I have just been successful on the hardest level, biggest island and 4 AI players!

It was very hard half way through. One AI player would attack me and then multiple would within a second or two. It felt like at times the AI was cheating,

I was close to being crushed but managed to come back. This is the first game were I realised I could round up some non warrior people and move them to another tile to help defend against an attack. I imagine that helped me a bit.

It only took just over 1000 minutes (16.5 hours!) to win. over a few gaming sessions.

I'm quite proud of my achievement so had to post about it! :)

Now if only there was a save game feature on multiplayer... it would almost be the perfect game.

Good work. What clan did you use? That's because it is cheating.

You can see this by checking the statistics at the end of the game. If you pay attention to the Krown and Food stockpiles at the very beginning of the game, the AI is earning way more than is possible. Yikes! I don't think I've spent anywhere near that much time on a single game!

Is was the Wolf clan. I've played the vast majority of my games using that clan. I guess I should try out some other clans but I like the Berserker's ability to claim new lands.

I guess I should be even more proud of beating cheating AI then!

It was a very long game, I keep on going forward and then getting beaten back and back and back again. It really was not enjoyable for a couple of hours but I was determined to try and beat them and eventually got the upper hand.

Each clan plays very differently, and it takes a while to get used to their particular quirks and strengths. Wolf has an absolutely garbage economy, but doesn't really need economy since you just claim territories for free with the Berserker and get gold for free from killing enemy units. For me the Stag clan was the one I got too comfortable with.

If you want to claim territories for free, the Stag do have something similar from their unique relic. It works differently from the Berserker's ability and can't be done on neutral territories (it [i]only[i] works when decolonizing enemy territories), but it also has no cooldown. I guess you're lucky there wasn't a Boar clan. I find they're usually on track to win lore victory within 7-8 years, and you have to either kill them before that or race them to a different kind of victory.

I always play with only domination for victory. That's probably why my games take so long but that's the way I like it!

I think I'll give the Stag clan a go and see what it's like for me.

Oh, if you play on domination-only then Stag is incredibly overpowered. Their Jarl bonus is that they get +1% to all job outputs for every 100 points of fame, and there's no cap so if the game keeps going on they keep getting more and more free resources. So if you can hit 5000 fame then that's +50% to all jobs, which lets you do silly things like keeping a population of 100 people fed and happy and having the krowns to recruit half of them into your warband. I'm not joking, I've been able to hit size 50 warbands within 10 years as Stag.

Yes, it does seem a bit easier playing as them. I'm maybe an hour or two into the game and haven't really had an issue with food or people being in short supply.

However I am not playing at the hardest level this time and not on the largest map, so that may well explain why it's easier as well! :-D

Too easy, only took 3 hours. I'll try the stag again on hard with max island size and 4 AI players and see how I get on!