"And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!"
- taken from "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe

So finally it is here, the update of this guide.
After a lot of trial and error I finally managed to find a new strategy for huginn and muninn that is viable and leads to a very powerful raven clan.

First of all, I want to say thank you to three players who helped and/or inspired me while I was searching for a new way to go. Even if they will never read this guide. :P

1. Broken clock (this guy is a very strong raven player I met in PVP)
2. Crazy Dentist (a Northgard youtuber with a lot of helpful videos)
3. Cortanax (another Northgard youtuber)

I really recommend to check out the youtube channels. The videos that had the biggest influence on this guide are "Northgard Raven clan build order (Fast fame "rush")" by Crazy Dentist and "Northgards world fastest 500 fame raven?" by Cortanax.

This guide is basically a mix of the two mentioned videos, shared experiences of Broken clock and my own ideas. :)

You will probably enjoy this clan if...

• ...you have a defensive mindset and like to turtle into the late game until your military impact is superior by far.
  
• ...you are a patient person and have no problem with long games.
  
• ...you are a sly player to some extent (espionage + attacks behind enemy lines).
  
• ...you enjoy well timed attacks and timing in general as a key discipline (important to correctly use mercenaries).

You will probably NOT like the clan if you prefer to be very aggressive because as far as I know raven is the worst clan of the game for early rushes. I think the other clans are much better at it.

Of course the build order can vary according to the stiuation you are facing but in general the following is a good way to go for:

1. scout camp in the start area
2. house in the start area

----- colonize a second area (try to leave one food area for later) -----

3. woodcutter's lodge next to the start area (try to prioritize forest areas)
4. normal training camp in the start area
5. harbor in the start area
6. second house in the area with the woodcutter's lodge

----- colonize a food area -----

7. food building that fits your food area (farm, hunter hut or fisher hut)
8. second woodcutter's lodge (try to prioritize forest areas)
9. silo into food area

----- colonize more areas for space, fame and happiness -----

10. stone mine
11. second harbor if you have enough coasts
12. add more military camps (normal training camp would be the best) and houses
--> do not build too much houses, make sure you can keep your growing population happy
13. when your food production gets high enough, add some trading posts (at least 2)
14. very late in the game when you already have a big army, you can add a healer's hut
--> I usually build it after I got my warchief and he got hurt
15. Furthermore you can add a marketplace to buy some stone when you are swimming in crowns.
--> This situation appears only in very long games.
--> You can then use the stone to upgrade several military camps to improve warrior damage.

Always build as much harbors as you can to maximize the happiness buff offered by "Exotic Goods". If you can not get enough harbors to keep your population happy, you should build a brewery.

This is just a suggestion. The most effective path may vary according to the situation (for example: you probably do not need sharp axes with two wrecks) but you usually want to focus the trading section and unlock the military section at next. I usually do not get coinage because I have sailors and trade routes to get crowns.

After the 10th skill it gets very situational.
You want to attack and have to clear neutral areas for it? --> Monster Slayer
You Have some defense towers and you are forced to play defensively? --> Defensive Strategy
Happiness problems? --> Feeling Safe

In the most games I never take more economy skills than sharp axes because the games end too soon. I guess the most effecitve skill order in that section varies a lot.

I really prefer the "Tactician" path over the "Conqueror" way. In my opinion the advantages given by "Tactician" have much more impact because the free military lore from "Conqueror" won't make a big difference in longer games and the buffs of "Blood Bath" only appear AFTER you have lost any forces. Guardian is usually not very useful for a raven because you want to be very aggressive in the later game stages.

As raven you are a late game clan, so in this game stage you should usually focus on completing your building process and getting a strong economy. If you need some help with that, check out the "Build Order" section of this guide. I recommend getting two scouts at the start to explore all areas next to your town hall and then returning one scout back into a villager to get a better economy. After getting the first training camp it is a good idea to get two warriors to clear nearby areas to make sure you won't get attacked. After you ensured the safety of your clan you really should return not hurt warriors into villagers to improve your economy. Furthermore you should spam the "Explore Option" of your harbor to scout your enemies as soon as possible. Huginn and Munnin synergizes extremely well with bear Clan and wolf Clan because they can make great use out of your early enemy scouting. That's why this special ability is your most powerful tool as raven in the early game. The goal of the strategy in this guide is to get 500 fame very fast. However, you should not use your harbors for earning fame because the income is extremely low and lore skills will buff your fame anyway (15 fame per skill). Furthermore you need a lot of lore to get a strong military and a lot of crowns at the same time. Like mentioned in the build order, the harbor should be built very early. This will allow you to always use crowns for expanding and to always recruit warriors when you need them. Make sure to get a loremaster, too (if the map allows it). The plan is to not get a healer in this game stage. Turn your wounded people into warriors and use them to clear tiles until they are dead. If you have enough food production for it, you can throw feasts but avoid it during winter because they are ineffective then. In team games you should throw the first 3 feasts at max because a raven can not produce a lot of food but the first 3 feasts are cheap and give 20 fame each. However, there are enough alternatives for getting fame. So if you have a helpful goat in your team that throws one feast after another be thankful. You will get a lot from the free production buffs. Last but not least I recommend doing a scout rush to the special map tile for the additional 50 fame.


























You should get "Jörd's Blessing" in this game stage. Use its stone and iron to get a warchief and to upgrade your buildings. After the town hall I tend to upgrade my food production buldings first. Then I upgrade my five military camps and the scout camp if needed. In the most games I can skip this upgrade because the harbors are already providing enough vision. When the first stone source gets exhausted, immediately start to mine the next one. You need at least two stone sources for the mentioned late game goal.

I recommend getting 5 additional iron bars to upgrade your warriors' tools. I prefer to colonize a draugr crypt for that purpose because it gives you additional fame like wolf caves.

The fast territorial expansion with crowns, the colonizing of crypts and caves and especially the high amount of upgraded buildings usually result in getting 500 fame in the year 802.
Now you can start to send mercenary raids. However, spamming them without a plan is rarely effective. Please check out the "Mercenaries" section of this guide for more information.

You usually get a great food production going in this year, too. You should build some trading posts to trade food and maximize your crown production even more. You can then use your money for mercenary raids or you store it to build a mass of warriors later. For more information about trading, please check out the "Trading" section.












This is the game stage in which you really shine as raven clan. Try to maximize the amount of your stored crowns, the lore progress in the military section and the capacity of your army. This will allow you to become an unstoppable force in this chapter of the game. You will have a giant army that gets a huge damage buff from the ability "gear upgrade" and your stored crowns and you will probably have enough crowns to start several mercenary attacks without negating the gear upgrade buff. Furthermore you should have at least five upgraded normal training camps and upgraded tools for your warriors. These things result in extreme power. Your warriors should deal 19 damage with every hit now, so you almost doubled the standard damage output. Sometimes the games are long enough to befriend the giants, too. Simply make sure that nobody is faster than you at trading with them. So in conclusion your goal is to defeat your enemies by domination now because you will be very hard to stop.

Alternative Strategy:
If you have multiple coasts and there is at least one lore area at a coast, which is not controlled by you or an ally, it may be a good idea to go for the lore victory. Every Raid you send to this tile will give you +80 lore. Furthermore each active harbor will push your lore anyway. So with enough crowns and harbors you can increase your lore insanely fast, which may turn lore victory into a better goal than domination victory.

As already mentioned in the earlier sections you should have some trading posts. If you have allies that need food/wood/stone/iron, you can also set up trade routes with them to help (especially if you have to get more crowns as fast as possible or your allies are in a bad economic situation). Trading with the Kobolds or the giants is always an option. The last option is highly recommended because if you manage to befriend them, they will improve your military impact by a lot.

Feel free to trade other resources as well if you have more of them than you need. Especially by trading iron and stone you can get rich very fast. It honestly does not happen too often to me that I trade stone or iron but sometimes the conditions allow for it.

Of course it is always an option to trade with your enemies while you have peace with them but keep in mind that you will buff their economy with it and that you will get less crowns for trading with them. Furthermore it is not a very reliable crown source because u can't use it when the war starts.

However, under good conditions you should always use trade routes instead of recruiting merchants because it's usually more profitable.

There is one more thing to say: Do not go for a trade victory. I mean you all are free human beings and can do whatever you want but I really do not recommend it at all. You need tons of crowns for it and because you also have to spend the crowns you will not have the resources to recruit a powerful army for defense, which makes you highly vulnerable for attacks. The military potential of the raven clan in the late game is so great that you can always go for domination victory in my opinion and with the trade rework you really should.

As you may have noticed in the "Game Stages" section, I recommend to only build warriors as regular unit. In my opinion it really is the best choice for a raven. I will now explain why.

The damage buff of your gear upgrade ability can have a lot of impact because it can give you 25% bonus damage, this is equal to the bonus of five upgraded military buildings, so it is really huge. However, this buff is somehow wasted on shield bearers because they have very low standard damage and so the absolute damage buff you get is much lower than on warriors and axe throwers. That is why getting shield bearers as raven is generally not the best idea. Of course gear upgrade on axe throwers will lead to the biggest absolute attack damage increase but axe throwers are extremely easy to counter with shield bearers because their damage will be cut in half against this unit. Furthermore their base damage is only one point higher than the damage of warriors while they are much more fragile. So going for axe throwers is counterable and risky. Furthermore axe throwers and shield bearers are both more expensive than warriors.

So the warriors are simply the best choice for this clan. Gear upgrade will have a great impact on them and the unit will not be countered that easy, too. Furthermore warriors with upgraded tools can handle shield bearers AND axe throwers pretty well. Another special condition that makes warriors so great in the hands of a raven clan is that your gear upgrade replaces the "military strategy" in the lore tree, so you do not need to have every unit in your army to maximize the damage buffs and going for only one unit type is completely okay.

Finally I will write a few words about raven clan's mercenaries. In my opinion mercenaries are extremely weak if you just spam them without a special strategy and let them attack completely alone. They are pretty fragile and their damage is not that high, too. Furthermore they are pretty expensive units and you must reach 500 fame to use them.

So, are they useless?

The clear answer is NO. You just have to use them in the right way. In my opinion there are several ways to use them effectively:


1. The Mercenary Rush

Like mentioned in the "Game Stages" section, you should get to the 500 fame points in year 802. As I have written it above mercenaries can easily be killed if used alone. Defense towers (at least the upgraded ones) are able to handle them well. However, if your enemies have not yet build defense towers in their coastal areas, this strategy can be devastating. Simply send your mercenaries in as soon as possible and try to overwhelm your enemy by spamming them.

If they have enough defense at their coasts, do not use this strategy. You will just waste your crowns this way. I recommend using the second strategy in this case.

2. The Multi-Raiding Shadow

This one is especially a great late game tactic and also my favourite way of using mercenaries.
If combined with an offense of your army or allied ones, multiple mercenary attacks against the same enemy at the same time can completely overwhelm your foe because she/he has to defend multiple tiles at the same time and will be forced to split his/her army what normally putts your foe's troops in a short-handed and critical position and turns defending in a nightmare for your enemy. You can also send one attack after another to the main tile while you attack with your army. Very often this method is already powerful enough and it consumes less crowns.

3. The Counter Attack

If you get attacked by your enemies, you can not only defend your territory with your army and maybe some towers. You can also deploy mercenaries in your enemies' territory to force them to use a part of their army to defend.

4. Plundering Sailors

The 4th tactic in this section concentrates more on economy than on war. Depending on the tile type you are raiding, you get different resources. Sometimes it can make sense to send a mercenary attack primarily for this reason. In particular iron tiles can be interesting targets because I think you get more money by selling the iron than you lose by sending an attack. Please correct me if I am wrong here. Lore tiles as well may be an interesting target for this one (please look at the end of the „Game Stages“ section for more details.

But honestly, I use this ability very rarely primarily for economy. Its military aspects are just too good and important in the most cases.

Additional hint:
I really like to create a hotkey for each harbor by pressing CTRL + digit key to make fast switiching between them possible. Managing the mercenary raids and spamming the explore ability of harbors gets much easier that way.

Thanks for reading the guide! :)

If you enjoyed it, a like would be pretty nice! :D

Please give me a feedback, let me know what you think about the guide. If you have some suggestions and tips that are missing in this guide, please write them down below. I will give credit to people who are sharing their tips with the community. :)

Written by me:

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1448573920

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Written by Artwaltz:

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1826950663

Artwaltz is an expert of the kraken clan and the dragon clan. I highly recommend to check out his guide. It is extremely informative, helpful and well written.