Recommendations for castle building sim?

[JasonPratt]

I just noticed that Legends has a Steam edition now (that's the one with the Dracula vampire campaign btw), which apparently helps it out to the point where the only real problems are clunky gfx optimization and multiplayer instability. The general opinion still seems to be that SH2 is still the best 3D version of the game, and that CrusaderXHD is still the best version of the game.

Extreme in this case doesn't mean everything runs around fast, btw. ;)


Here's a nice video of gameplay from versions of the game from 2001 to 2014. Stronghold 1 HD starts at around 12:00 mark

[JasonPratt]

Be aware that the Stronghold games are very, um, pre-formation RTSes. You can group blobs of troops, and they will blob around, and blob around in vague formation settings but they're still blobbing.

The ones based on the first engine (S1HD and SCXHD in your case) are isometric top-down 2D sprite fests. So there are hard limits how far you can zoom in (and out for that matter, although the HD versions help somewhat with that).

[Gusington]

That is some full service there, Pratt, thank you.

And in readin up on Stronghold 2 on Metacritic, the game gets shellacked for the MP and graphics issues you mention above...but most of those reviews are from 10+ years ago.

Still...Dracula! And I aint afraid of no blobs. I still like the sprites in old TW games, Age of Kings, etc.

[JasonPratt]

I'm honestly looking forward to the new Steam version of SH2.


Someone upthread mentioned Kingdoms and Castles, which I didn't know until just now would be released in July. It will also be on Steam. Naturally I expect it to be a buggy mess (and probably early access beta, because that's how things are done today). But it does look quite of the sort of project I'm thinking of, if more cartoony than I was thinking.

[Gusington]

Yeah way too cartoony for me.

[Greybriar]

...the whole rationale for Forest Village is to pick up on Banished, evidently abandoned by its dev....

I find it hard to believe that Banished has been abandoned by its developer since there was a 12 June 2017 news update on the Shining Rock Software website. The sole review of Life is Feudal: Forest Village on Metacritic states: "It's a doppelganger of Banished - the same ideas, but with less polish and oversimplified."

As for the topic of this thread, the Stronghold games are nice looking, but bear in mind that they are castle defense games and not castle building sims. Dated as it may be, I still have fond memories of the original Castles, which can be purchased as part of a 2-pack along with its successor from GOG.com.

[Yskonyn]

For the record: my LiF mention wasnt about Forest Village, but the 'Your Own' prequel-thingy to the full MMO LiF.

[Gusington]

Greybriar are you sure? I thought construction was a big part of Stronghold.

[JasonPratt]

They are definitely castle design and building sims. You start with a small central keep, and build out walls and things from there. If you put wall pieces out wrong, they'll collapse, too.

[JasonPratt]

I'm glad to hear Banished devs haven't abandoned the game, btw. I haven't seen a full comparison of features between the two, only that Steam users for Forest Village (which has a Life is Feudal title but not the same dev team) routinely regard it as having more features.

[JasonPratt]

Testing this morning indicates that Crusader Extreme (HD) does in fact need Crusader installed, but installing Extreme will also install Crusader. They'll run from different Steam points evidently -- launching Extreme only brings up new maps and skirmish and map designer, not the campaign(s) from the original game.

[Gusington]

EXTREME

[Greybriar]

Greybriar are you sure? I thought construction was a big part of Stronghold.

Yes, I'm sure. Check out this review:

Stronghold (2001)

"This game didn't quite sit right with me to start with, I'll admit.

The problem is that, while you use troops and build fortifications and set up resource-gathering chains and so on, making it looks very much like a real-time-strategy game, Stronghold is not a real-time-strategy game.

It is a castle-defence game.

The differences are extreme, but because most gamers will have an instinct about how to play RTSs by now, you'll probably spend some time getting taken apart by the PC before you manage to start winning.

Let me just give you a rundown of how defending a big stone castle in the Middle Ages worked. Two words:

Tank. Rush.

That's really all the tactics the enemy have, be it historically, or in the game. They throw a HUGE mass of troops at your defensive position, set up a couple of immense rock-lobbers and all you can do is hope that your archers kill them all before they breach your walls. If your walls are breached, you hope and pray and cry that you've got enough troops to fight off the attackers so that they need to retreat and you can mend the breach. If the walls are breached and your troops start to falter: You. Are. Finished.

Medieval warfare was not nice, was not healthy, and generally didn't involve the taking of prisoners other than for the purposes of raping and/or casual torture for the amusement of the more sick-minded of the troops.

Your defenses, other than the obvious examples of archers, crossbowmen include men with pointy sticks, who will be killed in large quantities, men with spiky metal balls attached to chains, who actually get to wear armor, and so might actually last a second or three and swordsmen, who get to wear huge, heavy suits of full-plate armor so they can be easily riddled with crossbow bolts as they trudge towards the castle. The spearmen are mainly useful for destroying the siege-ladders which runners will prop up against your walls in order to allow the invading forces a way in to the castle walls.

Apart from the fighting units, you can build traps, such as spikepits, flaming pitch-ditches and moats to slow down and kill the enemy forces. While the game features an intricate and complex chain of supply, with four types of food-supply, two building materials and a satisfyingly detailed model of your citizens' happiness levels, this is only there to keep you supplied with food, gold, weapons and warm bodies with which to defend, build and repair your Stronghold.

Stronghold is a game that can leave you mentally exhausted after playing a level, desperately shoring up defenses, fending off invaders deploying troops and managing the vast supply system that holds the whole thing together. It isn't a pleasant game, but it's an immensely satisfying one, and it has an occaisional moment of welcome humour. If you fancy a challenge, put this one at the top of your list.

Reviewed by: Frosty840"

But it's not really a point worth quibbling over.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Castles of Mad King Ludwig?

http://www.mobilecastles.com/

[JasonPratt]

Stronghold is certainly as much of a castle defense game as Interplay's Castles series (which I also played back in the day); in effect it's an upgraded expansion of those games, except without the occasional RPG elements.

I don't understand the point about it not being a castle building sim, though. I've actually played Stronghold, a lot; beat the first game's campaign, and played around on SH2 more than once back in the day (although not extensively). You generally don't start with a castle, so if you're going to defend your castle you need to build a castle, and you can't just throw that up: you have to build a town from scratch first, with economies. Some of it ideally inside the eventual walls, some of it necessarily outside.

That said, maybe it's better to call it a walled-town sim. The castle itself doesn't have rooms per se (although I recall SH2 being more detailed about that.) You're building an extensive series of fortified walls and defensive emplacements around your central keep (which is basically two rooms, top and bottom floor, where the new immigrants spawn from and where you leader retreats to during a successful siege for his final defense.) In that sense, both the Stronghold games and, let's say, Imperium Romanum, are both "castle defense" games.

Except one of them ends up with the player managing an economy to build something that looks and functions a lot more like a castle.  ::) (Note: not IR, although that's a great game, too, and actually quite a lot like what I'm looking to show the nieces.)