The ice has melted, finally you can see the grass growing. You find a place to settle your people, start some farms. Now you must grow and expand as more people find your town. They wish to settle among your people. Be careful, not all who join, are your friends. This is Kingdom Reborn.
What is Kingdom Reborn?
Kingdom Reborn plays a lot like Sid Meier’s Civilization games. You pick a plot of land, expand and grow the empire. This game, does not have fighting like Civ. Rather, the game focuses more on building, expanding and supporting your citizens. It is a city builder with simulated citizens with a procedurally generated map. You can play solo, or with friends, up to 8 players. It is a slow paced game, so great to play when you wanna play a game, but need to get some work done.
How to Play
Factions
The first thing to do is deciding on the faction you wish to join. The current options are Emirates, or Duchies. Emirates are Arab based and have clay buildings, -20% trading fee and +20% Mining Bonus. Duchies are central-European, build with wood, start with a mushroom farm, pig farm, +15% research and can start with wheat seeds.
Vikings are said to be the next faction being added to the game.
Character profile
Faction isn’t the only option. There’s the icon, portrait and color schemes to choose.
The icon is the logo seen on the game map with your name. Portrait is the person representing you and your kingdom. The color schemes are pre set. You don’t get to create your own unfortunately. Perhaps something they can add another day.
Starting A Game
You’ll see a menu with a lot of options to determine the world generation. Such as map seed and map size. You can even determine the sea level, moisture and temps. Once you have picked your settings, you will hit Generate world. When the world is ready, you may click start game.
Next is picking where you start to build your empire. You will want to start somewhere close, or in trees. Depending on your faction, you may need a river nearby as well. You will need resources, as many as possible. This will allow you resources to sell, or upgrade homes.
You will be able to see the entire map and the resources available. You can also see the other player’s/AI’s and the smaller cities. Once you pick a location, you will then place your Townhall. This serves as the town center where your resources start at. You will then expand and grow from this square to the rest of the territory.
Now you can select your starting card, which varies from Faction to Faction. Next up is the Biome Bonus and then another Biome Bonus.
Expanding
As people join your Empire, citizens have babies, the babies grow into adults and have babies. You will reach milestones which allow you to choose cards for building slots. Most buildings will have two slots. They are random each time, but benefit in different ways. There is also a deck from which you can pull and choose a randomization of five cards. These cards are buildings that you can buy and then place. When the timer on the deck reaches zero, you have another card to pick from five random cards again. If you don’t pick buildings the cards stack up to five, merge into one wild card. The wild card’s are then used to purchase any building that you have unlocked. All cards purchased go into your toolbar or hand.
Early Game
There is a tutorial of sorts, however it is not the best. It is great for starting, but as the game progress’ past the start, the tutorial becomes obsolete. It mostly just needs some tweaking and updating to be viable.
The next thing is the Science/Research points. These points are used for two trees, the Tech tree and the upgrades tree. The Tech Tree expands the research and the buildings available. The upgrades take what you may or may not have, and upgrade their functions. Be it the production, or adding what you can make. The upgrades tree is also how you obtain stronger military soldiers. Careful, as the Soldiers become cards that you hold. You can only hold a max of 7 in your hand, with another 7 in a storage hand.
The game cycles through the four seasons. Two and a half minutes is one round, and each round is part of a season. You have early, mid and late seasons giving a total of 12 rounds in one year.
During the three winter rounds, no farming or food gathering is done at this point so you have to make sure you have plenty of food. During the three rounds of Spring, the farmers are planting the harvest. The Summer is when the plants grow, and fruit gatherer’s will begin to gather. Fall is the harvesting time. Hunter’s will work throughout the year but there is only so much food.
You can Keep track of all your resources on the left hand side of the screen. This is also where you see the supply depot’s being used, housing compared to families, adult child ratio and happiness levels.
Author Thoughts
The game is a slow paced game. You can’t run ahead to build things and hope for the best. You need to keep track of how many builders/laborers you have, and make sure you have a few without jobs to ensure you have someone building everything you need. Best to make sure you have five builders/laborers minimum during the beginning. Any more than that, build jobs for them. You can also set how many jobs at each building is available. The one thing that is concerning is that the Viking Faction was announced, but prior the last update was in March 2022, and then July of 2021 before that. Even without the updates the game is very well made. I recommend giving it a look for sure.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1307890/?snr=1_5_9__205
Mom of three, enjoy videogames, board games and phone games. I typically am playing Simulation games or FPS games.
