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.