DESCRIPTION:
Last year's Stronghold was a slightly uneven combination of city builder and real-time strategy game, with an emphasis on siege warfare. It had the distinction of being the only castle simulation from a major publisher since Interplay released Quicksilver's Castles II in 1992. Aspiring warlords could forgive Stronghold's shortcomings, since the original game gave them the opportunity to build and raze walls, pillage countrysides, and launch cattle from catapults. Firefly Studios has now polished up its old game nicely and has sent it on a long road trip into the Crusades.Stronghold: Crusader is the stand-alone successor to Stronghold, meaning you don't need the original Stronghold to play it. It takes Stronghold out of Europe and into the Holy Lands, giving it a tighter focus and a more exotic flavor. The economic missions that had you racing against the clock to fulfill contrived objectives have been removed from the game. Instead, Stronghold: Crusader places more emphasis on the fine art of defending or storming a castle. After all, isn't this what you want when you pick up a box with a knight standing in front of a castle? When players first looked at the box for the original Stronghold, they probably wouldn't have guessed that they'd be spending their time accumulating 500 units of cheese.Indeed, the original Stronghold divided its single-player missions into two types: military and economic, though the latter, which generally involved raising crops and stockpiling resources, wasn't as popular as the military missions. It also had a single-player skirmish mode and head-to-head multiplayer. But Stronghold: Crusader presents you with many more options. For instance, you can play skirmish games against AI opponents on a number of different maps, even in multiplayer. Some are completely even playing fields, while some feature interesting balance dilemmas, giving advantages and disadvantages to each player. The skirmish maps can be played against your choice of AI opponents or in multiplayer games.However, players who are new to Stronghold's economic model, which actually folds elegantly into its combat model without upstaging it, will likely want to start out by playing with the castle-builder option. This is a sandbox mode that, like in the original game, lets you learn the unique features of Crusader's new desert maps without having to worry about fielding an army to defend against attacks.
DOWNLOAD LINKS:
http://rapidshare.com/files/151055670/STRONGHOLD.br.iso.002apidshare.com/files/151055670/STRONGHOLD.br.iso.002
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