Man, just look at those screenshots. Another isometric, Middle Ages-themed RTS, with archers and spearmen running around. And you can build walls and towers, like about every other RTS in history. Snore. Haven't we all seen enough of these games? Don't tell me. You collect resources, build a base then recruit troops and kill everything that moves, right? Right. But despite all those things being true, Stronghold is something even the most RTS-weary gamer should play. It is, indeed, a Middle Ages real-time strategy sim, but its focus is much more on defence and careful construction than the combat-heavy, click-fest action of other, superficially similar games. Stronghold has two single-player campaigns, which, incidentally, are both available from the beginning. One focuses on combat, defending and attacking castles and generally being pugilistic; the other is altogether more peaceful, concentrating on economic scenarios and resource management. The combat campaign is definitely the heart of the game; its plot concerns a fictitious civil war in 13th century England, between you and an unholy alliance of four dukes nicknamed the Rat, the Snake, the Pig and the Wolf. These four are characterised well, with a mixture of little video and sound clips depicting their increasingly emotional responses to your armies marching through their kingdoms. The missions themselves usually have you entering a new area, and having to establish a castle and then defend it against waves of attacking troops. This usually involves choosing a defensible location for your keep, identifying useful food sources (wild animals for meat or green valleys to farm), locating the resources necessary for expansion (wood, initially, then in later levels, stone, iron and pitch), growing your population, and raising an army. 0-9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Demo Published by: Take 2 Games Developed by: Firefly Studios Released: Oct 2001 Version: US release Price: $44.99 Graphics: Do the job. Can be rotated and zoomed, for a change Audio: Music is the usual twiddly medieval fare, but spot effects are excellent Longevity: Robs spare time; deep, varied and comprehensive Originality: More than it looks Appeal: Those bored of the traditional RTS paradigm Bugs: A couple of small ones Packaging: Manual has some omissions, but readme file clears them up Interface: Fully featured and excellent Pros: Ambitious design and excellent execution A sense of humour! Two different campaigns plus historical castles No micromanagement Well-paced, gets challenging later on Cons: Oddness with fortifications vanishing Stronghold - Main Review Reviewer: Mike Smith Man, just look at those screenshots. Another isometric, Middle Ages-themed RTS, with archers and spearmen running around. And you can build walls and towers, like about every other RTS in history. Snore. Haven't we all seen enough of these games? Don't tell me. You collect resources, build a base then recruit troops and kill everything that moves, right? Right. But despite all those things being true, Stronghold is something even the most RTS-weary gamer should play. It is, indeed, a Middle Ages real-time strategy sim, but its focus is much more on defence and careful construction than the combat-heavy, click-fest action of other, superficially similar games. Stronghold has two single-player campaigns, which, incidentally, are both available from the beginning. One focuses on combat, defending and attacking castles and generally being pugilistic; the other is altogether more peaceful, concentrating on economic scenarios and resource management. The combat campaign is definitely the heart of the game; its plot concerns a fictitious civil war in 13th century England, between you and an unholy alliance of four dukes nicknamed the Rat, the Snake, the Pig and the Wolf. These four are characterised well, with a mixture of little video and sound clips depicting their increasingly emotional responses to your armies marching through their kingdoms. The missions themselves usually have you entering a new area, and having to establish a castle and then defend it against waves of attacking troops. This usually involves choosing a defensible location for your keep, identifying useful food sources (wild animals for meat or green valleys to farm), locating the resources necessary for expansion (wood, initially, then in later levels, stone, iron and pitch), growing your population, and raising an army. The key statistic in this process is your popularity. Represented by a number between 100 (Ice Cube) and 0 (Vanilla Ice), it determines how fast new people come to your castle. These new people are Stronghold's most important resource – without them, nothing gets done. They are potential soldiers, farmers, miners, blacksmiths, archers; the list goes on. If there are no new people waiting by the keep for employment, your shiny new swords will have nobody to wield them. Popularity is affected by a great number of different factors; from the simple (tax rate, level of rations) to the complex (availability of beer and religion) to the random (bandits appearing or a travelling fair coming to town). If your treasury is empty, but your granary is full, increasing both the tax rate and the level of rations will have opposite but, hopefully, equal effects, cancelling each other out. Stronghold is full of these interdependencies. So to the real meat of the game - castle design. Stronghold has many features for the budding architect in you. Walls are simple to build, from stone or wood, and connect together to form ramparts. Crenellated walls (walls with battlements) can be built next to the plain walls, as this gives your archers a place to fire from cover. There are a variety of different-sized towers and platforms for archers, and the largest allow catapults to be placed on top. Gatehouses come in wood or stone, and a variety of different sizes. You can build moats and drawbridges around your fortress. Traps can be built from hidden wooden stakes or pitch ditches, ready to be set ablaze by a flaming arrow. Attacking castles is just as varied. Is it best to send in a large force of infantry, to fill in the moat and hack down the walls? Or should you hang back and allow your crossbowmen to pick off the defenders? If there's access to the base of the wall, laddermen can allow your troops to scale the walls. Machinery like battering rams, catapults and wheeled platforms can help crack a difficult castle, and mobile wooden shields can help prolong their lifespan by protecting them from missile fire. If none of that is working, you can send in tunnelers to burrow under the walls or towers, destroying their foundations and making them collapse. Several of Stronghold's levels give the player a large force of varied soldiers and leave all these decisions up to you. The economic missions are generally simpler. Although there is often some combat, they tend to focus on environmental hazards like wolves or bandits rather than taking on a powerful enemy. Nonetheless, they're just as involved as the combat missions, often using tight time limits to impose tension and provide challenge. Stockpiling a large number of weapons when your crops keep failing, bandits keep attacking and your castle keeps catching fire is tough. Micromanagement is, thankfully, kept pretty much to zero. Although the men running around with armfuls of logs are reminiscent of micromanagement-fests like Age of Empires and Settlers, in Stronghold there's no need to get involved in the management of resources beyond making sure there's enough coming in. If not, the only thing to do is build more farms, or woodcutter's huts, or whatever - you're not going to find your villagers standing around waiting for you to babysit them. A quick glance around the map, and maybe a check on the contents of your granary, armoury and stockpile, is all that's needed to get "the big picture". The same is true of the combat - a well-built castle will, more-or-less, defend itself. This is definitely a good thing, because often attacks come thick and fast, with just enough time to rebuild and reinforce defences in between waves. So while your troops and walls are keeping the enemy at bay, there's time to check your farms and behind-the scenes production; building of defences is forbidden when under attack. Despite its matter-of-fact appearances, it would be wrong to assume that Stronghold is one of those RTSs that takes itself too seriously. The obligatory vocal clips that accompany ordering around each unit are produced with tongue firmly in cheek, as their variety of comedy British regional accents demonstrate. All the engineers are Scottish, the pikemen are from Yorkshire, and the crossbowman sport an excellent stereotypical military bark. However, the tunnelers are from Wales, which may or may not have caused much hilarity as squads of these defenceless units were sent to certain death at the hands of enemy archers. Ahem. Even the catapults can be instructed to hurl plague-infected cattle into enemy castles, in scenes oddly reminiscent of a certain Arthurian comedy film. Fortunately, the interface fails to get in the way of any of this RTS goodness, being, as it is, full-featured and unobtrusive. Many of the difficulties inherent in constructing and repairing walls with an isometric view are overcome with the "flatten" feature, which renders the map as a plan, so buildings don't obscure what's behind them. The view is rotateable and zoomable, making commanding large forces of troops easy. So are there any problems with Stronghold? A couple of bugs are reported; a crash bug on one combat level, which we passed without incident, and a rare pathfinding problem causing slowdowns, which reared its head once. A patch is reportedly in the works, but overall, Stronghold is commendably solid. One "not-a-bug-but-a-feature" issue is that any defensive features built in the vicinity of the place where attacking troops enter the map is liable to disappear; this is done for good reasons -- preventing cheating by surrounding these areas with walls and archers -- but is nonetheless bewildering at first. On the lasting-appeal front, Stronghold is excellent. The single-player campaigns are engaging, if a little easy at the start. There's a fully-featured multiplayer mode, and even a selection of representations of historical castles to play with. This is the kind of game that steals weekends - be warned. Conclusion Is Stronghold as unoriginal as it looks? No, it isn't, and it wouldn't be fair to lump it in with the host of similar-looking RTSs. Its defensive focus and thoughtful, non-click-fest combat are unusual, and are its main strengths. Its historical accuracy seems broadly good, and if Civilization can be considered a useful tool for historical exploration, this game certainly can too. If you're bored of standard RTS fare, and fancy something a little different, you'll get a great deal of mileage out of Stronghold.
