Ultimate in pay-to-win

Short version: you will be competing head to head with people who have spent thousands (literally, not figuratively) of dollars on this game. If you are not willing to spend that much money, they will win, simple as that, wiping out weeks or months of work.

There are certain realities when it comes to every freemium game; they all encourage you to spend money, and they all provide an advantage to those who do so. This is not at all a bad thing, this is how the development gets paid for.

However, not all games are equal in this regard. Vikings does more to aggressively insist upon your money than any of the many other freemium games Ive played, and is the ultimate in pay-to-win.

If you start out in a new kingdom, the game is a lot of fun. This fun lasts for a couple months, maybe a few months. Then people start hitting the timers that last for months (even over a year), and several of them. Someone decides to spend literally thousands of dollars bypassing these and other timers, jumping to the final troop tier.

Now they are essentially unbeatable, cannot even be effectively ganged up on, unless you are willing to spend thousands of dollars yourself, which several others will. If youre not willing to spend thousands yourself, you can try waiting a year or three to get past the timers.

Most of those who will spend thousands will naturally band together, and why wouldnt they? Theyll then clear-cut the entire kingdom. The end result is predicable, dozens and scores of abandoned cities for every active one.

Dumnbunny about Vikings: War of Clans, v1.7.0