Stronghold
Simply put, Stronghold is a castle simulator. Your job is to create the best castle you can, then defend it against the hostile approaching hordes. You build and govern authentic medieval castles and plan campaigns to repel attacks through a brilliant combination of simulation and real-time strategy game styles. To overthrow your adversaries you must create an impenetrable fortress from a massive selection of historical buildings, troops, and war machines. It's not all warfare; in order to succeed, you must keep your peasants happy and productive, plan for current needs and future expansion, and, of course, execute cunning castle design.
Stronghold Accessories
 Stronghold 2
Stronghold: Crusader
Stronghold Legends
Age of Empires: Collectors Edition (Jewel Case)
Medieval II Total War
Stronghold Crusader (Jewel Case)
Stronghold 2 Deluxe
Stronghold
Age of Empires III, Gold Edition
Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties Expansion Pack
Stronghold Reviews
From the very first little mission, where you have to build a settlement and manage to make a bunch of bread for the king, I was rapt. It far better than simcity because aside from the nice graphics, it's very educational and diverse. Stronghold 2 is better and more expansive than the original in many ways, and but don't miss #1. After being so blown away with Stronghold 1 and Stronghold 2 and Stronghold Crusader, I wondered if I've been missing out all these years. Settlers, Pharoah, Cleopatra, The Guild, and others.
I think age of empires 3 is nice (3 1/2 stars), and I'm delaying judgment on rise & fall and rome total war. I ordered a bunch of games in similar genre, and none of them interested me. The series of missions act like a non-obtrusive tutorial, letting you learn how to do each thing, and challenging what you learned before. I liked SimCity the original for a while way back in 1990, and since then I've played almost no games at all.
But stronghold is far and away the best game I've ever played. I happened on this game because Stronghold (#1, original) and Tropico were bundled, and on clearance for $2 at target. First of all, I am not a gameplayer. And especially don't miss Stronghold Crusader (my #1 #1).
The way that it's design, strategy isn't just merely building up a large contingent of forces and then rush. The real draw with Stronghold is that it's defensive oriented, so if you're the type of person that likes to design and build garrisons, then this is definately in you alley. For less than $10 dollars, Stronghold won't disappoint. To win you have to plan carefully and take advantage of terrain and know the strenghts of both your own men and the enemy's. Hence, there lots of ways to win a battle. You can have full fledge blood and guts battle, or opt for something more low key tactics. This is probably one of the best strategy games that I have ever played, and I played a lot.
For example, you may wish to deselect one group of soldiers and select another, but instead you will end the first group to where the second is. Unlike other medieval warfare games where castles may be just one of the many buildings available, or you may have many forts and cities, stronghold is truly a "castle sim"You must build just one castle in each mission, but you better make it good. But this can be overcome once you get used to the controls.Any avid strategy gamer must buy this game to get a different perspective on medieval warfare than what Age of Empires and Warcraft offer.
Your castle will be realistic and the methods of controlling the populace are also fun and realistic.One small problem I encountered was that the player interface is sometimes hard to get used to. You will then be taught mission by mission to build better fortifications of stone, how to gather more types of resources more efficiently and how to keep on the good side of your people. Also, the controls are a bit annoying.
You will also get more advanced troops such as crossbowmen and mounted knightsWhat I really liked about this game was the realism. In the campaign stage, you will start by building log forts and just archers and rustic spearmen in your army. Unlike other strategy games where the description "strategy" is a misnomer, in Stronghold you are forced to follow strategies that must have been followed in the Middle Ages.
I've pretty much played through this, I'm still going back and replaying my faves, and I'm ordering Crusader today. This is the first game I've bought for the computer. I picked it because I like medieval stuff, and I wasn't disappointed. The games are challenging enough to frustrate, but not so hard that you can't work them out in a fair amount of tries.
It has strategy, awesome castles, and all that. You build your own castle while controlling ur economy, it's sorta like Age Of Empires except more based on economy.(that and the towers dont fire arrows, you hafta supply the soldiers for all that stuff). But be careful, the enemy has siege weapons, archers, crossbowmen, knights, and much more. I haven't had too many castle sims, but this is the best one i've ever had. With all this u hafta prove that ur castle is the best of all.
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