Stronghold Kingdoms Advanced Guide
Despite being released back in 2012, Stronghold Kingdoms remains a popular strategy game. The fact it’s free to play on Steam helps, but there is a surprising amount of a depth to the free title. In a separate post, we covered a Stronghold Kingdoms Guide for Beginners. In it, we outlined some of the basics of the game when you’re first getting into it. However, if you need more info on playing the game, our Stronghold Kingdoms advanced guide is just the thing for you. We take a more detailed look at everything the game has to offer.
Stronghold Kingdoms Advanced Guide – Getting Established
Before you start on the advanced tactics and approaches on offer in the game, you first need to establish yourself. There are a few steps to reaching this point, mostly centered around the key mechanics of the game. Again, we covered this in more detail in our beginner’s guide. However, to recap:
- Get your buildings up to scratch. As well as carefully planning out your village and castle, you’ll want to spend the time upgrading them to maximize their output.
- Do your research. Early-game research is key to success. Make sure max out your resource gathering, building speed, honor, and other areas such as Arts, Engineering and Mathematics.
- Increase your honor. With points in Arts as well as scouts, you can start ramping up your honor points.
- Unlock foods. Although apples will sustain you early on in the game, you’ll want to unlock meat, bread and cheese as early as possible. The latter is achieved through a quest, while the others require research points.
Once you have all of these elements in place, you can start moving on to some of the more advanced aspects of the game.
Stronghold Kingdoms Advanced Guide – Castles
One of the central parts of Stronghold Kingdoms is your castle. It’s your last line of defense, and your muster point for attacks. As such, you’ll need to have a design that reflects both elements. Many inexperienced players just start building their castles in any way they see fit, putting looks and cost above all else.
In reality, a tactical approach to building your castle will yield much better results. There are a few points to consider when planning out your fortress:
Don’t mix wood and stone. It’s important to understand that infantry troops can’t damage stone towers, but they can damage wood and stone walls. So, you want to make sure you can fit as many stone towers around your design as possible.
Moats are your friends. Moats are often underutilized by inexperienced players. They can act as a great replacement for stone walls, as catapults can’t attack moats. So, they can be incredibly beneficial during large-scale sieges. Of course, they come at a cost, so you’ll need plenty of gold for repairs and upkeep.
Use ballista and turrets. When it comes to defending your castle, troops can only do so much. Make sure that you cover your weak points with turrets and ballista to ward off attackers. You can also use oil pots for when troops approach the perimeter.
Stronghold Kingdoms Advanced Guide – Armies
Once you’ve got yourself a castle worth defending, it’s time to assemble an army capable of defending it. Early on in the game, your approach to your military isn’t quite as consequential. However, once you hit the higher levels, you’ll need to start paying more attention to your troops.
One of the key things here is to understand how certain units behave on the battlefield, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. Here’s a brief rundown:
- Swords. Although they don’t have that much armor and health, their attack power is very high. They can easily take down stone walls, and are a fearsome match for many units in the game.
- Pikes. Pikes don’t have the attack power that swordsmen do, but their health and armor is far superior. They’re excellent for defense, as they will stay where you place them until the bitter end.
- Archers. You can utilize archers in many ways, and they’re good for attack and defense. However, you’ll need to make sure they’re well-protected by having some melee troops in front of them. Once troops get near, they tend to be quite frail.
- Catapults. If you’re carrying out sieges, these long-range weapons are essential. When you upgrade them to a higher level, they can make easy work of walls and towers.
You’ll want to spend the time and resources researching each of these types of troops. Once you have them all, you can focus on maxing out their stats.
When you’re assembling an army to accompany your captain, you want to make sure you have a balance of these types of troops. When attacking, focus more on swords than pikes, and vice versa for defending.
Stronghold Kingdoms Advanced Guide – Final Thoughts
So, we’ve outlined some of the further advanced elements you need to progress in Stronghold Kingdoms. Once you’ve mastered the basics, it’s time to start building yourself a castle and an army that will be the envy of your rivals.
