Stronghold is a unique cross between city builders such as Caesar III or Sim City and a RTS in the tradition of Command & Conquer and Age of Empires. Set in medieval Europe, you'll establish settlements, build and manage castles and engage in siege warfare. The game incorporates much more building and "community managing" than a traditional RTS, yet allows for a more intense combat experience than city builders have featured in the past.

Combine building and community management with intense real-time strategy (RTS) combat with Stronghold.

Set in Medieval Europe, Stronghold challenges your strategic building, resource management and RTS combat skills. Become the ruler of a virtual medieval world with each decision and policy they implement. Decide how to regulate taxes and rations, when to offer free ale or hold fairs, as well as many other policies that will have an impact on your citizen’s lives. Work to build and protect your castle and ultimately mount an invasion to dominate the enemy’s fortress. A campaign-style storyline develops through narrative and in-game interaction.

Stronghold’s multiplayer mode supports up to eight players over the Gamespy Internet gaming service and LAN connections. You can choose to compete in the multiplayer mode for control over your own castles or work together on the same castle, assigning control over aspects such as troops and resources management in a cooperative mode.

Building
Stronghold presents missions in the form of more than 20 building goals. You begin by establishing a community through the construction of basic housing. As villagers arrive and join the aspiring kingdom, you may build workshops to produce necessary resources for castle development and defense equipment. Throughout each mission, you're challenged to take on more responsibilities such as creating mining operations, adding new workshops, and constructing various castle elements like walls and defense mechanisms. Over 30 types of walls, towers and anti-siege equipment are available, varying in cost, stability and efficiency. Additionally, virtual builders have access to various castles-specific features such as moats, drawbridges, secret gates and keeps.

More than 50 unique workshop structures provide different benefits and services. These structures include bakeries, grain mills, armories, blacksmiths, fletcher shops, mining facilities and quarry sites. As you make necessary improvements, attacks on the castle become more advanced and increasingly difficult to defend. Attacks include ones from animals to full-blown army versus army siege combat. Iimprove your castle’s functionality by strategically planning the castle layout defenses and production facilities. Proper planning will yield a self-sufficient castle capable of enduring a siege threat.

Resource Management
To increase prosperity, you'll manage various aspects of the village including crop supplies, storage facility maintenance and farmland preservation. Balancing mining efforts will help provide sufficient building resources like stone and iron. Llords must also regulate taxes to keep the economy in check. You can increase loyalties by properly managing the game's resource elements.

All Stronghold management aspects are simplified by the utilization of adjustable global settings and permanent onscreen controls which eliminate the need for you to micro-manage the game through more traditional sim genre controls such as lassoing. Additionally, personnel resources are simplified through the automatic creation of peasants and work assignments.

Combat
Stronghold’s combat elements focus on castle defense. You must form and maintain an army to simultaneously defend the castle from enemy invasion and attempt to overtake the opposition’s castle, thus winning the game. By creating various training facilities, you'll gain access to several different troop types, such as knights and archers, as well as more unique ones like siege engineers, tunnelers and ‘storming’ ladder bearers. Troops make use of various forms of mobile equipment such as siege towers, battering rams, balistas and catapults. Troop control is handled directly through the easy-to-master permanent onscreen control system.