I think having an archer right from the start is kinda overpowered. I play on hardcore and while a footmen easily loses 50% of his health against a group of small stone golems, my archer from the northern alliance easily manages to kill them all without losing health. I mean, it makes things a little bit easier, so I wont complain, but if you want to ballance all the races, the archer should probably start with a “rotten bow” or something like this, which deals a little bit less damage and giving the enemy more time to approach the archer.
the balance is, he is hunting food, and i will tell you; your guys starve a lot in NA lol. So you have the might, but the lack of staying with food issues till you get to carpenter to get the hoe, or get lucky enough and trader comes along with one
5 Likes
It is only easier with the starter enemies. As soon as they get large groups or multiple groups to attack you, you will miss having a footman ;p
3 Likes
The advantage of starting with an archer is easily offset by having no easy access to more bows early on. This will limit your army to one archer till you get a carpenter (late game for NA) and therefore cause a slow training of units.
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You can start with 2 bows, making it very easy until mid game.
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Your mason will probably be high level for stone swords until then, giving you access to footmen.
I thought this as well initially, but keep playing until you get to Ogo and then the first enemy archers. If you haven’t leveled enough soldiers through the archer class and into footman and knight by then you’ll be toast.
northern alliance is the combat focused faction
it makes sense that they have an easier military start than other factions
easy?? well maybe because I didn’t start w/ an archer but MY GOD, has anyone realized how difficult it is for the NA to develop military troops? You have to level your mason, then level your blacksmith (god-forbid you can’t find adequate ore), and THEN level your carpenter which takes FOREVER!!! Not to mention not having access to a tailor also slows progress because you don’t have access to a farmer ( who has to get to lvl 2) to grow the silkweed weed for the raw materials for tailor so you can make leather, which is what you need for bows. And if all that isn’t enough, you need a fully leveled carpenter in order to access the higher level archer weapons.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m loving the Northern Alliance and I super like that there are three different races but in my opinion, as a race that’s reliant on stone and masonry, it makes MUCH more since to have the NA be the ones with footman and melee classes and the Ascendancy to be the ones who are archers only. In my mind they are a better fit for the elven race anyways b/c they rely so much on wood and elves are generally associated with wood and bows and arrows.
phooooooooeewwww! Sorry I just got done playing them for the first time (I started with merchant caravan) and I’m at 20 hearthlings and barely able to eak out some archers. I still haven’t gotten my tailor up and running I was just lucky enough to purchase leather from a traveling vendor (who’s only appeared once!!! like…really?/!!!). Idk, it’s been kinda ridiculous. I’m curious if anyone has had a similar experience or a similar take on NA.
That’s my biggest grip with them. Alright, that’s my $5.48
PS- Super sad that the team will be moving on to other projects and that this game will be, for intents and purpose, in maintenance mode. It really is an incredible game and I feel that it’s not quite reached it’s zenith in terms of playability, polish, and potential.
Or you just build stone swords from the mason.
3 Likes
but you need bows in order to have archers. swords are fine if you have archers to upgrade 
actually you can solve the food problem by simply leveling the mason so he can make you a trapper’s knife and a cook’s spoon, the trapper can catch bug and get the town a bunch of bug meat while the cook can turn it into kebab. At that stage, archer’s only role is to protect the town from hostile enemy and wild animals