Quick Links
- Plan Your Village
- Delete Buildings That Don’t Serve A Purpose
- Resources Are Finite
- Warehouses Are Overpowered
- Use The Marketplace
- Choose Your Clan Wisely
- Build An Army
- Vision Is Key
- Micromanage Your Units
- Upgrade Your Units
Frozenheim is a wonderful mix of Norse city building, real-time strategy, and worker management. It’s equal parts relaxing, and stressful as you slowly expand your village and fend off bandits, invaders, and roaming animals looking for an easy meal. That, and the ever-present threat of rebellion.
There is a lot to the game, and whilst it does do an admirable job of explaining what everything is – it’s easy to get overwhelmed. There are plenty of buildings, units, Clans, and systems to stress over, so we thought we’d step in, provide a guiding hand, and offer some tips to get you started.
Plan Your Village
Your village will either operate like a well-oiled machine, or it will barrel through challenges like a muscle car. Everything from your population's happiness, available resources, and even whether or not your population starves to death relies on your village being optimised to some degree.
This sounds harder than it is. In short, what you want to do is make sure you are not stretching workers too thin, you are building plenty of houses close to Wells, Healer’s Huts, and Inns, and you have clear pathways to your Jarl’s Homestead. Even slight tweaks to your layout can have drastic effects on how easily you fuel your efforts.
Delete Buildings That Don’t Serve A Purpose
One thing that can often be overlooked is the idea of deleting useless buildings. This happens all the time in Frozenheim and is mostly linked to things like Bog Iron, Stone, Wood, and Animals. It also harkens back to planning your village.
You don’t want your workers travelling large distances to gather materials, so instead of relocating the designated gathering spot, delete your hut and build it in a more appropriate location. The game even gives you a little pop-up when you have depleted resources, and this is a perfect time to consider rejigging things.
Resources Are Finite
Something to consider when playing Frozenheim is that resources are painfully limited. You will start most missions inundated with trees, animal life, and various minerals. As you play through the game, however, those resources will begin to dwindle. At first, you may not realise the strain this will eventually put on your village, but in time, you will.
This is especially true for Wood. Wood is gathered faster than most finite resources, and you will quickly chop down every tree in an area. Once you are out of Wood in your village, it becomes much harder (and less efficient) to harvest wood from lands further away. To avoid being starved of resources, don’t waste them. The only truly infinite resource is Food – everything else is a pain.
Warehouses Are Overpowered
Warehouses are easily the best building in the entire game. Nothing compares to the sheer amount of power they provide. By power, we mean resource gain – more specifically, resource efficiency.
Warehouses allow you to assign workers to gather resources from nearby production buildings, like Fishing Huts, or Hunting Lodges. The advantage of this is that resources don't have to travel as far before they are usable. Placing Warehouses in key gathering locations can increase your productivity several times over.
Use The Marketplace
Speaking of resources and being starved of them, the Marketplace is an excellent way to convert your excess resources into something more useful. Of course, the Marketplace is not exactly the most efficient way to gain resources – you are almost always operating on some kind of unfair trade exchange – but when you are desperate for materials, it’s always an out.
There are two ways to interact with the Marketplace. Firstly, you can build one. These can be found in the Tier Three building section, and you can access them at any time once it’s constructed. You can also access the Marketplace by finding Traders in the world. These are more difficult to work with as they are often hidden and you need troops nearby to trade, but it will help you in the early game.
Choose Your Clan Wisely
One aspect of Frozenheim that doesn’t get much lip service is the Clan system. Clans are incredibly powerful and offer permanent upgrades. At base, they don’t do anything. But invest resources into upgrading your Clan's unique tech, and you can suddenly skyrocket in power across just about any system in the game.
The Deer Clan is excellent at increasing production, the Wolf Clan are masters of warfare, the Crow Clan are expert scouts and lovers of religion, whilst the Bear Clan are beyond tanky and love a good siege. Pick a Clan that is suitable for your mission, or that fits your playstyle. There is no wrong choice – they are all good.
Build An Army
It’s easy to forget that this game is an RTS and not just a quaint city builder. Enemies will frequently try and attack your village, and you will need to defend yourself. A standing army is fantastic at doing just that, but you will need to expend a lot of resources – especially early game.
Military units are not cheap. They require fairly hard-to-come-by resources, they use up your workforce, and if they are injured, they take even more resources to top back up. You can’t ignore this aspect, however, so you will need to balance expansion and production with your military goals. Plus, you need a military to win most missions. It’s inevitable.
Vision Is Key
The Fog of War in Frozenheim is pretty thick, and enemies love to hide in it. Not only that, vision is further impeded by the existence of trees and bushes. It’s very easy for enemies to sneak up to your camp and attack without warning. Heck, it’s easy for enemies to ambush you whilst exploring.
Because of this, you need to focus some of your efforts on vision. Scouts are perfect for this, as they are fast, have a large view distance, and can send eagles to gather information on faraway locations. Having some scouts on your borders can help keep things in check. Not only that, but you can also find Watchtowers – often on hills. Send a Scout to claim that tower, and suddenly, you will have vision over large portions of the map.
Micromanage Your Units
Combat is, for the most part, your typical RTS affair. You have units, and you send them to hit other units. You can spend limited time managing your troops and still come out on top if you have enough units at your disposal, but it is much more effective to micromanage.
Micromanaging is the act of giving detailed commands to your units in battle. This could be controlling every movement everyone does, to using a fast unit to bait an enemy so your archers can fire whilst they are distracted. Micromanaging is incredibly powerful in this game, and even a light dabble in it will have amazing results. You can overcome forces many times your size just by moving your units effectively.
Upgrade Your Units
If you are having trouble getting your units to perform, or if you encounter particularly stiff resistance, then consider investing resources into your Weaponsmith. The Weaponsmith provides upgrades to all of your units, and these bonuses can increase to as high as a 40 percent increase in effectiveness.
This is nothing to scoff at, but they also aren’t cheap (although that is Clan dependent). It’s unlikely that you will be able to afford every tier of every upgrade, so focus your purchases on important things. Are you encountering a lot of ranged units? Consider upgrading your ranged defence. Are you building lots of Archers? Consider improving their range and damage.
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