StrategyFront Gaming

Northgard is a real-time strategy game released in 2017 by Shiro Games. You lead a Viking tribe settling on a new island fighting for survival against nature, the elements, and rival Viking clans all in an attempt to try and claim victory.

Little about Northgard is as it seems, the cute Viking settlement you build is actually a complex economic engine, one that is always on the brink of collapse. Your fierce warriors are one bad move away from death, losing out on all those resources you spent on them. And your enemies, who seem so strong from the outside, are just as fragile as you are.

Northgard takes place in a fantasy Viking world, where you’ll be trading with Kobolds, fighting off Draugrs, and trying to piece together bits of ancient lore to research new technology. 

The game first and foremost is about survival. At first glance, Northgard takes a board game-like approach to its design. But the simplicity of its appearance obscures the strategic depth and the brutal survival elements at play here.

It does this through intuitive but intricate resource management systems, that use scarcity to produce tension and forces you to make impactful decisions. 

Gameplay in Northgard 

A Northgard game starts out simply, like almost any other RTS. You begin with a few villagers, a collection of buildings, and resource nodes.

First, though, you’ll have to choose one of the many Viking clans to play as. Each of which has their own bonuses and abilities. 

What immediately is different about Northgard from other real-time strategy games is its tile system. Having tiles in a real-time game like this seems odd at first but their implementation is well done.

Tiles act like small regions where you can only build a certain amount of buildings. You’ll constantly need to expand if you want to develop more buildings. 

But any expansion will be expensive. Your scouts first need to explore a tile before you can then colonize it which will cost food, a precious commodity in Northgard. 

This brings up the games most compelling system, economic resource management. 

It may seem odd that in a game about warlike Vikings, most of your time will be spent managing economic concerns rather than fighting your enemies. 

Part of the reason it works so well is that you’ll always be on the brink of collapse, always having to balance multiple factors all the while racing towards victory against AI opponents. 

Resource Management

There are several main resources you’ll have to manage in Northgard.

The first is food, which you’ll need to bring more Vikings to your settlement. The more Vikings you have, however, the more food they will consume. 

You’ll also use food to colonize new territory. Each new tile cost exponentially more than the last. So instead of Northgard being a mad land rush for territory, you’ll have to think carefully about where you extend and what resources you want to take.

Wood is another major resource. Wood is key to building new buildings and heating Viking homes during the winter. It’s less scarce than other resources but critical to expanding your settlement.

Stone will let you upgrade your buildings. For example, a farm that may have allowed for two workers can be upgraded to contain three. Once upgraded it will now give you a bonus to food production. 

This makes stone extremely valuable but it’s also incredibly rare and when you find a deposit it’ll only be enough for a few upgrades. This makes every building upgrade you choose count enormously in how your game will play out.

Alternatively, you may want to focus on mining iron instead of stone. This allows you to upgrade your miners themselves or your precious warriors. 

Kröwns act as gold or coins. You’ll use them to pay upkeep for buildings and your warriors. Getting them in the early game is difficult and will require setting up a marketplace to trade with your neighbors. 

Fame allows your clan to access their specific bonuses which can be a huge boon in every game. These bonuses and abilities are critical to get you out of an economic death spiral. Or allowing you to get more of that critical resource you need. 

You’ll obtain fame by completing great deeds like slaying monsters, exploring, or defeating other Viking clans. This forces you to go out into the world and not just stay turtled inside your base. 

The final resource is Lore, which acts as research points. Researching new technologies with lore can grant some pretty hefty bonuses to your settlement. Like having your farms produce more food or giving your warriors the ability to fight better in winter. 

These sound like small things but in Northgard every little thing counts as you’re constantly on the verge of ruin.

You can also build Longboat harbors which will send boats to go off map to raid for either Lore or Fame. This can really help your early game deficits before you get your army up to snuff. You don’t control these raids directly that’s handled off-screen. 

On top of all of this you’ll also have to keep your vikings happy. 

When your population’s happiness gets too low, they’ll stop growing and production will be lowered. So you’ll have to further balance your workers between production and working on happiness by building a Skald. 

Every building you build will need workers to operate it meaning that those workers will need to be fed. This only really becomes a problem when winter comes. 

Winter is Coming

Winter is bad, real bad. You’ll take massive debuffs to your food and wood production as people can no longer grow crops and will need to heat their homes with wood. This means the other seasons are about stockpiling resources to survive the winter months. 

It is a huge challenge and any mistake in overextending yourself during the earlier seasons can have massive repercussions during winter. 

It forces you to consider every move you make. If you want to build a house in spring you have to think, should you be saving that wood for winter, or can you even afford to feed the new workers who will live there. 

It all ties back to Northgard’s main theme of scarcity. Resources are scarce, warriors are scarce, and time is also scarce as winter will always be coming. 

In a game like Endless Legend, which is turn-based, Winter works in a similar way. But in that game, you have all the time in the world to figure it out before you click end turn and winter comes. Since Northgard is real-time, winter adds a whole other level of tension to the experience. 

Exploration in Northgard

When it isn’t Winter you’ll also be exploring neighboring territory. 

Stepping out into this world filled with wolves and Draugr is dangerous but can also be extremely rewarding as you’ll need to send scouts out to find new resources and discover treasures. 

You’ll find special tiles which can give you important buffs, like the Hot Springs or ancient monuments. Most of these will be protected by hostile creatures that need to be defeated before the resources can be exploited. 

Wolves and Draugr are two of the most common neutral enemies you’ll face but there are also fearsome Valkyries, who often gave me a lot of trouble in my games. 

Besides the creatures there will be non-Viking villages of Kobolds and Jötunn(Giants) which you can either trade with or raid. 

Kobolds look weak but can be incredibly tough in a fight. It’s often a good idea just to trade with them and let the other Vikings attack them and waste their own troops rather than yours.

You can also trade with the other Viking clans on the island which creates an interesting dynamic. You’ll both be trying to claim victory over each other but the economic concerns of Northgard mean that often you’ll need each other’s trade just to survive the winter. 

As you explore you’ll be able to settle these new regions. As I mentioned before each tile you claim will be exponentially more expensive so you’ll not be able to take every single territory you’d like to. 

Occasionally as you’re managing all this you’ll be hit with random events like rats eating all of your unstored food, earthquakes, or a Draugr Invasion. These break up the careful management you’ve been cultivating and force you to adapt your strategy. 

When multiple of these crises hit at once it will be a real struggle to right things. 

Northgard isn’t about the actions you’re taking per minute, it’s all about the long-term planning you’re doing. 

The core game is easy to learn but you’ll have to put in the work to gain victory, and you’re always one mistake away from everything spinning out of control.

Campaign of Northgard

Northgard’s campaign is short and sweet. It serves as an introduction to Northgard’s game concepts but has a forgettable story. It helps you get on your feet and understand what you have to do to survive in a multiplayer or skirmish game. 

One thing to note about the campaign is how much easier it is then the skirmish mode due to starting with a Hero unit.

This helps a ton in the early stages. In skirmish games, you’ll otherwise be struggling just to fight off a few wolves with your warriors. 

Combat in Northgard

Northgard’s combat is far less frequent than many other RTS games like Age of Empires or Starcraft. Still, there’s a surprising amount of depth to be found here. 

The first thing to know is that each warrior in Northgard is precious. Like claiming new tiles each warrior you recruit costs exponentially more, even when they die. This means that for every man you lose they can’t just easily be replaced, you’ll have to build a new even more expensive version. 

Due to the economic limitations on your army, there aren’t many early rush strategies to be found in Northgard. 

In the beginning, you’ll mostly be fighting wolves and draugr. These hostile creatures will spawn from their Dens and Tombs which you will have to destroy to clear the area.

It’s sometimes a good idea not to destroy these if they’re on your border with another Viking clan to provide a buffer with them. Forcing your enemy to deal with the problem before attacking you. 

You’ll also have to micromanage your units, keeping them alive by pulling them back behind the fight to heal them or keeping reserves in case things go badly. 

One interesting concept is that units cannot advance into tiles until enemies on the current tile have been cleared. Meaning that if you want to raid a clan across the map, by the time you’ll have gotten there your troops will already be weakened by fighting their way through neutral areas filled with monsters. 

Units will also be less effective fighting outside their home terrain in winter. This creates a realistic sense of campaigning seasons where you generally want to conduct your fighting in the warm seasons while hunkering down during winter. 

Warfare is about attrition more than any clever tactical maneuvers. You’ll be trying to destroy your opponent’s economy far more than their army. 

This creates interesting strategies where you’ll try to kill or maim other Vikings workers. It’s a good idea to only maim them because for every wounded unit their clan’s happiness decreases meaning production and growth will ground to a halt.

It’s the sort of devious strategy which makes Northgard so great. All the interlocking systems can be exploited by clever players looking to get an edge on their competition without risking their own units. 

My biggest complaint about the combat is that the higher tier units often feel like a waste. They don’t perform overly much better than the basic warriors for their costs. Defensive towers are also far too powerful, often they would stop attacks dead in their tracks and could wipe out armies. 

While Northgard is not about building a military engine to field massive armies it does have a combat system that provides a surprising level of strategic and tactical management. 

Victory

All of this leads to how you actually win a Northgard game. Like a Civilization game, there are multiple paths to victory: Trade, Domination, Fame, or Lore. 

What’s interesting about these is that you can see what victories you enemies are going for and know where to hit them where it hurts the most. 

Perhaps you know your enemy is going for a Lore victory and that they’ve neglected their army. You can exploit that to your advantage applying military pressure on them so they have to divert effort from that victory to counter you.

What’s also great about this is that it keeps the tension going until the last minute of the game. You could lose your entire army in the last push for a conquest victory, dashing all your hopes. Or you could have another player raid you and disrupt your carefully laid path to victory just before you achieve it. 

The whole system keeps you on your toes while also giving you multiple options to focus on when trying to win. 

DLC

Since release, the developers have created five new playable clans for purchase in the form of DLC.

While these don’t fundamentally alter the core gameplay experience they do add nice variety especially when playing multiplayer.

If you’re a huge fan of the game I’d recommend buying them but again, they’re not necessary to play the game.

Conclusion

Northgard is a game that knows what it is. Every system is carefully designed to feed into the next and create an extremely interesting experience. You often won’t be doing too much because you’ll be planning and biding your time. Not frantically clicking like in some RTS games. 

It also helps that matches never take more than two hours meaning you can play all of this out in a relatively short amount of time. Getting you back into the next game quickly.

Economics being the focus is also an advantage. It means you’ll be able to come up with strategies to cripple your opponents economically or destroy their population, not just defeat their armies. 

Additionally, having to plan for both known factors like the harsh winter, and unforeseen events like earthquakes mean there is always the tension of the unknown.

You can never come up with a plan so good you’ll never have to scramble sometimes. But also having a plan means your people won’t be starving come winter. 

Northgard is stressful but it never feels overly hectic or unfair. Its stress comes from the knowledge that any wrong move could put your economy into a death spiral or wipe out your army.

Scarcity and disaster are how Northgard keeps things interesting and in that it succeeds in spades. 

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