Stronghold 3...the good, bad and ugly

The Game Room
1

I don’t see a thread on this, so if there is one, mods feel free to close or merge as you like.

It’s been a rather disappointing year, for me at least, PC gaming wise. Nothing I’ve played lately has really been good, IMHO. I had rather high hopes for Stronghold 3, as I really liked the first game. Sadly, it’s been another disappointment.

First, the good. Visually (with a single caveat that I’ll get into in a bit) the game looks really good. And I like how you can turn in 3d using the center mouse button, instead of the old 90 degrees at a time. It’s also cool that you can zoom in really close or zoom all the way out, and the maps, so far, are much tighter with less wasted space.

That’s about it for the good, though I have to admit I’ve only played through 4 scenarios of the military campaign so far. But it’s a slow paced and frustrating game and I’m doubting I’ll make it through the whole game at this point. First off, though I said the game is visually nice, it’s got really odd video settings, and basically only fills the center part of my widescreen monitor. It’s almost like the game is designed for old CRT monitors or something. I’ve tried changing settings but this is the best I can do. Highest resolution is way below what my system is capable, and it looks squashed. And building stuff in this game is actually more frustrating. Why they took away the ability to hit space bar and get a 2D view with no walls or terrain obstacles is a mystery (space bar now zooms you out completely). Gah…if I hear the guy say ‘can’t place that there’ or that’s blocked’ one more time my head will explode! :mad:

But the worst thing is trying to move or position your troops, or have them fight. If you thought Stronghold 1 was frustrating, you ain’t seen nuffin yet! The troop positioning is totally wonky, and your guys will either charge off to wander about (and die) or stand there and die…seemingly which ever will be the most frustrating for the player. Getting guys positioned on the walls and staying there is an exercise in frustration.

This game had so much potential, but sadly it fails to fulfill that potential. It’s just so damn frustrating. :frowning:

-XT

2

This is disappointing to hear. I was really looking forward to this one. I enjoyed the first two so much. :frowning:

3

Well, for anyone interested, here is a review that hits pretty close to the mark of my own feelings about the game. I’m still slogging through the military campaign, but it’s definitely a slog. Just for fun I did the free build last night and that was fun for a while…it let me experiment with trying to figure out how to build walls (still no idea how you are supposed to use a curtain wall, or how the bastions actually fit into castle defense or how to fill the gaps in them) and see what units were available later on (one cool thing is you can build a knight, and if you’ve built a stable you can have him send for a horse…so, knight units can be either foot or mounted).

I really, REALLY want to like this game, and I have to say that I’ve figured a few things out that have made the game marginally more enjoyable. But it’s still just not a very fun game to play, unfortunately, no matter how hard I try.

-XT

4

Man, I remember loving Stronghold, ad I still have a copy of Stronghold 2 around somewhere. But this series did kinda run down with every new release for some reason. I guess they just couldn’t be satisfied with the basic fun of building and conquering, and they always had piss-poor AI.

Done right, it could have been a mix of SimCity (SimCastle?) crossed with Total War. Guess that was too complicated.

5

It’s like they deliberately tried to make it retro and the same as the first game (which I loved as well), but then they put in everything that was annoying or broken from the entire series and just sucked the fun out.

As an example that’s alluded to in the review I linked to (and this review was kind…there are some scathing ones out there if you look). Basically, you have to take the Sultan’s castle and are given some troops to do it. Similar to the first game where everytime you confronted a main protagonist (the Rat, Pig, Snake, Wolf) you had to beard them in their lair, and you only got a finite number of troops to do it. Some of those were pretty tough, especially the last one against the Wolf…but they were do-able. I’m trying to assault this castle and it’s a nightmare. I’ve failed 3 times (I FINALLY was able to take an outer keep, but it cost me all of the peasants and about 30% of my archers, all of the catapults, and all of the rest of my siege equipment except the battering ram), and frankly don’t see how, given the constraints and limitations of the interface, anyone could do this on the normal difficulty level. You have to basically run troops up to the walls so that you can spring the traps which are a combination of pit traps and burning logs rolled out of the hoardings on the walls. In the face of crossfire from archers on towers, on the walls. Oh, and a catapult siege engine on a protected tower throwing rocks. And this is to take the outer bastion so that you can have any hope at all in trying for the gatehouse, so that then you can fight the final troops in the keep. If you don’t send enough peasants initially (to spring the initial traps) then they die before getting close enough due to the archer and catapult fire. Try and move your own catapults in and they are too slow and get hammered by the single tower catapult long before they are close to being in range. But if you try a mass attack then the burning logs will crush and burn your entire army (I literally lost 90+% of my troops to one log trap…unreal).

After 3 tries I managed to take the outer works and suppress the siege tower, kill all of the archers on the outer wall and protecting towers and bastions, and I have enough troops to…well, no idea, since there are 4 more hoarding traps in a narrow confined valley that is supported on both sides by wall and tower/bastion positioned archers culminated in a protected gatehouse. I gave it one try last night and basically lost all but a few men at arms and archers just to get the ram to the gate, and there was no way, even assuming I could get through that gate I could take the pike units (yeah) guarding the final keep, let alone the lord that is there.

But the above doesn’t really explain the frustration, as it just seems a really difficult tactical challenge…something I usually love. But trying to get your troops to move, to get in position, to attack…to do anything other than stupidly walk into log traps or just stand under fire and die…is just incredibly difficult. Mind numbingly difficult in fact. When I first saw this scenario load up I just laughed at the paltry number of troops they give you in the face of really well laid defenses. If you had a Total War type interface and the ability to really move your forces around with the expectation that they MIGHT go where you told them to go and do what you told them to do, and you could pause and issue orders…well, even then this would be a stone cold bitch with what they give you. As it is, I don’t see how it can be done, though I’m planning to beat my head against the walls and try tonight (I THINK I took the outer works with what has to be an optimal number of troops still alive considering what I had to do, and if I can figure out the minimum number of men at arms I have to send in on suicide missions in each wave to trigger the flaming log traps I might have enough guys to at least get through the gatehouse. At that point I have no idea how to even attempt to kill the pikemen or lord, but it will be an achievement just to do that, IMHO).

And none of the above gets into the actual castle building frustrations. Fire. Rabid bears. Disease. Peasants just wandering about and not producing food, which eventually makes people leave the castle so that it’s a no win situation, iron or stone gatherers just sitting idly, not delivering their production while oxen just wander about doing gods know what.

-XT

6

I feel the same way on all points… and its funny i found this post by you by searching the web to see if anyone posted on how to beat this map… It was frustrating the hell out of me as well… and honestly I hate those missions where your given a limited amount of troops but anyway. It was because of that mission that I actually went on to do 90% of the economic campaign (which is insanely hard by the way) … but i finally went back to this map and after far too many failures that i would rather not think about… FINALLY I beat it… and heres how…

once youve killed the warhound cages Initially you have to send about 30% of your peasants in small groups of 3-5 Zig zaging along the right side of the field . then right behind them select a small group of your archers at least ten to do the same … (basically they will pick up the onager fire once the peasants are dead … and you can keep running them around avoiding it by watching the shadow of the rocks on the ground to see where they are going to hit. …
Send your surviving peasants all to the far right hand corner right beneath the wall (try to keep them out of archer fire from the high left wall and in front of them. before you send them have a group of about 10 spears 10 archers 3 of those walking sheild things… and your catapults. Hit tight formation so they all stay bunched up and try to keep the sheilds at the front as much as you can. While your peasants are about half way to the wall and your archer group is running around (staying out of arrow range) … send it off and keep them walking on the extreme right of the map to minimize any archer fire (again send everyone to the right corner beneath the wall (onager fire cannot reach you there and theres only about 2 archers that can hit you so get your archers and spearmen to kill them once they are all there. (they should all be arriving in close proximity to eachother. so omce there get your archers and spears in range all at once… and hit the stop button (this makes them auto target anything in range and fire much faster than you can if you click them to attack (also it picks up multiple targets at once) now once you have a safe zone … you can use your troops to take down the wall or your catapults but you really wont even need them for that so keep them in the corner till the wall is down … once its down … move your groups of spearmen (about 10)and archers (about 20) behind the wall in ranger of the archers on the wall and the onager… again hit stop to pick up targets correctly and that should take them all out now us your catapults to hit the walls with the logs and destroy the log traps. if you did this the way i managed to do it you should still have a large number of archers peasants and spearmen waiting at the beginning of the map with your other seige gear. so now its time to send them all in to the first keep area and set up your push up the hill… this can be tricky … it requires you to do some skirmishing with small groups of archers and spears… Again send some of your peasants in and Right behind them the archers and spearmen… get the in range… and kill the archers on the towers… dont go far enough to trigger the first log pile on the left … once youve got a clear path to those logs send a few peasants to trigger it and keep everything well behind the lower walls to avoid them they can go really far all the way down the hill, as im sure you know by now… after thats done… do some more skirmishing … use your sheilds… and walk small groups of spearmen and archers just short of triggering the next set of logs… (you need to draw out all of the spearmen standing gaurd at the gate and try to kill the nearest archers… once the spearmen are chasing run away to kill them in safety… after that send your ram to the gate by itself if you send it straight to the gate the logs dont trigger…once the gate is down send small groups of archers to kill the remaining archers and triggr the logs… (keeping your other troops well out of the way… once its safe move all of your troops up the hill and destroy the logs with your catapults before they reset… you should still have 75 % of your spearmen left to kill the rest of the troops inside… once there its very easy… hope this helps.

7

I should be a nailed on sale for this game, I have played and enjoyed all the others, I have plenty of disposable income, and I was keeping an eye out for its release date.

But…

I was looking at a few of the trailers on Steam, and what struck me was that this game just seemed completely the same as Stronghold 2. The same units, the same designs, even the same bloody lines for all the peasants from the same voice actors. I see not a single “new” thing that this game brings to the party.

Add in the bad buzz it seems to be getting, and it looks like I won’t bother me hole.

8

I’ll have to restart, since I saved off after taking the outer bastion. I gave it one shot last night when I got home from my latest road trip and I was able, finally, to take the inner gate house, but I had so few troops left that there is just no way I could take on the half a dozen pikemen and the lord in the inner keep. I think I had 4-5 men at arms (all beaten up) and perhaps 6 archers left at the end. It was ugly…what I did was select groups of 9-10 men at arms to basically run up and soak up the 3 remaining log traps (you can avoid the first one by waiting until you see them release it and then running away…the other two are, afaict, unavoidable and will kill anyone in the narrow valley you have to go through to get to the inner gatehouse). One thing you have to watch out for is that you need to move quickly, as (unbelievably) the freaking log traps actually reset after only a minute or so…so you need to throw your disposable men at arms to their deaths in fairly quick succession, keeping in mind that if you bunch them up at all then the follow on waves will be hit as the burning logs roll down the narrow valley (the physics is pretty cool…the people who designed this scenario are, however, idiots).

I’m on the road again today, but hope to be back home Sunday evening and I’ll give our tactics there a whirl. I was having a bit of fun after giving up on the military campaign playing in the free build and historical battles sections. The first historical battle is a bit of a bitch as the defender, but it’s a good kind of bitch in that it’s possible for you to actually win if you use good tactics.

-XT

9

[QUOTE=bucketybuck]
Add in the bad buzz it seems to be getting, and it looks like I won’t bother me hole.
[/QUOTE]

Wait until Steam has it on sale for like $9.99 or something similar (maybe if they sell the complete Stronghold pack with everything in it, assuming you enjoyed the first game or don’t have it on CD or whatever) would be my advice. It’s possible that they will patch of fix it, and even if they don’t it’s probably worth $9.99, even in it’s present, broken state.

I don’t remember the second one (all I remember is that it was just like the first one, but set in the Middle East or something like that), but this one is a full 3D engine (which IS kind of cool, if they would just fix the interface) and has a real world (sort of) physics engine which is also kind of cool, and there are a couple of buildings and production resources that I don’t remember from the first game anyway. The units are pretty much exactly the same though, and it’s actually harder to place units or walls/buildings than it was in the first game (I know this because with my pre-order of Stronghold 3 I got Stronghold 1 for ‘free’, and I’ve been playing it in anticipation for the last week or so before the release).

-XT

10

Not sure if you already know this, but Stronghold: Crusader was just an expansion pack for the original Stronghold. Stronghold 2 was a bigger step forward, with 3D graphics and different units and economy dynamics. I once got the complete collection from Steam, so I have even played Stronghold Legends, for my sins.

11

yeah those log traps are a real pain… but theres one thing i forgot to mention and to my amazment when i tried sending my ram up the hill by itself the logs on both sides didnt trigger. and after the gate house was down I just moved it under the log traps and quickly pulled it back and set them off that way managing to avoid the first one but it served its purpose ten times over by allowing me to get past that without loosing any troops,which is vital… you need to be able to outnumber those pikemen in the end, as for the reset … you wont need your catapults anymore so send them up to destroy teh logs once they are spent before they reload… and pulling them one by one is really important, just hit the nearest one with some archers and quicky run away.

Ive been playing through the next few military maps and they are getting alot more fun finally giving you real castles to start to build/ defend. so im really enjoying that… just have to over look and work around all of the bugs, and save often because Its only a matter of time before the game crashes haha… but im determined to get my moneys worth … And i have to be honest for all of my gripes And dissapointment im really liking where they were going… if only they had finished it haha

12

Sorry, I’ve been away quite a bit lately, but thought I’d follow up on the game. I haven’t gone back to play the military campaign since I’ve gotten back, but I’ve been giving the economic campaign a whirl so thought I’d put down some quick thoughts on that.

First thought…it’s a total, stone cold bitch. I think that, so far, I’ve only gotten through one scenario without having to reload (in some cases several times)…and this doesn’t count the lock ups in game. This is reloading because I flat out failed to complete the mission. In one case I had to play through 4 times before I finally managed to win, and at that I had (again, literally) 3 seconds left on the clock when I finally managed to win. I’m on my 3rd try of Ghosts in the Abby (something like that) and I have my doubts I’ll win this time either, since it’s going to come down to the wire with wood and pitch…again.

The scenarios are almost ridiculous in their difficulty. Even if you took all of the stupid disasters that are scripted in each one they would be quite challenging…put in the odd wrath of god or bandit raid or whatever and they become a matter of playing through multiple times so you know when the script triggers are going to hit and then optimizing your setup to get around them and still complete the mission. IOW, you have to have knowledge of future events in the game to have any chance at all of completing some of the missions, especially the timed missions. It’s completely horrible and gives the player zero margin for error…you have to build things exactly at a certain time and shift resources exactly at a certain time or you will fail, and your options are extremely limited. There are probably several ways you could do this, but once you lock in whatever method you plan to use you will have to refine your strategy down to when and where you place every building, and use every peasant.

As an example, I was playing a scenario where you had to get 5000 gold in a certain time frame or you will fail. There are various things you could build to generate gold, and you could change your tax rate to increase your gold income…assuming you could do so without having your peasants all leave of course. And you need to feed those peasants as well (there are various emergencies such as fire and the ever popular ‘rats in the granary, sire’ thingy just to make your life interesting). What it boiled down to in the end was ignoring the computers initial advice of building an iron mine (takes too long, uses too many resources) plus some pitch gatherers, cloth builders, ale makers, etc, and focusing everything on just building pitch gatherers and optimizing my taxes. I literally had to sit there, poised to change the taxes as either good or bad things were going to happen. I knew exactly when there would be a royal visit (there are 3 of them FYI) so I could up the taxes for the duration of the visit, or when there was going to be a good day (you gain 10-20 happiness points for good weather, just as you lose it for bad weather or any sort of emergency). It took me 4 tries to get everything perfect, and in the end I had 3 seconds left on the clock when I finally managed to squeak out a victory and move on.

Ugh. :mad: That’s the thing about this game…it COULD be so much fun to play, but they make it ridiculously difficult to do, and force you to micromanage every little aspect if you have any hope of beating the game and moving on. They narrow your possible strategies down to only a few that will work, and then force you to refine them to the point that every single thing you do has to be scripted or you will fail. And even then, you will probably fail anyway.

-XT

13

I know your pain my friend I had gone through some of these so many times it pains me to even remember …the phrase “The skin of your teeth”… pretty much sums up most of the campaigns in the economic campaign i agree with you on all points… though i have to say that the more i played the more i learned about the tiniest little micro managing tricks and nuances of the game and learned ways that i probably could have gone back and aced these in must less time… But its the EXTREMELY short timeframes they give you that really put you under the gun on just about every map and makes them extremely painfull. yet in some masochistic way i couldnt put the game down i guess im just the type that once i set my mind to complete something i cant stop till i do. IF you have it in you to try the military campaign again i have to say it is the same sort of thing there… but once you start to learn the nuances of how to really work the strengths an weaknesses of your troops and how each work together, it really starts to get fun but then again here as well every damned mission has some ridiculously short timer… They needed to have a few difficultly settings in this game because i can see the need for the timers to some degree… because alot of the missions if you are given unlimited time would probably pose little challange and get kinda boring… yet they set them WAY too high for the novice player. but there are a few missions inthe military campain that i really enjoyed playing especially the ones where your given a castle and have to defeat two to three other castles on the map… like the rats… and thepigs for instance… the others where you are under attack non stop and have to hold out and survive are pretty fun too although VERY hard… again the timers and lack of difficulty setting are a real problem, but if you can manage to deal with them it was a fun experience for me personally because the pressure that was posed really forced me to learn the nuances of strategy in the games that i wouldnt have gotten otherwise, yet the made a big mistake in making it so painfull a lesson… they could have made it much more fun.

14

by the way How about the dreaded Witchcraft ?? that one burned me up … lol… the one thing i did realize much a little late in the game that would have made every map much easier is to do everything i could in the first five-ten minutes of each map to Crank up my approval rating as high as possible to get as many peasants to come in a quickly as i could, (this is especially true in the military campaign)… that made everything much easier in the long run… Though it often meant holding back in the beggining and not building as many things … focusing on housing and keeping taxes low.

15

Well, I’m full stop on the economic campaign. I’m playing through the one after Ghosts in the Abby, and I can’t figure out how to do this one at all. You have to (simultaneously) build sufficient food for your people (or they leave) using only one food type…grain/bread. At the same time you have to defend against periodic but increasingly difficult bandit raids (from ‘deserters’ who have siege equipment and archers). You also have to acquire stone (without the benefit of stone quarries…i.e. you have to buy it). You also need to create an army of swordsmen (there is an iron mine and you can make swords and armor, assuming you have the gold and resources, including the royal fame or whatever, which you need to do banquets to do, which requires more resources). And all of this on a weird map where it’s difficult to fine room to put down anything. Oh, and you start off with only a little food…and since the wheat/bread production takes time to get going (you need wheat farms, then a mill, then bakeries) you will run out of food before you bake the first loaf…which means all your cash reserves are going to go initially towards just keeping people fed. Oh, and you have those bandits attacking (even if you win those fights fairly easily it drops your popularity down for the duration…and so ‘people are leaving the castle’ is something you are going to hear quite a lot of). Ah, and forgot about the fires…you will be hit by seemingly constant fire (which means you have to practically dedicate a peasant to stand by a well, and hope it’s close to where the next fire will come from). And as the final bit of fun you have to stockpile bread as well…and that’s the only food source you can make. Oh, and you have 2 timers in this one (plus you have to keep some of the original troops you have alive and your lord character or you lose right there).

I’ve tried it 3 times now and I’m still unsure how to do this one. I can make weapons and build the troops needed, but then I fail because I don’t have enough bread or stone. I can make bread, but then I can’t make all the weapons or get all the soldiers (or stone) I need, since I have to spend all my money on buying other food stuffs to the point I can turn off the peasants eating the bread. Or I can buy the stone needed but then I can’t get the other stuff done. I don’t see any way to do everything AND keep the bandits from wrecking the place or having my lord die. :smack:

ETA: You are right about how it’s still strangely addictive, despite it being such a bitch to play. I don’t know what it is about the game that makes you want to reload and figure out the seemingly impossible scenario they have thrown at you next, but I keep going back. The challenges are so over the top and ridiculous, yet I keep giving it one more try because I see ways to make it work…though, as I said, this time I don’t see any way to push on and complete the given mission.

-XT

16

Screw it. if the kingdom is this obnoxious I say you give it to the Wolf and let him beat out his brains running it.

17

Yeah, that’s excellent advice. :slight_smile: I’d like to see the wolf do all that stuff on a timer! Right now I’m just marking time until Skyrim comes out…and hoping that this game breaks the recent trend that everything I pre-order starts out broken (hell, I STILL can’t play Rage) and isn’t really a lot of fun to play in any event.

-XT

18

For anyone still following along, or for future 'dopers searching for info about the game, figured I’d post the info from the latest patch. I haven’t been home much lately, so haven’t played any, but it seems, based on the patch, that at least some of the issues I’ve had in the have been at least minimally addressed:

Updates to Stronghold 3 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

  • The mouse cursor has been improved and will help with selection and responsiveness issues.
  • Game speed added. Press + to speed up the game (x2 or x3 normal speed) and - to slow the game down to normal speed (x1).
  • Buildings can now be placed on top of workers and animals. The game will move the workers or animals out of the way.
  • Fixed issue with military units sometimes not selecting a new target after a fight.
  • Fixed issue with Archers and Rangers not being able to attack walls & buildings.
  • Fixed issue with wolves (and other animals) being able to climb up ladders.
  • Fixed issue with siege equipment being able to climb walls/towers.
  • Fixed crash when changing resolutions in game on some machines.
  • Fixed issue with stone quarries and iron mines when a worker was turned back into a peasant.
  • Fixed issues when quitting/continuing the Tutorial.
  • Fixed several pathfinding issues in Tower of London siege map.
  • Fixed issue with peacetime continuing from multiplayer games into single player games.
  • Hostile animals now respond to missile fire.
  • Fixed French keyboard layout.
  • The Map Editor is now available from the Steam interface. To locate it click on the top menu ‘View’ and select ‘Tools’. Scroll down and you will see ‘Stronghold 3 - Map Editor’
  • An extra large map size has been added to the Map Editor.
  • A new large Freebuild map, Abandoned Lands, has been added.
  • Various small bug fixes.

-XT

19

You’ve totally sold me on never playing this game. The cost of a game is only in part a dollar cost; there’s also the cost in hours of my life, and a shitty game I get for free still isn’t worth paying that cost.

20

Yeah, my recommendation would be to stay away from the game unless, like me, you got sucked into pre-ordering the thing and are now stuck with it (like I’m stuck with Rage now as well). If you have a large masochistic streak in you and enjoy pain, then wait until it goes on sale for less than 10 bucks…possibly by then they will have fixed some of the more glaring problems.

FTR, I fired it up tonight since I’m home for a change this weekend, and at least one of the things mentioned in the supposed patch doesn’t seem to be there…at least I can’t figure out how to slow down the speed of the game.

-XT