Build archer towers in outskirts and ballista towers in city centers.
Place 3 tiles high guard towers at random locations. When your city is overpopulated, food storage will start dropping at a VERY quick rate.ģ. Cheaper buildings also requires less staff - which, as it turns out, is a VERY important consideration, see the point 2 above (not below).Ģ. You can build there, and then demolish when you need it. For that matter, it is in general (but not always) not advisable to "save" strategically placed land tiles for later use. You can always demolish buildings later: nobody really seems to gets upset by being evicted, and you will regain half the invested resources. For instance, build a library instead of a church. In early to maybe half midgame, prioritize building the cheaper variant of buildings. Maybe you could get 1 dedicated worker for every 10 citizens, that you could position any way you want, or something similar.ġ. Or when you have two hospitals and still 20 people die of plaque, because the hospitals are understaffed. Or when people are on the edge of rioting, but your extremely resource demanding and finally finished church stands empty. I mean, you are the king, after all! It is rather ridiculous when vikings ravage your city because half your guard towers stand abandoned, meanwhile 20 workers stand around almost empty stockpiles, having a smoke and reading Farmer Illustrated. however, you should be able to flag certain jobs as high priority. Demolishing building projects and shutting down operations in less prioritized buildings is fine. Either, it is harder than it looks, or I am not as good with these games as I thought (and I have beated Alpha Centauri on transcendant iron man, more than once!)Ģ. Ok, after playing some more on frequent raids, I need to add two things:ġ. Considering it is SEK 97 (like, 10 euros or 10-15 dollars, something like that) I think it is a fair deal.Įnd sum, do I recommend this game? Hell yes! * Because of the above point, I surmise that it is possible, that once you manage to build a city with such good defenses you are safe from raids, the game might become boring in the sense "Ok, what now?" HOWEVER, until you succeed with that, you will probably spend at least a good 10 hours or so (I just spend 3 hours), but probably more like 20-25 hours until you master the game on the frequent raid land. And also, you wont have to demolish half your city every time vikings raid and you realize just how badly you planned your defenses, if you are raided all the time! Raiders also will not sack your entire village completely (thankfully) so you will not be very upset and throw your imaginary NES-controller in the floor out of frustration. I surmise I picked the wrong difficulty: because the game is rather much Sim City in between raids, the most fun land is probably the frequent raid land. After each raid, you will discover how badly you have messed up in city planning. I played infrequent raids, because, well, it is the first time I play. There are three lands you can play: no raids, infrequent raids, and frequent raids. * The most interesting aspect are dragons and vikings.
I will say this: if you like city builders and if you liked the Eschalon streamlining, you will love this game. Does that mean you grow bored of your kingdom too quickly? Again, to early to say. * The islands are rather small, and since city planning is easy and satisfactory, I would say this game is very streamlined.
However, supposedly, you CAN micromanage your peasants, if need be, by shutting down construction and job slot filling of buildings, so even overextending should be easily fixed - like I said, I did not encounter this problem and therefore didnt try it out. I believe it is possible to overextend your city growth, in such a way that that you get stuck in "catch 22" scenarios, where there is none to say, build a hovel, therefore, you will miss out on the work force needed to grow more food or whatever, but either I lucked out on my first play or this is not much of a problem. Does that mean easy -> ultimately unsatisfactory playing experience? To early to tell. * Your city progress quickly, and there is no (so far) micromanaging. * It is very self-explanatory, and in any case you have advisors telling you what to do. So, be warned! Do not buy this game is you have an important exam coming up, or just started a new job, or something similar. * It is very addictive, like all city builders. Thus, I neglecting my family to bring you my first impressions: