A building & worker placement game
I have read a lot of review comparing this game to settlers & age of empires.
Settlers:
Similarity: cute villager doing their job, map divided in regions, villager task
Different: no complex economy (no ressource transformation), no logistics (common ressource pool)
Age of empires:
Similarity: send your villagers collect food & wood, and later stone & metal, build buildings, assign worker, different clans with common basis and slight or big differences on specific points
Different: few units types and small armies, building limits.
Actually, nobody explained that he emphasis of this game is building & worker placement, like in several board games. You have a limited amount of building slot per region, and some regions have specific ressources (stone, fish, ...), you need to expand to get new regions for new buildings. You also have a certain amount of worker available at some point, and you can re-assign them to task according to your current need: You have too much wood? let's convert your woodcutter into miner or warrior.
In addition to this, you have some ressources (food, happiness, ...) which are critical for the stability of your village, and some other which helps to improve (metal, science...). In the case you under-evaluated your needs, or some event happens, you can be short on a vital ressources, and all your economy crash down: did not plan enough food for winter => people are unhappy and less productive, and could also hunger and are even less productive or die. No hardcore survival game here, but it happens sometimes and it is fun.
Oh, the winter, an interesting game feature. Few strategy games included interesting cycle management (day/night by warcraft 3 meh). Here you have once a year (12 minutes) 3 month of winter in which your consumption of food and wood increase drastically, and your army attack capacity drop down.
Last point, the games are usually 45-75 minutes, but you do not feel under time pressure for micro management or whatever.
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