Hearthlands

fun little game

Alrighty.... 16 hours of playing and I arguably didn't get past the tutorial. Well, that's not true. I beat the tutorial and started the campaign. Mission difficulty started off at "Very Easy" for the first three missions and for the fourth, it was "Easy" difficulty. I started off on a good footing and preemptively cleared out the trolls and their camps while still building my army and only had one person die. Sweet. Things are going well. Next up: conquer a neighboring city; which includes a very specific line: "Four full squads should be enough to win the battle." I had six full squads and I targeted the second-to-weakest city and lost miserably... what? Okay... reload. I had two Archery squads, two Berserker squads, and two Axemen squads which apparently isn't enough, despite the fact the game only expects me to have four squads, two Axemen and two Berserker squads, Let's add another archery team (fastest to make at the moment). I tried again, still died.... Uh... lemme save up and spend research points to upgrade my troops a bit -> 1 level in both leather and chain mail armor as well as 1 level in Axe Mastery and Archery. Now go my sev- oh I lost again. Uh... Alright, I'll add a squad of Spearmen to my ranks (got the achievement). I now have eight squads and they chew through all my gold for upkeep like nobody's business. Seriously, I'm at the edge of going in the red while selling everything possible via trade at all times, with two levels to increase the trade limit to 80 too. I even got the Great Merchant achievement! It's been 20 in-game years. I enjoy taking my time. Anyway, I'll also wait for enough time to research Spear Mastery to buff my Spearmen and now GO! EIGHT SQU- oh I still lost. So, uh... yeah. Sergio, I dunno if you're reading this, but what in the world? I ended up just going after the weakest neighboring city (got the achievement), beat the mission but I decided "that's enough." One thing for sure, combat is probably the weakest aspect of the game I experienced as your squads don't really listen to you. When you send them out to war, you wait for several in-game months at a time and then you just get the results. As for local combat, where I had to fight against Elementals that spawned after all the trolls died because I mined too much, it isn't engaging. You either have the units and win or not and don't. There is no strategy besides "select all your squads (individually, so pause while queuing commands) and click on whatever is looking at you funny." There is no opportunity to kite enemies around with your archers because the enemy is a big, slow moving troll or Elemental. For everyone else, this game does quite a lot of things pretty darn well. If you like the premise of a strategic city building game, you'll like what this game has to offer and it really has a lot to offer. I still won't recommend it because by my experience. This is a subjective review despite the objectivity in the first two sentences of this particular paragraph.

Very cute Impressions-style city-building game. If you enjoy Pharaoh, Caesar III, Zeus, Emperor and so on... you will probably enjoy this.

Military Units get stuck on targets. You cant swap the target without sending the unit home first and then trying to swap the target while they walk back. Otherwise i really enjoyed the city building aspect but the military really killed it for me sadly

yes