Sadly combat is let down by sluggish units and poor AI.
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Missions make use of these Warlords well, often tasking you with taking them before tackling your main opponent, and then giving you free reign on how to best approach this. By rushing the Turtle with diplomacy I was able to put a wedge in-between us, and build up my defences in peace before his final push. In between us was a well defended castle held by the Turtle, and on my flank economic Warlords got on with their duties. Other times they are part of a simple puzzle you need to tackle in order to beat a timed challenge: one mission saw me needing to hold out for a month as a flood forced my opponent out of a city. The tug of war is satisfying, especially when you steal a key Warlord to give yourself the buff you need to leapfrog their progress. Having these bastions on the map is interesting because it lets you see the real-time effect of the power struggle between you and your opponent, who will inevitably spawn small armies to go after Warlords that are neutral, or that you’ve taken back. The Tiger will buff melee attack numbers, and for a lump sum of diplomacy, will send an army at a target of your choosing, but taking him over will require a lot of troops or a hefty amount of diplomacy directed his way. The Mouse warlord will be able to give you rice in exchange for diplomacy points when conquered, and will improve the speed of your rice farmers – he’s easy to conquer through military pressure, but resistant to diplomacy. Each one gives a bonus, and can be conquered via military might, or through the expenditure of Diplomacy points, which are generated through expensive buildings in your castle. The titular Warlords system adds a wrinkle of complexity that’s welcome: each map is populated with various Warlords with animal epithets. It ends up being fairly helpful, as most of your time will be spent futzing around the map working out your diplomacy, and applying military pressure where needed. Whilst the simplicity of food production isn’t too challenging, ensuring you’re getting the most out of your populace for the least amount of effort is definitely where the meat of the challenge is.Įverything about this is handled by a very simple – some would say outdated – UI but it’s nice to be able to instantly glance at a number in red and know you need to increase production, or see a big green smiling face, and know your populace is happy. Matters are complicated by the tax system however, which sees you turning the screws on your population’s purses whilst increasing rations and improving housing quality in order to keep them happy. Credit: Firefly StudiosĪt a base level, this means getting your settlements up and running is easier, but it also causes issues that when you’ve got enough resources to ensure you are filling bellies, there isn’t much work needed to maximise efficiency, and economic tinkering doesn’t appear to have much depth to it. It takes a little while to get going, but there’s no supply chain. Early entries that featured bread as a staple food, required you to plant wheat fields, build multiple granaries and bakeries, then have them all working together in unison to make sure you had an ample supply of bread. It sounds like a banal change, but having rice be such a basic staple changes the pressures that logistics had in prior Stronghold games. READ MORE: ‘Maquette’ review: exquisite puzzler that doesn’t quite fit togetherĪs an example, one change is from the staple food of bread, to rice.As much as the details change, the surface remains the same, but some of those details do add interesting texture. Missions see you build castles, build forces, and either survive waves of enemies, or take out an opposing law.
The change of locale brings with it a light change in some mechanics, but this is still Stronghold.
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It’s not as prominent in the cultural consciousness as European Medieval Warfare – after all, Firefly Studios‘ Stronghold series started in this era, and managed to eke seven games out of it, including with two set during the Crusades, in the sandy deserts of the Middle-east. It occurred to me fairly early on in my time with Stronghold: Warlords that I wasn’t really all that au fait with Asian siege warfare.
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