Welcome, Sovereign! Your noble family is ready to transform this small village into a proper kingdom, and as your counselor, it is my duty to help you grasp the different concepts of rule. This guide will cover the basics of Norland, from the user interface and mechanics to early gameplay tips.
Gameplay Overview
Norland puts you in command of a kingdom, managing your noble family as you transform a small village into a city full of people with their own needs, characteristics, and behaviors. These evolve as they gain traits, change social status, and react to the world around them.
You’ll lead armies in combat, arrange assassinations, court princesses, and manage rebellion—all while ensuring your noble family’s survival against significant dangers lurking on the empire’s edges.
Starting Your Kingdom
To begin, you must start your family. You have a range of family options and can choose the scenario that fits your desired family structure. You can customize all three starting members, including their looks, skills, and traits. The starting skills and traits can also be modified to suit your strategy.
This customization includes your starting family’s total combined skill stats, which will influence your gameplay. In addition to family customization, you can customize your kingdom, from its name to a combination of flag settings and a list of resources.
You can also customize neighboring kingdoms to fit your playthrough, including their military strength, starting city size, and their attitude towards you. Set parameters to make your playthrough unique.
Choose from starting scenarios that affect your family’s way of life, modifiers to increase difficulty, toggle the Unholy Horde crisis, or create a more challenging start.
The Basics – User Interface
Understanding the user interface is crucial for managing your kingdom effectively. The interface includes various elements found on both the town and world map screens. It features a comprehensive list of your current resources, from raw to refined products, weapons, gold, holy rings, and more.
Hovering over any resource provides a description of its use. The population overview gives you a list of different types of people in your settlement, with more information available by hovering over each category. The matriarch’s relationship indicates your standing with the Holy Church and their involvement in your affairs.
The problems tab notes issues within your village, providing ideas on what to prioritize. The noble overview offers a glance at all nobles within your family, including the lead family member’s satisfaction and current status.
The help menu provides a dropdown of information about various subjects in the game, accessible by hovering over the subject text. The kingdom events tab shows notifications about your kingdom and the kingdoms around you.
The day/time & speed display shows the current day and time in the game, the current season, and allows you to control the game’s speed.
Management tools offer a range of options to manage your kingdom, including construction, production limits, finance, statistics, army management, dynasty overview, knowledge, trade agreements, and access to the world map.
Town Operations
Daily life in Norland follows a routine that you must know to manage your settlement effectively. From 12am to 8am, villagers rest in houses or on the ground if there is a lack of housing. Nobles and your army can be woken up to fight during the night if ordered.
From 8am to 9am, villagers attend the morning service if a temple is present. From 8am to 6pm, villagers engage in working hours, including construction and nobles giving instructions. From 6pm to 12am, villagers enjoy recreation hours, where they are paid, buy food or alcohol, and engage in village activities.
Villagers need assignments every three days to continue working, with assignments issued by a manager. Managers are noble characters, and you must balance their management skills with how many buildings they are tasked with.
On the world map, you can interact with various events, from trade to marriage and intrigues against other rulers. You can plot to assassinate, hire thieves to steal gold or books, and plot with heirs to weaken their king.
At the end of each day, an economic report shows monetary exchanges in your settlement and any inefficiencies that might be occurring.
Character Management
Your people are generally self-sufficient and will operate within their traits and moods. However, you can affect them in many different ways. Selecting any character will open their profile, where you can see their social class, name, age, mood, combat level, and current status.
This window also notes any inventory the character carries, their desires, and any “states” or effects currently impacting them. Noble characters also have a loyalty and knowledge icon. The needs section shows the level of satisfaction the selected character has, which is affected by mood and thoughts.
The skills option is only available to nobles and shows the character’s skills and any personality traits they may possess. The relationships section shows the selected noble’s relationship with other nobles. The history section shows a history of actions from the character.
The actions section provides any available actions for the character, from direct interactions with the Sovereign to various punishment, education, and social options.
The World Map
The world map is where you will interact with your neighboring kingdoms and their various elements. Your kingdom is noted by the house symbol, and you control all areas within your borders. Villages provide tribute, and you can affect migration or raid them.
Bandit camps are outposts of outlaws that you can attack for loot and prisoners, hire as mercenaries, or trade prisoners with.
Selecting any neighboring kingdom capitals will present helpful information about your neighbor, including their current states, kingdom stats, ruling family and opinion, army size and value, lords, detailed information about migration factors, economy, and army stats.
You can assign various interactions with that kingdom, including talking to lords, kidnapping, assassination, marriage, trade, and invasion.
Armies & Battles
You must build an army to project your influence on the world map, engage with bandits, and eventually fight off the Unholy Horde should the crisis be enabled in your game. To create an army, click on the Army Tab at the bottom of your screen.
Select an available lord to lead the army, paying attention to their combat skill, which increases attack evasion, and command skill, which determines the magnitude of morale bonus in the squad. Fill your army with peasants, prisoners, or mercenaries from the Warriors section, choosing what weapons you can equip them with.
Hiring mercenaries costs gold and will take a full day to arrive in your town. You can also recruit additional lords into your army. Equip them with any weapons, armor, and shields you have available, then click Create.
On the ground level map, select your army by left-clicking on their banner. Move your army by right-clicking anywhere on the map, and to attack, right-click directly on an opposing army to initiate a direct attack order.
On the world map, you can send your armies to raid villages or attack bandit camps, neighbors, or enemy armies if you can catch them on the road. In all cases, once an army arrives at its destination, you can choose to fight the battle manually or auto-resolve.
Early Gameplay & Helpful Tips
Spread out management tasks among your nobles to avoid overburdening any one noble, which can lead to reduced effectiveness and discontent. Using prisoners for free labor can be beneficial, but be aware of the higher chance of revolts.
Your nobles should always work on acquiring knowledge, as books unlock new buildings and production methods. If a noble dies, any knowledge they acquired will be lost unless another noble has also acquired that knowledge.
Reducing the cost of local market goods allows your peasants to buy beyond the basics, improving their mood.
Hiring mercenaries early provides a primary army, which will be crucial as they take 24 hours to arrive. Trading goods with the Holy Caravan is an excellent source of gold income and allows you to purchase precious books and acquire knowledge.
Start beer production early to offset labor costs, as villagers will use their wages to buy drinks, reducing the negative effects of fatigue. Destroying bandit camps positively affects neighbors who like you and negatively affects those who don’t.
The loot rewards can be worth the potential negatives. Regularly check the world map, as your neighbors will offer opportunities to interact with them, positively or negatively. You can also view their army’s strength and opinion of you, helping you plan your strategies.