Tips | Controls Stronghold: Crusader II Guide
Last update: 11 May 2016
Stronghold Crusader 2 differs slightly from other games from the RTS genre, and while there is some help in the game in the form of a manual, it's not very detailed, which can make some of the players feel a little lost. With the help of this section you will learn about various gameplay mechanics, as well as about things you should and definitely should not do.
1. Before you start creation of your army, you should first make sure that you have sufficiently developed your economy. A huge army (which you surely won't be able to hire either way) won't be any good if you will run out of gold after a couple of minutes, or your granary will end up being empty - you won't be able to do much and you will be forced to wait for the enemy to finish you off. There are some exceptions to this rule, however - if you have huge amounts of hold from the very beginning of the game, or if you are planning a rush attack on the enemy.
2. As soon as the game starts, whether it's a single player or an online one, look around your starting position and locate key places, like oasis (or several of them), stone and iron deposit, or lakes and mountain gorges. Place your stockpile as close to the oasis as possible, and you should do the same with your Granary - it will allow you to speed up the food production process a lot.
3. Make sure that your stone and iron transportation is efficient. You don't have to build 4 Ox Tethers (which is max) from the very beginning, especially when iron / stone deposit is not far from your base. Place 1-2 of them by each Stone Quarry and Iron Mine and observe how the transportation works. If there are some deadlocks, when there are no boxes near those buildings and there are is no resource movement, build additional Ox Tethers until the transportation works flawlessly.
4. As far as food production goes, you can divide the buildings responsible for it into two groups - those which are effective in early game (when your population is under 50 peasants), and those which are effective when your castle is prosperous (i.e. when the population is exceeding 50 peasants). The buildings in the first group include apples, cheese and meat, and the second one is about bread production. Then your population is exceeding 50 peasants, there's no need to build additional buildings from the first group - it's better to just focus on bread production (as it is the most effective method of food acquisition), and leave the rest of the buildings and refrain from building more of them. You can also set automatic purchase of the remaining food types (apples, cheese, meat) so that you will get a popularity boost from food variety.
5. If you are planning on keeping a relatively high level of ale / religious distribution (x2 - x3), you should remember about a golden rule - build 1 Brewery and 1 Candler's Workshop for every 10 peasants present in your castle (by having a population of 50 you will need 5 Breweries and 5 Candler's Workshops). It will allow you to keep the distribution of those goods on a high level, and you should still be able to sell some of the surplus on the market.
6. Try to build in a neat and tidy manner - do not place your buildings randomly, scattering them around the whole map. Not only that it will slower your goods production (not to mention that you won't be able to find anything...), you will also waste a lot of precious space - and you surely will find about the fact that every centimeter counts in this game, especially when it comes to oasis.
7. Place your production buildings in appropriate places. Resource production, excluding stone and iron (which cannot be placed anywhere else but on deposits), or to be more specific wood producing buildings (Wood Camps) should be placed near trees - this will make your woodcutters' route a lot shorter, making their work more efficient. Food producing buildings should be placed as close to the Granary as possible - your peasants will carry the food a lot faster, allowing them to produce more food in general. Buildings turning one material into another (like Mill turning wheat into flour, or Brewery turning hop into ale), or those which "make something out of thin air" (like Candler's Workshop) should be placed near Stockpile. Buildings which produce armament should be as close to the Armory as possible. Placing your buildings in a proper way will allow you to boost your productivity - if your enemy won't be doing the same, you will have a huge advantage over him. A thing to remember - if you have the opportunity, you should always place every mentioned building between Stockpile, and the place from which your peasants extract various resources, or to where they are carrying a final product. Wood Camps will work the best when placed between Stockpile and a source of wood, Bakery will be most efficient when between Granary and Stockpile - this rule applies to armament producing buildings as well (Stockpile - Armory).
8. Do not place your buildings on top of one another. It's crucial to build in a tidy manner, without scattering construction around the map, but you should not build all your buildings on top of one another. There's one reason for that - the risk of fire. When one of your buildings catches fire (regardless if it was caused by natural means or by enemy's attacks), all the buildings in the closest neighborhood (those which "stick to it") will be set ablaze in a matter of seconds. This way, you can have dozens of burning buildings in a short while, which is almost impossible subdue, resulting in a loss of massive amount of wood and/or stone. If you don't want to make any space in between them, you should at least split different groups of buildings.
9. Regardless of whether you care about space in between buildings, you should always invest into wells. Building a few of them is an insignificant cost, and having them when a fire starts will allow you to rescue at least some of them, saving massive amounts of resources.
10. Don't build your Hovels in advance - if you need a few more peasants at most (to fill in some buildings, or to just increase the army recruitment comfort) build one, two hovels at most. Building several of them at once will increase your population by a huge amount, which will in turn increase the expenditure of food, ale and candles, which can collapse your economy in a matter of seconds.
11. If you need to recruit a massive amount of soldiers in a short span of time, you can use a little trick. Make sure that you have all the required materials, like weapons and gold (you should always prepare more gold that you are willing to spend), and a sufficiently large supply of food, candles and ale. Next, decrease your taxes to a level in which you are starting to give away gold (bribes - the bigger the better), increase your food rations (to max, if you are able to) and set the religion / ale distribution to maximum. This way you will be losing huge amounts of gold, food, ale and candles, but your popularity should significantly exceed +100. Thanks to that, you will have a rapid peasant inflow (about 2 peasants each second), which will allow you to recruit hundreds of soldiers in only a few minutes. Remember to make sure that you are well prepared for that. You can also use a "lighter version" of this maneuver, changing food, taxes, ale and/or religious ratios to your own preferences, but you should always opt to get at least +100 popularity. This method is extremely effective when you've just lost your entire army and you have huge supplies of resources and gold to spend.
12. Read the Units section to learn about various types of units, their strengths and weaknesses. It will allow you to counter your enemies easier - which is especially easy to do, as there is no fog of war in the game and everything is visible.
13. While building walls, try to do so in a way so that your walls are at least two-grid wide - so that you can post at least two rows of units on them. It will allow them to withstand a lot more attacks from enemy's siege equipment, and you will be able to set more units on the walls.
14. Additionally, try to build as many towers as possible, especially Grand Towers. They are more effective and resistant than even several layers of walls, and they give a huge height advantage, allowing your archers to get rid of most siege equipment before it even reaches your walls.
15. If you decide to build some "turrets" (Tower Mangonel / Ballista / Haybale Launcher), build them several grids behind the wall. Those buildings are extremely expensive, and at the same time very vulnerable to attacks (one spear from a Man-at-arms will destroy it), and given their extreme range (especially that of a Ballista), they will still be able to attack most of their targets, while being relatively safe.
16. Try not to leave gaps on the walls - try to mount them carefully. Each gap in the wall can lure an Assassin attack, who can climb up your walls and get past it without you even noticing (Assassins are invisible to the enemy, unless they are close to them) - they can make a lot of mess in your base, open a gate, or even kill your Lord if there is enough of them.
17. Placing a Sergeant at Arms and/or a Healer in between a group of Archers / Crossbowmen standing on a wall is a good idea. The first one will increase the armor of your troops, while the second one will heal any wounds sustained by them. It's quite a large, though one-time cost, but with a big attack intensity of the enemy forces it should return pretty quickly. Don't forget about their main appliance though - Sergeant at Arms are suited to be on the front lines, together with Swordsmen and Templar Knights.
18. Don't you ever attack with your Lord! He's the strongest unit in the game, it's true, but the moment he is killed is the moment your game ends. Keep an eye on him all the time, surround him with a wall (even if you've already built a wall around your whole base) and leave a few stronger units in his company to protect him from a surprise attack (performed by enemy Assassins, for instance).
19. Your most important buildings, like Granary and Stockpile should always be protected at all costs - try to build them behind a wall so that the enemy won't have an easy access to them. Losing the former one will result in a serious penalty to your popularity - you will have to deal with lack of food, and even if you build a new one, it will take a few moments to start gathering food again.
20. Don't leave your siege equipment without protection! Even the most basic, weakest and cheapest units in the game can make a short work of them, and most of siege equipment cost enormous amounts of gold. Your machines are especially vulnerable to enemy Macemen, Sassanid Knights and Whirling Dervishes, who all have the Charge ability.
21. While planning to attack the enemy defenses, send a squad of cannon fodder and "run around" the wall a little bit - this way you will be able to pick any traps (like Man Traps). After you've made sure that the terrain is relatively safe, send your heavy armored units (Swordsmen or Templar Knights) before you use any siege equipment. It will allow to focus at least some of the fire on your knights, increasing the time your machines will have to make short work of enemy walls and towers. Always try to send your armored units first, regardless of whether you have your siege equipment or you are planning on using a huge squad of archers to clear the walls of off enemies.
22. While sending your troops to the walls, make sure to mix them up, so that there's plenty of Archers, as well as Crossbowmen there. The former are excellent against swarms of fragile troops, and because of their huge range, they are especially good with dealing with the enemy siege equipment. The latter have shorter range, they take more time to fire their projectiles, but their attacks are many times stronger than those of Archers, meaning that Crossbowmen are extremely effective against armored targets. There's really no need to send melee units on your walls (besides Sergeant at Arms), because there are no units (besides Assassins) capable of climbing your walls, like it was in previous installments of the game.
23. Your Trebuchets, even when they are mainly used for offense, are extremely effective when used in defense as well. Placing several of them just behind your walls (from your side, obviously) will allow you to get rid, or at least severely damage enemy siege equipment before it even reaches your walls (one stone fired from it can destroy most siege equipment). You can also use them to fire carrion, so that enemy forces marching towards your walls will be weakened, if not killed.