Northgard - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Matt Cox)

northgardgiantheader

Northgard is a splendid RTS about rearing a clan of vikings in a punishing climate that makes every decision matter. But you’ve read my review, and you already know all that. Northgard is a fantastic game in the present, but what does its future hold? I spoke to CEO of Shiro Games and Northgard dev Sebastien Vidal about what we’ll see in the next update, competitive play, and expansion plans for further down the line.

(more…)

Mar 14, 2018
Northgard - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Matt Cox)

northgardreviewheader

My clan folk are starving, freezing and diseased. It was a harsh winter, and the rats that raided our food supply in January have forced me to butcher my only remaining sheep. The future looks grim, but my people s suffering is curtailed when one of my opponents becomes so famous that he wins the game outright. Losing is a strange kind of mercy.

Despite its harshness, Northgard is a superb RTS that s easy to pick up but difficult to master. That may be an overused phrase, but it s justified here – let me tell you why. Hurry up, winter is coming.

(more…)

Northgard

Developer Shiro Games' Viking-themed real-time strategy Northgard has now properly released on Steam, following a year of early access development.

Northgard has attracted a decent amount of praise from strategy fans over the last 12 months. On a basic level, it's a lot like the classic Settlers series, insofar as you're tasked with establishing a settlement and slowing building it up through careful exploration, resource management, and expansion. In practice though, it has a rhythm and pace all of its own, thanks to some atypical design choices that set it apart from its peers.

Its big distinction is that each map is split into separate zones, which you'll need to individually scout, rid of enemies, and finally colonise in order to grow your settlement.

Read more…

Northgard - Brioche [Shiro]
Hello Northgardians!

Bug Fix

We fixed a few things that caused problems in the v1.0.8772
  • Crashes were fixed
  • Easy mode for Chapters 3 & 11 have been modified
  • French, German, Polish & Portugese translations have been fixed, Spanish & Turkish translation are still to be implemented
  • Games in campaign mode were counting as played game in the "Profile", they aren't anymore
  • Arrows, axes and spears were shot to the sky, it has been fixed
  • We changed a few wording and camera problems in some of the campaign chapters.
  • We fixed the non-functionning campaign achievements. To activate your achieivements, just play and win any other chapter in the difficulty level you did the rest of the campaign!

Other things to know
  • During the dialogues in the campaign's chapter, the game is paused, you can take your time to read everything, your units will not keep fighting ;-)
  • The MacOS version is now live and functionnal! If you encounter any issue on this version, pease report it in the dedicated thread :
    http://steamcommunity.com/app/466560/discussions/0/1698293255121551686/
  • The Linux version of Northgard is yet to be optimized, and should be working soon on the majority of Linux Distributions. If your distribution is not compatible, an error message will warn you and give you the name of the libraries you'll need to download in order to make the game work properly! Here is the dedicated Linux Bugs & Issues thread:
    http://steamcommunity.com/app/466560/discussions/0/1698293255121560931/

Once again, thank you so much for helping us patching the game! <3

We're working on the other achievement and campaign problem you met!
Northgard - Brioche [Shiro]
Hello Northgardians!

Bug Fix

We fixed a few things that caused problems in the v1.0.8772
  • Crashes were fixed
  • Easy mode for Chapters 3 & 11 have been modified
  • French, German, Polish & Portugese translations have been fixed, Spanish & Turkish translation are still to be implemented
  • Games in campaign mode were counting as played game in the "Profile", they aren't anymore
  • Arrows, axes and spears were shot to the sky, it has been fixed
  • We changed a few wording and camera problems in some of the campaign chapters.
  • We fixed the non-functionning campaign achievements. To activate your achieivements, just play and win any other chapter in the difficulty level you did the rest of the campaign!

Other things to know
  • During the dialogues in the campaign's chapter, the game is paused, you can take your time to read everything, your units will not keep fighting ;-)
  • The MacOS version is now live and functionnal! If you encounter any issue on this version, pease report it in the dedicated thread :
    http://steamcommunity.com/app/466560/discussions/0/1698293255121551686/
  • The Linux version of Northgard is yet to be optimized, and should be working soon on the majority of Linux Distributions. If your distribution is not compatible, an error message will warn you and give you the name of the libraries you'll need to download in order to make the game work properly! Here is the dedicated Linux Bugs & Issues thread:
    http://steamcommunity.com/app/466560/discussions/0/1698293255121560931/

Once again, thank you so much for helping us patching the game! <3

We're working on the other achievement and campaign problem you met!
Northgard

Viking RTS Northgard has just swept out of Early Access, adding a singleplayer campaign in the process. Think of the game as a bit like Age of Empires, only with more snow and four-winged dragons. It sold more than 600,000 copies in its year-long Early Access, and T.J. enjoyed his time with it last year when it was still just a Skirmish mode vs the AI, so it might be worth a look.

You start off foraging for food, eventually gathering enough resources to build a settlement and have your villagers specialise in a particular job, like a warrior or a woodcutter. Where it differs from the classic Age of Empires formula is that the map is split into sections, and gaining control of each area (either by spending resources or defeating an enemy force in that area) will let you construct more buildings—each area has limited building space.

The update that brings it out of Early Access is a big one, and that campaign mode is the main addition. You play Rig, son of the Viking High King. Your father is murdered and his Regal Horn is stolen, and it's your job to quest through the wilds for vengeance. During its 11 chapters you'll get a chance to master each of the game's six clans, which should make it an ideal intro for beginners and give you some of the skills you'll need in skirmish and multiplayer.

Speaking of, you'll now be able to create solo or online multiplayer games across seven different environments. The latest update also adds combat penalties that ramp up as you travel further from friendly territory and rebalances the clans, which you can read all about in the patch notes

It's been on my list for a while, and I'm definitely keen to check it out. If you are too, then it's $22.50/£17.84 on Steam, which includes a 25% discount that lasts until next week.

Northgard - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Dominic Tarason)

Northgard

Correction: The early access piece was from a year & two weeks ago, not two weeks.>

We come from the land of the ice and snow~> From the midnight sun, where the hot springs flow~>

If you’ve been anywhere near the UK this past week, you’ll have probably seen Winter (with a capital W) coming back for one last clawing grasp at our dreary little isle. Perhaps some of you even took a liking to the sight of snow on the ground, and your breath condensing in the air. These people are wrong and bad, but we love them anyway.

Mercifully, we exile those poor, wrong-headed folks to the frozen north now, albeit in RTS form. Northgard, the clever little Viking town-building strategy game from French outfit Shiro Games is out now, after a well-received stretch in the icy fjords of Steam Early Access.

(more…)

Northgard - Valve
Northgard is Now Available on Steam and is 25% off!*

Northgard is a strategy game based on Norse mythology in which you control a clan of Vikings vying for the control of a mysterious newfound continent.

*Offer ends March 14 at 10AM Pacific Time
Northgard - Brioche [Shiro]
Hello Northgardians!

We’re so proud to finally officially release Northgard to you!! :)

Before jumping into the patch note, we really wanted to thank all of you for supporting our game during this Early Access year! It’s been quite a ride :)



This major update is without a doubt the one we put the most work in. You’ll of course be able to enjoy the full version of Rig’s Saga. We also worked a lot on a new feature for our combat system, and we added A LOT of cool new things :)


As we reached the 20k users registered to our Rig’s Saga Beta, we knew that we had to deliver a very qualitative and fun to play campaign mode. We work very hard on these 11 chapters. I strongly recommend you to play the first chapter again, as we added new cool things (including Achievements, Easy and Hard mode, dynamic in and out game cinematics).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1323083558

A few more things for you to know:
  • For each difficulty levels, completing the campaign will unlock specific Steam achievements
  • Completing every additional objectives for each chapter will also unlock Steam achievements
  • When having completed every chapter in Hard difficulty and having obtained every additional object, you unlock something quite special for your solo and multiplayer games ;)

We truly hope you’ll have fun playing this campaign =)

Disclamer: We know that some of the campaign dialogue are still to be translated, we're on it, and it should be done next week! ;-)


Mac & linux versions of Northgard

You asked for it, so we did it!
Northgard's Mac & linux versions will be released tomorrow, March, 8th :)

New Features - Solo & Multi player

Supply Penalty:

We know there has been some issue with rush tactics. So we decided to add to the current combat system a “distance to home” dynamic. Military units will have their attack power decreased depending on the distance their are from allied territory:
1 Tile: -0%
2 Tiles: -5%
3 Tiles: -15%
4 Tiles and more: -30%
Please note that this rule will not affect mercenaries’ attack power and will not be implemented in the campaign scenarios.



Other changes:
  • AI behavior has been modified: its aggressiveness will be scaled on how close you are to victory
  • Silos now can only be built on tiles where a generating buildings are built. They now only improve food production of Fishermen, Hunters and Farmers
  • Feasts now grant:
    • 20% production bonus for healers with Medecine
    • 20% production bonus for Menders and Sailors
    • 20% production bonus for Skalds and Sailors
  • Tool upgrades now grant
    • +15% production for Skalds
    • +15% production for Menders
    • +15% / production for Sailors (depending on your choosing)
    • +15% production for Healers
  • We changed the way villagers react to an attack in their tile:
    • Villagers who are building in a tile under attack will now run to defend the tile
    • Exception: villagers building towers will keep building!
  • You can now cancel the launch of a Mercenary raid by pressing the ESC button
  • The units of a defeated player will instantly be killed if they are situated in another player’s tile (ally and enemy)
  • You can now access the patch notes from the landing screen of the game
  • You can now travel to a healed unit by double clicking on their portrait
  • When decolonizing a TownHall tile, every member of your team will now earn some
  • We added many alert boxes regarding the players’ progression towards victory in multiplayer games:
    • Reaching 800 and 1000
    • Colonizing the Relic of Gods
    • Colonizing Helheim
    • Reaching 500, 1000, 1500
    • Colonizing the Magma Lake tile
    • When forging each of the Odin’s Sword peices
  • We added 8 new achievements related to Solo/Multiplayer games
  • We changed the way diseases work (again...)
  • We added more shortcuts, with the possibility to remap them. Here is the list of the functionalities:
    • Change minimap type, from ressources to military (T)
    • Select inactive clan member (U)
    • Select all villagers (G)
    • Select all scouts (H)
    • We added another mapping system for Bear clan. Select the Warband (E) and click (E) again to exclude Kajia
    • Affect only one unit (Ctrl (Hold))
    • Cycle through selection (Tab)



New Features - Multiplayer only
  • You can know choose to play on dedicated servers or to host games - this has been added after many Australian players (among other) encountered lag issues, sorry guys!
  • We added a profanity filter on Multiplayer games
  • In the lobby, you cannot choose a team if it is already full

Cosmetic changes:
  • We added lightning during bad weather
  • We added trails for combat units movement. This adds a lot of clarity (and coolness) to fights!
  • We improved the FX of the Draugar Portals and Wyvern attacks
  • You can now choose between 7 different environment when creating a Solo or Multiplayer game


Clan Balancing
  • Clan of the Wolf:
    • Pillage now also works on ally territory
    • Plunder healing effectiveness has been reduced (from 50% to 35%)
  • Clan of the Boar
    • Handiwork effectiveness has been increased from 10% to 15% for non-upgraded buildings
    • Lay of the Land now reduces the chance of being attacked by neutral units by 90% (previously 30%)
    • The Mender's Hut cost has been lowered from 60 to 50 and its Krown upgrade cost has been lowered from 50 to 25
  • Clan of the Stag: Advanced Silo bonus went from +2 and +5 (when upgraded) to +2 and +4
  • Clan of the Goat: You only get one sheep at the beginning of the game. However, at least one other sheep will ALWAYS be in an adjacent tile
  • Axe Throwers attack power has been slightly decreased (-5%)


As usual, we fixed many bugs:
  • Life bars of longships docks and harbors are now correctfully placed
  • Victory bars are now more logically scaled
  • We fixed an issue where sailors would spawn in the water once a player has lost its Town Hall
  • We fixed many visual problems with the Wyvern animations
  • We fixed a problem in the way the description of certain building was displayed
  • It was possible to walk through the Altar of Kings, this has been fixed
  • It it now possible to heal Vedrfolnir when given by an ally
  • We fixed a visual bug on the farmer’s food gathering animation
  • We fixed some issues with the tile transfer:
    • Towers will now have the right color
    • The notification “building not built” and “building empty” will now disappear
  • When launching mercenaries on Fields Tiles, you’ll get the right amount of
  • When targeting a tower, military units will not walk through rocks and lakes anymore
  • The miner’s upgrade tool now gives 15% more Stones
  • We fixed A LOT of “No Entrance”, “Null Access” and “EOM” bugs


The roadmap after the release

As we already mentionned, Northgard's development will not stop with this official release! We plan on working on the game much much longer, adding many gameplay features, game modes, and general content.

Between these MASSIVE updates, we'll keep improving the game, in terms of bugs, system compatibility and balancing.

In a few weeks, a balancing patch will be released to adjust the clans' specificities after the modifications of today's launch. Following this, we intend to work on a more complete multiplayer patch.

The next clans' release

With each of the major updates, we plan on releasing new clans to add to the diversity of the game.


Any resemblance to real months is purely coincidental


The last year has been quite a ride for us! Northgard's concept seduced way more people than we anticipated at first, and you, as a group of players passionnate about Strategy games, pushed us to deliver the best game we could. We could not have dreamt of a more helpful and dedicated community and it's clear that Northgard could not have been as complete as it is today without you!

For that, for your invaluable feedback, for you advice and feature requests,we say THANK YOU! The future will show that we will not let you down.

Enjoy Northgard, its campaign, its solo and multiplayer modes.



ShiroGames Team
Northgard - Brioche [Shiro]
Hello Northgardians!

We’re so proud to finally officially release Northgard to you!! :)

Before jumping into the patch note, we really wanted to thank all of you for supporting our game during this Early Access year! It’s been quite a ride :)



This major update is without a doubt the one we put the most work in. You’ll of course be able to enjoy the full version of Rig’s Saga. We also worked a lot on a new feature for our combat system, and we added A LOT of cool new things :)


As we reached the 20k users registered to our Rig’s Saga Beta, we knew that we had to deliver a very qualitative and fun to play campaign mode. We work very hard on these 11 chapters. I strongly recommend you to play the first chapter again, as we added new cool things (including Achievements, Easy and Hard mode, dynamic in and out game cinematics).

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1323083558

A few more things for you to know:
  • For each difficulty levels, completing the campaign will unlock specific Steam achievements
  • Completing every additional objectives for each chapter will also unlock Steam achievements
  • When having completed every chapter in Hard difficulty and having obtained every additional object, you unlock something quite special for your solo and multiplayer games ;)

We truly hope you’ll have fun playing this campaign =)

Disclamer: We know that some of the campaign dialogue are still to be translated, we're on it, and it should be done next week! ;-)


Mac & linux versions of Northgard

You asked for it, so we did it!
Northgard's Mac & linux versions will be released tomorrow, March, 8th :)

New Features - Solo & Multi player

Supply Penalty:

We know there has been some issue with rush tactics. So we decided to add to the current combat system a “distance to home” dynamic. Military units will have their attack power decreased depending on the distance their are from allied territory:
1 Tile: -0%
2 Tiles: -5%
3 Tiles: -15%
4 Tiles and more: -30%
Please note that this rule will not affect mercenaries’ attack power and will not be implemented in the campaign scenarios.



Other changes:
  • AI behavior has been modified: its aggressiveness will be scaled on how close you are to victory
  • Silos now can only be built on tiles where a generating buildings are built. They now only improve food production of Fishermen, Hunters and Farmers
  • Feasts now grant:
    • 20% production bonus for healers with Medecine
    • 20% production bonus for Menders and Sailors
    • 20% production bonus for Skalds and Sailors
  • Tool upgrades now grant
    • +15% production for Skalds
    • +15% production for Menders
    • +15% / production for Sailors (depending on your choosing)
    • +15% production for Healers
  • We changed the way villagers react to an attack in their tile:
    • Villagers who are building in a tile under attack will now run to defend the tile
    • Exception: villagers building towers will keep building!
  • You can now cancel the launch of a Mercenary raid by pressing the ESC button
  • The units of a defeated player will instantly be killed if they are situated in another player’s tile (ally and enemy)
  • You can now access the patch notes from the landing screen of the game
  • You can now travel to a healed unit by double clicking on their portrait
  • When decolonizing a TownHall tile, every member of your team will now earn some
  • We added many alert boxes regarding the players’ progression towards victory in multiplayer games:
    • Reaching 800 and 1000
    • Colonizing the Relic of Gods
    • Colonizing Helheim
    • Reaching 500, 1000, 1500
    • Colonizing the Magma Lake tile
    • When forging each of the Odin’s Sword peices
  • We added 8 new achievements related to Solo/Multiplayer games
  • We changed the way diseases work (again...)
  • We added more shortcuts, with the possibility to remap them. Here is the list of the functionalities:
    • Change minimap type, from ressources to military (T)
    • Select inactive clan member (U)
    • Select all villagers (G)
    • Select all scouts (H)
    • We added another mapping system for Bear clan. Select the Warband (E) and click (E) again to exclude Kajia
    • Affect only one unit (Ctrl (Hold))
    • Cycle through selection (Tab)



New Features - Multiplayer only
  • You can know choose to play on dedicated servers or to host games - this has been added after many Australian players (among other) encountered lag issues, sorry guys!
  • We added a profanity filter on Multiplayer games
  • In the lobby, you cannot choose a team if it is already full

Cosmetic changes:
  • We added lightning during bad weather
  • We added trails for combat units movement. This adds a lot of clarity (and coolness) to fights!
  • We improved the FX of the Draugar Portals and Wyvern attacks
  • You can now choose between 7 different environment when creating a Solo or Multiplayer game


Clan Balancing
  • Clan of the Wolf:
    • Pillage now also works on ally territory
    • Plunder healing effectiveness has been reduced (from 50% to 35%)
  • Clan of the Boar
    • Handiwork effectiveness has been increased from 10% to 15% for non-upgraded buildings
    • Lay of the Land now reduces the chance of being attacked by neutral units by 90% (previously 30%)
    • The Mender's Hut cost has been lowered from 60 to 50 and its Krown upgrade cost has been lowered from 50 to 25
  • Clan of the Stag: Advanced Silo bonus went from +2 and +5 (when upgraded) to +2 and +4
  • Clan of the Goat: You only get one sheep at the beginning of the game. However, at least one other sheep will ALWAYS be in an adjacent tile
  • Axe Throwers attack power has been slightly decreased (-5%)


As usual, we fixed many bugs:
  • Life bars of longships docks and harbors are now correctfully placed
  • Victory bars are now more logically scaled
  • We fixed an issue where sailors would spawn in the water once a player has lost its Town Hall
  • We fixed many visual problems with the Wyvern animations
  • We fixed a problem in the way the description of certain building was displayed
  • It was possible to walk through the Altar of Kings, this has been fixed
  • It it now possible to heal Vedrfolnir when given by an ally
  • We fixed a visual bug on the farmer’s food gathering animation
  • We fixed some issues with the tile transfer:
    • Towers will now have the right color
    • The notification “building not built” and “building empty” will now disappear
  • When launching mercenaries on Fields Tiles, you’ll get the right amount of
  • When targeting a tower, military units will not walk through rocks and lakes anymore
  • The miner’s upgrade tool now gives 15% more Stones
  • We fixed A LOT of “No Entrance”, “Null Access” and “EOM” bugs


The roadmap after the release

As we already mentionned, Northgard's development will not stop with this official release! We plan on working on the game much much longer, adding many gameplay features, game modes, and general content.

Between these MASSIVE updates, we'll keep improving the game, in terms of bugs, system compatibility and balancing.

In a few weeks, a balancing patch will be released to adjust the clans' specificities after the modifications of today's launch. Following this, we intend to work on a more complete multiplayer patch.

The next clans' release

With each of the major updates, we plan on releasing new clans to add to the diversity of the game.


Any resemblance to real months is purely coincidental


The last year has been quite a ride for us! Northgard's concept seduced way more people than we anticipated at first, and you, as a group of players passionnate about Strategy games, pushed us to deliver the best game we could. We could not have dreamt of a more helpful and dedicated community and it's clear that Northgard could not have been as complete as it is today without you!

For that, for your invaluable feedback, for you advice and feature requests,we say THANK YOU! The future will show that we will not let you down.

Enjoy Northgard, its campaign, its solo and multiplayer modes.



ShiroGames Team
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