Vikings



Viking invasions are always a threat to your land, your resources, and your peasants lives'. It is crucial that you prepare against these risks.

Easy Mode
The invasion will begin after year 30, only if you have more than 49 peasants. If you are past year 30, the moment you have 50 or more peasants an invasion will begin. One thing to note is that after invasions have started, if your population drops below 45, invasions will cease to occur until the next time you reach a population of 50 peasants. (During the climb back up to 50 peasants, between population sizes 45 and 50 the viking timer will reappear. However, this is only a visual glitch, as it will count past 0 into the negatives until you reach 50 peasants)

Latest[which?] patch update? Vikings will attack in year 30 with less than 49 peasants (tested with 48 peasants / 4 cottages and 42 peasants / 2 cottages, 1 manor).(Confirmed. Tested with 46 peasants 1/13/20.)

Hard Mode
Similar to easy mode, you must have more than 49 peasants, however the invasion will begin past year 20 giving you less time to prepare.

How the invasion works
The invasions size depends on the population size, therefore the more peasants you have on your island, the larger the invasion force you should expect, coming in the form of ships. Each ship is a separate army, and each army is composed of torchers, kidnappers, thiefs and normal vikings. Each of them may only perform an action once, for example torching a building, kidnapping one of your peasants or stealing from your treasure if able to reach it. Ogres will be explained in the later section.

Effects on Happiness rating
If at least one of viking troops is able to remain alive when they are done pillaging (successfully) and leave, players will receive a kingdom-wide unhappiness debuff (temporarily), plus no visitors and immigrants will come in this year.

However, each Viking troops and ogres killed will provide +5 happiness buff for a short time.

Ogres
Ogres will begin to appear in invasions when the population exceeds 150 in easy mode and 100 in hard mode. Additionally, if you have fully walled off every building on your island, the vikings will come to invade, then leave due to being unable to attack any buildings, and then bring ogres on the next wave no matter your population. Their appearance in each invasion is random. The ogres first target walls and archer towers, then next targeting granaries and stockpiles, after there are none nearby it will attack any building.

Given the fact that ogres are massive beasts, ogres destroys the trees where they walk past. (Notes: Trees fallen by ogres' march does not yield any resources.)

Usually if players managed to kill all the ogres in an invasion before they breach your defenses, other vikings will retreat - Vikings are helpless when all buildings they can pillage hide behind the walls, without any ogres they are not able to get through the walls.

Bugs
If you encounter a bug where a viking invasion seems to be stuck, save your game and exit to the main menu. After reloading your new save, the vikings should move onto whatever their next step of invasion they got stuck at.

Viking Ships
Orges and Vikings rides different kind ships when approaching to your island. While Viking longships are unarmed troop transport, Ogres rides a larger catapult ship.

Longship
Normal Viking troops ride longships. A longship can carry at most 2 Viking squads. However helpless when the coastlines are totally walled off that they have nowhere can land.

Catapult Galley
Ogres ride the larger warship of Vikings - catapult galleys. Not just carrying a wall-smashing ogre, the catapult galley itself is also a wall-breaker - if the landing spot is blocked by walls, it will destroy them with its catapult (as long as the ship is manned), and then unleash the ogre onto your lands once the wall is down to create a landing foothold.

Early Stage
If you cannot afford a fully walled town, a few archer towers on wooden castle blocks can repel some early invasions cheaply (in terms of raw material costs).

Since archer towers and ballista towers have a high upkeep cost when manned, they are not highly affordable to early kingdoms. If you wish to save costs, players can man the defenses (either by enable-&-disable the buildings or task types) only **AT THE MOMENT INVASION BEGINS**. Once the invasion is repelled, disarm the defenses in the same way soon as possible (mentioning the upkeep is paid half-yearly). If this method is used to save defense upkeep cost, defense tasks are required set at high priority, but no higher than food supply tasks such as farmers.

Walling off all your buildings in your town for too early (before population reaching >150 or >100 population in hard mode), is not recommended, unless you are confident about your defense or having some ballista towers ready. Even though a town with all pillage-able buildings hide behind walls will force Vikings retreat (since Vikings cannot destroy walls), doing so will cause Vikings bring their ogres earlier starting from the next wave, which ogres are tougher than average Vikings and able to destroy castle blocks, ruining your cheap wooden defenses easily.

VS Viking Squads
Normal Viking squads can be effectively killed by archer towers. Ballista towers are less recommend since ballistas can only target one Viking per shot, instead of the entire squad, unlike barrages from archer towers that can hit almost every Viking in a squad and deal more effective damage - Surplus damage dealt onto a Viking will be wasted, those damage won't pass onto the next Viking in the same squad.

Viking squads are a less problem when you have all buildings safely behind walls made of stone, and having strong enough defenses to kill ogres - if all ogres are killed before the defense is breached, all remaining Vikings retreat and leave.

VS Ogres
Ogres can be effectively countered using ballista towers, which ballistas provides more damage per shot than archer towers per barrage, and a longer firing range factor. Mentioning Ogres is a single enemy unlike Viking squads, ballista damage dealt on the ogres are less likely to be wasted.

Tips for using your own army
If you plan using your own army to repel the invasion, here are some general suggestions.

Most importantly, always keep a good supply of armaments and surplus money so you can always resupply squads with fresh recruits after vigrous combats.

Swordsmen squad can intercept Viking squads, stopping their march and have a bloody fight with them, harnessing the high HP they have (131HP in total, 5HP per swordsman, 51HP for swordsman commander). In addition, ogres ignores any troops, swordsmen squad can attack ogres harmlessly (but won't stop ogres approaching towards your town).

Archer squads can fire barrages of arrows from distances in the similar way as archer towers, except they are mobile. They should avoid melee combats, since they are highly fragile (31HP in total, 1HP per archer, 15HP for archer commander). The best way to use them is to deploy them on the walls - which walls provides them a relatively safe cover and high ground boosts their firing range.