People complain about difficulty, but once you get the hang of it, game is an absolute blast. The loop is simple but I scratches that itch of wanting to play an RTS without having to be running 5000 km/h smashing hotkeys. That plus the design and graphics, makes it one of my favourites of all time. Hope it gets more recognition and of course, more content!
When you start Stronghold determining your opening moves can take a bit of time to get used to. That is maybe you need to start cutting trees before focusing on food or weapons. Then comes the decisions of what ground you will defend and what to leave exposed. Spread your forces too thin and you risk a disaster. The key with Stronghold is the missions are long enough to be a challenge but not a painful slog. As you build can feel yourself making progress towards your mission's goals.
After two missions (after the tutiorial) and almost 20 hours invested in Diplomacy...well I am back playing Stronghold HD.
Note the 5 stars are for Stronghold HD.
Installed the game, tried to run it for the first time...
Antivirus and firewall both going in full "red-alert" mode, game's files get put in quarantine which cause my computer to crash. Spent a full hour checking everything to make sure whatever virus they put in there had been removed.
DO NOT buy that thing, it's a trojan horse to get access to your computer !