For our newest article we ask ourselves “Things We Love About… Stronghold Kingdoms”, Firefly Studios’ medieval free to play browser RTS that allows players to assume control of their of town and build up their fledgling kingdoms commerce, military and influence. Competing against other players or working alongside them the game offers strong elements of real life diplomacy as alliances are forged, trusts are broken and wars are waged in a bid to rule the known world. The game offers a slower pace than many RTS games making it a struggle for man, but here’s a few reasons why we think players need to think twice and actually give the game a chance.

• The Known World - Each world server has its own map for players to conquer of known locations. Staying true to the realistic medieval theme players will find themselves in a very familiar location, depending on your language settings for the game players will be able to enjoy the game on a world map based off their own country; United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, Spain, America, Europe and more, each map broken down into hundreds of provinces, cities and even towns for the smaller locations such as the UK. As a player from the UK we loved that we were able to find our hometown on the map and choose to start in its general vicinity, making it a personal goal to take over and rule it then cast our eye to other real world rival towns! The familiar locations add a new meta to the game, have an ex-girlfriend from a few towns over? Time to send your armies to go and raze her home…. at least digitally.


• Research Tree - A huge amount of variation and customization is available to make your kingdom unique. One of the best elements about the game is the research tree, we’ll even go one better and say that it’s probably one of the best tech trees we’ve seen in any game. Ever. One of our pet peeves with RTS tech trees is how linear they can by, how they bottleneck you into long chains having to pick up the same techs in order, so that progression wise there’s not that much different between the thousands of other players advancing down it. In Stronghold Kingdoms that’s not the case, with the 758 research techs there is masses of variation to really focus your talents, abilities and playstyle in a direction you want. By spending research points a player can unlock a technology, for example “Castellation” to start building up your castle defenses, by spending 1 point in “Castellation” players open up the chance to unlock the “Fortification” tech, two points in “Castellation” opens up “Vaults”, 3 points “Defence” and so on. However, once “Fortification” is opened up then perhaps the player wants to put that second point into “Fortification” itself, which could unlock further technologies off that branch, or give them access to different buildings the more they develop that particular tech. The tree offers the chance to specialize building up a technology, eg. Archers and getting it to rank 9 to make that technology even stronger, or spread more thinly to pick up more techs but less specialization, so picking up Archers, Pikemen, Swordsmen, etc. instead of focusing on one particular tech.


• Liege Lords and Vassals - Players can lead or be lead. In a lot of online games there are available clans where a player will rise to the top as the leader to give orders, structure and general support to players, but in Stronghold Kingdoms this begins life as a much simpler and personal system. Players that don’t feel they are going to be particularly active in the combat side of the game may find themselves a prime target for more aggressive players, and so they may turn to another player become a Vassal with that other player being their Liege Lord. By offering up resources a Liege Lord can station their units within your towns and villages to better protect them from attackers, offering a more strategic element to the Liege Lord as well with their troops having more locations to attack from or getting closer to a rival without the need of controlling every territory on the way if they can leave the running and costs to their vassals. The social aspect to this relationship is extremely interesting and real life negotiations, diplomacy, trust and loyalty are needed.


• Factions and Houses - Be part of something much bigger than yourself. Whilst the Vassals and Liege Lords is a very personal relationship players also have the ability to create their own Faction (a guild or clan) made up with other players who unite under one banner. The leader takes the position of General and puts in place Officers to help run the game, but once more the social aspect is important as Officers can technically vote out a leader they grow tired of or one that they feel is taking the faction in a direction that doesn’t benefit them. The General is also able to join a House, the larger organizations in the game that they join with other Factions to make a standing alliance, the first six Factions to join a House become the voting members and any subsequent Factions will have to apply to join and be voted in. The trickle-down effect of power makes a truly interesting dynamic; the single player trying to run their dairy farm, part of a Faction, who in turn is part of a House, can find themselves at war with hundreds of other players should their rulers choose it.


• Many Different Playstyles - Players can do more than just fight. Even in huge franchise RTS games like Civilization players have multiple victory conditions depending on a style of play they want to go for, focusing on commerce, industry, culture, religion and of course military conquest. So to can the same be said for Stronghold Kingdoms, probably more so, in that players need never train a troop; the Research tree is broken down into Industry, Military, Farming and Education, and players can rightfully just focus on producing resources to supply to their Faction mates, a savvy trader bringing in commerce, pushing religion and gaining piety or focusing on establishing a spy network. There’s dozens of different playstyles away from military domination and every one of them is useful.


• The Games’ Pace - The game offers a slow and strategic pace. The games’ pace will make or break the game for a lot of players, it is a very slow rate of progression learning new techs, constructing buildings, training and moving troops, it requires patience and planning. The game doesn’t offer intense action moments, it is a management game where you check in a few times a day to keep things running as opposed to sitting there for hours playing, and as you get further into the game you will open up more options to have even more to do; manoeuvring troops in a planned attack, negotiating with other players to create diplomatic alliances tracking intel uncovered by spies and sharing it with allies. For those that might grow tired quickly of the methodical and meticulous pace we say give it a chance, it’s free to play and a game that can easily be played on the side casually.

So that’s what we love with Stronghold Kingdoms, but more importantly what are some of your favourite things? What do you think could/should be added to our list that makes the game great? Let us know what you think in the comments below!

If you want to know more about this title, check out our review HERE and visit our profile by clicking the "Info" button below.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 18th, 2015 at 1:28 pm and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.