Northgard

Northgard is a real-time strategy game with a Norse mythology theme. It feels like a cross between Civilisation and Age of Empires. Each square is weirdly shaped but it plays like a hex grid, and has the 4x mechanics (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate).

You can only move to the next square if it has been scouted, and you can only build in that area if you colonise it by spending food. You can only do this if you defeat any hostile units before taking it. The more areas you conquer, the higher the cost. You can only place a few buildings in each, but that limit can be expanded by one at a cost of 100 coins. You don’t need to care about precise building placement. Fog of war is temporary - once discovered, you can always see what’s there.

You only need a small army which was a feature I really liked. It was mainly about base building. In the campaign you always start off with a hero unit who has high health. They can single handedly take on a few wolves, allowing you to expand early on.

In the first 5 minutes, you will need to build a house to boost the population limit, a scout camp so you can start expanding, then woodcutters since wood is vital to build. You then need to expand and find food sources. Later, you will need to increase your coins, and find Stone and Iron for the upgrades. Coins can be generated from markets. Stone and Iron are quite rare and you don’t get much from each deposit. You need to manage happiness too. As long as it is positive, you generate a new villager periodically.

Each building can normally have 2 villagers assigned to work there. Buildings can be upgraded which allows you to assign another villager. Unassigned villagers will generate food, but you get much more on farms, hunting or fishing. Certain areas on the map have runes which you can assign a lore master to, which then generates Lore which is used for research.

Healing huts can be built anywhere, and the healers heal any units in your region; so they heal from massive distances.

As time progresses, you will periodically enter winter. This hinders output from farms, and there’s an increase in wood use. You need to make sure you have enough wood and food supply to be able to sustain periods where you have a negative output. If you have any sheep, you can sacrifice sheep for quick food.

It can be tough to balance your resources because there is normally at least one aspect that you are lacking. The general problem is that buildings increase the drain on coins, population drains food and wood.

So let’s say you have a need for coins. So you want to place the Trading Post, but maybe there is no room, so you need to conquer a new square. Maybe that would be a struggle without adding another warrior, but that costs coins. If you do manage to clear enemies from the square, you need to spend food to colonise the square. Then you can place the Trading Post, but maybe by that time, you have hit the population limit, so you also need to place a house. So it ends up taking a big investment in your resources but you will still be in a situation where you are struggling. Sometimes it seems like there’s fine margins between success or failure.

Outside the Campaign, there is a multiplayer mode, and a single player random map mode.

I liked the artstyle; it is slightly cartoony, and very colourful. There’s not many music tracks, so I soon put my own music on.

In some ways, I think Northgard streamlines aspects of real time strategies so it’s not as complex as some games, but there is still a lot of depth to it, and can be very tricky. Each match could take an hour or so, so it is more similar to a game like Age of Empires rather than the massive time sink like Civilization.

As soon as you fire up a game of Northgard you will be reminded of 90s RTS classics like Warcraft and Age of Empires. You gather wood and food, you builds structures and expand your territory, the game really builds along the classic templates of those games. Personally it feels good to have a modern RTS that feels like old favorites, but it's not to say that Northgard doesn't have its own unique touches. Compared to most RTS, this one is much more focused on building things than military. For example once you build a Warrior Camp, you can only produce a max of 2 units with it, so you won't be building this huge army unless you commit multiple army buildings (and each set area as a maximum of buildings so you will be lacking in other areas).

Most of the games play the same, that after a few games you have established your own personal strategy and the game feels a little bit like comfort food. Explore new areas with your scouts, expand your max populations with house and gather as much resources as you can. Keep your people happy with Brewmasters and start building your economy with sailors and merchants and expand until your reach one of the victory conditions. The game features a story mode which I do recommend playing, not specifically for the story, but the missions introduces the game concepts at a good pace that it's a good way to learn to play the game. The real game is in single or multiplayer mode however as most of the recent updates are only featured in that mode (skirmishers, relics). The game features 6 different clans to choose from (4 more added as DLC), and they all have their own unique buildings and traits, but most of them play the same and it's not like Starcraft where the factions are completely different from each other.

Northgard is not a game that is revolutionizing gaming here, it's something that we've seen before but it's rather easy to get into and it gets more challenging as you go along. After 15 hours I feel that the game is given what it can give me to its maximum, but I will probably revisit for a few games once new updates roll around. Would not hesitate to recommend to RTS fans, just don't come in expecting hardcore military fighting as more passive strategies are recommended for this game. Overall pretty good.