izigame.me

Sometimes Northgard is good. This is not one of those times. This is one of those times where it's clear they have more than one person doing game balance and whoever sucks is the one who did the dragon clan.
So... it's a one trick pony that sucks at the one thing it's supposed to do. Whee.
The dragon clan is meant to be COMBAT. BIG, POWERFUL SINGULAR UNITS! RAWR!
Shame they're absolutely garbage at combat. Rat clan is better at it than this, so you know this is gonna be bad.
Alright, so first off, the dragon clan has only ONE combat unit by default: the dragonkin. Sound pretty neat huh? But they're not. They don't look like dragons and they aren't particularly dragonny in any way, shape or form. Weak offense, weak defense, no fire breath, nothing. They have abnormally high health for a normal unit, but that's about it. They have "12" attack... but it's two separate attacks, so armour applies twice. That 12 damage does 2 against a target with 5 armour, so against even a generic, normal warrior, they lose the fight pretty badly.
But wait, they get an upgrade early on that makes them awesome! It doubles their damage! ...When they're the only combat unit in the zone. ...Huh. Well that's... not that useful after the first year or so of gameplay but sure. I guess you're supposed to have one big unit fighting, then pull them back, let them heal while another moves in to take their place, right?
No. No you are not. Their healers suck. They do not get the +50% healing knowledge, so that extra health they get takes foreeeever to heal up, and it makes rotating them in combat not really that great, and usually means you have a loooot of wounded dragonkin being pitifully healed up, wasting all your healers' time healing instead of making food, so they starve pretty easily on top of that.
Oh, and that increased damage? Yeaaah... it removes the +20% flat attack damage bonus to get it. Meaning when there are 2 warriors and 2 dragonkin, the warriors have actually a higher attack now. Oh joy. So they aren't even good for that.
It sure is a good thing they have a great relic!
...They have a great relic, right? You know, a good one?
...Oh. Oh I see.
So... once per YEAR you can summon a 16 attack, 14 defense draconic jotnar with their relic for 200 food. ...Remember that thing I said about how they starve pretty easily? Yeah, it's actually tough to get that 200 food even with their thralls helping out. Fortunately you only have to worry about it once per year. Which is far too slow to be the only tanky unit they have, since the 6 armour on the dragonkin just doesn't hold up against much of anything.
They get no further upgrades, either. The dragonkin and drconic jotnar just... that's all they'll ever be. They have 0 increased stats in their combat tree, just that one single upgrade to damage that doesn't apply any time it matters, making them literally weaker at combat than every single other clan in the game including the rat clan somehow.
So they have extra health they can't heal, below average damage, their tanky units are only good for 1 per year, and they have severe starvation problems, and they don't even look dragonnyish. What else could go wrong?
Oh yeah, no ranged units. Period. At all. Not one. Enemies can literally just kite them, run past them, do anything they want and you can do nothing but waddle slowly over because, hey, let's make your melee units have no way to get into melee either, making them even WORSE than warriors. Because that seems like a great idea.
And they have to sacrifice their own units constantly. I forgot that part. Yeah, if they don't kill someone every few months they get -10 happiness until you do. Sure, they get a tiny bonus to something, like money, food or wood income for example, a small bonus to happiness or fame generation, but it's a very small bonus, and you only get one, and if you try to sacrifice more units at a time, instead of filling up the bar and getting multiple of these tiny bonuses active at a time like the tooltip says, instead you just throw away everything but the highest one. Yay.
So... they're constantly sacrificing units, with a stacking, increasing cost each time you replace them, and making a dragonkin reduces your essence so you have to sacrifice more people faster...
Well this is garbage. It's not even fun, it's constant micromanagement with no payoff in the slightest. It's a clan whose only strength is combat, and they're the worst clan there is at combat. At least their healing is better than rat clan, but still.
It saddens me to say this, but the dragon clan is a total, abject failure. It does not do what it's supposed to do. Its own upgrades negate itself or remove critically needed standard effects like increased healing or damage. This is a non-functional clan. It does not work. It doesn't do what it's supposed to do, it doesn't work even as well as a clan with literally just the default abilities and nothing else, it isn't even fun, it isn't even dragonny. It's just absolutely a disgrace across the board.
I'm not sure who made dragon and rat clans, but please put your mittens on because you know how you hurt yourself when you don't wear your mittens.