NTGame Launches 2 Classic RTS Guides — Stronghold and Stronghold Crusader#

When it comes to kingdom-at-war strategy, medieval castle siege warfare is a lesson no real-time strategy fan can skip. This time NTGame is launching complete guide hubs for the two most classic entries in the Stronghold series — Stronghold and Stronghold Crusader. Both titles were developed by Firefly Studios and published by God Games, and the hub articles were written by Chasun. One centers on economic management and a four-villain campaign; the other moves the battlefield to the desert and the Holy Land. Together they give players a complete field guide to medieval cold-steel warfare.

New Game Overview#

The two guides total 42 pages, running from beginner basics all the way to advanced strategy, skirmish play, and castle design, so players at any stage can pick what they need.

Stronghold#

A hybrid of medieval castle building and real-time strategy. You play a lord who, through tight economic management, sturdy castle defenses, and strong military power, must complete the king’s missions or conquer your enemies. The guide is organized around the complete loop of “build — produce — defend — attack,” growing a castle from a woodcutter’s hut into an impregnable fortress step by step.

Guide Contents#

Full guide hub →

Supply Chains and Resource Flow#

The heart of Stronghold’s economy is the tightly interlocked chain of “production — processing — finished goods.” The guide splits the economy into four chains: agriculture, forestry, mining, and industry. The agriculture line runs from wheat to bread and from apples to ale, keeping your people’s popularity fed; the forestry line supplies the timber that sustains construction; the mining line extracts stone and iron for walls and weapons; and the industry line turns iron, wood, and hides into swords and armor, directly determining whether you can field an army worth the name. The guide also gives the most efficient quota configuration for each chain, so you can maximize output on limited land without one resource piling up while another runs dry.

The Campaign’s Four Villains#

The single-player campaign is set against “the king’s death and a kingdom split apart,” and you must defeat the four villains — the Rat, the Snake, the Pig, and the Wolf — one by one before taking back the throne. Each villain is a standalone chapter of 5 missions, each presenting its own style of challenge. The guide breaks down each villain’s background, campaign structure, and completion priorities, and lists every mission’s objectives and key strategies so you can quickly find your footing when stuck.

Stronghold Crusader#

The series’ second entry moves the battlefield from the European plains to the desert and the Holy Land. On top of economic building, its signature feature is two parallel unit rosters — Arabian and European — plus a roster of recruitable heroes, adding a “heroes on the field” variable on top of unit counters. The guide treats the desert economy rhythm and the specific attack-defense points separately, so you don’t simply force the previous game’s playbook onto this one.

Guide Contents#

Full guide hub →

The Desert Economy’s Quirks#

Compared with the first game, one of Stronghold Crusader’s core challenges is the environment itself. The desert map’s key difference is the well system — buildings only function properly within a well’s radius, and well placement directly decides where you can build your castle and which side gets the market. The guide covers well-coverage rules and layout thinking in their own section, then details how the food system, popularity, and tax rates interact: raise popularity through food variety, then prop up the treasury with market arbitrage and taxation. That “water first, then grain, then soldiers” logic is the biggest difference between the desert chapters and the European ones.

Siege and Defense#

The siege side deserves its own study too. The guide covers shield carts, battering rams, siege towers, trebuchets, catapults, fire ships, tunnels, pavise shields, and more, laying out when standard assaults, surprise raids, and sieges-by-starvation each apply. On the defensive side it compares the Arabian and European defense systems — how to trade thick walls and brave garrisons against flexible equipment is a long-term question you need to answer from the opening minutes.

The Dual Unit Roster#

The two rosters each have their strengths and check each other — that tension is where this game’s strategy lives.

The Hero System#

By meeting specific conditions in campaigns and skirmishes, you can recruit several legendary heroes into your army. Each one brings a special ability that can swing a battle — some grant morale buffs to nearby troops, some heal or assassinate, and others lean toward health and defense boosts. The guide analyzes every hero by faction, recruitment condition, and combat role, and suggests unit pairings: keep support heroes marching with the main force and put tank-type heroes at the front of the line to get the most out of their abilities.

AI Opponents#

Skirmish mode offers 8 AI lords with sharply different personalities, ranging from economically frail, archer-reliant conservatives to economically strong all-in aggressors. The guide covers each lord’s economic playbook, military leanings, and exploitable weaknesses, with targeted tactical examples so you can turn your strengths against their weak spots.

About This Batch#

Both games added in this batch belong to the real-time strategy genre. For players who have already played the first game and want to complete the medieval set, reading the two together forms a full arc from the European plains to the desert Holy Land. For newcomers to the genre, we recommend starting with each game’s beginner, buildings, and resources pages to establish the base logic of “economy feeds production, production feeds the army” before moving on to the campaign and skirmish material.

NTGame will keep expanding its classic RTS series with complete guides across more genres — pick and read as needed.