Stronghold free download full version
This is pretty good and justifys the different character types as far as I am concerned, there is genuine tactical difference between them and though all you can do is watch the battles it is gratifying to see that different characters have different abilities. Character types sometimes play a huge part in combat, for instance an undead force will have little chance against your gang of clerics whilst a pack of thieves are likely to spot an enemy far faster than your other characters.
The battles are watchable though and there is a good variety of enemies. You could send in some nearby reinforcements but chances are by the time they turn up everything will be over anyway. Battles occur when your forces meet enemies and everything is pretty much automatic. That said, perseverence yields rewards and though you will still long to be able to just group select as you can in say Command and Conquer the system does make things possible, though never especially easy. My own personal experiences with it led me to believe that whoever designed the 'magnet' system of movement needed an extended beating with a +3 mace of sense seeing. Balancing gold, food and housing is one thing but when it comes to actually grouping a party and sending them out to do something you'll almost certainly need to read the manual carefully and experiment a bit. It looks good, there is no doubt about that, but it is confusing as well. Stronghold is an ambitious game, it aims to put you in charge of just about every aspect of running a fantasy empire. I suppose they just decided to simplify it into general types, I mean the game is quite confusing as it is so clerical elves might have been a step too far! I'm no expert but some characters are clerics by race, whereas others are elves. Somewhat strangely though the characters in your empire don't seem to conform to the AD&D rules too closely. This means that with a bit of micromanagement you can train up a powerful group of characters and use them to deal with your enemies. Surprisingly you can train any of the people in your empire and they will gain levels and new abilities, including spells and suchlike. Your own people can be 'attracted' to training, building or recruiting. Enemies vary from very stupid creatures like giant bats who just flap around attacking things to evil wizards who construct their own buildings. Your aim is to build up your empire and then defeat the other monsters or strongholds. Everyone in your kingdom has an opinion of you as their ruler as well as their own suggestions, click on anyone and you'll be given a more than adequate view of their current status and thoughts. This really is quite amazing especially considering how old the game is, it all looks pretty good and there are quite a few different buildings to construct and a nice variety of monsters to fight. Stronghold runs in real time and displays each 'tile' of the land in 3d, complete with citizens wandering around and crops growing, seasons changing and monsters and characters battling. At this point you may be thinking I'm talking about a RPG but no, this really is a strategy game. Stronghold, not to be confused with the castle building strategy game of the same name, is an interesting game set in the AD&D universe.