Stronghold Heaven

Kingdom of Armenia

Objectives

‘Fortify Chilvan Kale in Armenia. Duc de Puce has been launching assaults from nearby La Roche Guillaume. See to it that this particular Rat does not expand his territory further’

Notes

The first mission in the Crusader States sees you take on the Rat in an introduction to skirmish mode. This level won’t cause you too many problems once you are aware of the requirements for playing skirmish. The combination of managing an economy, defending a castle and plotting to siege the enemy is an interesting one that offers a new slant on gameplay.

You will start with a healthy pot of gold, plentiful goods on the stockpile and a handful of troops, archers and spearmen, to defend against. With the Rat’s castle taking shape before your eyes, you need to do the same.

To start this map you need to quickly establish a defensive force. Build an armoury, marketplace and barracks, Buy 20 longbows and recruit archers. Then buy 10 pikes and recruit spearmen. Place the archers on top of the keep initially and be ready to move your spearmen to defend the initial invasions.

Once this is in place, build two wheat farms on the fertile land near to the keep and one hop farm. Ensure a decent supply of wood by placing three woodcutters’ huts near or on the edges of the fertile ground (I found 3 to be more than enough, likewise 2 wheat farms in relatively close proximity to the stockpile was also sufficient for my plans). As the wood stocks increase, you can introduce a brewery and inn. This increase in popularity (+8 with a population of 26-ish) gives you freedom to run the economy of the castle in two ways: tax the peasants huge amounts of money, or turn off food consumption. I have played around a little with this and if you are able to sell bread, I found that going overboard with bread production and selling everything I make can give you a huge amount of gold over a few gaming years. I chose to turn off food consumption and throughout the map, steadily increased the food production side. I also added religion and found I had +9 popularity with a chapel, a church and a cathedral, combined with an additional +3 popularity for having all three buildings. It must be said that you don’t really need such high religion exposure, but it is there for you if you wish. This theme of maximum religion and ale coverage will no doubt be a common requirement in skirmish maps as you endeavour to recruit as many troops as possible.

The above can be worked on throughout this map and when you feel you can progress. Turning to the military side, with the initial troop recruitment in place you can pretty much see off all attackers. I decided to keep these in situ to defend throughout the map and opted to buy iron from the market and make metal armour. Combined with a poleturners’ workshop I was able to recruit a small but significant number of pikemen, their sole purpose was to attack the Rat in his castle. With the gold rolling in to the kitty, I built a mercenary barracks and recruited as many horse archers as I could. This unit is extremely effective in numbers due to their mobility and ability to keep firing when moving across the map. Initially I placed 7 or 8 at each of the attacking points of my castle, east and west of the keep, to add a bit more defensiveness to the castle.

Once I had 15 pikemen and in the region of 20 spearmen and 50 horse archers, I moved ALL of my troops to within striking distance of the Rat’s castle. The horse archers were used to wipe out the majority of the enemy troops on top of the keep and to pick off any random archers I found there. There’s really no need for siege equipment in this map. Move the pikemen to a point where they can either break through walls or knock down a gatehouse and attack the Rat. Remember that your horse archers and standard archers can also be used to fire against the Rat, slowly weakening his health. Victory should be yours before too long, but consider knocking down the enemy barracks and granary as well.

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