Northgard vs XCOM: Enemy Unknown
Northgard
Northgard is a rather unique city-builder/strategy game that allows you to lead a group of Northmen to unknown new shores in hopes of making a life there. Like most city-building games, you'll need to help them set up a home, assign your Vikings to perform various roles, ensure there is enough food to feed the entire village, and amass a small army to help defend your territories from other hostile clans. The strategic aspects of the game may not be obvious at first but you'll quickly realize that new territories that you discover (you don't exactly need to conquer it for this to work) will present new strategic opportunities for your clan to expand or grow, be it new sources for food or a nice place to set up a new trading post. There are many victory conditions as well, so it's not always "kill or be killed" in this game.Northgard offers players a single player experience by playing with AIs with various personalities or with their friends online. However, many players have reported that the game does have a somewhat flawed AI-player relationship. Even if you're best buddies with an AI's clan through healthy trading relationships, their clan members will still attack your people, which frankly feels a lot like a betrayal. It'd be nice to have a tutorial as well.
That said though, Northgard is an impressive game especially if you enjoy a bit of city-builder/strategy game like Valhalla Hills.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown
XCOM: Enemy Unknown puts you in charge of a secret paramilitary organization known as XCOM and as its commander, you'll need to build a functional base, manage your resources, constantly improving your technology and give tactical orders to your team when taking on a global alien invasion. The game is, obviously, part of the award-winning turn-based strategy game franchise, XCOM, which is famous for its incredible action sequences, as well as squad management and turn-based combat systems. The game will also see you as a diplomat of sorts as you'll need to interact and negotiate with various governments during your missions.XCOM: Enemy Unknown is one of the best turn-based strategy game there is (and yes, this means until now). However, the game can be quite difficult especially for newcomers to get into, and to truly appreciate the details and the flawless gameplay mechanics, you might need to put in quite a bit of time into the game. But if you do all of that, you'll be richly rewarded with one of the best gaming experience you'll ever get.