Feel free to comment and discuss this game here. Also, if you have any useful tips or tricks don't hesitate to share them with the others! Thanks!

Review and Download (if available)

This game uses D&D rules, not AD&D, unless I'm quite mistaken (the manual shows "Dungeons and Dragons Computer Game" prominently on the cover, without an 'Advanced' anywhere.

The sound is very choppy for me... using dosbox on linux. I'll try tweaking the settings a little, but has anyone else had any success?

Hmm.. I turned frame skip up a tiny bit, and it cleared up the sound without any noticeable effect to the graphics. Seems all is well now.

Curiously enough I think "elf" used to be considered a class all by itself way back in the day. So maybe it is accurate after all?

Never heard of this game but I'm going to have the give it a try. From the description it kind of reminds me of one of my favorite strategy/sim/rpg games, Majesty.

AWSOME game

Yup, it's the "classic" D&D ruleset, that was thought of quite a time back before it became "advanced". I still have a copy of the "Baisc Rules" lying around in my Pen&Paper shelf and a quick look-up shows that Elves back in the day were a mix of fighters and wizards, halflings were by default a weak warrior with a little bit of thief thrown in and dwarves were fighters with a touch of cleric added. Only "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" introduced the distinction between races and classes, next to a slew of more or less working rules add-ons :-)

I loved this game when I was a kid. I still play it from time to time. Too bad it didn't have multiplay. I wish they would remake it... :cry:

A real good classic, at least top 5 for me. I hoped for a remake when the new Stronghold came out, but instead was disappointed by a boring game. So I don't think there will be a remake at all...

A pity, because there are some major flaws in the controls, if you want good building you have a lot of micromanagement to do. For the sound, it runs fine in Windows XP without dosbox for me, usually crashing at the first startup, but the second always succeeds.

PS: Ok, no solution for linux, I admit :/

Hi,
One of my alltime favourites, altough it is a bit easy and repetitive. The stone-gazing creatures are a pain. Take them out as fast as you can :sniper: .

For a truly hilarious time, train up a bunch of clerics and waylay a vampire. The clerics will kick the muck out of him, but they'll never be able to kill him as the vampire is immune to blunt weapons :w00t:
The clerics will rack up levels at a tremendous rate and the vampire will be unable to defend himself as there is always some uberninja-cleric beating his head in.

Elfs are useful as they have range and are pretty deadly, and their tree farms are quite lucrative, but they reproduce really slowly, so don't spend them all at once.

Wizards are expensive to make powerfull, but then they kick anybody's behind with their ranged magic attacks.

Clerics are essential to cure disease and so on and trashing vampires and other undead :ok: Mix some wizards in for best results.

Dwarfs are usefull, being quite magic resistant and tough fighters, and they are also lucrative, especially the mines, which don't last very long tough.

Humans are your cannon fodder. Use them to keep your enemies busy, as they reproduce like rabbits.

I always try to create a nice laid out multi-ethnic city. It looks pretty cool too. You can have some really cool battles with the nastier monsters.

Cheers,
Lodewijk

This was a welcome change from most of the D&D titles that were available at the time. This was at the tail end of my old Pentium 100mHz computer, when the only games I could play were about a year past their prime. :D

Anyways, I received this game as part of a D&D four pack, that also had the game Fantasy Empires, Dungeon Hack, and Unlimited Adventures (a make your own Gold Box toolkit). It was sold as "Fantasy Fest!" and provided countless hours of fun. Fantasy Empires was actually hotseat multiplayable, with real time combat on a shared keyboard. That was probably my most played game in the set.

Stronghold itself was a unique experience and there was some fun to be had building up my little areas but it lacked the drive towards a greater goal so I soon moved on to other games. There is a more recent game, Majesty, that took a similar approach to real time strategy as well as I can remember anyways. It has been awhile since I last booted up Stronghold. :bleh:

A game with that magical word: AD&D

That the reason why i downloaded it. :D

Pardon my stupidity, but I still can't understand how you muster up your armies and actually send them somewhere (or "attract" for that matter)

Can anyone be so kind as to help me?

You must have some units set to ready status then click on a place u want to attract them to, and there is a long bar underneath the triangle. Click on it and u can set the number of units to get there as long as there are some free. The further right, the more attracted. Make sure u have the right leader selected for the right troops.

Took me a while to figure that out myself LOL. :Titan:

:ok: This game is FUN, top 5 for me. I can play it for ages now I downloaded it again.

I always set a piece of terrain for each 'race' to train these fellas. A training center, a Forge and an Armory/Fletcher/etc meaning the offensive / defensive improvement buildings. I gather a bunch of people and ser them to train, and when I got smthg respectable such as level 5/6 it's time to go kick arses. Also you may consider gathering 4 fulle expanded huosing to pute them to recruit and increase up to a unit of 7, that helps as well.
If you're going to build defensive walls, upgrade them to the maximum (manned) as they provide housing as well and get defensive bonus, and set a long range fighter to defend them, else your soldier there can't beat the enemy until they destroy the wall! :Titan:

One more stupid question... Is there ANY way to speed up time passage? That is, EXCEPT pressing space that doesn't help too much...

Thanx

I used to enjoy this game but there is something that I don't understand. Is there a final purpose, like beating some evil enemy or you just have to achieve your objetives (that is, becomnig emperor or defeating al enemies) in different maps?

No, they never built it into a campaign. Think of it as an interesting simulator. I found that works best.

@ Mongi: HOLD space, don't just press it once. Other than that, d/l the pdf with the manual, as at least both the questions you posted are covered there (in other words, RTFM! :P).

Now, my own question: in a couple of places in the game and in the manual a "building card" is mentioned, which I supose is a quick-reference table of the building types and atributes. Would anyone happen to have it scanned? Being able to alt+tab a jpg of it would be a great help. :)

I can't believe this only got a 3!

At least a 4, I'd go straight 5.

Having played it for a couple of days now, here's my 2 cents:

-My "first cent" is to wholeheartedly agree with the reviewer, the atraction system of unit placement seems to be a study in user unfriendliness and cumbersome playability. It managed to bring down my rating to the game from a 4 to a 3. Even after you get the hang of it, it's still a pain, as you need to check which units are set to "home" and which are set to "ready" before setting the atraction, lest some of your building blocks go vacant and degrade. It's a shame, as the game on most other aspects I think the developers were very successful in creating an inovative and well developed game (for it's time or ever since).

--My "second cent" is to wholeheartedly DISagree with the reviewer, I don't see how you can derive months of gameplay from this title. After getting the hang of it, I finished the game a couple of times in a couple of days, and it seems to get run-of-the-mill rather quickly: settle, develop, attack, rinse, repeat. I think it lacks in therms of goals, be it a campaign goal, or even reaching advanced buildings or units on later stages of a scenario. Like I said, I think it's a solid game, but getting repetitive rather quickly (I got the same run-of-the-mill impression from Baldies, and to a lesse extent from Settlers 2 Gold), I don't see it offering months' worth of playing time.

[I do adimit that I played only in the second difficulty setting, so the 3rd might offer something extra, but given the AI we can expect from the game's year, I assume it would probably be just a matter of a few more monster bases, and the ocasional roaming monter arriving at your town -- i.e. just more of the same]

People who come to forums only to swear and troll and then never come back are usually stupid. The reviewer is entitled to his own point of view even if it is flawed.

Anyway I have a problem. The mirror to the manual doesn't work for me. Can someoe give me an alternative? I really need the awnsers to those protection questions.

I just wanted to say I also owned the Fantasy 4-Pack the guy on page one mentioned, and I have the CD for this about three feet away. I haven't been able to play it because I lost the copy protection information for the games :O

The best game !!!!!!!!!!!!

It was a very nice game for it's time ,but I also did enjoy the newer version of stronghold.But I am not a type for strategy games :whistling:

gr,
Irene

I remembered playing this game when I was a kid.. loved it!

But now i'm having trouble trying to play it after i downloaded it.

everytime i run it, i'd choose the sound system and it would go black and no response.

i'm running it on windows xp

anybody can help?

thanks!

Ok many thanks mate. I'll have a look and try again with DOSBox

If you have any questions, feel free to ask - I'll answer them as soon as I am able to.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DecebalPS @ Sep 27 2006, 10:17 PM) [snapback]257859[/snapback]</div>Yeah. I'd like to find the manual as well. Mirror doesn't work.

Neuauflage
 

What do you guys think about... is it possible to get the ancient source-code from Stormfront and develop the game further; i think of bigger Maps, new units, a campain or any other changes.
The code itself is really small i think. Excuse for my bad english!

I really like that game! Its a pitty that it becomes to easy after a while.

The only places where you could get the original game's source code are the publisher company (or whoever owns it now) or its programmer. Otherwise, all you can do is code a remake from scratch.

Quick Reference Card (Documentation)
 

http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.2270 - The quick reference card can be found here. :)

Slay Mindark
 

If you set the difficulty to hard, in the second wave of monsters, Mindark and his nasty army of mages and golems is suppose to appear. Beating him is suppose to be the point of the game. I've only gotten him to spawn once, though...

That is the fun part, and replay value of this game: it can be very tough if you get the hardest bastards all at once. While you can combine 5 classes, the mobs can give you hell with stone + flying combo as well.

Mindark will always spawn on 2nd wave, if you are Neutral or Evil Alignment.

Quick reference for copy protection:
Page Line Word
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 1 choose
2 2 after
3 1 movement
4 3 dots
5 1 hit
6 1 longbow
6 2 spells
8 1 constructing
9 2 squares
10 1 swamps
11 2 would
12 2 repair
13 1 controlling
14 1 setting
15 1 sage
16 1 when
16 1 button
17 1 home
18 1 needed
19 2 screen
20 2 gold
21 1 spellcasting
22 1 opponents
26 1 expense
27 1 plan

If you have problems with sound running on DOSBOX, try editing the config file and search the faq for maximizing cycle (or set it to appropriate value).

I have a few questions, and I cant find them anywhere :

1) Is there a limit to the buildings you can build? I reached a point and suddenly my buildings start to disappear, especially buildings that CANNOT deteriot, for example Halfling Castle. Happened to farms and houses too.

2) Is it possible to have the units reach level 30 without prolonging the game? I normally finish at level 12, and was already going slow.

3) What is the limit of construction sites?

4) Is there a speed difference between types of construction sites? i.e tier 1 buildings/upgrades.

5) What is criteria for outposts to work? They usually fail to automatically attract units to them. (I have tested distances, it is not a factor. An outpost halfway across a map have worked while one just at edge of city may fail.)

6) Do cleric's Bath affect only clerics or ALL units across all classes?

7) Do Mason's Building work on all construction sites or only the owner's ?

8) Are mirrors distributed to all classes or only the owner?

Cheers and thank you for your time.

1: no, but it needs a unit to maintain it, and i believe that lack of money causes deteriation too

2: train just a few units to lvl 8 - 10 and start using only these, mostly 8 or so, to take out wandering monsters, the tougher the better. When all the wanderers of 1 species are gone, go for the next. DO NOT destroy their castle. But yes, you'd be prolonging the game, a lot.

3: good question, i dont know either. Anyone?

4: Yes. upgrades always take longer than the first building and more important/difficult buildings take a lot longer. for example, training facilities are very time consuming. Speed up building by having more units attracted there

5: see 3

6: all units, but only a few for each bath. You'll need lots of baths to improve all your units, which means lots of clerics, which means lots of cleric houses and farms, which means more clerics. sneaky, eh?

7: only the owner

8: all towers and thieves


my cents on strategy: you need a mage, a cleric and a fighter. its ranged magic, healing melee, ranged melee. After that, feel free to choose your own. Thieves are nice with their long scouting range, but the others are kind of superfluous
when building, start with 50% farm and 50% housing. As soon as you expanded a bit, start upgrading the farms. Only 2nd and 3rd tier farms and trees produce gold in winter. While upgrading farms, drop 10 marketplaces around the place. it boosts income and allows access to the common fund.
next is a vault, then a training ground and then the various buildings that upgrade weapons and armor. For fun you can add some of the money making buildings, but as soon as you start upgrading your farms to plantations they are a bit outmoded
the cleric should have the biggest stronghold, you'll need his baths. Build an arena asap, it'll speed up training a lot. being able to pick up your new army at lvl 6 instead of lvl 2 is a big impovement. finally, upgrade, upgrade and upgrade. One upgraded building is worth several weaker ones. Dont build copys of smiths and such, it will only speed up the distribution of weapons and such, not improve the weapons themself, and new units always have the best available equipment.

warning: when you destroy an enemy castle, all the remaining minions will make a beeline to your nearest castle, make sure there arnt any or have a 2nd army to intercept them. Walls are your friend here, but they dont stop fliers
when attracting armies, make sure that you unattract any units you might still be waiting for, or you'll find that, after reaching the enemy fort and the heavy battle, some units are breaking off towards your previous gathering point or other points that still have an attraction for one or two units. Finding those points later on is more trouble than making sure you reset em all in the first place.
When you have dwarfs, let one wander around to excavate the various stones and change ownership after the mine is built. Later in the game, you'll have a steady income (100 in winter is nice enough) and after all, you dont build that much later on after all has been upgraded, so just remove the stones if they are in they way, or leave them be.
Do not expand all over the map. True, that is what outposts are supposed to be for, but they dont always work and most importantly, any area settled by you is not available to the second wave of attackers! Now, where is the fun in that? the arguement is that an outpost allows attracting new units there... great, a bunch of lvl 1 in your lvl 6 to 10 army, better send the rookies down to the capitol and free the veterans who have been training up there for the whole time, who are by now lvl 6 or 7, which is still faster than training up a lvl 1. in short, kinda useless

I noticed that there is a limit to construction sites, but you can overcome this limitation by doing upgrades and claiming trees. However, when you do that you can't actually go above the limitation: some construction sites simply disapear. This mean that you can lose new construction or upgrades that you were doing if you are not carefull. As far as I know, you also lose the gold...I wasn't aware that outposts do that. I would rather use the pyramids to attract people...

I had a frustrating half an hour trying to play this game yesterday. Than I realised that I had manual for it (either I got it from replacementdocs or got it from here when we still kept links to that site) and after reading it I had a very enjoyable evening with the game :)

It's very different to any other game I played (I've noticed a couple of posts saying the game was similar to Majesty, but I didn't play that one). Perhaps the closest similar concept in a game (that I played) would be in Dungeon Keeper series, with independantly thinking minions which you can only direct, rather than fully control (with the exception of Possesion spell). I love DK series, btw, especially DK2.

One thing I didn't like about the game was that it tends to get overwhelming at some point, especially after you expand a bit. You really have to pay attention to all the tiles and all the units, or your risk them getting idle - it happened to me a few times that a new unit appears and wanders off to an unoccupied square and stays there without me noticing it for several minutes. And more often than not it's a square I don't want to colonize anyway. Another thing that could've been improved is the way you're atracting units to a square. Although I appreciate the idea of being able to attract only certain unit types at time (gives you opportunity to match certain enemies with certain types of your units), it would've been great if there was a shotcut you could use to attract all the units at once. Something precious when under attack and you want a quickest possible response.

Not really a complaint but I wish I could control all 7 types of units, not only 5per game, even if limitted to only 5 leaders. This could've been overcome with adding a building on a map that you could conquer, like wizard tower or cleric temple or dwarf hold or halfling hole, etc. But that's just wishful thinking.

Finally I wish I had that building chart so I wouldn't need to experiment and guess which was the best order to build. The Quick Reference Card from replacementdocs is exactly what it names says and has nothing to do with the buildings.

Building effects are cumulative.
If expansion is out of control don't build housing.

if you feel your units are wandering around uselessly, getting hard to find and such... build a wall, close the gate. From now on all your units will stay inside the wall

Hello
 

I love this game, it's a fun game but I'd like to know are there any patches for this game or do any of you know who holds this game so I can get the soruce code for it?, also does anyone on know of a 3rd party game editors for this fine game?

The developer company, if it still exists. Else whoever bought it out. Not very likely that the code is still around after so many years (misplaced, damaged media etc etc), or even that they'd be willing to part with it.

Damn, thanks for the info, oh well it would have been nice to have had it, it's one of my all time fav games.

I'm having trouble running this game at a decent speed. I'm using D-Fend Reloaded. Usually if a DOS game is struggling, I set CPU to Dynamic and Render to ddraw. I also tried disabling sound in the startup config. Unfortunately, that's the limit of my tricks, and it's still really lagging. Any solutions to this?

Try it without D-Fend.

if game crashes
 

Sometimes the games crashes shortly after enemy stronghold collapse. It won't happen if the minions are killed before collapse.

Intro looping?
 

Hi,

The game seems to always loop the intro without any warning message. I started up dosbox and started the application via it, so would there be anything wrong with it?

don't think so

did you interrupt and play the game? if it works fine, no problem there. I think I noticed the same and just figured I had to press something to go to the main menu
been some time though

Oskatat is right. This is an old game, mouse don't work to stop the demo if I remember well. Try the keyboard instead.