General Tips and Tricks
7 years ago
Latvia

I've played the game for years but don't have the time myself to do runs, so I'll just share my ideas for consideration when planning strategies. Many also apply to Stronghold Crusader.

  • Use hotkeys.
  • Consider moving pre-placed buildings (granary, armory, even the stockpile) to more desirable locations, spending or selling the resources first to not lose them.
  • Every little bit of building placement optimization counts in the long run - make sure workers have the shortest paths possible.
  • In missions with multiple goals optimize build order to reach them all around the same time.
  • When placing buildings use spaces closest to stockpile first.
  • Delete pre-placed walls and buildings that are in the way of optimal worker paths or that you simply don't need for resources to use or sell.
  • Micromanage taxes and rations to keep popularity high when in need of additional workers or troops and around 50 otherwise.
  • The lord is useful to take out annoying wolves, bears and small packs of invaders on his own without need of troops.
  • In 'Time until last battle' missions move all of your troops to the entrance signpost (if there's only one) at the end to clear out the last invaders as soon as they enter.
  • Take note of the exact times that scripted events happen in missions and plan around them.
  • To avoid workers taking detours to visit 'good things', build walls around them.
  • Build and spread out single decoy walls to cheaply attract enemy catapult fire.
  • Place non-producing buildings away from the stockpile and paths of workers.

I'll add more when I remember more ;)

Tay and Boomer like this
Germany

Thanks for your contribution!

Latvia

Also check out the first 2 tricks from this video, they work in original Stronghold as well! Should save a lot of time in certain missions if used properly!

Tay likes this
Małopolskie, Poland

Hello! As mentioned above stone teleport is a huuge time saver (esp. mission 16, gathering stone). Also on mission 13. Snake Eyes there is a nice "skip", which saves you like 14mins - just build a wall with stairs on the Snake's hill and run with all army at his keep (you can see this at my run, although I could execute it way better). On mission 2nd you must "complete castle". It just means, that there must be a wall around the keep, so you can remove wall to save wood and build much smaller. Those tips are of course for Stronghold military campaign. Good luck everyone :)

PS: I hope that this is a right topic for this post - didn't want to create a new one only for this run.

Edited by the author 7 years ago
California, USA

Personally speaking and speaking on behalf of other expert players within the multiplayer community. The teleportation for stone and other teleportation of resources is considered a bug/glitch/cheat in our community, so it should not be allowed to count towards runs. If that is the case I can just surround my stockpile with a wooden wall, completely blocking access which will instantaneously transport resources (iron, stone, wood, weapons (surround armory) etc.) and it would count. Doing this will take no skill whatsoever and will defeat the purpose of the economics part of the game. Please let me know your thoughts.

Also, if anyone has any questions about game play and how to improve let me know.

My background: player since 2002, played multiplayer since 2002, top expert in all maps and rules, won over a dozen 1v1 tournaments and over a dozen 2v2 tournaments. Discovered many tricks, glitches, bugs, and tactics used by expert players.

¤¤Also expert in Stronghold: Crusader¤¤

Edited by the author 7 years ago
Latvia

This is an interesting discussion point. Speedruns usually allow all kinds of glitches to save time. In case of truly gamebreaking glitches - separate categories are created. So here we'd have to either have one category with a certain list of disallowed glitches or two where one would allow everything and anything and the other would not allow the gamebreaking glitches or any glitches at all. What do others think?

Małopolskie, Poland

Yea, stone teleport is banned on multiplayer, but the purpose of speedrun is to finish game as fast as you can. If a game allows something to do and it saves time you can use it. Even if it is a glitch or bug. You can't modify game files though.

Małopolskie, Poland

Hey guys, I created Autosplitter for Livesplit for Stronghold Military campaign. Tested on version 1.41 only. If you want to try it and give me some feedback here it is: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Tay0108/livesplit-autosplitters/master/stronghold.asl

Features are: Auto start when starting first mission Auto split each mission when victory text shows Auto reset when starting first mission again

There is one bug I'm aware of, but pretty unlikely in a real run - if you press "mission info" during first mission and then go back to game timer will reset.

Hope it helps you somehow! If you have other versions than V1.41 you can let me know if it works for you.

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