Vikings

Please help improve this if you can. The Discussion page may contain suggestions.

**This article may need cleanup to meet quality standards.**
Please help improve this if you can. The Discussion page may contain suggestions.

**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 (Old Version)

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 (Old Version)

Similar to easy mode, invasion will begin when your kingdom has 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 different viking troops, later siege engines and even giant ogres (different Viking units will be explained in 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.

### Viking Units

#### Viking Raiders

All invasion waves always includes Raider sections, which they form the bulk of every Viking invasion army. They prioritize plundering, most commonly farms and residences, at certain extent storage buildings and at lesser extent industries.

Raiders may plunder by torching, or directly break into buildings. Either fire or direct plunder deals damage to buildings.

They will also try to kidnap peasants along their path. However, kidnapped peasants can released by killing the kidnapping Raider.

Raiders can attack stone walls at a slow rate, but they will only do so when the invasion force is still accompanied with at least a cataplut or Ogre (Strangely, in rare occasions they try "plunder" walls)

#### Viking Looters (a.k.a. Thieves)

Looter sections have different behavior, and can be identified by their different Leader model (Viking in leather coat instead of full armor, with a loot bag behind). Different from Raiders, they march faster than others. They only targets your treasuries, attempt to ransack gold from them.

If they managed to reach a treasury, at most 200 gold will be taken away from your treasury. Like kidnapped peasants, stolen gold are returned when the Looter is killed.

Looters can attack stone walls at a slow rate, but they will only do so when the invasion force is still accompanied with at least a cataplut or Ogre.

Looters bears thinner version of banner.

#### Viking Catapluts

Later on, the Viking invasions will include catapluts, providing alternative to break defensive positions other than Ogres. Like the player control-able variant they can deal massive damage to buildings, but cannot target troops. Normally catapluts will prioritize attacking walls, and if there is enough opening, they will attack buildings.

Catapluts can be countered by ballistas, which can destroy one in a single shot, and out-range them when put on high towers.

Catapluts bears marked banners to identify their dangerous nature.

Killing all Catapluts and Ogres (while any important point of interest for plundering cannot be reached) will rout all other Vikings.

#### Viking Elite Raiders

Elite Raider sections will appear in later invasion waves, gradually replacing some regular Raiders - A much tougher, more hard-hitting but *functionally identical version of Raiders*, composed of stronger Viking warriors. Visually the troops are replaced by elite warriors sharing same model as Raider Leaders, led by a Elite Leader which is essentially a Raider Leader mounted on a horse.

Behaves in the similar way as Raiders.

Elite Raiders bears marked banners to identify their dangerous nature.

#### Ogres

Ogres will begin to appear in invasions when ~~the population exceeds 150 in easy mode and 100 in hard mode~~ ( <- No longer relevant after introduction of Catapluts) **your kingdom are completely walled off**. The ogres first target walls and defensive structures, 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.)

Killing all Catapluts and Ogres (while any important point of interest for plundering cannot be reached) will rout all other Vikings.

### 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.

#### Longship

Normal Viking troops ride longships. A longship can carry at most 2 Viking squads. Longship itself is unarmed, hence they are 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 the obstacles in its range with catapult (as long as the ship is manned) for a clear landing.

### Defense Countermeasures

#### 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.

## Gallery

* Vikings enter a kingdom via forest. Note the archer transports opening fire.
* Vikings rampage an undefended district of a Kingdom

### History

* Fixed issue where ogre would still move around when the game is paused.
* Fixed issue where viking raids could happen back to back.
* Fixed issue where vikings would sometimes freeze.

Version 1.04 - July 18th, 2017

* Viking units have less life.

Version 1.01 - July 13th, 2017

* Viking invasions on Hard Mode are larger.

Beta Version 3.01 June 17th, 2017

* Vikings can no longer just run away from your armies

Beta Version 3 - June 16th, 2017

* Viking raids now save and load

Beta Version 2 - May 16th, 2017

* Ogres prioritize archer towers, ballistas and walls first, granaries and stockpiles second, and then everything else when choosing a target
* Ogres now walk and attack faster, dragons are stronger
* Viking ships now sink when all the vikings onboard are killed
* Fixed bug where vikings could walk through iron deposits