Some Findings On Norland
Norland the game that is. Ignore the lead image; there's no 'free' non-copyright image one could use without infringement.
Ok, let's get started. The game itself is very difficult to play. Even trying to make it easy is hard. The first thing to do, even before the game start, is to make sure that all the people in the world is weaker than you. That is, set them 50% on city size and army strength. Then, you need extremely good relationship with them to start with: everyone aim to be peaceful; everyone is your old ally. OK, that per se isn't going to help in late game; enemies are going to be sworn, especially those peaceful-turned-ambitious alliance leaders, but it could buy us time.
Selecting traits; one go with 3 brothers and 1 wife, as bride can easily be married from other places. All should have decent level of intelligence (say, 7). Then, King, one changed his 'star' to trade. He aims for persuasion and trade. Queen, aim for really high intelligence (at least 13). Then, one of the brother is going to be "manager", which'll manage lots of buildings; another will be "fighter". The latter, just aim for high combat, and manager should have high management. Aside from King, which if you send him visiting other countries, you need a second trader, so one assign some 7 to "manager"'s trade skill. And make sure your Queen isn't too old for giving birth -- don't max out the skills or they'll be 40 or 41 years old. One usually aimed around 36 for da boys, and the queen early 30s or even late 20s.
Moving on, one prefer to activate all the positive modifier, max out the gold, no unholy band, and no scenario. Just, as easy as possible; and even that is hard. And you should start with an alliance, with you as the head. One start by annexing 3 countries, and make oneself the head of the alliance (not suzerain but head of alliance.)
Starting the game, just build. One can't say what to build, but you should start with lumber/wood gathering. Then, getting your way to build other stuffs. There are other guides online that speaks more clearly than one; because one just want to quickly skim through this part and focus on the military. Anyway, always trade with the trader: you need weapons (mace and arrows initially, then light armor and shield later on); you need books; Don't buy the prisoners!!!; and whatever you're lacking (food, alcohol, etc.) you buy, and whatever you have a lot of, you sell. Ensure that when you sell, you don't go over the market supply/demand limit (it'll have a number that guide you.) or you'll be selling dear. And there's this thing to lower the price of product sell to your peasants to ensure they can buy food and alcohol; but again, that's covered somewhere else. Let's move to the military.
Military part, yes. Hire mercenaries! 3 is enough. Really speaking, knight aren't important. First, they're too expensive. Second, we already have our "fighter" to lead. Unless you don't have a fighter, don't. Or unless you see some use to it? One don't know! One can't remember if they came with an armor or something. Anyways, being 15 in attack points, there are other 12+ attack point mercenaries that aren't knight as you scroll; and they're cheaper too! Remember, you don't have that much money at the beginning. We just need to hire 3 and that's already paying insanely.
Now, how to expand? The quickest way is to attack bandit tribes. To do that, ensure that you already have a prison camp (or whatever it's called) built. Build it near your barracks, and put in the day and night patrolling that radius it in. When you have mace, they knock bandits unconscious (not sure the probability, maybe 50/50?). The prisoners that brought home can be hired as soldiers. As you gather more and more of these, you can sell these prisoners off (whoever is damaged too badly, like lose an eye or too badly injured that will waste your 'salve' to heal them) to the holy trader. The rest of the prisoner, you hire them as soldiers. And as you attack more bandit camp, your army became larger.
Because they're previously bandit, they have a 'knife' icon that says they aren't very willing to listen to commands. We can only have that much of them; but that's all right, because soon, our peasant will become loyal/fanatic enough to join our ranks. And soon, when you sell off stuffs more and gather more money, either to the holy trader or to your neighbors, you'll gather more money to hire more mercenaries, which're relatively safer than bandit-turned armies.
Iron is important, as they're needed for later. Trade them with your neighbors. Build mine in your country to mine them. Don't wait, because later after we've access to tools, then we'll be starting to build weapons. These weapons are tradeable with other countries, but keep in mind how much tools you can make, how much charcoal you can make to produce tools and what-nots. The link of supply and demand goes again. All in all, gathering a supply is what means you don't have to worry about demand for the short period when you have access to crafting weapons and armors. Unfortunately, that's what got into problem; one's lacking the tools to craft. Until one upgrade the building to higher levels, it can't keep up. And one haven't found the balance for what no. of lumbering you need, how much charcoal you need, etc. That you have to tune yourself.
If you start seeing your neighbor forming alliance, quickly get the other people to join your alliance! The earlier, the better! That's why we need very good relationship with everyone around -- they'll readily join if you have +50 (one think this is the number?) relationship with you. The problem is, one didn't realize this early enough until they made a line and blocked off the way for one to get everyone in one's alliance. The trick is to balance how much countries you annex (because if you reach some number, the church will start to charge you 2x tax on your army -- which is equivalent '12' units of land, but not 12 countries, because some countries are larger and take 2 or 3 units of land, one think).
If you're in the same situation as one, then you have to break the alliance. The thing to do this is to force the head of the alliance into neutral pact, then the alliance will automatically disband. But you cannot immediately do that, because your neighbor will see you as cheating and they lose trust in you. You need to change your status with them first. That's where dark deeds come in. You shall try to assassinate the king (or perhaps any other members, depending on the success) of the other country. One isn't sure the skill needed to increase the chance, because there are several -- perhaps intelligence and persuasion? Anyway, after it fail (or success), you can start forcing it to neutralize, to which it'll get rage. The king will say, one's the head of an alliance and you ask me to disband my own alliance? You muppet! And now, you can start to attack it (within 3 days, of course, or you'll lose face).
Now a sidenote. Just because you can assassinate someone doesn't mean someone can't assassinate you. Ensure that you save checkpoints! Otherwise, if your people die, it'll be a pain in the arse retraining someone from scratch! It's ok-ish if it's the bride married, but if it's your starting 3 brother 1 wife heroes, any one of them, ha ha ha.... To die because of age and to die because of assassination is 2 different things. The way to prevent this is to have enough army in your hometown, and build patrol everywhere, day and night. Actually, everywhere your manager, fighter, king, and queen went. At night, make sure the lord dormitory have night patrol, and put "priority" to lower it to the minimum.
When you attack it, make sure you have enough soldiers to get at least 60% in your favor! Untimately, the higher the batter. You should now have soldiers fully equipped with weapons, shields, and armor to increase their chance of success! The first time one send, one sent 18 (excluding 'fighter') against the enemy 10 or something? It was a success. Now make sure you have good relationship with the neighbors annexed by your mortal enemies, otherwise they'll (probably) reinforce the guy you're attacking. That's what one did wrong in a previous game -- one war with everyone around me, no one is my friend, all my enemy, and dead rekt it is. It's like, unless you're Genkhis Khan that don't need friends, otherwise you won't be strong enough to fight your enemy that have friends! One country might not be stronger than you, but together, it's like trying to break a bunch of chopstick stuck together! New Game it is!
OK, one haven't continued play for more; but the longer you're detached away from your 'old ally'; meaning, after you conquer your neighbor, the neighbor of neighbor but not directly your neighbor, they'll be more neutral towards you than good friends. And since they're more neutral towards you, the above thingy you cannot do. You must ensure that you become good friends with them first before you can rinse and repeat. Otherwise, as one tried, they'll become negative and likely help their alliance head if you ever come to battle point.
OK, that's perhaps it. Overall, it's a difficult game. One can't imagine the hardcore version, plus all the negative trait, negative starting point, minimum gold, everyone hates you, etc. is going to survive at all... One can't imagine!
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