Complete Walkthrough of Stronghold Crusader 2

Author’s Note

Hi thank you for choosing Troublmaker as your choice for a walkthrough in this game.  A little about myself before the actual walkthrough.  In 2002 I found a copy of Stronghold Crusader in a dollar bin at Walmart.  I had been a fan of siege type games in the past but early in my progression into a real job, I was poor.  At the time I was working at a highway craft shop of which there was absolutely no access to internet, and other than a lightbulb… no power.  So I had a little laptop that I would charge up at home and bring to work… to play Stronghold Crusader.

The original game had no campaign but instead featured a 50-skirmish track that became so painstaking hard that they allowed people 3 skips of missions they chose.

The new game comes with a lot less skirmishes but also comes with a campaign.  They get aggressively more difficult over time and because of this I have chosen to write a formal walkthrough featuring the tactics and strategies used to beat these.  This walkthrough with completed with the presumption that you aren’t going to be a little bitch forever and you will eventually try on the hard difficulty.  Everything discussed here will work on lower difficulties… but you really should grow a pair and stop saying things are too easy while playing on easy mode.

Each level is completed with a video.  For best learning how to beat these levels watch the video while reading down the instructions.  Think of it like learning Shakespeare in high school.  The easiest way to learn was always by using Cole’s Notes (or Spark Notes these days I guess) while reading through the actual book.  Thank you for your time and have fun.

Intro – Preparation

You are a young commander that has to setup the grounds for King Richard’s landing.  You have to setup the camp, clear the harbor front and deal with the challenges associated with being a junior commander.

1. Arrival

This is the simplest of the missions.  The goal is to collect wood and food and destroy some buildings.

Wood is the key to success in this game.  It is the building resource that is used to produce the buildings for every other building in the game.  You should never be short on wood builders.

When placing wood builders make sure they’re close to trees.  In this map aim to have them around the oasis. The oasis is the patch of green on the desert.  Clearing this is important because this is also the only space where you can place your farms.

On this mission you will not be able to build hovels.  Hovels increase your worker base.  Because of this you have a limited number of buildings you can create.  This means patience is a virtue.  Whenever you can make sure to build your food building on the oasis.

The mission will end as soon as you have collected enough food and wood.

To speed this up make sure your few soldiers are destroying ruins.  These are narrow walls and are considered to be the objective building.

Once you begin food production scour the map looking for little covered supplies.  These are all food caches.  If you collect them too early they’ll just get eaten up by your population, so save them for last.

2. Blacksmiths and Bows

The objective of this mission is to Collect Iron, build bows and build swords.  Iron is the ingredient for swords and wood is the ingredient for bows.

As always wood production is key.  You will need a lot of wood for this mission so don’t cheap out on your wood.

You will also still need food as without food your people starve.

To add a bit of zest they’ve added in lions to the north to block you from getting your iron.  To dispatch them send your lord with some peasants to destroy them.  You need to lay down a Barracks to build peasants and require no weapons.  In any other situation your lord is the King in a Chess game, he dies and it is over.  In this instance he will slay the lions quickly.

Make sure to destroy the lion’s lair.  It will constantly spawn lions and lionesses regardless.

After you’ve dispatched them there is a cache just to the north of the lion’s camp.  Grab it and get a nice little boost.  You can now get your iron resource.

All weapons must be placed in an armory, so before you can build any weapons you will need to lay down the barracks.  This can be found in the same tab as you found the barracks (the one to the left of the tower looking thingy).

You should aim to build the blacksmiths first to get your swords.  If you start with bows you will have less overall wood and slow down production of buildings.  One blacksmith will suffice.

As well once you can build your one bow making archery go for it.  If you can squeeze in another it will make the mission go ever so slightly faster.

3. The Lion’s Den

This is the first training mission in which you will have an enemy.  To make matters worse you have a deadline to complete this mission.  The objective is to collect stone.  Unfortunately without dealing with the enemy you cannot collect stone.

To make matters worse the enemy will also send units at you.

You will want to build an archer heavy army.  Build as many archers as you can.  Mixing in a few mace men will be invaluable especially when dealing with the next issue.

You can use your keep as a defensive structure to defend against the enemy.  The macemen are skirmishing units and although lightly armored they will be able to charge into enemy archers and wipe them out quickly.

Obviously wood production is going to be important again because of your need for archers.  But also you will need some food.  Having large wood production will be necessary for getting your stone making facilities down later.

When the time is right march with your archers.  You can build a step and a wall piece near the enemy’s base to give your archers a bit of cover.  It will also increase their range as the higher you are the more range your shots have.  It will also provide moderate cover.  Removing the enemy’s advantage is important.  Once they’re all dead you can just move your army into that base and use it to defend against small enemy invasions.

Put down your stone production facilities as fast as possible.  Each stone production facility should have at least two oxen because of how far the distance is to transport the stone.  But leave the oxen to as you need them.  Lay down an oxen whenever all oxen are busy.  The key is to get down stone facilities and get your men working.

It will be tight but you should be able to get all of your stone.  The eraser tool can be used to destroy buildings and refund 50% of the building.  If it is getting real tight recycle your wall, barracks, and armory.

If you are short on workers you can quickly turn off all weapon’s production.  This can be done by clicking on the building and clicking off the Global Off button.  This will turn off all building’s of that type.

Campaign 2: Lionheart

Richard the Lionheart has landed in the Holy Lands and is looking to carve out a new fiefe for England.  He has made you a commander of a small army supporting his operations.  The conquest of The Holy Lands is not an easy one.  The great Arab General Saladin waits and has planned intricate defenses and traps for the greatest army man has ever seen.

1. First Blood

King Richard is thirsty for blood and has charged you with taking the first fort.

You are given an army which makes it exceptionally easy.  To add a bit of a time constraint lightning will periodically kill your troops, so it is a rush.

Move your three catapults forward and burst down the front wall.  Don’t aim for towers or the arch at first because they have too many hit points.  Just burst down a wall.

Once it’s down push your knights in and get your archers inside the walls to fire. The catapults can now redirect their attention to taking out towers and arches.

Now rush in with your knights and aim for the lord in the keep.  Once the enemy’s lord dies it’s over, so pushing for him is important.

My best time doing this was 2 minutes 22 seconds.  Time is important here as the longer you take the more of your units will randomly die to lightning.

2. Ambush

Word spread of Saladin’s ambush and Richard has heroically retreated away from it.  He has left you to deal with the ambush and to defend the small fort from all enemy’s.  You must survive for 25 days in which each day is roughly 1 minute.

The castle you are given is already built so you simply have to place your archers along the various flanks.

You will need some stone production to repair and extend your current castle.  To the west is your stone pile.  You will want to eventually create walls to protect this area by extenting your walls from east to west around it.  It will screw with the computer’s AI however and you will be forced to eventually dispatch forces to deal with the bugging out group of enemy’s.

Another priority is to the north of you.  This is your source of wood and food.  The enemy will often send men carrying fire to try and burn it.  Man at arms are perfect for dispatching these.  They have a very fast attack, can hurl one attack and will keep a lot of them occupied.  Preventing this area from burning down is key.  Make sure to have a well available in case a fire begins.  All of these structures spread fire insanely quickly and will set you back very far if any catch on fire.

Man at arms are pretty cheap to build so losing them to enemy archers is not a big deal.

Other than that there are three real flanks to worry about.  The northeast, the southeast and the southwest.  Generally speaking the northeast will only be ranged units which can be easily dispatched, this means you will not need to defend this flank very heavily.

In the southern flanks it is a very different story.  There will be catapults, archers, and knights.  Your archers can wipe out the enemy’s archers and knights with ease.  You will want to build macemen skirmishing units to run in and wipe out the catapults.  Don’t get them caught in melee combat with non-catapults, they’re only there for catapults.

This is a rinse and repeat operation where you’re constantly expanding your forces.

When the final push comes it will come directly from the north.  Move all of your archers to the northern wall and get your melee ready to rush out and occupy enemy melee forces while your archers take them out.  Macemen should take out catapults out first.

If the mission doesn’t end it means some units have bugged out and you’ll have to go around the map to hunt them.  Just look on the mini map for dots that are not yours for their hidden location.

3. Antioch

It’s the first city that you will have to tackle… and it has a time limit, 50 days or 50 minutes.  Most people are going to look at this mission in which you have to attack someone and focus on attacking, but this is Stronghold.  In Stronghold the best offense is a good defense.  You will have to defend against constant waves until you can reach a critical mass of units.

The critical mass of units is one in which if you lost half of your army you would still have enough to win the game.  It will take almost the full time to hit this mass.

So your opening focus will be on wood, food and stone… in that order.  You will need a lot of stone to build a fortress so you can defend against the enemy’s attacks.  These attacks will get stronger over time.

Stone is a very valuable resource, you can sell it.  To sell it go to your Stockpile and select stone, then sell it.  Sell it basically when you have no more need for it.  With this money you can buy more wood to build more buildings, build weapon’s producing facilities or purchase units.

Having a strong economy is key to this mission.

Worth noting that you have a trebuchet at your disposal… and you can make more.  The trebuchet is an ancient war device which is purpose wise a catapult.  The trebuchet (pronounced Tray-Buu-Shay) requires setup time.  Once setup it can fire off large boulders much more powerful than a regular catapult as well as a large number of “diseased animals.”  By toggling to diseased animals you will launch whatever animal it happens to be at the enemy and create disease clouds.  These disease clouds will kill off the enemy slowly.  With 3 trebuchets firing at once you can wipe out an entire army with a single volley of diseased animals.

You can use this trebuchet by itself to harass the enemy knocking down walls and throwing animals, but you shouldn’t be too aggressive with this as it moves very slowly.

Another unit you will gain is the Ranger Archer.  The ranger is a mix between a ranged and a melee unit… which for these kinds of games makes them really awful.  They are your scout class that will switch between melee and ranged and will.  You shouldn’t build too many of these because their usefulness is rather limited to niche engagements.

Instead build a weapon’s shop and armorer to build pikemen.  PIkemen are the first frontline soldier you get.  They are heavily armored and exceptionally slow.  However they tear apart enemy archers and cavalry.

The challenge of this mission will be balancing pushing with defending.  The honus should be on defending here because the enemy attacks can very easily wipe you out.  Focus on increasing production and getting large numbers of archers, swordsmen, and trebuchets.  Just about every other unit is going to be useless to you here.

If the enemy is able to get to your wall you should use your pikemen to delay them.  Losing too much wall will really hurt you fast.

You should also be looking for men with torches.  They will burn your farm land and that just cannot happen.  To deal with them rally your pikemen out and have them spread out.  Pikemen like man at arms attack very quickly and will make short work of these cheap enemy units.

When you have a large number of archers you can use them to harass.  Kill off enemy archers. This will cause the melee units to “pull.”  Move your archers back, they move 10x faster than the enemy units.  As long as you continue to move them away from enemy units and fire they will kill off the enemy.  You can clear off the entire first wall with this method.

Adding in a few boulders from trebuchets from time to time can also help as the enemy will have a massive height advantage.

After you have down this first wall you will need to plan for one giant push to the enemy.  You will want to wait for about 30-35 minutes in before you consider moving out, you will need a lot of units.

Move forward with your trebuchets and knock down any old wall at all.  Once it’s down work on knocking down walls and towers with archers on them.

Move your archers in to try and pick off some archers.

Move your giant ball of pikemen and whatever melee units you can must and have them directly attack the lord.

Once the lord dies, you win.  If you do not kill the lord, you lose.  If you have the time use your trebuchet to wipe out as many walls and towers as possible before doing your final push, this will make resistance far less.

4. Jerusalem

Not quite the capitol of the Muslim empire but it was a very important holy city to both sides.  Jerusalem has been building walls for centuries, making it one of the easiest cities in the world to defend… but a hell of a fight to capture.

This is a layered siege with the first layer being traps and wood picket, the second layer being a single wall, the third layer being a circled wood picket, the fourth layer being a wall with towers and the final layer just being a wall.  Each layer has a large number of archers and select groups of swordsmen.

Lucky for you there is no time limit.  What there is, is an enemy army constantly being sent at you.  The army grows larger over time and waves will increase over time.  Eventually the enemy will just start spawning on your base because the army is so large.  This is an artificial timer because eventually the enemy army will become so big that you have absolutely no hope of defeating it.

The goal to beating this on the hardest difficulty is to to constantly increase the size and scope of your economy.  This means constantly increasing production of food, your population, and weapons production.

Early on you will want to max out your stone production so that you can build up a mini fortress as fast as possible.

A good fortress should be square have multiple gateway doors for fast travel and a few towers to keep your archers on.  Make it as close to the front as humanly possible.  You will even be able to get a few early hits on the enemy doing this.

Once you have this monstrosity built you can lay down your barracks and armory.  Once they’re sold you can sell off your stone.  The amount of stone you should be getting from six quarries will be huge so use Shift+Click to mass sell items.

Your iron production is what you need next.  You can sell some at first but eventually you will need it for weapon’s production.

You will be building a varied army here.  Swordsmen are the frontline grunt of the army.  They are slow but very powerful.

The templar knight is also very slow can be updated with a mount to charge faster into battle.  Their attacks are incredibly powerful… buy they also cost 150 gold to make which means the stronger your economy the more of these juggernauts you will get to keep.

The Sergeant at Arms will grant your army a buff.  The buff will increase attack power and reduce damage coming in. These you will only need a few of as their attacks are not that strong.

Man at arms or pikemen can be mixed in for a little bit of extra damage but are not all that necessary.

The core of your army is crossbowmen and archers.  The more of these you get the better.  In large numbers they can obliterate just about anything.

When the enemy invades an important consideration is getting down enemy catapults first.  Catapults will destroy your walls very quickly.  After that your ranged can take care of whatever the enemy throws at you.

You can get some trebuchets out to harass the enemy.  Once you get 3-4 of these things their diseased animals will obliterate packs of enemy’s.

Before moving up trebuchets and the bulk of your army make sure to send in some Fire Carts (also found in the tents that build trebuchets) ahead of the army to attack areas that are wooded.  Wooded areas are loaded with traps and the fire will burn them all down making it safe for your army to travel through that region.

This mission is all about balancing progression with defense.  The enemy will spawn from two distinct points.  At the far end you will have very powerful cavalry archers who will obliterate anything that isn’t on a wall.  Directly next to your base is the main army spawn point.  If your forces are caught too far from your base they will be flanked and obliterated quickly, the wall provides a massive advantage to your army.

Once you have about 50 crossbowmen you will be able to quickly take out the enemy.  Slow progress with your trebuchets knocking down walls with your swordsmen and crossbowmen supporting against the possible cavalry archer attacks.

It’s important to remember for this one that as you are taking longer and longer you have to consider investing more in food, hovels and weapon production.  You need to keep ahead of the size of the enemy army that will spawn.

Campaign 3: Saladin

Saladin, commander of the Muslim armies has set you, a young general, with the task of controlling out lying areas and keeping things in check.  Chaos is spreading throughout the Muslim world and you are the one who has to put it all back together.

1. Crusader Incursion

The crusaders are making a beach landing and you need to stop them from getting a foothold.  They have landed their ship and setup a preliminary fort… that has to be demolished.

The trick here is you can only purchase mercenary units.  Mercenary units are far more expensive than regular ones but there is no time cost in terms of getting weapons.

There are a large number of mercenaries to choose from.  There are two types of ranged.  The first archer has the unique ability of shooting in a very large curve which can fire over walls.  This is useful in wiping out enemies that are not on walls but are waiting for a ground attack… like computer melee.

The second kind of ranged is a cavalry archer.  The cavalry archer can shoot on the move making them perfect for picking off melee units… but awful against other archers.

In the melee category there is the generic foot soldier which has slightly worse armor than the swordsman and slightly less damage… but is functionally the same.

Finally there is a Healer who… can heal units.  This is purely a support character.  As a unique feature they cannot heal other healers… but there is an achievement for healing your lord up from 50%.

So with this one it’s all about economics.  You can build stone to sell and cheese.  You will need to sell a lot of these to make the army you need.

While waiting on that though make sure to get a decent sized cavalry archer army, 15 should do.  Have them wipe out all of the armed peasants and man at arms in your way.  They should avoid the wall if they can as the archers there will cut through them easily.  If you have idling time you can use your cavalry archers to wipe out enemy’s production.

Your invasion composition will be 2-4 catapults a few healers and the foot soldiers.  The foot soldiers will walk in and take out the lord.

You simply have to use the catapults to knock down the walls and kill the archers on top.  Going with only one is silly as it will get easily destroyed.  This mission is a balance of pushing in on the enemy and sitting back to defend random spawn pushes.

2. Treachery

One of Saladin’s own Caliphs has betrayed him… and you’re left to deal with the traitor.  The traitor is attacking your post and you are left to quickly defend.

In this mission you will gain access to fire throwers.  These are powerful low range area of effect units.  Because of their insanely low range it’s recommended to not build too many of these.  They are great for clearing units off of the walls, not so great against archers.

As well you will gain a new trap, pitch.  Pitch traps require you to lay down the actual trap and to place braziers in towers.  When the enemy steps over the black tar you select an archer near a brazier and hover your mouse over the pitch and right click to light it on fire.  You will need to place a lot of pitch to cover territory.

For your economy you will have stone, food and pitch.  The swamp for the pitch is located in the oasis where your food is.  You can fill this up with pitch extraction as anything you don’t use you can sell.  Likewise you can sell stone and food for extra troops.

You will want to initially destroy all of the ruins around the wall.  After this build in place real walls.  You’ll want to add in a couple more gates and one more tower to the mix.  After that sell any stone you don’t need for repairs later on.  Also a bit worth it is to wall off the eastern side where your stone production is.  This will stop the enemy from burning it indefinitely.  But much like other missions it will bug out any enemy that is set to go there.

For “clean up” you will need a few melee units.  The new Whirring melee unit is an excellent anti-artilley unit.  It will dash very quickly towards the enemy and begin doing an area of effect attack.

Keep hitting pitch when an enemy is on it and this campaign level will be done very quickly.

3. Justice

Stronghold 2 Crusader is a real time strategy game in which you have to create resources and use those resources to build units to kill the enemy’s castle. It is often categorized in the sub-genre of castle siege.

Richard has taken Jerusalem. Saladin fearing that they would plunder the city ordered you to take back the city at all costs. The goal is to break through with a limited army and reach the main gates.

It’s off to go hunt that dirty Caliph and you’ve been given an army to invade his keep.

This mission looks really hard but is in fact quite easy.

For the first wall use cavalry archers to pull the melee unit and kill it.  Send in your regular archers with mantlet to pick off the one archer on the top.

You get a new unit, the assassin.  This is a unique siege unit that can climb walls and remain mostly invisible unless around enemy units.  Use it to climb the wall and open the door for your troops to get through.

Next up is a wood barricade.  Send your torch runners to light it on fire.  After it runs out send them again to the next wood barricade to do the same thing.

On the next wall you’ll probably not have any archers around.  If you do have them kill the enemy archers on the wall.  If you don’t just have your assassins all in to unlock this wall.

For the next two walls you are going to “brute force” your way in.  Having your foot men attack the gates and break them open.  Nothing the enemy has does a terribly high amount of damage.

After this simply click on the lord.  The mission will end as you reach him.

4. The Holy City

This is a very unique invasion mission.  You will be able to purchase new units as you find caches of gold spread throughout the map.  There is one visible cache of gold.  This cache is designed to trap you as getting it takes time off your clock and hurts your goal.  On hard difficulty it is best to just ignore this extra 250 gold as you will never be able to make the timer.

You now gain access to a brand new unit, the Sassanid Knight.  These knights have a charge ability that will deal very high bursty damage on first strike.  After this they do regular damage.  They are most effective against armored units but can be used for tying up ranged or knocking out peasants quickly.

To start rush your knights north past the first wall.  There is a hill leading to a second path.  On that hill in the western corner there is a pocket where you can pick up 250 gold.  Use this to get another Hassinite War Wagon and a Catapult.

The Hassinite War Wagon will be used profusely from here on out.  When you place ranged units in it they will be able to fire on the move, while being protected.  These will be used to pick archers off of walls and towers so the remainder of your forces can get through.  Load up your war wagon and move them north.  Move your armored foot soldiers with them to add a bit of bang for your buck.  After it is clear move the rest of your forces up.

Your war wagons should move forward again on the hill and wipe all of the ranged off of that wall.  Bring in your catapults to wipe out enemy towers in the distance.  While this is happening your armored mercs can be used to destroy the enemy wall.  With your catapult focus on getting rid of wall pieces with archers on them and any towers.  If an archer is destroyed you do not need to destroy the full wall, just focus on getting rid of the archers with the catapult.

After you get this wall down there will be another hidden gold cache by the ruins.  Grab this and get more catapults out.

You will want to aim down the long wall segment on the northeastern part of the map.  Use the war wagons to pick up archers while your catapults break it down.  Your foot soldiers should charge forward to aid in breaking the wall down.

Once it’s down move your soldiers through to deal with melee.  Your sassanid knights can be brought in to support as well.  Once you have enough space from that wall to bring your catapult and war wagon in do so.  They’ll offer amazing support for this final push.

There is a “counter push” by the computer that will randomly get rallied out.  They arrive at your leader when there is only one minute left on the clock.  If you’re taking too long you can use a horse archer to pull these units away from your leader.

There’s one very heavily defended area left.  Any kind of melee you can rally out at all will be helpful.  Armed Peasants can be especially good for breaking down walls.  Use everything you have to knock down this wall.  The goal of the mission is to get to a point so once this wall gets down ignore the units and just move your forces forward.

Campaign 4: Delivering Justice

After the fall of Jerusalem, King Richard feels this land is not as plentiful as he had once thought.  This land was full of crimes, petty lords, and a total lack of nobility.  One “swine” (The Pig) is taking the time to rob local caravans.  King Richard sends you out on a mission to hunt this Pig… I mean swine.

1. Robber Baron

The enemy patrols come from one of five locations.  There are two entry points in the southwest and three in the northeast.  They can come from any of these points.

To deal with this you are going to make a ball of fast units.  Archers, mounted knights, macemen, and man at arms are all going to be amazing units here.  Simply have high production of resources as you have been in the past and add in work shops for these types as you can.

You will be given a high supply of random weapons so adding in an armor work shop will be invaluable.

To better see the enemy locations go to the Mini Map and hold Shift while zooming out.  This will zoom out the map all the way so you can better see where the enemy is coming from.

About half way in you are going to want to begin building a second army that is only for the west.  This army should be composed of pikemen, footmen, knights, and crossbowmen.  It will need far less units, but they will also be far more expensive.  Since they only have two flanks to cover they can just sit in between the two points.

This mission is all about maintaining your economy and getting your numbers up.  As long as you can balance having a strong mobile group and having a moderate strength static group you will do fine.

2. Swine

With the caravans protected Richard has now charted you to hunt down the swine and take him down.

This is another siege mission in which you are gaining access to a huge variety of units.

Use your catapults to wipe out the wood walls.  You want to create a straight path for your units to just walk on through.

With them knocked out walk forward with every unit but your ranged, mantlets, and assassins.  After you have your units near the square tower at the entrance have your guys attacking it.  This tower will actually provide cover against many of the archers firing.

If you’re looking for brownie points get your Dervishes (the spinning guys who run fast) to wipe out archers on the bank to the east.

Your archers and crossbowmen should be moving out slowly picking archers off of the enemy walls to eliminate enemy fire.  If you move all of them too far forward at once they will be the ones getting targeted heavily and be wiped out quickly.  Your catapults are in a similar situation, they need to have most archers cleared before they can move forward and aid with taking out that square tower.

Once you get down the square tower you can move to the next round of towers.  It’s not as heavily fortified.  Use the archers and crossbowmen to pick off whatever enemy ranged you can.  This time have your footsoldiers targeting a wall segment.  This southern wall fragment will also act as cover.

Oh did you forget about your assassins?  Unfortunately they die to fast to be involved in the main siege.  Once you get down that last wall you can bring them in to assist with damage on the lord.  However before doing this just try and clear out the enemy’s melee behind the wall, you don’t after all want to have yourself pinned down while archers are firing.

Once those last few units are down bum rush the enemy with knights and bring in your assassins for extra damage.

Campaign 5: Freedom Fighters

With Saladin’s empire destroyed he is seeing a mass revolt of Arab lords all turning against him and trying to get their own share of the property.  Saladin has a small army now and must re-unifying the Arab world under his boot in order to drive out the Crusader lords.

1. Kerak

One of the lords claiming their stake in the region calls Castle Kerak their home.  Striking down Kerak will not be easy.

Kerak is a simple two wall design.  However it being on a mountain means that all ranged units gain extra range making a traditional siege impossible.  It is a fortress.

To start lay down 8-9 wood cutting places, one home and 2-3 fruit farms.

Buy up as much wood as you can and sell off everything else in favor of wood.  Get up the maximum number of stone production buildings followed by the maximum number of iron buildings.

As you get stone build the largest tower on the southern part of the island (to the east it’s very small).  This is what you will be using as a choke point to beat the enemy.  Build your gatehouse, a large strip of wall and some stairs to get up.  Once that’s all built sell off all of your stone to build a mercenary camp.  Pump out as many archers as you can, enemy forces will arrive soon.

In terms of the enemy forces there will be a scouting party and the main force, both will gain in strength over time.  For the main force focus on destroying the artillery pieces first and enemy second.

With your wood once you have all of your stone and iron production you should focus on food.  Some milk and some meat production will be valuable.  But the real money will be in bread.  Lay down wheat fields, a mill, and some bakers.  Throughout the game this is the one resource you will be constantly expanding on as it is the only one that will provide decent income.

As a finished product bread provides insanely high income and will be used to generate the revenues to pay off the lord for assistance.

However you don’t want to pay the lord off right away.  Instead work on getting your wall full of archers.  You can mix in one slave master (for the armor buff) and one healer to keep your forces from dying.  You can also add a few fire throwers to deal with melee on the walls.  Archers are very cheap and eventually you’ll be swimming in gold.  Lay down a siege camp and pump out War Wagons.

War Wagons can be loaded with archers and will fire on the move.  Once you have eight fill them up with archers and move out with them.  Make sure to move out with them AFTER the enemy has attacked.  Look on the map to make sure there are no slow moving knights coming.

Move these eight war wagons to the east along the mountain face.  The goal here is to wipe out the enemy units along the western wall of the enemy as well as the two towers.  If you can do this you can bring your own forces to link up with your purchased units for a full push.  You will lose some war wagons here… try not to lose any archers if you can.  Once they’re all wiped out bring the war wagons back, you can reuse them later on in the final push.

In the mean time start hard production of foot soldiers for the final push.

Keep in mind this whole time you should have been expanding bread production by adding in wheat farms, mills, and bakeries.  You should be swimming in bread and be able to pay off that final sum immediately… but you’re not.  Instead you’re going to prepare as many foot soldiers as you can.

The point where you should push it over and call on the Shah’s army is when you see a siege push with a trebuchet and four catapults.  That is the final big push by the enemy.  To defeat it send out your giant army of knights to meet the enemy and focus them on wiping out the enemy catapults.

There will be another scouting party and some enemy knights after this, but with the size of your army they are easy to deal with.  Send all of your units to the middle south of the map to link up with the Shah’s forces as they arrive.

The Shah will give you an interesting mix of units, some are useful, some are useless.

Load up archers into the war wagons.  You can send the war wargons and foot soldiers ahead first.  Just make sure to slow the war wargons so they’re always behind the foot soldiers.  The mantlets can also be used to soak some of the ranged damage from the war wagons.

Your cavalry archers can be used to wipe out enemy archers on the eastern wall…. unfortunately they’re one of the most useless units here.  The knights can be used for charging down enemy armor.  They should however be pulled back when they’re not attacking enemy armor.

Catapults and surplus archers should be moved up slowly after the bulk of the archers have been wiped out. The catapults can be used in breaking down walls and doors.  Your knights should also be focused on this.  Once the gatehouse has been knocked down send your units in.  Focus the catapult and units on knocking down a wall.  Your war wargons can slide in and provide that cover, as well other archers can be brought in to help with this as well.

Once the wall is opened move in with your footmen.  You should have at least 50 footmen by this point.

Your catapults can provide support now hitting walls with archers on them, gatehouses and towers.  Once you climb to the top of the master’s keep… you win.

2. The Horns of Hattin

Welcome to RTS hell, there is very little room for development and your only two tradeable resources will be Bread, Stone and Wood.

You should start by building a medium sized tower, a single stretch of wall and a stairs next to it.  This should be placed just south of the fortress beaming over you.  Send your archers up this tower and wipe out as many enemy archers as possible.  Once you can’t fire on anymore bring them down.  This will allow your workers to actually work instead of constantly getting sniped.  You will have to buy some stone to do this.

Next up plant down your wood, a lot of wood.  Look to 9-10 wood camps.  You should place your stone next, only the two.  Make sure to have 3 rams carrying cargo for better efficiency.

You will note that in your stockpile is a lot of wheat.  This means that you can skip straight to making a mill and start mass producing bread with bakeries.  So that’s going to be your plan here.  You can add one or two wheat farms from time to time throughout but for the most part that 100 stack of wheat should last you the whole game.  In terms of your economy make sure to constantly expands your homes, milling and bakeries.

You will need to complete your castle eventually.  Just make a few more walls and create a half fort.  This will draw the enemies in towards your half fort instead of skipping to your castle.

As for items to sell, it’s only going to be bread and stone.  This means your revenues will be insanely small.  With what you get make a lot of archers and as many foot men as you can.  These are your two main battle units.

Saladin will send you free units, they won’t be the ones you necessarily want… but they will be the ones available.

Eventually you will get assassins.  You can send a single assassin to eliminate the dog traps on both sides of the map.  Once activated the enemy will destroy them themselves without the assassin losing stealth.

If you move your group of assassins to the south of that fortress overseeing you, you can actually climb them up without being spotted and kill off all of the enemy archers and rangers there with relative ease.  This gives you control of the fort, and also 500 gold.

For another extra piece of gold look to the northwest.  There is a giant open area there behind a wall.  Have an assassin climb over that to get the extra gold.

You will need to spend a decent amount of time defending here.  You won’t even begin your first push until the half marker.  At this point you will have been given four catapults from the computer and will have a massive force of archers and footmen.

You should send two knights to clear out the little picket of archers before moving too far.  They will just slow you down and the knights unfortunately are not that useful in this mission otherwise.

Move forward with the footmen in the lead and have your catapults try and target down archers on the walls.  Your knights can punch through here.  You’ll probably get as far as the second wall before this fizzles out.

This gives you the other half of the time to prepare your last attack.  Try and time it for the final big push of the enemy.  Push when you get the two war wagons arrive from Saladin.

You can send your forces in and simply bypass them (like two trains passing in the night).  At this point you just try and slow down their advance while your own ball of units pushing in and kills the lord.  You only need 10 surviving footmen to kill a lord, so the number you should have by this point will be ample.

In terms of management make sure your catapults are targeting down walls with archers on them while your footmen blitz through hitting the walls and killing melee enemy.  Your war wagons can be used to support as well to try and wipe archers off of the walls.  When the walls are all down you can bring in your assassins for some extra killing power.

After Thoughts

The Stronghold campaigns have always been known for being challenging and this is no exception.  In terms of learning time I spent 20 hours learning how to do each of these missions with many being far more difficult than others.  The campaign has tonnes of balancing problems and many bugs that will make you feel like quitting.

Every single mission is completable on hard difficulty.

Thank you for taking the time to read through this guide.  In the pipeworks will be the skirmishes walkthrough.