The video provides a comprehensive guide to playing Stronghold Crusader, covering essential strategies from managing popularity and optimizing building placement to effective trading and combat tactics. It debunks common myths, like the function of braziers, and offers practical tips for economic development and army management. The guide concludes with an advanced tactic for rapidly acquiring gold.
Debunking Braziers Myth #
- Braziers (koksowniki) do not increase damage for archers.
- An archer still needs three shots to defeat a pikeman, with or without a brazier.
- Braziers are only for igniting pitch.
Popularity Management #
- Overview: Popularity level, shown in the scribe's book, dictates whether people join or leave your castle. Below 50 points, people leave; above 50, new subjects arrive faster.
- Food Rations: Higher rations increase popularity but consume food faster.
- Food Variety: Each additional food type (beyond the first) adds 1 popularity point, up to a maximum of 3 points for all types.
- Taxes: Higher taxes decrease popularity. Giving gold rare is not recommended.
- Overcrowding: Always negative for popularity, occurring when you have more people than available houses.
- Fear Factor: Can be positive or negative, affecting productivity and popularity.
- Religion:
- Churches and cathedrals increase popularity.
- A chapel, church, or cathedral provides priests to bless people, positively impacting popularity based on the percentage blessed (2 points for 25% to 8 points for 100%).
- The first church gives +1 popularity, the first cathedral +2 popularity. Subsequent religious buildings do not provide additional passive popularity.
- Inns: Active inns provide popularity, up to 8 points if ale is available. One inn serves up to 30 people; adjust based on population.
- Events: Events in scenarios affect popularity but are not present in skirmishes or online play.
Strategic Building Placement #
- Core Buildings: Marketplace, granary, armory, and stockpile are crucial.
- Efficiency: Building workshops near stockpiles and armories, bakeries near granaries, and mills near stockpiles improves efficiency.
- Proximity: The closer workers are to relevant buildings, the faster production and deliveries.
- Relocating Stockpiles/Granaries: Additional armories and granaries should be placed next to existing ones. The initial stockpile can be removed and relocated closer to resources like stone or iron deposits to streamline production and sales.
Trading and Economy #
- Marketplace: Essential for game flow; in the Ultimate Edition, it’s free.
- Buying Wood: Always buy wood to accelerate early development, rather than waiting for woodcutters.
- Selling Goods:
- Selling wood is unprofitable. Use wood to build quarries, iron mines, farms, and weapon workshops.
- Crafted goods (e.g., crossbows from wood, metal armor from iron) yield significantly more gold than raw resources. A crossbow gives 30 gold, while the three planks needed for it only give 3 gold.
- Automatic Trading:
- Set automatic sales/purchases for resources (e.g., sell stone above 50 units, buy wood if below 15 units).
- Ensure the trade button is green (active) for automatic trading.
Morale and Productivity (Fear Factor) #
- Torture Devices (Negative Fear Factor):
- Up to 5 levels, the highest reducing popularity by 5 but increasing worker productivity by 50%.
- More torture devices are needed to reach higher fear levels with larger populations.
- Units hit for 25% less damage, but this is acceptable while focusing on economic development.
- Pleasure Buildings (Positive Fear Factor):
- Graves, gardens, dancing bears increase popularity by up to 5 points.
- Soldiers deal 25% more damage.
- Workers' productivity is reduced by 50% as they take breaks at these buildings.
- In the Ultimate Edition, blocking access to pleasure buildings is less effective as workers will seek other random buildings to rest.
Resource Gathering Tips #
- Woodcutters: Place them close to trees for faster lumbering.
- Quarries: Initially, place two oxen near the stone stockpiles to minimize worker travel time. Add more as needed if the quarry is far from the main stockpile.
Army and Combat #
- Unit Selection:
- While many units exist, online play often favors mounted archers, portable shields, assassins, catapults, pikemen, and crossbowmen.
- Best ranged units: Mounted archers, crossbowmen.
- Best melee units: Macemen, pikemen, assassins, camel lancers.
- Lord as a Unit: The Lord is powerful and can be used on the battlefield to engage enemies or destroy siege engines/buildings.
- The medic unit can heal the Lord.
- 'L' centers camera on Lord, 'Shift+L' cycles through Lords on map.
- Keyboard Shortcuts for Recruitment: Use shortcuts (e.g., 'N' for mounted archers) to recruit without moving the camera.
- 'Shift' + click recruits 5 units.
- 'Control' + click recruits maximum possible units based on gold and weapons.
- Portable Shields (Ruchome Tarcze):
- Inexpensive (5 gold per shield, 30 gold per engineer).
- Cannot be placed on walls/towers in Ultimate Edition.
- Crucial for protecting ranged units during attacks.
- Group shields and ranged units separately for better formation control.
- Unit Grouping:
- Select units, then 'Control' + number (1-0) to assign them to a group.
- Pressing the assigned number selects the group.
- Different unit types move at different speeds, so group them accordingly.
- Catapults:
- Not just for destroying walls; can instantly kill any unit (except Lord) upon direct hit.
- Effective for taking out approaching enemy troops.
Gold Farming with Laddermen (Exploit) #
- Laddermen Advantage: They are the cheapest units in the game and do not consume food or beer.
- Recruitment Strategy:
- Continuously recruit laddermen until you have hundreds.
- Delete the laddermen; they will turn into idle peasants around the campfire.
- Immediately set maximum taxes, remove food rations, and disable inns.
- Peasants will slowly leave, but before they are gone, you can collect tens of thousands of gold in taxes.
- Once the peasant count drops (e.g., to ~30), restore food, enable inns, and reduce taxes to normalize popularity.
- Alternative (Less Efficient): Build many wells to attract peasants in the normal way, then apply maximum taxes and disable buildings. This is more labor-intensive and requires significant food resources.
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