Stronghold: Warlords - castle building in East Asia

[Thac0]

What's actually holding them back is a very interesting mystery to me.

I think the balance between castle sim and rts is fucking them up.
The very first game had a very deliberate balance between sim elements and combat elements, to the point where the peacefull campaign is genuinly really fun to play.
Crusader has a good degree less sim elements, and the peacefull Crusader campaign is boring by comparison. Very interestingly Stronghold Crusader sold significantly worse than Stronghold I, despite now being remembered as the best Stronghold game very often. So there were definitly core fans which were fine with taking a detour from castle sim elements, but a majority liked them.
Stronghold II sold less than both Crusader and Stronghold I, and it definitly oversteered towards castel sim elements. The peacefull campaign is literally more fun to play than the military one. Quite interesting is that presumably the sales of Stronghold II and Crusader were not that far apart, both a good deal below Crusader.
I have no idea how well Strongold Legends sold, but since they never published the numbers anywhere I assume it did not sell well. Stronghold Legends interestingly plays least like a Stronghold, and the most like a generic rts.
Stronghold III is a clusterfuck and nearly killed the series. I don't think this can be related to the castle sim/rts balance, it is more a consequence of the retarded idea to cut AI opponents.
Stronghold Crusader II feels like a strange mashup of Legends and Crusader I. It introduces very "gamey" units like the armor aura seargents, which were a trait of Stronghold Legends. Also it dials the castle sim aspect a bit from Crusader.

Warlords seem to follow Crusader II's path, and take the game even closer to classical rts, and it seels and reviews mediocrely.

I think of you look at this as a development the issue is as follows:

Stronghold 1 is the best mix of castle sim and rts that the series ever had.

Stronghold Crusader is as high on the RTS / Castle Sim aspect as you can go. A Stronghold should not try to be less castle sim than Crusader.

Stronghold II is too far on the castle sim scale. A Stronghold should try to be less castle sim than Stronghold II.

So to make a good Stronghold again, they need to place the amount of castle sim mechanics between Stronghold and Stronghold II, and not put the amount of rts elements above Crusader of all things.

Then again it is always easier to critique stuff from the outsite than to make it, and I do not really envy Firefly's position of sitting on a prestigious IP without the skill to make it justice.

 

[A horse of course]

 

[fantadomat]

In theory, yeah.
But we're talking about a team here that cannot even reproduce its own game - since what, 20 years now.
Don't start demanding advanced things from such a team...

Ahh i am not demanding anything really,i don't even expect it at this point. I have no real interest in the game,will try it out in a week or two...most likely. But the design looks outdated and kind of boring. It is muh build castle and kill retarded AI,now do it 30 more times. I remember the crusaders game,where you just build moat and win because the AI was too retarded to get past it.

 

[fantadomat]

What's actually holding them back is a very interesting mystery to me.

I think the balance between castle sim and rts is fucking them up.
The very first game had a very deliberate balance between sim elements and combat elements, to the point where the peacefull campaign is genuinly really fun to play.
Crusader has a good degree less sim elements, and the peacefull Crusader campaign is boring by comparison. Very interestingly Stronghold Crusader sold significantly worse than Stronghold I, despite now being remembered as the best Stronghold game very often. So there were definitly core fans which were fine with taking a detour from castle sim elements, but a majority liked them.
Stronghold II sold less than both Crusader and Stronghold I, and it definitly oversteered towards castel sim elements. The peacefull campaign is literally more fun to play than the military one. Quite interesting is that presumably the sales of Stronghold II and Crusader were not that far apart, both a good deal below Crusader.
I have no idea how well Strongold Legends sold, but since they never published the numbers anywhere I assume it did not sell well. Stronghold Legends interestingly plays least like a Stronghold, and the most like a generic rts.
Stronghold III is a clusterfuck and nearly killed the series. I don't think this can be related to the castle sim/rts balance, it is more a consequence of the retarded idea to cut AI opponents.
Stronghold Crusader II feels like a strange mashup of Legends and Crusader I. It introduces very "gamey" units like the armor aura seargents, which were a trait of Stronghold Legends. Also it dials the castle sim aspect a bit from Crusader.

Warlords seem to follow Crusader II's path, and take the game even closer to classical rts, and it seels and reviews mediocrely.

I think of you look at this as a development the issue is as follows:

Stronghold 1 is the best mix of castle sim and rts that the series ever had.

Stronghold Crusader is as high on the RTS / Castle Sim aspect as you can go. A Stronghold should not try to be less castle sim than Crusader.

Stronghold II is too far on the castle sim scale. A Stronghold should try to be less castle sim than Stronghold II.

So to make a good Stronghold again, they need to place the amount of castle sim mechanics between Stronghold and Stronghold II, and not put the amount of rts elements above Crusader of all things.

Then again it is always easier to critique stuff from the outsite than to make it, and I do not really envy Firefly's position of sitting on a prestigious IP without the skill to make it justice.

Stronghold 1 sold well because it was 20 years ago and it was a novelty while the standards for story and map design weren't even mediocre. The others didn't sold well because it is the same generic shit over and over again,people got bored and moved on. They just didn't improve on the formula. They should have just made a new game instead of going for muh stronghold.

 

[Axioms]

The key issue for a lot of games is the balance between casuals vs "fans". Being super balanced allows for this the most, which is why the first game did the best commercially. Because it was ideal for casuals.

 

[vota DC]

Ahh honestly RTS needs more RPG elements like side quests,campaign progression,interesting map design. Star craft 2 the terran campaign did kind of right.

In theory, yeah.
But we're talking about a team here that cannot even reproduce its own game - since what, 20 years now.
Don't start demanding advanced things from such a team...

They should just return to 2D.

As I wrote, it does seem that going 3D somehow broke the developers.
However, it's more of a joke because it really doesn't make sense.

The game, for all intents and purposes, is still very much 2D. Everything obviously still happens on a grid, as it did 20 years ago. Most RTS games are like that in that the entire game logic is still very much 2D-based.
The 3rd dimension that they added isn't really utilized in any way other than graphics and possibly part of the physics.

What's actually holding them back is a very interesting mystery to me.

But even Age of Empires 2 had a hidden bonus of height advantage for archers, of course no 3d RTS game Is brave enough to feature proper mountains, even open world games don't have them.

 

[thesheeep]

But even Age of Empires 2 had a hidden bonus of height advantage for archers, of course no 3d RTS game Is brave enough to feature proper mountains, even open world games don't have them.

Exactly my point.
Even things that "seem" 3D like height advantages have been done in 2D before (iirc in the original Stronghold, too, there was a concept of height, at the very least for being on a wall).

 

[JarlFrank]

But even Age of Empires 2 had a hidden bonus of height advantage for archers, of course no 3d RTS game Is brave enough to feature proper mountains, even open world games don't have them.

Exactly my point.
Even things that "seem" 3D like height advantages have been done in 2D before (iirc in the original Stronghold, too, there was a concept of height, at the very least for being on a wall).

There still is a concept of height at least when it comes to walls.

 

[SoupNazi]

I spent maybe 200 hours in the original Stronghold just building castles with infinite resources and then sending enemies at them. Creative mode or something I guess, or maybe I cheated. I remember there also being entire online communities dedicated to building beautiful stuff on it and just creating scenes. There were several "exploits" to do stuff like wooden walls that you could walk on (iirc you'd damage a wooden wall then build a palisade over it, or vice versa). You could use that to make water docks and shipyards, or even ships themselves. The stairs could also be used to make complex structures, pyramids, sky castles, etc. Think there was an exploit to build buildings on top of walls as well to make multi-leveled strongholds. You could create some really nice looking maps and scenes with all of the not-really-intended stuff. I think it was even possible to "hide" trebuchets inside of a "ship" building to make it look like you're firing cannons. Cool stuff.

 

[Deflowerer]

Some people made some pretty epic castles.

 

[Infinitron]