Miscellaneous > The Sallyport
Stronghold 3
Sir William:
Nice...found it on eBay for about the same price. Is this anything like Age of Empires? I played the first two games and loved them, but by then, the consoles took off and after that, I only played Counterstrike online at a friend's house (we'd do it up in a lan party, hilarious to think back on now) and the odd Starcraft mission.
Sir Edward:
I haven't played Age of Empires, so I don't know.
Sir William:
Well then, let me give you the quick and dirty on it:
The AoE games are RTS games, set amidst actual historical events. Probably the biggest competitor of Sid Meier's Civilization series.
Your job is to start up civilization and lead it through the major advancements, specifically from the Dark Age through the Imperial Age (think Renaissance)- a thousand year timeframe give or take. Later games added more civilizations and other perks to the existing gameset. The civilization you choose to start (will determine what special technologies you get to unlock as you advance through the ages...the epitome of which is the Wonder. It takes a lot of resources (both human and arable, not to mention wood, stone and gold) to build and can be easily destroyed before it reaches completion. Once it does so, however, it is quite difficult to bring down, and each civilization has their own unique wonder that can only be built of certain parameters are met (generally speaking, you will have to have leveled your civilization to its zenith before you can begin).
I literally spent hundreds of hours planning and building my towns, building walls to protect said towns, planning out farming regions, housing and consumables...not to mention the number of warrior units you could train, but only if you've upgraded your barracks and equestrian (and later siege shops) centers to accomodate the newer tactics. All in all, a great franchise...and excellent background music as well.
Sir Edward:
Cool, maybe I'll look at those too.
I took a stab at Medieval II (or was it III?) a while back, which is also RTS, with large-scale battles in the field. I liked the strategic combat, but for some reason I never really got grabbed by the campaign.
The Stronghold games are also RTS, in which you have to build up food production, harvesting of wood and stone, to build your castle structures and defenses, recruit troops, etc. But it's not civilization-scale. It has a series of missions with various goals, which involve building up a defensive position and defending it against attack, or going on the offensive against another castle. The environments change, as do the goals, with a storyline.
Sir William:
That sounds pretty cool...I see it as a localization of the same concept of AoE (or Medieval, or Civ) which definitely strikes me as worthwhile to pursue. I think with AoE II: Age of Kings (set during the Middle Ages), I got caught up in the historical parts of the campaign, for instance, one of the campaign missions (depending on which campaign you chose, there are 5 I believe, ranging from Joan of Arc to Genghis Khan) dealt with escorting Frederick Barbarossa's remains to the Holy Land, complete with a horse-drawn cart, pine barrel in the back, old Fred's remains slowly decomposing. You have to negotiate Berber horseman, raiding Touregs, etc etc to infiltrate to the Sepulchre where you can lay Fred's bones to rest. Another campaign you get deals with Saladin's defence of the Holy Land. Pretty cool stuff!
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