Stronghold: Summary and Rating

My halfling emperor has defeated all enemies!

     

Stronghold
United States
Stormfront Studios (developer); Strategic Simulations, Inc. (publisher)
Released 1993 for DOS, 1994 for FM Towns and PC-98
Date Started: 8 August 2021

Date Finished: 16 August 2021
Total Hours: 21
Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5)
Final Rating: 26
Ranking at time of posting: 215/444 (48%)

      

To wrap up my coverage of Stronghold, I'll discuss my experience playing a game on "Hostile" mode with a halfling ruler and dwarf, mage, fighter, and cleric vassals.

      

This is what a fully-upgraded halfling stronghold looks like, by the way.

       

I started the usual way, building farms and housing and claiming trees and mines. As my income grew, I expanded into granaries (you need a lot of food storage to get through winters), vaults, and some training institutions. My character got promoted to duke just on city-building alone.

  

Eventually, I started to notice enemy units to my east, and I went through the army-building process described above. The enemy faction was giant bats. I fought them to their "stronghold" (a cave) and destroyed it. Ultimately, that's what you need to do to defeat any faction. I found out the hard way that destroying a stronghold will immediately cause any random units of that faction to make a beeline for your stronghold in revenge. You need to prepare for this by having units in between (and it's very hard to send units to multiple different locations) or by cleaning up most of the random units before attacking the stronghold. This is usually pretty easy because enemies tend to have only a single unit on most rectangles except their strongholds. I found that if I set a destination for my army that would take them through the middle of a bunch of enemy forces, they would generally clear a path of destruction in between, wiping out those single units.

     

Big battle in front of an evil cleric's stronghold.

    

While I was finishing up with the giant bats, I ran afoul of another faction of "evil clerics" in the same area. They had low-level undead in their armies, but they were easy to defeat, particularly with my own clerics turning undead.

  

I set up a tower and immediately noticed a third faction in the northeast corner. I started sending my army against its outlying units, and there encountered my first problem. This was a faction of wights. Wights can only be turned by the highest-level clerics, and they can only be damaged by magic weapons or spells. The only way to get magic weapons into your party is by building forges and upgrading them at least once. I hadn't built any. I immediately had my dwarf, fighter, and cleric factions work on forges (mages don't get that option), but building them takes a long time, and you have to not only build them but then improve them one level so they start spitting out +1 weapons. Even then, they only distribute them to units at a rate of one per turn, and the distribution seems to be random.

       

Well, that's going to be a problem.

     

For a couple of entire seasons, I fought straggling wights with my mages doing most of the damage and the other units just serving as cannon fodder to keep the mages alive. Eventually, +1 clubs, short swords, and bows started appearing in the hands of my units, and I could do some serious damage. I pressed forward and destroyed the wight fortress. This entire time, I had been sending new units to the battlefront, but as I mentioned, a lot of them deserted and claimed parcels of land on their own. I manually unassigned some of these units, but others I just sighed and left them where they were, creating a string of occupied territory between my central kingdom and the areas I'd conquered.

   

I figured while my army was already in the field, I might as well focus on them and clear as many other enemy factions as I could. My kingdom was already built as much as it really needed to be. I had a solid income coming in and plenty of places to store gold and food. I had training facilities and equipment facilities for each type of unit, plus an arena that supposedly improves all factions faster. I was spending money to upgrade random facilities, trees, and farmland just so it wouldn't go to waste.

       

This was just a vanity project.

      

The army was in the northeast corner, so I picked a random square in the mid-north corner and sent them there, then moved them towards the northwest corner. You understand that while the main army was doing this, new units were traveling from my central kingdom to join them in these destination squares. As I got close to new factions, I started seeing their units. I cleared out two strongholds of dire wolves, one of giant toads, and one of evil fighters. I began to wonder how many damned factions there were on the map. My main character was crowned emperor--enough to win a "lawful" version of the game--during this process.

      

This halfling truly bows to no one.

   

All of a sudden, I was in serious trouble. One of my guard towers to the west of the kingdom was wiped out by a party of obsidian statues. They literally seemed to come out of nowhere (and in more than one sense; I've never seen them in a previous D&D game). I realized with horror that there was a line of them extending westward heading for my kingdom, and specifically my mage's keep.

   

I immediately recalled my army, but it was too late. The obsidian statues blew through my outer defenses. By painstakingly swapping new Level 1 units for some of my more experienced ones, I was able to halt them on a hill one square to the south of the mage's keep, where a pitched battle began. A few fighter, cleric, and mage units held them off long enough for my field units to start returning to the square.

   

The resulting battle lasted literal years of game time. I think the seasons changed nine times. During most this time, I had every new unit join the battle, but otherwise the kingdom went on as normal. (You don't have to click within a rectangle and watch the battle for the battle to continue; I'm not sure if it makes any difference if you do.) I continued making upgrades, including to my main stronghold. I upgraded forges and armories. 

     

This battle would not end.

    

One of my commenters wanted me to comment on combat sounds. The game is otherwise relatively sparse with sound. Where it's not sparse, it's annoying. For instance, when you click on one of your leaders to view his statistics, there's an obnoxious pause while the game loads a sound file--either a cheer, silence, or jeers depending on his favorability with the populace. But in combat, the sounds are pretty good. There are clanks and thuds for weapons and lots of sounds associated with spell effects, including a satisfying zap when a mage fires off a lightning bolt. Unfortunately, I think these sounds contribute to frequent stuttering during combat. There are some other oddities, too. I think there might be a maximum number of characters that the game can depict on a single screen. Very often, my army would clear out the enemy forces but still show as "in combat." I would click off the screen and return, and there would be half a dozen more enemies there.

  

Slowly, the tide started to turn in their favor. The game had been going on so long by this point (about 10 hours of real time) that I almost welcomed a loss. I could still say I "won" with the previous character but also had the experience of combat. But I sucked it up and started taking units from built rectangles and sending them into combat. Immediately, the structures started to decay, and ultimately I lost most of them. As even those units fell, I started taking more and more. By the time I eventually turned the tide, I had deconstructed fully half my kingdom, including key facilities like vaults and forges.

       

Things got pretty grim for a while.

    

The one positive from the experience was the army that remained was mostly higher-level units. My thoughts immediately turned to revenge. I sent everyone I had westward, towards where I assumed the obsidian statues were coming from. About the same time, a faction of trolls started attacking from the south, so I had to permanently station some units on their path of approach to deal with them, which mostly worked. I also let new units occasionally establish themselves in the rectangles from which I'd taken the veteran units, thus slowly rebuilding my kingdom. Fortunately, I had plenty of income still, and because I was already emperor, I didn't really need to keep anyone happy.

   

Before I found the obsidian statues, I cleared out a faction of minotaurs. The statues themselves weren't as hard on their home turf as they'd been on mine, but the final battle still took so long that I established a series of outposts on the west side of the map. Outposts allow you to spawn new factions in areas other than the central kingdom. It's not quite the same thing as "vectoring" in Warlords because you can't control what percentage of new units spawn there, but it's better than nothing.

  

Destroying the obsidian statues' stronghold was the highlight of the game. I then sent my army southeast into troll territory and destroyed them. From my guard towers in their territory, I identified the final faction, which was a bunch of goblins in the southeast. They swiftly fell before my horde of Level 6-8 units.

      

On this map, you can see my kingdom in the center and my field units entering the goblin kingdom to the southeast.

     

"All enemies destroyed," the game told me, as I settled back in satisfaction, ready to finally write this entry. That satisfaction turned to rage when the message changed: "Next wave of enemies appear." Seriously!? Destroying 12 other kingdoms wasn't enough?! The neutral or chaotic hero really gets a raw deal in this game.

      

Next what now?

    

The "second wave" consisted of a smaller number of more difficult enemies, including more obsidian statues, more giant toads, fire giants, and the dreaded Lord Mindark. Some of their strongholds spawned right next to rectangles I was already occupying, leading to immediate combat.

   

I had a high-level army already in the field, though, and my kingdom was by now restored to full power. I was having to stop every few minutes to spend tens of thousands of accumulated gold on new buildings and upgrades I didn't even need. Upgrade some random farmland for 3,000! Turn a tree into a forest for 4,000 (how, exactly?)! Make that forge capable of +2 weapons for 8,000! Build another arena!

    

I can't remember what these enemies are.

      

Thus, the only difficulty was the time it takes to send units from one place to another. I revved up DOSBox considerably during this period. As the army reached each kingdom, though, they were pretty swiftly victorious. I destroyed the fire giants last. Steeling myself for a "third wave," I was happy to see that the game, in fact, ended there. I could continue playing, but my score wouldn't be recorded beyond what I'd already accomplished.

    

Major rewards for destroying Mindark's stronghold. Too bad it's the end of the game.

        

In retrospect, that I was able to win twice in succession, including on "Hostile" difficulty, suggests that perhaps the game is a bit too easy. Then again, I never faced medusas, red dragons, stone giants, or vampires, all of which the manual says are possible. Perhaps you need to play custom difficulty to generate those, or perhaps I just got lucky. Because I found it relatively easy, there are a lot of aspects of the game that I didn't explore, a lot of buildings that I never tried, and a lot of variables that I never optimized. For instance, I didn't overly worry which race claimed a mine, tree, or farm even though dwarves, elves, and halflings do better with those things, respectively. I didn't fiddle much with the "pyramids" (which adjust the proportion of time spent on various activities). I never had one hero build a location and then transfer it to a different hero. I never did much with walls or even bridges. 

     

I wish I could put these two against each other.

         

I wouldn't say that I "enjoyed" the game--I don't really like city simulators--but I found it remarkably addictive. The character who won on "Hostile" took about 14 hours, and I'm sorry to say that I played most of that in a single day, from about 14:00 to about 04:00. There never seemed to be any good place to stop. I've had the same feeling with Warlords and other strategy games. I've never played Civilization, but I've heard players say that it's almost impossible not to binge. Afterwards, I saw city blocks in my dreams. I felt vaguely ill, like a mental hangover, the next day. There are times after playing an RPG in which I don't feel like it was a great use of time, but I rarely feel so utterly drained.

     

In a GIMLET, I give the game:

   

• 1 point for the game world. There isn't much to the story. You're not even told what planet you're on.

• 3 points for character creation and development. The specific assemblage of "characters" makes a big difference in gameplay, and I like the way that units can get experience through training instead of just combat. 

    

The only "leveling" that matters is in random units, like this one.

    

• 0 points for no NPC interaction.

• 3 points for encounters and foes. The enemies are D&D standard, with their strengths and weaknesses well-programmed. There are no other types of encounters or puzzles.

• 3 points for magic and combat. There are a lot of factors in combat, but you don't control any of them except what units to bring. This makes combat more strategic than tactical.

     

A battle before the obsidian statue stronghold.

     

• 1 point for equipment. You have no control over specific inventories, just what your kingdom in general is capable of producing.

• 5 points for the economy. It's one of the most vital parts of the game. It lacks a certain complexity, though, and about 3/4 of the way through any game you're spending money just to spend it.

• 2 points for a main quest, or at least a main objective.

       

Destroying the evil Mindark is the closest the game has to a "main quest."

       

• 1 point for graphics, sound, and interface. I found the graphics too small and the sound too sparse, but the interface is the biggest problem. There are some things that work well, but these are overwhelmed by the deficiencies--no ability to control individual units, no ability to mass-unassign units, no ability to stack units, no ability to see developed and undeveloped parcels, and more.

• 7 points for gameplay. Games take a bit too long, but beyond that it's hard to find much to complain about. There's a lot of challenge and replayability packed into each session, particularly with the initial game options.

   

That gives us a final score of 26, which sounds low, but this is a city-simulator/strategy game being rated with RPG criteria. 

      

Note that SSI called it a "kingdom simulator."

    

Computer Gaming World tackled this one in November 1993, with H. E. Dille giving it a positive review, though noting that once you master the strengths and weaknesses of various characters, it's nearly impossible to lose. My experience bears this out. 

  

Overall, it's a much better game than I would have expected given the circumstances of its development and release. It was authorized by SSI in the waning days of their D&D license. In addition to the last of the reliable Gold Box games, this period resulted in a flurry of unconventional titles, including Spelljammer: Pirates of Realmspace (1992), Fantasy Empires (1993), Dungeon Hack (1993), and Menzoberranzan (1994). I haven't played most of these. The general consensus seems to be that they're mostly misfires, maybe with a few good ideas, but to me Stronghold is more solid (again, for its proper genre) than the rest. Of the developers SSI used, Stormfront always seems to have done at least a competent job.

    

In 2017, Christopher Weaver, the founder of Bethesda, interviewed Don Daglow, project director for Stronghold, for the Smithsonian Institution. In the interview, Daglow takes credit for the conception of Stronghold. He had been musing about a combination of SimCity and Dungeons & Dragons, but he held off development on it until he came up with the concept of the 3D side view to make it look less like SimCity specifically. He goes on about the 3D in a 2000s GameBanshee interview, too (it "was an optical illusion created in 2D with display panes and careful use of camera angles!"). I find it amusing what elements developers think matter. To me, the 3D view is the least interesting part of Stronghold. It would have been easier to work with each plot if you had seen it from the top down, like SimCity, and thus better understood the positioning of terrain elements. Anyway, Stormfront pitched the game to SSI, got the green light, and the result is in front of us.

     

There's a part of me that wants to start a new campaign, so I'd better get away from this time suck fast. Dark Sun recently appeared on the upcoming list, so we'll have a new D&D game fairly quickly.