Stronghold (computer game 2001)
| Stronghold | |||
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| Studio |
 Firefly Studios MacSoft (Mac OS)
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| Publisher |
Take 2 Interactive God Games
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| Senior Developer | Simon Bradbury | ||
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
October 19, 2001 April 17, 2002 (Mac OS) |
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| platform | PC ( Windows , Mac OS ) | ||
| genre | Real-time strategy | ||
| Game mode | Single player , multiplayer | ||
| control | Keyboard , mouse | ||
| system advantages preconditions |
Windows:
Mac OS:
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| medium | 1 CD-ROM , download | ||
| language | German | ||
| Current version | 1.4 (HD) (Windows) 1.2 (Mac OS) |
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| Age rating |
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Stronghold is the first part of the medieval real-time strategy series Stronghold , published in 2001 , which was developed by Firefly Studios . It is the only part of the series that was released for Mac OS in addition to Windows . The American developer MacSoft was responsible for the porting .
action
The four enemy generals Duke de Puce ("the rat"), Duke Beauregard ("the snake"), Duke Truffe ("the pig") and Duke Volpe ("the wolf"), face the player in the military campaign, each of them being of different strengths and using different tactics.
The king of the country was captured by a conspiracy, causing unrest and a civil war . The protagonist's father tried to negotiate a truce, but was lured into an ambush by the serpent and killed. Thus the enemy had a free hand to gradually take over the individual counties of the country. The player himself takes on the role of an aspiring general who is supposed to gradually recapture the counties, defeat the individual dukes and finally avenge his father's death in a 21-part campaign .
Gameplay
Economic system
Each player has a castle as a base, the center of which is the keep . If there are places to live, residents appear in front of the keep at regular intervals and gather around a fireplace. The number of castle residents is influenced by both the popularity rating and the number of existing huts, but soldiers are excluded from this, as soldiers are created from unemployed civilians and are therefore no longer counted. The subjects can, depending on their needs, transform themselves into any number of characters, from farmers to various economic professions and soldiers.
Plague , food shortages, wolf attacks and other negative events lead to a lowering of the value. If this falls below 50 - a maximum of 100 is possible - the subjects leave the castle one after the other. A high variety of food, tax reductions, the serving of beer for the subjects or positive events such as a fair , however, counteract this and increase the popularity. The higher the popularity, the faster new farmers appear, which speeds up the recruitment of soldiers and improves the economy.
The player can earn income in the form of gold by collecting taxes , which, however, have a negative effect on popularity, as well as by trading raw materials, intermediate products and weapons on the market. The gold is needed for the construction of certain buildings as well as the construction and maintenance of the military. In addition, raw materials and products that are urgently needed or that cannot be produced in-house can be purchased on the market.
Raw material and food system
The basic raw materials in Stronghold are the building materials wood and stone, with which both the defense systems and the military, social and economic buildings are built. But some weapons (like pikes and bows ) are also made of wood.
Iron is degraded in iron mines in order to derive armor, Mace and swords to manufacture or build a pitch boiler. Iron mines as well as quarries have to be built on appropriate raw material deposits.
Another raw material is pitch , which is mined in the swamp and is used exclusively for defense.
Food can be produced by grain and fruit farms, as well as cheese factories, or by hunters. Hunters, fruit farms and cheese dairies produce food directly, which is then stored, but cultivated grain must first be processed into bread. All food producers deliver the food in the granary, from which the food is consumed at different speeds depending on the number of subjects and the set rations.
In addition to the granary as a storage location for food, raw materials and intermediate products such as flour and hops are stored in storage facilities in the immediate vicinity of the keep.
Castle building and military
The creation of defenses is done by building a castle from individual wall segments, towers and gates as well as setting up various traps. The traps include, for example, the pitch pit (this can be ignited by archers near a burning brazier) and the spike trap ("killer hole"). In addition to the traps, there is the possibility of placing mangers and ballistae on large towers.
In addition to the siege machines characteristic of the Middle Ages, such as the battering ram , the ballista or the tribok , the player can train a variety of units. These include archers, lancers, maces , crossbowmen , pikemen and knights . These can then be used by the player in self-developed strategies for the defense of their own castle or for the siege of the enemy castle. Gold and weapons are required for recruitment and must be bought in the market or manufactured in the castle's production facilities.
The units are selected with the left mouse button and maneuvered on the playing field. Archers, crossbowmen and siege devices have a range advantage when shooting from an elevation (e.g. a tower or hill). Unit strength varies greatly: for example, heavily armored knights and swordsmen can easily defeat multiple lancers. Some well-positioned crossbowmen can easily defeat the very slow swordsmen, but are unprotected in the open against fast cavalry . A complex rock-paper-scissors principle is used here .
The lord of the castle, who is a personification of the player, is the strongest unit and has by far the most hit points . He can be ordered to go into battle, but he has free will; you cannot command him directly from the map. Only a direct attack on a certain unit is possible or, if necessary, the lord of the castle can also be sent back to the keep, which makes sense in dangerous situations, as the death of the lord of the castle means the player is eliminated. In order to penetrate the enemy's fortress, there are various siege devices that destroy the enemy wall more effectively than melee units and thus enable entry into the enemy castle.
More game modes
In addition to the military campaign, there is also a mode for free building and a smaller economic campaign with a total of five scenarios. In the various economic missions, for example, the player has to accumulate a certain amount of gold, manufacture weapons or assert himself in an inhospitable environment.
Map editor
The map editor designed for each game mode should, with its simplicity, give beginners the opportunity to design their own maps and / or castles or to recreate real castles and landscapes.
You can create your own castle as well as the enemy's castle in the editor. There are two types of editor: single player and multiplayer. In multiplayer, the player can create seven different enemies, some of which are friends with each other.
Development history
As with the second part, a free mini-game called Castle Attack was distributed as a preview. The full version of Stronghold was released for Windows on October 19, 2001. A deluxe version and a port for Mac OS followed. The two patches primarily fixed minor problems, but also added some functions such as the capture of castle gates. At the end of 2012 Stronghold was updated to HD graphics along with Crusader and Crusader Extreme , which brought it to version 1.3. In July 2017, the patch 1.4 was released, which contains bug fixes and allows further higher resolutions to be selected. In addition, the Polish, Japanese and Brazilian versions of the military campaign were equipped with their own country-specific maps, where previously the map of the United Kingdom was to be found.
reception
Stronghold was largely positively received by the trade press. ( Metacritic : 81 out of 100). In particular, the very extensive castle building and defense system did not appear to this extent in any of the competing products. In addition to great praise for the deep game principle, the somewhat outdated 2D graphics and the lack of clarity in larger battles were slightly criticized.
Many see the first part together with the successor Crusader as the highlight of the series. Due to the very good reception, the game principle from Stronghold 3 should be adjusted to that of Stronghold .
Historical inaccuracies
In the game, the mace fighter does not have a mace, but a flail as a weapon. Similar to the Pikeman unit : He does not use a pike , but a halberd .
Another inaccuracy is the presence of tomatoes and peppers on one of the victory pictures. At that time these fruits were neither cultivated nor known in Europe , as their original growing area at that time was still exclusively in Central America .
If you also select the game mode of the military campaign in the German-language version, the territory of today's Federal Republic of Germany (excluding Schleswig-Holstein ) can be seen on a map , other countries are also presented in their respective editions with their current borders.
Stronghold Deluxe
The deluxe version subsequently published in June 2002 also contained numerous new individual scenarios and 27 fictional and historical castles. These, such as Camelot , Stolzenfels Castle and the Tower of London , were created by the community for the German Stronghold castle building competition .
Web links
- Official website for Stronghold, Stronghold 2 and Stronghold Crusader
- Stronghold at MobyGames (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ The storyline and characters on stronghold.heavengames.com (English). Retrieved July 17, 2012.
- ↑ 1st article on spieletipps.de Retrieved on July 18, 2012.
- ↑ 2nd article on spieletipps.de Retrieved on July 18, 2012.
- ↑ Castle Attack on pcgames.de.Retrieved on August 18, 2012.
- ↑ Information about the patch 1.2 on 4players.de.Retrieved on August 10, 2012.
- ↑ Information about patch 1.3 (HD) on atomicgamer.com ( Memento of the original from June 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved November 7, 2012.
- ↑ New Patch. July 5, 2017. Retrieved July 14, 2017 .
- ↑ Metacritic : Average rating (English), based on 19 articles. Retrieved August 18, 2012.
- ↑ Article at gamestar.de.Retrieved on July 23, 2012.
- ↑ Article on playnation.de about the HD remake.Retrieved on August 1, 2013.
- ↑ Reviews on computerbild.de.Retrieved on July 12, 2012.
- ↑ Stronghold Deluxe on pcgames.de.Retrieved June 26, 2012.
