Chuck-ese

Stronghold: Crusader is a mighty old game, having been released in 2002. Age, though, has not diminished the greatness of this game, for it taps into two seperate but equally playable genres, the Real Time Strategy Game, and the City Builder. The RTS elements consist of cranking out troops and flinging them at your adversary. The city building aspect derives from managing the mood, diet, and size of the population so that you can support your armies. However, while these aspects are well-developed enough to give the game a more realistic feel, it is not explored thouroughly enough to make the “Castle Builder” mode fun in any way, shape, or form; far be it from this game to rival the Caesar games in that department.

One thing that must absolutely be mentioned in any guide to this game is its playability. By “playability,” I don’t mean aspects of gameplay which make it easy. I am reather calling to mind the fact that once the game is installed on the computer, the CD is no longer required at all for any purpose. This leads to situations like mine, where everybody I know who has this game installed it from the same disk. Of course, the game is playable in the other sense of the word, too. The interface is generally like that of other RTS games, and learning the basics of the game can be accomplished in one game against a couple of Rats.

Speaking of the The Rat, the different forms of AI the computer lets you choose from are a unique feature. You can play against any combinations of builders and fighters, at any difficulty, although the Sultan, the Rat, and the Snake are so pathetic you can’t tell which role they are supposed to fulfill (although the Sultan must be given props for making an aesthetically pleasing castle). Any of those three AI types can be dealt with in the same way: use Arab horse archers to clear off the walls, then assassins to finish them off. Easy as cake.

Any discussion of more advanced strategy in the game really revolves around one point: archers. Anybody with a bow in their hand is one of the most powerful men in the Holy Land. A volly of arrows will seriously put the hurt on anyone foolish enough to approach your domain, and an archer is one of the cheapest units you can produce in the game. Horse archers are fairly faithful to the Turks and Arabs fought, and 25-30 of them make an impenetrable perimiter guard. After you’ve bult your walls and staffed them with a buttload of archers, a force of 50 horse archers makes a pretty good strike force, especially against the lower level AIs. Speaking of the wall garisson, braziers are your friends; put them on every tower and every gatehouse. To re-iterate: archers, archers, archers!

When on the other side of the walls, things become more complicated. If the walls have been cleared and the defenders reduced by your horse archers, a force of 50 swordsmen should be able to finish off the opposing lord. If the walls havne’t been cleared, a force of 50 swordsmen should still be able to penetrate the gatehouse and do away with the opposing lord. Never use assassins on a fully protected lord, and never use fewer than six. As far as seige artillary goes, the best course of action is to be able to hit the enemy castle with seige engines on towers in your own castle. This opportunity happens frequently on small maps.

Pitched battles don’t occur that often in the game, as opposed to seiges and couter-seiges. They most often occur if your resource denial troops (horse archers and slaves) are caught by an enemy force, or if they sally forth to attack your seige-works. In the former case, let the slaves go, and use your horse archers Mongol-style. If the latter, you already have your crack force of swordsmen. If you’ve been using resource denial effectively, they shouldn’t be able to challenge you. If you haven’t, or are playing somebody who’s very good, use pikemen/spearmen and archers/crossbowmen to guard the seige machinery, and knights and horse archers to engage the enemy units.

Economics are simple. If you build your fams within your walls (where possible), you have a safe food supply, and can afford to sell it off to buy things. Ditto for hops and ale. You’ll need lots of wood, and when you don’t it’s sellable.

Things not to build: When playing as the crusaders, the mercenary camps are only good for horse archers and slaves. Any other units should only be purchased in emergencies. Seige ladders are useless. Monks are extremely weak, don’t waste the money. Water pots and wells are wastes, just let it all burn and rebuild (not that anything should be burning in the first place). Apple and dairy fams are superior to wheat farms because they food doesn’t need to be processed to eat, and requires fewer laborers that can better be used as a recruiting pool in the early game; when you gain the means to process labor-intensive crops, go for barley first.
Thus ends my review/guide/thing of Stronghold: Crusader.
Note: I have no experience playing this against human players. I also only rediscovered this game since I stopped playing about this time in 2005, so I only have limited current experience agains the AI.