This is a edited review;

After almost 3 years, 16 persistent official worlds from beggining to end, god knows how many incomplete ones, and 4 world wins as either coallition or nation leader, it is time for a real review given noone has done one that reflects its current state.

The current state of the game has changed a lot since it first came to be, while at the beggining it was ruled by premade blobs that stretched and expanded cities from day 1 with wars over obsidian during the first day, sometimes the first hour, now it has changed.


1. Premades are still powerfull but not as much as your trade gets limited by autorivalry btween the top 5 nations(Ranked through Victory Points[VP]) forces them to stop trading without extremely convoluted means of abusing convoluted secondary exclusive markets and very long chains of goods transfers btween so many tiles(Regional Centers[RC] or Countrisides[CS]) that you will need a automated spreadsheet to keep track of it while the game drags, as i have experienced myself.

2. The changes to war also made enlisting your OOC allies harder, and most of the time outright damaging to yourself. Fighting alongside formations of someone who is at war with the same target as you but not in the same war as you will lead to MASSIVE war morale penalties which will kill off not just any advantage you could have gained from it but damage you towards capitulation far more than it will to your enemy. For two players to join in the same war they need to be aligned and that boils down to being in the same nation, as in one being a subordinate of the other.

3. The introduction of Countrysides and division of the game by stages of development helped cull the uncontrolable race for industry(actives, porcos, the guys that actually work) that the old game had. Nowadays you'll fight over slices of land to farm or mine far more than a industrial center and almost always its more advantagous to either try and kill off the target 'city'(Regional Center) than to annex it so fights become over farmland, mines, humiliation(casus belli), extortion(subjugation or just negotiating), or more often than not just bragging that you beat the ♥♥♥♥ out of someone who's been antagonazing you for a month. So now the ancient bronze age wars where you march somewhere, kill their army, burn down their city, raid their farms and forces them to pay 'reparations' is trully in play rather than a unending state of war.

4. The meaning of treaties has also improved as with the casus belli update peace treaties stopped being meaningless without any repercussions to breaking. Now you'll generate casus belli towards whoever you offended and specially lose Political Points[PP] which is your currency for waging towards treaty guarantees and both preparing for and declaring war. The need for PP to be spent on fabricating annexation claims is also really important as it will limit how fast someone can go to war and how fast they can afford to turn on their previous obligations without going into "Political Debt", aka negative PP, which makes you lose legitimacy and thus lowers not only your PP gain but also the loyalty of your regions.

5. The ongoing Quality of Life updates also improved a lot up to this point, that, while we faced some bugs for a few days they were solved inside the first week. The main change until now was the new ease of building farms which can be extended infinitely and over unusable terrain such as water and even the VOID at the border of the screen, but it will not produce any resources from said bad tiles, it is just a tool to help you use best the best land you have around.
While raw farming land area has gotten a bit less importance than before the value of GOOD farming land area has multiplied by a lot with the new incredibly higher production of Silt river banks(arid and desert), so warring over riverland on those two biomes is even more frequent than it was even during the earliest public release.
In the future it is said that we will also get a overworld control for the traders distribution of goods and that will come soon on the next update given how the trello is proggressing.

6. Cultural Points[CP] and their changes were also very welcome. While most of these reviews date from before they even existed their introduction was good as it limits people to their national specialties rather than being a unending addaptable hydra. But specially recently during the QoL update the changes made so it is no longer painfull to reset every single ♥♥♥♥♥♥ farm you have on every single hellish tile after every cursed CP you'd spend on a agricultural product because of Efficiency increase and thus increasing the land area a farm could support. Now you still need to do it whenever you reach a new technological level up to bronze, where each level increases land area usage, but once you have iron it'll only increase productivity and thus make more goods from the same land area but very importantly it'll save you from reorganizing your farms when you have 5 RCs and two dozen CS.


1. It is still possible to use insignificantly small civilian or military formations to movement block until the attacking formation has 75 Action Points[AP] to then *Crush* the civilians and move on. With enough people and enough single sow stacks you can stall a attack for a week more than it had to be.

2. There is still no dedicated spawn choice for Desert nor Mediterranean biomes and all you can do is hope you drop in there while sellecting the main biome(arid and temperate).

3. The trade route update still hasn't happened and thus will continue as a problem with the instant free of charge infinite distance market transfers that we have today. At least its better than the exploitable old cargo.

4. There is still no Nation Market for nation members separated from internal orders. Which honestly its probably best for gameplay, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

5. The dev is delaying the Hog accounts and hogcoin market in favor of a AI that i doubt will improve singleplayer to make it a sellpoint while trying to catter for a player market which would never enjoy the game as it was envisioned.

6. Support for Real Time is non existant, even when feedback is at reach. I however do not blame him as he just does not have enough time and doing fixes for it would slow down development and most things can be fixed through simple server config.Would be good to see those fixes come into the main branch

7. Fighting a war into the late game without at least one nation Marshal online at all times is impossible but it is just a time commitment for this game much like any other. However that affects people like me with work and college the most with my limited few hours during breaks through the work and study day, it is still doable, but very stressfull.

8. The god forsaken new cultural character portraits that are already done won't be put into the game until the Hog accounts update because of simply engine limitations, and because the Hog accounts are being delayed for the AI it will be a long ass time before we get more flavour.

9. There is still a massive gap during iron age with the lack of spear infantry and iron age cavalry. The lack of a brigandine mammoth also drops the strenght of Nordic in comparison to Arid far too much during iron age, which as a Desert Snake it makes me very glad, but i still want a better game.

10. Some units are still useless with the Battleswine being far too bad at its one job to ever compete with the Porcus as anything be it Shock or Siege infantry, yet you can still make it work with overwhelming numbers and resources. But specially the biggest problem is the Sword Boar which is right now a Steel Age sword infantry but its weaker than a Porcus and many times more resource intensive.

This is a edited review; After almost 3 years, 16 persistent official worlds from beggining to end, god knows how many incomplete ones, and 4 world wins as either coallition or nation leader, it is time for a real review given noone has done one that reflects its current state. The current state of the game has changed a lot since it first came to be, while at the beggining it was ruled by premade blobs that stretched and expanded cities from day 1 with wars over obsidian during the first day, sometimes the first hour, now it has changed. [h1]This is less of a review for new players and more of one for the current state of the game;[/h1] 1. Premades are still powerfull but not as much as your trade gets limited by autorivalry btween the top 5 nations(Ranked through Victory Points[VP]) forces them to stop trading without extremely convoluted means of abusing convoluted secondary exclusive markets and very long chains of goods transfers btween so many tiles(Regional Centers[RC] or Countrisides[CS]) that you will need a automated spreadsheet to keep track of it while the game drags, as i have experienced myself. 2. The changes to war also made enlisting your OOC allies harder, and most of the time outright damaging to yourself. Fighting alongside formations of someone who is at war with the same target as you but not in the same war as you will lead to [b]MASSIVE[/b] war morale penalties which will kill off not just any advantage you could have gained from it but damage you towards capitulation far more than it will to your enemy. For two players to join in the same war they need to be aligned and that boils down to being in the same nation, as in one being a subordinate of the other. 3. The introduction of Countrysides and division of the game by stages of development helped cull the uncontrolable race for industry(actives, porcos, the guys that actually work) that the old game had. Nowadays you'll fight over slices of land to farm or mine far more than a industrial center and almost always its more advantagous to either try and kill off the target 'city'(Regional Center) than to annex it so fights become over farmland, mines, humiliation(casus belli), extortion(subjugation or just negotiating), or more often than not just bragging that you beat the shit out of someone who's been antagonazing you for a month. So now the ancient bronze age wars where you march somewhere, kill their army, burn down their city, raid their farms and forces them to pay 'reparations' is trully in play rather than a unending state of war. 4. The meaning of treaties has also improved as with the casus belli update peace treaties stopped being meaningless without any repercussions to breaking. Now you'll generate casus belli towards whoever you offended and specially lose Political Points[PP] which is your currency for waging towards treaty guarantees and both preparing for and declaring war. The need for PP to be spent on fabricating annexation claims is also really important as it will limit how fast someone can go to war and how fast they can afford to turn on their previous obligations without going into "Political Debt", aka negative PP, which makes you lose legitimacy and thus lowers not only your PP gain but also the loyalty of your regions. 5. The ongoing Quality of Life updates also improved a lot up to this point, that, while we faced some bugs for a few days they were solved inside the first week. The main change until now was the new ease of building farms which can be extended infinitely and over unusable terrain such as water and even the VOID at the border of the screen, but it will not produce any resources from said bad tiles, it is just a tool to help you use best the best land you have around. While raw farming land area has gotten a bit less importance than before the value of GOOD farming land area has multiplied by a lot with the new incredibly higher production of Silt river banks(arid and desert), so warring over riverland on those two biomes is even more frequent than it was even during the earliest public release. In the future it is said that we will also get a overworld control for the traders distribution of goods and that will come soon on the next update given how the trello is proggressing. 6. Cultural Points[CP] and their changes were also very welcome. While most of these reviews date from before they even existed their introduction was good as it limits people to their national specialties rather than being a unending addaptable hydra. But specially recently during the QoL update the changes made so it is no longer painfull to reset every single goddam farm you have on every single hellish tile after every cursed CP you'd spend on a agricultural product because of Efficiency increase and thus increasing the land area a farm could support. Now you still need to do it whenever you reach a new technological level up to bronze, where each level increases land area usage, but once you have iron it'll only increase productivity and thus make more goods from the same land area but very importantly it'll save you from reorganizing your farms when you have 5 RCs and two dozen CS. [h1]Now the bad side to it; [/h1] 1. It is still possible to use insignificantly small civilian or military formations to movement block until the attacking formation has 75 Action Points[AP] to then *Crush* the civilians and move on. With enough people and enough single sow stacks you can stall a attack for a week more than it had to be. 2. There is still no dedicated spawn choice for Desert nor Mediterranean biomes and all you can do is hope you drop in there while sellecting the main biome(arid and temperate). 3. The trade route update still hasn't happened and thus will continue as a problem with the instant free of charge infinite distance market transfers that we have today. At least its better than the exploitable old cargo. 4. There is still no Nation Market for nation members separated from internal orders. Which honestly its probably best for gameplay, but goddammit. 5. The dev is delaying the Hog accounts and hogcoin market in favor of a AI that i doubt will improve singleplayer to make it a sellpoint while trying to catter for a player market which would never enjoy the game as it was envisioned. 6. Support for Real Time is non existant, even when feedback is at reach. I however do not blame him as he just does not have enough time and doing fixes for it would slow down development and most things can be fixed through simple server config.Would be good to see those fixes come into the main branch 7. Fighting a war into the late game without at least one nation Marshal online at all times is impossible but it is just a time commitment for this game much like any other. However that affects people like me with work and college the most with my limited few hours during breaks through the work and study day, it is still doable, but very stressfull. 8. The god forsaken new cultural character portraits that are already done won't be put into the game until the Hog accounts update because of simply engine limitations, and because the Hog accounts are being delayed for the AI it will be a long ass time before we get more flavour. 9. There is still a massive gap during iron age with the lack of spear infantry and iron age cavalry. The lack of a brigandine mammoth also drops the strenght of Nordic in comparison to Arid far too much during iron age, which as a Desert Snake it makes me very glad, but i still want a better game. 10. Some units are still useless with the Battleswine being far too bad at its one job to ever compete with the Porcus as anything be it Shock or Siege infantry, yet you can still make it work with overwhelming numbers and resources. But specially the biggest problem is the Sword Boar which is right now a Steel Age sword infantry but its weaker than a Porcus and many times more resource intensive.