INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
If you build up a big area of plains on your board, you can drop your "Farm" piece in the middle, and it converts those plains into richer
Put a "Woodcutter" into a bunch of forest, and it harvests that wood and turns it into plains
Set down a "Watchtower," and it recruits some archer units for every plains tile in its vicinity, and even more for richer fields
You could drop a Woodcutter next to a Farm and Watchtower, and it would turn the forests into plains, the Farm would turn the plains into
fields, and the Watchtower would pick up more units for all those rich fields.That kind of multi-effect combo, resulting from one piece you
perfectly placed in the nick of time, is what keeps you coming back to Drop Duchy
The bitter losses come from the other side, like realizing you've leaned too heavily into heavy, halberd-wielding units when the enemy has
lots of ranged units that are strong against them
things.There's an upper strategic layer to all the which-square-where action
You choose branching paths on your way to each boss, picking different resources, battles, and trading posts
Every victory has you picking a card for your deck, whether military, production, or, later on, general "technology" gains
You upgrade cards using your gathered resources, try to balance or min-max cards toward certain armies or terrains, and try not to lose any
one round by too many soldiers
You have a sort of "overall defense" life meter, and each loss chips away at it
Run out of money to refill it, and that's the game.
