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<\/a><\/p>\nCampaigning for glory<\/strong><\/p>\n Stronghold houses two separate campaigns, namely the military campaign and the economic campaign. Historical sieges and a free build sandbox option also make an appearance, however, fans of the series will no doubt be disappointed to find that there is no skirmish mode or kingmaker included.<\/p>\n The military campaign, entitled \u201cWolf’s Revenge,\u201d is aimed toward the more combative player and continues the storyline of the series in which our nemesis, the Wolf,\u00a0 returns to wreak havoc against the protagonist known as the Boy.<\/p>\n The military campaign kicks off with a bit of excitement as the Jackal attacks in the dead of night, unexpected and without honour. It’s the duty of our noble hero and his men-at-arms to find Lady Catherine and lead her to safety. Don’t worry if it takes you a moment to find the bonny lass, she isn’t actually in or near the castle as the advisor suggests. You’ll realise soon that \u201ccastle\u201d is Stronghold’s all-encompassing term for the entire village but don’t worry, she’s not too far.<\/p>\n The economic campaign challenges players to help Lady Catherine rebuild her abbey and make strategic use of available land while facing off against difficulties that can’t always be conquered through an iron fist.<\/p>\n The challenges are surprisingly well-thought-out for a campaign that isn’t all about blood and guts and quickly teaches players to place their stockyard and granary in strategic places that are readily-accessible to villagers. Naturally, the closer villagers are to the these buildings, the quicker resources can be gathered.<\/p>\n Often players will be required to amass a certain number of resources within a specific time-limit, fend off disasters, make successful use of very limited land space and often build with some sort of precognition.<\/p>\n Grasping at gameplay<\/strong><\/p>\n Historic sieges give players the chance to play out real-life battles from around the world as either attacker or defender. At the time of this review, there are five battles available to try out and they’ll require a well-formed strategy and a fair bit of experience to master.<\/p>\n Free Build is a welcome addition, with two maps for players to build their castles to their hearts’ content without fear of enemy molestation.<\/p>\n Villagers are, as expected, your most important resource and are attracted by food, housing and tax incentives. A new villager will appear every 21-seconds, depending on your popularity which is governed by how lucrative your settlement is. However, let food become scarce or allow taxes to overburden your villagers and your popularity will sink.\u00a0 When this happens, villagers will instead leave, one-by-one every time the clock hits zero.<\/p>\n Fortunately, it’s possible to raise popularity by building churches and inns and supplying them with candles and ale respectively.<\/p>\n In Stronghold, there is a delicate balance in keeping food stores full while still managing to harvest resources such as lumber and stone. The more villagers at your disposal, the faster your food stores run out. A simple rule to remember is to never have more workers than you have farmers capable of feeding them.<\/p>\n There is no construction time as buildings are placed instantly. Farms will remain dormant until the villagers assigned to them arrive and begins the process of planting or breeding. Depending on how far from your stronghold, stockyard or granary buildings are, resource collection can take a lot of time, so the lack of an actual construction time is hardly surprising.<\/p>\n Besieging castles, especially those of the well-fortified persuasion requires tact and cunning. Set your archers to the ready to clear and distract the walls while the battering rams head for the gatehouse. Make use of sappers to do double the damage to walls and ready your catapults for a legendary onslaught. Siege battles are enjoyable, difficult and hair-raising.<\/p>\n A number of disasters rear their ugly heads during gameplay. Some, such as plague slowly kills off your villagers on top of lowering your popularity. Others such as animal plague and fungus destroy your entire crops and livestock, potentially starving your people; influencing many villagers to leave while others such as ‘the sighting of a black hat’ aren’t quite as bad and simply give your villagers a light scare, evoking fears of witchcraft.<\/p>\n While often frustrating, disasters add to the feeling of medieval believability and gradually influences players to always stock up on resources to lessen the impact of such events. Well, at least until rats infest the granary.<\/p>\n Fortunately, while there are disasters there are also beneficial events that substantially increase popularity. Weddings and sunny days make everyone cheerful.<\/p>\n Debatable design<\/strong><\/p>\n Most game designers go to some lengths to have the fading in and out of unnecessary off-screen graphical detail as smooth and unnoticeable as possible for the sake of optimising performance. Stronghold, bewilderingly, doesn’t, or at least seems to do so haphazardly. Often foliage noticeably disappears the moment it falls outside of some invisible barrier, the occurrence of which is very much on-screen and noticeable.<\/p>\n While textures aren’t bad, Stronghold feels very scant on graphical detail. Villager animations are charmingly elaborate. Players can, for example, watch their workers cut down trees, transport the logs back to their huts, saw them up and carry the planks to the stockyard for other industries to collect and make use of, but there’s very little in the way of substance. The lack of any time-acceleration in the UI means you’ll be doing this a lot.<\/p>\n Apart from the occasional dramatic blood-splatter, cut-scenes in Stronghold consist of black-and-white stills. While this art style seems somewhat quaint and appealing at first, it’s not long before it feels cheap and tacky.<\/p>\n Chickens and farm livestock are often found roaming around and while this makes for a pleasant atmosphere it unfortunately means that the bigger your village gets and the more villagers and wildlife roam around your land, the more difficult it is to place buildings. If there is even so much as a stray chicken in the way, a building cannot be placed.\u00a0 This is exceptionally irritating when demolishing buildings to place new ones.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n