on it as campaign yet. Judging by the structure of the game, though, it doesn’t seem like it’s the sort of thing that can have a good or bad campaign. It’s just going to be a series of effective skirmishes with custom victory conditions.
This, pretty much. The regular skirmish mode gives you a very large multi-hour challenge (as in, tough to complete in one game session, unless your game session is more than a couple of hours) and takes all the rules and feature training wheels off. The campaign is basically more structured play to present rules and those custom victory standards.
Yeah, the campaign is dull stuff for how it forces you to play an already kind of slow game even more slowly. Better to jump into a standalone game and fail so you can appreciate the cool stuff you don’t get to see in the campaign than sink hours into plodding handholding that buries some of the cooler elements of the game.
-Tom
Just finished the 2nd campaign mission. It was ok. Keeping food output up, while trying to get all the other resources, and expanding can be a bit difficult. My first attempt I was expanding like crazy and ran out of food in the winter. That doesn’t kill your game, but it made me want to start over so I could do it right.
Its been over a decade since I played a Settler game, but I do not see the comparison at all. There aren’t any industries, its build this building, and put workers in it to get X resource, that is about it. Of course I am still early into it, but the game play is pretty basic so far.
I don’t dislike the game, but still not having fun with it.
That’s because you’re playing the campaign.
Stahp.
Settlers 7 is the most direct comparison, and Settlers 7 stood apart from the other Settlers for a lot of reasons. If you played 7, the similarities with Northgard would be more apparent.
And, yeah, @triggercut is right. Before you write it off, fire up a single player game outside the campaign. You might still not like the game, but at least you’ll see a bit more of what it’s trying to do.
Are you doing what I think you’re doing?
https://am23.akamaized.net/tms/cnt/uploads/2015/09/tommy.gif
-Tom