Stronghold 2

[schild]

Gamerankings.com page.

This game looked really goddamn appealing to me when I was in EB earlier. Anyone have any opinions? Played the previous one - or this one?

A single Yahoo Games review doesn't do it for me.

[Stephen Zepp]

I played the first one and it was pretty nice as a simulation, but the AI absolutely sucked (you could make pathing traps to win almost any of the 'defend' scenarios), and the scenarios in the campaign were IMO poorly designed.

For example, in one of them, you had to basically force 100's of your guys to dig on a very specific terrain square to raise a bit of terrain, and then jam 5 times as many troops through this square just to defeat the defenses of the particular castle you were sieging. The next campaign scenario, you were so completely outmatched I didn't even bother trying it the first time.

The user interface was a bit rough in places as well--it could be almost impossible to detect holes in your walls for example, yet the enemy AI's pathing seemed designed specifically for "broken wall" detection, and would zoom right for them. I learned basically to always make double/triple thick walls so I wouldn't have to be bothered by finding diagonal holes hidden by terrain/camera position.

I'd probably by stronghold 2 if just for reference/research purposes, but probably not at fresh release price myself.

[Zane0]

The first one was too "arcade-ish" for my tastes.  Sieges were fun, but perhaps too trivial- you'd be attacked 3 or 4 times every scenario, each time by a stronger force, which got tiring after a while.  The economic system was too simple to be enjoyable, but vital enough to be crippling if it were damaged.  Conscripted peasant-spearmen in an attacking force would walk right up to your walls and start digging with their hands, bringing your mighty foundations to the ground in 20 or 30 seconds if uninterrupted.  The gameplay was designed to be fast, while in reality a siege was usually just about the slowest, most protracted thing you could do in a war.

Really, the idea of a castle siege can be entertaining, but I derive more enjoyment from them when they're part of a greater whole.  The Total War series, or Lords of the Realm, for instance.  You have a sense of stakes when you're aware that the castle you're attacking/defending controls an entire region.  Stronghold doesn't have any of this greater picture- it's just an increasingly difficult set of siege scenarios. 

That was my impression, at least.  I haven't been watching Stronghold 2.

[Tairnyn]

Having never played the first Stronghold I had no preconceptions. I'm finding the game enjoyable but there's some serious flaws I expect to slowly disenchant me. btw, I've been informaed that the v1.1 patch is almost a necessity, fixing many serious bugs.

The castle building is pretty nice. Each stone building has ramparts that can be connected with walls allowing a great range of freedom for castle layouts. All ramparts can be occupied by troops and archers gain significant range from being perched up higher. Building of the castle takes a great amount of resources, making the 'attachment factor' to your castle high. Without the castle walls your peasants are *extremely* vulnerable to enemy attacks, and dying peasants makes the natives angry, giving a good deal of value to creating a defensive perimeter and defending it. The largest downside of the castle system is the inability to build wall structures anywhere but your home province. There were so many occasions I wanted to built walls further out to protect my territories yet it simply will not let you. Defense of controlled keeps is left to the horrible AI of troops you station there or a due diligence in keeping an eye on everything.

Unit production is also decent, based primarily on your ability to churn out weapons and peasants to wield them. Unit caps are based only on your ability to support the population and equip them. Artificial unit caps always bothered me.

Resource gathering is done well, for the most part. They've provided a managements screen which allows you to quickly assign peasants to tasks using a serparate resource map... this is one thing I'd like to see in other games. Production is based solely on the number of buildings created for that purpose, sometimes leading to nasty looking building clusters during times of high demand. Citizens actively move between the buildings and storage areas giving a nice impression of a bustling city when things get rolling.

Battle is just annoying to me. Units have no volume and will stack on top of eachother. This usually causes your armies to become tightly packed piles when ordered to attack and with no reliable means of targetting specific units. Units that are stationed seem to have a delay before they react, often taking a hit or two before even counterattacking effectively to defend themselves. In addition, I have yet to find any way to heal units after a battle, although I'm only on Mission 4 of the battle campaign. Units are moved with a LM click and deselected with the RM click.. this took some getting used to considering the current trends in RTS control.

The missions themselves tend to be a bit pretentious, sometimes continuing from a previous one. Right now I'm stuck on a Peace mission which begins with the enemy storming a rundown border town I just gained to reform. Unfortunately, not aware this would happen, my troops are all in my home province and unable to reach the town in time to defend. This results in dead peasants, which further detitutes the city and inevitably fails the mission. As a result, I will need to restart the entire campaign and anticipate it.

I'd guess this game could be really fun in a MP environment and I also want to try the freeform scenarios. As someone who enjoys the castle-building aspect I've found that part to be pretty enjoyable. The restriction on wall placement and unweildy battle has put a damper on my joy, though. Perhaps as I become accustomed to the nuances it will be easier for me. Overall it sounds like the problems that plagued Stronghold 1 carried over into the sequel. I give it 2 weeks before the charm is lost and the glaring problems turn me away.

I'll gladly answer any other specific questions folks may have.