Stronghold Military Campaign

[Isaiah 26]

Back when Stronghold Definitive Edition released, I started replaying the military campaign. I got through missions 1 through 15 last year on normal difficulty. I then stopped for various reasons, but yesterday, I booted up the game again and am planning to finish the campaign on normal. I thought it would be nice to share my progress. I'm playing other games at the same time of Stronghold, so my progress might be a bit slow.

Mission 16: Fighting Retreat

Yesterday and today, I completed mission 16 of the military campaign. This mission has you face off against the Pig's macemen and pikemen in the marsh as you try to gather enough stone to rebuild the monastery. The first time I tried this mission, I did not do so well. I started out by using wooden walls to enclose my keep and started making spears, bows, and crossbows, but the Pig's pikemen were too strong. Because I had my keep enclosed, they would attack me from all angles, and unfortunately, I did not have enough troops to fend off the attacks from both the front and the sides. It also made it harder to set off the pitch ditches at the right places; the Pig's troops were very good at avoiding them. After dying to the Pig's pikemen on the third or so attack wave, I decided to restart and try again.

For my second attempt, I decided to not close off my keep. Like last time, I started out by recruiting spearmen, archers, and crossbow, and later, I started recruiting macemen as well. The decision to not close off my keep was a good one because it led to the Pig funneling all his troops into the front gap of the castle. This made it a lot easier to set his troops ablaze. I plugged the gap at the front of my base with my spearmen and macemen so that they couldn't easily rush my lord if they managed to get pass the missile fire and the pitch. Because the Pig uses so few crossbowmen in this level, it was fine leaving my melee troops out in the open like that. My archers and crossbowmen would have picked off the Pig's crossbowmen long before they could start sniping my melee troops from afar.

Once I had my main castle fortified, I then turned my attention to gathering the stone required for the level. I constructed some wooden barricades and started digging a moat in the area to dissuade the Pig's men from harassing my quarries. I also sent another group of spearmen and archers to defend the area. As you can see from the screenshot below, there was no need to fully enclose the quarry area either. Once I had the wooden barricade long enough, the Pig would send some of his men in that direction, but they would always eventually funnel back to the main castle's gap rather than go all around the corner to destroy my quarries. Once I had the fortifications up and running, the level was pretty simple. I just had to make sure to watch the Pig's troops when they entered the map and set the pitch ditches ablaze at the right times.

This is what my final castle looked like.

Edited July 27 by Isaiah

[Isaiah 26]

I went back and played mission 15: Carving a Path again (in part because I had accidentally saved over my saved game the other day).

Mission 15: Carving a Path

My strategy was pretty basic here. First, I sent in my spearmen to clear the moat. Pretty much all of them died, but they served their purpose. After the spearmen had some time to absorb fire, I sent in the battering ram and macemen to take down the main gatehouse. Once they finished that, I set my macemen to aggressive stance and let them slaughter all the archers and crossbowmen in the towers in the first layer. I then took down the second gatehouse with my remaining macemen and intact battering ram while sending my archers and crossbowmen to man the first wall. Once the second gatehouse was down, I let my macemen go wild. All of them ended up dying, but they were to clear out 95% of the troops. Just a few macemen on the keep were left. To finish the job, I sent my archers and crossbowmen to the back tower and had them shoot the remaining macemen to death. I know Firefly rebalanced this mission for the Definitive Edition (on December 13 for the v1.11 update), and I have to say, the mission ended up being much easier than what I remember previously. Whereas it was previously a struggle to win it on easy, I managed to (re)-clear it on my first try on normal even if I did lose 75% of my troops in the process.

[Sir Windows 32]

I wasn't aware that they rebalanced Carving a Path in DE. That's pretty interesting. I remember using a similar approach to yours with making sure to clear the towers and putting my own ranged units there instead.

[Isaiah 26]

Mission 17: Smokey Bacon

This one took a few atempts. One main issue I had with this map is with the monastery's design. If you only close off the basic perimeter, then you end up with a pretty cramped castle that doesn't have enough room for everything you need. Enclosing off a larger area is very much doable, but it takes some time to figure out due to all the jagged cliffs. Generally by the time I figure out where to place my castle walls, the first set of the pig's men have already arrived. Since I spent so much time on placing walls, there were multiple times where I forgot to place the rest of my industry down, and this generally led to food problems during the first attack wave.

On my successful attempt, I started by rotating my camera to point north (so that I knew which way the enemy was coming; a few times, I placed all my defenses on the rear of my castle which turned out about how you would expect). I then placed a few woodcutters, a few wheat farms, a dairy farm, and a mill. Then I turned my attention to enclosing my castle with walls. You get a lot of stone in this mission, so I added two square towers with ballistae to the front of the castle and then spent a good chunk of the rest making sure the back half of my castle was enclosed. This left me with about 70 stone which was enough to do repairs throughout the level.

The other aspect of the first attack being so soon is that you don't really have a lot of time to produce weapons. So, I also placed a marketplace which I used to buy 5 leathers and 5 crossbows. I sent most of my troops to the bottom-left tower and a few troops to the bottom-right tower. The rest of my castle had a few scattered crossbowmen but was mostly undefended for the first attack. At this point, I started running into food issues because I forgot to put down the bakeries. Whoops! Good thing I wasn't planning to use the iron in this level, so I just sold some of the iron and used the money to buy some food to restore my popularity. Then the Pig's first attack came. I realized that I had not in fact fully enclosed the back-half of my castle, so after reloading (because it caught me by surprise the first time), I quickly put up some wooden walls to close the gap. This resulted in the Pig's troop redirecting to the front of the castle which took enough time that by the time I had finished with the first attack, the second attack was already upon me. I successfully defended against the second wave with little issue.

After the first two waves, you do get a brief respite. During this time, I put down two fletchers and a tanner workshop. One fletcher made bows while the other made crossbows. I also continued to buy crossbows and leather armor as I obtained the money to do so. Once the third attack came, I was well-prepared, or at least I thought I was. My troops did a great job of killing all the troops that did a frontal assault; however, the Pig liked to send its macemen around back. While the Pig's macemen weren't really a big threat, it took some time to get rid of them since I had next to no defenders in the rear of my castle. As a result of observing this, I made sure to reinforce the back part of my castle before the final attack which was defended against with ease. Here's what my final castle looked like. (I took this a little bit before the Pig's final attack.)

[Asophix 98]

On 25/08/2025 at 00:25, Isaiah said:

After the first two waves, you do get a brief respite. During this time, I put down two fletchers and a tanner workshop. One fletcher made bows while the other made crossbows. I also continued to buy crossbows and leather armor as I obtained the money to do so.

Is wood a scarce commodity in this map? Knowing Stronghold 1, gold is insanely hard to come by and perhaps it could be worth investing resources in workshops. 

I'm seeing that you could also build a drawbridge; digging moat could be a viable option 🙂 Eventually it could divert some of the invasion force away, provided you could enclose your keep beforehand.

[Isaiah 26]

On 26/08/2025 at 12:08, Asophix said:

Is wood a scarce commodity in this map? Knowing Stronghold 1, gold is insanely hard to come by and perhaps it could be worth investing resources in workshops. 

I'm seeing that you could also build a drawbridge; digging moat could be a viable option 🙂 Eventually it could divert some of the invasion force away, provided you could enclose your keep beforehand.

I don't think wood was that scarce, but the main consideration was just how much time you had to prepare. I think if you can get past teh first two attack waves in the level, then you're likely to win the level regardless of what you do afterwards. My main problem was getting my fortifications and economy up and running quickly enough.

Mission 18 - The End of the Pig

I had to reload a few times, but this mission wasn't too bad. Thankfully, there isn't a time limit unlike mission 15. At the beginning of the level, the Pig sends several of his macemen out of the castle towards you, so the first thing I did was just wait for them to approach my archers and crossbowmen who quickly annihilated them. After that, the real siege could begin. I started out by grouping my spearmen into three separate groups and dividing my macemen into about four groups. The Pig likes to use pitch, so I started out by sending the first group of spearmen towards the main gatehouse followed closely by the second group of spearmen with the goal of getting them to waste as many pitch ditches as they can. Once the enemy was focused on the spearmen, I then sent the first group of macemen to go clear the moat in front of the gatehouse. I also ordered my siege tower to start moving into position, but I made sure it stayed out of the thick of things until the macemen had dug through the moat. Once the moat in front of the gatehouse was mostly cleared, I then sent my siege tower in to dock to the walls and sent my second group of macemen in who I set to aggressive stance. The macemen then proceeded to slaughter all the archers and crossbowmen in the outer towers; however, they did manage to miss a few archers particularly in the rightmost towers. To rectify that, I sent about a third of my archers in to clear out the other stragglers.

Having managed to breach the outer defenses, it was now time to breach the inner courtyard. To do this, I first sent in the battering ram to knock down the outer gatehouse that I hadn't destroyed earlier. While I could just have my troops use the siege tower again, you cannot send in siege equipment over the siege tower, so the gatehouse needed to come down. Thankfully, the ram was out of the line of sight of the inner defenses, so it was able to do its work easily and effectively. Once the ram was most of the way done, I started sending in my remaining spearmen to the outer courtyard so they could exhaust the Pig's pitch ditches again. Following close behind them (but not too close) were my second siege tower and the third group of macemen. Once I was able, I then docked the second siege tower to the inner walls and had my macemen again clear the towers. I had my fourth and final group of macemen head straight to the Pig. One thing I did forget about was that the Pig also has pitch ditches inside his keep, so I lost a good number of troops to that, but I still had plenty of troops to slay him, so it wasn't a big issue. According to the victory screen at the end, I had lost 76% of my troops which is a lot, but that's what they're for.

[Isaiah 26]

I ended up finishing the campaign on easy mostly because I was kind of interested in just reaching the end, so I don't have too much to note about Mission 19 or Mission 20. They were pretty easy on easy (as one would expect); I'll have to do them again on Normal to see if they are any harder. That brings us to the final mission.

Mission 21 - Final Vengeance

This mission is another siege mission, and it is actually pretty difficult as I had to reload about 30 times. You have more options here than you do with the End of the Pig, but the Wolf has a very well-fortified castle with many defensive siege equipment as well as a lot of pitch ditches. I started the level by moving all my troops a bit south some to make sure they were outside of the range of the Wolf's tower ballistae and then waited. Like the Pig, the Wolf will send out some troops to harass you at the beginning of the level, so it's best to wait them out and let your archers and crossbowmen kill the knights and macemen as they run towards you. After they were dead, I used my engineers to build trebuchets. I built two of them to begin with to take out the two enemy towers with siege equipment that were closest to my starting position. This was successful, and the trebuchets also took out the first gatehouse which was also nice.

Next, I took my portable shields and crossbowmen, and used them to clear out the enemies in the outer towers. This might not have been the smartest move as I lost like two-thirds of my ranged troops doing this (down to 19 + 11 and no shields from 52 + 27), but it didn't prevent me from winning the mission later. I just had to be a lot more careful with my remaining ranged troops. After this, I used two knights to trigger the pitch ditch in front of the moat. I tried to retreat them to safety, but one of them still died from the fire. Then, I used about 30 of my spearmen to clear the moat in front of where the gatehouse used to stand.

I then bought another two trebuchets to take out the ballista tower to the lower-left of the second gatehouse. It would have been nice if I could do it with only one, but it seemed that I always had to destroy the smaller tower first before it would let me destroy the bigger tower. I use my remaining archers and crossbowmen to clear out a few more of the enemy ground troops now that the ballista is gone. I also attempted several times to get rid of the four archers in the tower to the left of the second gatehouse, but I never seemed to be able to do so without sustaining heavy losses, so I ultimately gave up on that idea.

Instead, I send in two of my knights again to trigger some pitch ditches, and then I sent in the remaining knights to join in on taking down the second gatehouse. The knights were relatively safe taking down the gatehouse, so I didn't lose too many troops doing this. At this point, I only have one gatehouse between the Wolf and me, so I thought I could just do a reckless all-in attack and go for the Lord. Unfortunately, like the Pig before, the inner courtyard is also filled with pitch ditches, so I had to reload a few times and take a different tactic. I commission another trebuchet near the west wall of the Wolf's castle and use it to take down the mongonel on the lone round tower. I got lucky, and the trebuchet took out the mongonel without taking down the entire tower, so I told it to fire at the tower with the obnoxious unreachable archers with its remaining stone instead. It took out that tower as well. I then used my siege tower to dock at the lower left wall, and used my remaining ranged troops to clear out the remaining troops in the outer two gatehouses. (I set up there because it still kept me out of the range of the enemy's ballista near the third and final gatehouse.

At this point, I'm running out of troops and want to still save my knights for the final courtyard. So instead of sending some knights towards the final gatehouse, I instead send my spearmen. They ended up all dying from the flames and the enemy fire before they could really do any damage to the gatehouse, but I sent in my battering rams in behind them, and the rams were successful in destroying the gatehousee.

Once the gatehouse was down, I sent in all my knights to trigger all the flames in the courtyard. All the knights died, but at least the path towards the Wolf was now clear. I then sent in all my swordsmen towards the Wolf while I moved my archers and crossbowmen to the square tower to the right of the second gatehouse. I had the ranged troops pick off the remaining ranged troops while those troops were distracted by the incoming advance of my swordsman. The Wolf still had one boiling oil engineer that I wasn't able to kill off, so I lost some swordsman to the fire, but my men still prevailed in the end. All in all, after a ~3 hour siege, I managed to take the Wolf down!

The image is a screenshot of the map as I head for the final kill.

 

Edited 12 hours ago by Isaiah