Recent reviews by Nyx

Very cute and relaxing game!

Very cool puzzle game, love the mechanics.

Very cute artstyle and OST

Possibly one of the best games ever made, it's sad that the developers have abandonned it but ACE is a pretty good effort as a continuation

Cute game, lots of potential

Very wholesome

Yes

I have kind of mixed feelings about this expansion:

- 15 EUR is too expensive for an expansion this size in my opinion, but compared to the price for the other DLC factions of 4.50 EUR for essentially an either underwhelming or overpowered reskin with a few tweaks, it wouldn't be too bad, if it was actually finished, that is.

-THE STORY-

- The expansion is definitely unfinished, while the 'epilogue' will presumably come in january, it could hardly be called an epilogue at all as the story so far stops before the actual climax of the story. The story itself also has a severe amount of bugs. (Mainly that the Viking-Neustria chimera faction you play as in a lot of the story just doesn't work at the viking side)

- The story feels like it definitely wasn't playtested much, aside from numerous bugs you'll hear people talk about in other reviews, it also feels very confusing at times as the tips and objectives don't give you any real indication of what you should do at times. And it can just be stupidly hard, easy or lengthy.

-THE FACTION-

- The faction I actually really like, but it is not flawless, it gives a very different spin on the usual game and definitely made me want to pick up the game again, overall it is also just very fun to play.

- This faction is stupidly dependent on your starting area, since you have to have essentially a constant source of stone before even half the year is over, otherwise all your people will starve in winter and you're basically pushed back a whole year or more if you don't salvage the situation. The base combat unit (Sentry), is as it says, a peasant with either gardening or cooking equipment, while funny, not something you can really expand with.

- The lore/faith tree is very underwhelming, most of the faction specific ones feel only mildly useful in the mid-to-late game, but in terms of this clan's ability to generate faith, boi is it stupidly overpowered. Since there are only 2 real ways of getting faith; throwing all your subjects into your chapel/town hall & making a monk-sweatshop, and the AI is very good at clustering population on the town hall tile, this faction is a menace to be up against in a faith victory in Conquest. Throw your Codex Aurelius relic onto your monk sweatshop and you'll essentially win the game within 5 minutes.

- The early development for this faction is stupidly slow, especially because of the earlier said reliance on good spawns and underpowered base units, the inability to heal your units without essentially offering up an entire zone and 5 stone early on makes it very frustating.

- The Militairy units, when you finally unlock them, are very fun to play with, especially in combination with the relic-bearing paladin, while as of now there is only one real relic for combat (the faction-specific relic, technically you could use the other two too but it doesn't doo much in terms of combat, only gives you resources from people dying), it makes for a fun mechanic.

- Defensively, the Fort unit behaves pretty weirdly, mainly that enemies will hardly ever target the Lord/Lady/Leude and will just shoot straight for the Fort, with the unit only ever killing 1, maybe 2 enemies before dying with the fort. The militairy paths also just feel like they do not align well with this faction, they are heavily different as opposed to the viking faction but it feels like the offensive path just doesnt work with the faction at all.

- I played the conquest for this faction and it was definitely not too hard but also not too easy, it does ultimately depend very much on the non-faction-specific bonusses and battles you get.

- All this combined, it's hard to say whether it's balanced, it is just vastly different from most factions and has very very weak and very very strong points.

-TIPS-

- Only give your zones a single production goal, I prefer to make the starting tile into an anchorage zone as you can get a +50% sailor/seafarer bonus, easily within the first year. (I also like to put up most of my taverners here in a hostelry in the early game as you definitely don't need much gold)

- Develop your zones instead of expanding, this faction plays well if you put a lot of effort into milking essentially the 4-5 zones you start with by maxing out livability, I have not had a single game where I couldn't survive off of 2 food tiles directly adjecent to the starting tile.

- Start mining stone right after you've built your first lumbercamp, house and foraging post. Ideally you want to be able to upgrade your foraging post before winter (or 2-3 months prior if farmstead, save up food for winter in this case and you should not or only lightly go starving). If there are wolves contesting it, build a sentry camp and colonize that zone asap (watch out for not having enought food to colonize)

- If in singleplayer, don't be afraid to restart if your starting area is bad (e.a. having stone deposit blocked by 3+ wolves)

- If necessary you can use the Ost knowledge which you can unlock very early on in the game, to get a fantassin camp in the early game to clear a lot of wolves or goblins.

- In the fourth episode of the story mode, choose the Squirrel clan's warchief as your advisor, since the raid upgrades are bugged at the moment (which I hoped will be fixed very soon), his banquet can end the game without a nearly impossible standoff between an army of warriors and a little boat with 2 weak mercenaries.

- In conquest; use Hildegard as your tank, since she heals from her first faction-specific-favor by being in a zone where enemies are killed, she is nearly invincible when not facing off against large units, while she has an army of longbowmen at her back that will grind entire armies into dust within a second.

Its a really nice game if you want to kill some time or just have a good time