Stronghold

Campaigns and scenarios

The game comes with a few scenarios and two campaigns, one economic and one military.

The economic campaign is short and not held together by any story. It consists of a few timed missions in which the player must acquire a certain target amount of goods or gold. The military campaign lets the player defend against sieges and siege other castles. It does also contain economic objectives and does feature a story that ties the missions together. The scenarios lets the player defend against a siege or control a siege against a castle.

Economy

In order to gather resources and create a stable economy, the player is required to maintain a positive popularity level with their peasants. The peasants are used for all kinds of jobs around the castle and if they aren’t happy they will leave their jobs. Popularity is maintained by keeping adequate housing, low taxes, high food rations, keeping a supply of ale, and religion.

The player must gather many different type of resources in order to build up a big army and castle. Wood, food, stones and iron must be gathered and processed in order to make buildings and weapons.

Often resources needs to be processed through a number of facilities before they can be used for a certain purpose. For example, wheat must first be turned into flour before it can be turned into bread.

Combat

The game has many different type of combat units, such as spearmen, archers, and cavalry, as well as a couple of non-combat units essential for sieges, for example there is a unit that carries a ladder. He can be used to let other units to clime up on a wall. Another important non-combat unit is the engineers. They are used to build various siege weapons, such as catapults and battering rams.

The defending side can not only build walls and towers to defend it self, but dig moats, build death trap pits and hide pitch in the ground. The pitch can be ignited by archers and will when used correctly wipe out many units very quickly.

One important differences to other strategy games, is that units do not take up space. This means they can overlap each other and make chokepoints useless.

Units

Archer

A basic ranged unit, that requires no armor to train. Good in defense and in big numbers. It's cheap and is a good unit to start defending your castle with. They can dig moats and climb ladders.

• Weapons required: bows

• Speed: high

• Damage: medium

Spearman

A basic melee unit, that requires no armor to train. The spearmen are a main force of a lot of lords, because they are cheap and require only spears to build. Good in big numbers. They can dig moats and climb ladders.

• Weapons required: spears

• Speed: medium in normal stance; high in aggressive stance

• Damage: low

Engineer

The engineers are the only men who can operate the siege equipment, making them crucial when both defending and attacking. They can also pour boiling oil onto enemies. They have no armor and are unarmed. Can dig moats.

• Weapons required: none

• Speed: medium

• Damage: none

Pikeman

An armored unit that wields a halberd. They're the toughest unit in Stronghold Crusader. A great armor, but a rather weak weapon. Can dig moats.

• Weapons required: halberds, metal armor

• Speed: low

• Damage: low

Maceman

A berserk who wields a mace to fleece his enemies. He wears a primitive armor, but can dig moats and climb ladders.

• Weapons required: maces, leather armor.

• Speed: high

• Damage: medium

Monk

The so called "black monks" are monk warriors, who wield staves and have no armor. Unlike the other units, they're trained from the cathedral. They are good defenders and cost cheap.

• Weapons required: none

• Speed: low in normal stance; high in aggressive stance

• Damage: low

Crossbowman

The most powerful ranged unit. Their production is slow, but they wear a leather armor and shoot a powerful crossbow that can penetrate metal armor. They're best in defense.

• Weapons required: crossbows, leather armor

• Speed: low

• Damage: high

Swordsman

The most powerful infantry unit. The swordsmen are units, protected by metal armor from head to toes and wield a sword and a shield. They sacrifice speed for power. Yet they are as good in offense as in defense.

• Weapons required: swords, metal armor

• Speed: low

• Damage: high

Knight

This is a swordsman, who has mounted a horse. The horse sacrifices power for speed this time. They're less powerful than the swordsmen, but are much faster. Great in offense. Can't climb stairs.

• Weapons required: swords, metal armor, horses

• Speed: very high

• Damage: high

Tunneler

Carrying a pickaxe and wearing not much more than blue denim, these Welsh blokes will dig for victory. A few of them can easily bring down the thickest walls. Although they have no armor, they do know how to use their pickaxes to crush their enemies' heads.

• Weapons required: none

• Speed: high

• Damage: medium

Ladderman

Weak and vulnerable, these poor guys carry the long siege ladders that will allow your light infantry troops to swarm the enemy's battlements. The cheapest unit in the game.

• Weapons required: none

• Speed: high

• Damage: none

Siege equipment

The siege equipment can be mounted and used only by engineers.

Catapult

This is a long range siege weapon that uses heavy rocks as ammo. It is mainly created to destroy castle walls, gates or towers. When created it is equipped with 20 rocks. Player can get 20 rocks for 10 stones. Can launch cows.

• Engineers required: 2

Trebuchet

The trebuchet is an advanced version of the catapult and most powerful siege engine. It has a very long firing range, even longer than the ballista but is less accurate than catapults. It's long arch can be used to fire over the castle walls and into the economic buildings. Can launch cows.

• Engineers required: 3

Battering Ram

The battering ram is a slow, powerful siege engine for taking down walls, gates, and towers. They are useless against soldiers though.

• Engineers required: 4

Siege Tower

The siege tower is a wooden tower that is capable to allow all units but knights and horse archers to scale to the castle walls. After the tower is used it cannot be chosen again so it stays on it's position. The engineers will also leave the tower when the tower is used. This makes them very vulnerable to the enemy fire.

• Engineers required: 4

Portable Shield

This piece of siege equipment is used to protect units from ranged fire. It can successfully stop thousands of arrows. However it's vulnerable to melee damage. It's high speed permits it to advance in front of your troops and protect them along the way.

• Engineers required: 1

Mangonel

A mangonel can be mounted only on a big enough tower. Once mounted and equipped, it fires rock barrages (6 rocks per shot) against the enemies. A single rock can kill an enemy troop, but the mangonel is pretty inaccurate itself, making him useful only versus large armies. It may also cause friendly fire, so be careful where you place it.

• Engineers required: 2

Ballista

Another piece of equipment that can be mounted only on a big enough tower. It shoots a single, long arrow that penetrates armor. It has a great range, so it's useful for taking out enemy siege equipment or stationary troops.

• Engineers required: 2

Minimum System Requirements

• OS: Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000

• Processor: CPU 200 MHz (550 preferred)

• RAM Memory: 64 Mb

• Hard Drive Space: 750Mb

• Video Card: 4Mb

• DirectX: 7.0

• Sound Card: DirectX 7.0 Compatible