IMO when it comes to sheer difficulty (i.e., how easy it is for you to straight up die), this mission still falls below Plain of Atum, Thunder Hill, and Hades. Sure, there are tons of enemies in this mission and it will take long to win. But you're also in a strong defensive position and it's much harder to actually lose.
Yeah setting up a strong economy is the real challenge on this mission but it's way easier to defend. Like if you play every mission on 90 speed mission 50 actually becomes harder than 80, and yeah Thunder Hill and Hades are such a nightmare lol (The Plains of Atum I don't think it's that hard compared to the other ones)
I don't agree. Thunder hill is rather easy because you can easily rush like 30 maceman to the closest enemy in the beginning and onl be left with 2 enemies.
Rushing in this game is for noobs IMHO , but Hades is very easy for me , Plain af Autumn is really challenging but this mission is disaster in all ways :D
80 is not as difficult as it is time consuming. I definitely find Hades and Thunder Hill way more frustrating. Plains of Atum is quite relaxing actually, only the first few minutes are hard.
Awesome guide, managed to survive early game! It worked for me, if you can stabilize early game you can beat this map without any problem, it just takes some time cause you don't have resources (farms, mines, quarries etc.) Just play around game speed, slow down if you have trouble and speed up when you just need gold and have a stable defense!
Yeah ture! Although in this mission a synchronized attack from wolf and richard can sometimes kill you if you're not paying attention! Their armies become massive after a while
The common mistake in this mission is to enclose the keep, by doing that the enemies catapults can't be reached by our tower without using mounted ballista. It makes the mission nearly impossible to clear.
You can rush Wolf with assassins at the start of the game, it makes everything much easier - you immediately remove the closest threat, get tons of gold, you can recruit more troops and you get a clear way to attack other AI lords ;) You can also put a couple of square towers with mangonels facing Wazir and bombard him into oblivion.
This is pretty clever. I tested and it works. Put down granary/3 houses/mercenary post fast to stay at 100 pop/producing 24 peasants. Click mercenary post 4 key and place rally outwards towards Wolf. Disband the 3 spear/2 bow and spend ALL your gold and get about 50 ninjas ASAP. Move a bit towards Wazir around the double wall going up, then click for them to mount the keep and slay wolf, who by RNG may or may not be in front of all his units. You have to get there before he starts spamming emergency defense troops, keep your ninja assault undetected as long as possible. This can easily fail if the ninjas route poorly as well. Killing him nets you 7K gold vs. your starting 3K gold! Best opening move for sure! Not to mention your army limit will be increased, which is normally a big limiting factor for attacking the 1st enemy lord.
I finally beat this yesterday. I closed off the narrow passage with a moat, and I closed off the front with a moat. I put it right in front of the farmland. I built two towers near the narrow passage with crossbowmen and mangonels. This was enough for early defense. For economy I did lots of bows, a few crossbows, and a few leather workers. I had 18 fletchers by end game. Selling bows was enough to keep the economy going even without stone or iron. Eventually I built 1 tower overlooking the narrow passage from behind, and 1 tower in the narrow passage. This allowed me to get stone. I eventually strengthened the front defenses with more towers and mangonels. I did the entire crusader trail without shields, as I thought they were useless. Sieging the enemies in this mission was really hard due to limited units and limited economy. But eventually I got it done. One of the lords I killed still had money, and after that I was able to make swarms of horse archers. Overall, a really good mission that challenges economy, defense and offense, and a fitting end to the trail.
Biggest problem on this map is to put enough defence troops while securing place in units limit for decent attack force before taking down first two AI lords.
I spammed this mission. Just kill nizar right away with 25 macemen and 10 portable shields with them so they don't die while digging that moat by the quarries. I've done this on 45 speed, but it took me practice. fire throwers and fire balistas behind your wall and tower will kill heavey armored units that attack your castle easily and can save you on money vs making crossbowmen. My favorite cost efficient way to fight AI's is using european archers and fire balistas. Heckle caliph with archers to give slaves cover fire while they are used as cannon fodder for bitch ass caliph's fire traps. Keep your units as far away from wolf's mangonels as possible forcing your units to hug the edge of the land by the ocean as you siege emir as your 3rd target. This is all tough shit to do, but a great challenge until you do it too many times like i did and eventually are burnt out of it.
Never had good experience with fire ballistas in the early game lmao. Also you can dig that moat if you send your slaves right when they spawn and dig a 1 square moat. If it's thicker than that you'll probably lose your slaves before they're done digging
If you want to make it even easier, here are some tips for a sustainable economy as crossbowmen are very expensive. Monks and slingers. Cheap. Easy to spam. Easy to replace. Fast attack speed. And price/performance is ridiculous. Some ale so you don't need to produce food (even if you have to buy ale, it lasts you for eternity and 1 inn feeds 30 people) And if you find the gold, -5 fear factor, at least for the beginning, to boost economy. The -25% damage output cannot compare to the +50% economic output. 100 units fighting at 100% strength have HP of 100 units and attack of 100 units. Whereas 150 units fighting at 75% strength have attack of 117.5 units and HP of 150 units. Naturally fear factor +5 boosts your troops, but you don't have space to make a large enough economy to sustain +5 fear factor. So in these cases negative ff is always better. With fear factor -5 only the profit will increase. Not the expenses. You'll produce 12 bread from 1 flour. 2 crossbows from 3 wood.
Haven't tried this yet but sounds really hard to pull off, I went with cathedral and +5 fear factor because you barely have any economy to begin with so that doesn't hurt much. But with religion and fear factor you can play with no rations and have a small income with any production you can get on that small area
@@Jefflenious Actuall, it isn't difficult to pull off at all. With ale you can play with no rations and don't need to have the eco killed by fear factor. Ale gives you +8 popularity on full nutrition. One inn feeds 30 people. The ale consumption is the same if you have 31 people and if you have 60 people, which is an advantage as you can always have 24 free people - you need to limit yourself only by multiples of 30. And if need be, buying one extra inn for 24 extra people will never ruin your economy. I always do no rations, because it's much more profitable to have no rations and sell all bread I make than to have any rations even if I have to buy all ale. 10 ale, which costs 200, can feed 60 people for very long time. 25 bread, which costs the same, is no match for it. And taxes can never match economy. I use this information for my advantage - to counteract -5 fear factor I use religion +2 from cathedral and small bribe, which gives me +3 reputation for hardly any gold. It's an investment, but the returns are over the roof. I can guarantee that.
@@Jefflenious The -5 fear factor is even more powerful with stuff that requires investments. For instance, bread - you produce 8 bread normally from 1 flour. With -5ff you produce 12 bread from 1 flour. Not for 1.5 flour as you normally would. Receiving 4 bread completely for free. Normally you produce 1 sword for 1 iron. With -5ff you produce 3 swords for 2 iron. Receiving 1 sword per 2 iron completely for free. On top of that you already receive 3 iron where you'd normally receive 2, meaning you have more resources to power your economy. With crossbows it's 3 crossbows per 6 wood compared to 3 crossbows per 9 wood. And you receive 5 extra wood from woodcutter. If one dairy farm can supply 7 tanner workshops, this means 21 leather armors for 7 cows with no FF. With -5FF the number jumps between 28 and 35 leather armors from 7 cows. On average it's 31.5 leather armors from 7 cows, whole 10 extra for no extra investment. The only pity is that ff doesn't scare cows into breeding faster. This is the same with every resource,,. except for flour. -5ff has no influence on flour. But with extra wheat and extra bread the bread eco is already mad powerful... unless you buy wheat. Then it's a bit less powerful. The only time positive ff is worth is is when your economy is so powerful that the 50% weakening of it is not going to hurt you... Which is at 200+ people. Or when you use the exploit that causes workers to not lose any efficiency upkn fear factor. But with not powerful economy positive fear factor sucks. Bribes hurt your economy much less than fear factor. And if we calculate it on troops, you have 50% of eco, so 50% less troops. Aka illustrated to previous example it'd be 50 troops, which is 50 troops of HP, fighting at 125% strength, which would be 50 troops fighting like 62.5 troops. Compare that to 100 troops from no ff and 117.5 from -5ff.
I've beaten this mission quite a few times, tried it on 75 speed recently and kinda struggled, but in 4th try I got the hang of it, got access to the stone and iron resources right before I started attacking tho.
It is one of my favorite missions. I have had way too much fun playing this game. I often make my own missions. I try to make it as hard as I can. As one of my friends used to say. "Don't you have any other games to play?"
Finished it. Good lord what a battle. I'd say arthur and the wolf were the hardest. Wolf more so because he had an insane castle defense setup. But arthur had a ton of knights and they're tough.
@@squirrelattackspidy Thanks for clarifying. It's all clear to me now. I can't believe I lived all my life without this knowledge. Will change my world forever.
Yeah, I can understand the confusion. Some people think he's Frankie's cousin but he's not. Arthur's a good guy. Makes a great linguine fra diavolo. Always makes extra that we take home. We bring over red wine for the meal. So good! :)
I think the Stronghold Crusader 2's last mission is harder because you have a small patch of ground and surrounded with enemies who get periodically free units from their keep (so you can't wreck their economy with a few men early on).
Although I already beaten every trail. I feel like I'd never found any 'fixed' way to build the economy fast. Do you have a fixed way that will work on any skirmish/mission?
The game is definitely situational, there isn't a one-size-fits-all economy plan. Sometimes you have a ridiculous amount of farms, sometimes a ridiculous amount of trees, sometimes its a big stinky pitch moat everywhere, you just have to adjust as best you can. You can always fall back to crossbow economy turtle with wood bought from the market, but it isn't necessarily "fast". It might be fast relatively depending on if you are struggling to adapt to the map economy/enemy sitaution.
I was able to defend with basic archers+flamethrowers with bread + church economy. Now i planing how to atack. Only bad thing is limit army units to 300
I think I lied, End of the Pig was way harder for me Depends on the player tbh, some are better at siege missions and some are better at economic missions like this one
I'm curious: Don't you think that approaching Richards's castle with a fire ballista to set it and Wolf's castle under fire as a smart way of dealing with them?
I've completed this mission several times, sometimes I wish that I just had to defend the ground for a few minutes instead of eliminating all the enemies
I rush to build a moat by where the stone is and build 4 towers at the choke point to my castle, ballistas on the towers and crossbowmen 👍 don't underestimate pitch either, it can be a real life saver 👍
i guess after defeating nizar and caliph the mission is simple , my biggest problem always is having more units i also make 2 towers in the middle with 20 crossbow and 20 archers and 6 fire throwers letting only 1 line to pass and don' t make maze
@@gilangiskandar7801 You select barracks (or any unit production building) and press 4 and click wherever you want. 4 is for crossbows because it's the 4th unit in the barracks so other numbers if you wanna rally other troops, you can even use it for engineers and monks
@@Jefflenious you need to try the unofficial crusader patch. it fixes broken ai castles, give you the option of letting ai build better, historical, or redesigned castles. bug fixes and player color change is pretty neet too.
This mission sucked monkey balls. Tried usual stuff. Dug a moat at that spot even though I didn't watch your video. After a short while they'll send pikemen and / or torch guys to fill in that moat. They'll also take a catapult and put it right behind a rock so your tower ballista can't hit them consistently (maybe 1 out of 4 shots is a hit). On my map, I cannot grab that iron and build a moat around it. Do you end up buying wheat? What about using bad things to boost cheese production? Gonna keep watching this and see what I can pick up.
They fill the moat because you probably enclosed your castle, notice that maze? I left it open so the AIs just mindlessly path towards my Lord without attacking walls, towers and filling the moat (Catapults would still do their job regardless) Also some guy suggested using bad fear factor + ale in mission 80, with the production speed you might be able to just buy wheat and get good income
@@Jefflenious Yeah, I did enclose the keep, so I'll not do that again. Did you put throwers on the wall of the maze to burn the troops? Did the assassins climb the maze up and down? That wouldn't be a bad thing because your archers could pepper them while they're doing that. The worst thing though is that they put the catapults next to raised rocks, just past the quarries just past your two towers. Not sure if maybe they changed the AI to snipe like that. I've tried sending archers out there to take out the catapults but they are mowed down by the arabian horsemen. But maybe if I put the maze they won't sit back and siege me like that. Did your guys survive okay on just the cheese or did you buy wheat as well? Thanks!
Watch this: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tpuBIJjaagU.html I did skip a few things since it's too fast lol, but I just skipped food and went for positive fear factor and religion instead, ale is also crazy strong, you can get it early on in the game too and it's a nice alternative for food
@@Jefflenious Finally got it stabilized so that I'm not getting my ass kicked thanks to you. :) I'll be attacking caliph first. Got to make my moat and draw bridge though before I do it. I have a gatehouse that's walled off on the other side of the quarry, closer to my keep right now. Hopefully Caliph will go down without too much of a fight. How did you kill him? I see monks but wondering how you got them in there? Siege tower? Didn't know you could crossbow the kings to death. Never seemed to work for me but I'm going to try it. Thanks!
If you're patient catapults are the best option, the other option is crossbowmen with shields but you need to be really careful not to send them in fire pits. Carefully trigger firepits and work your way there and eventually you'll be able to kill most of the archers and send in 20 monks to finish him
Dude thanks for making this video, appreciate it. But to be honest I can't take anyone seriously who plays with shields. It's like cheating. Don't understand how this is fun. You didn't beat the mission in my humble opinion, you cheated through it.
Well I agree shields make the game a million times easier but don't think it's needed, same opening can work without shields And for sieging you're gonna need to use catapults or horse archers more, don't think crossbowmen without shields are good at pushing
@@alonymelony8047 I mean I think catapults are also op in this game and they also die to melee attacks but that's not the point Thing with shields is, if you don't get them you lose ranged fights so you're FORCED to make them
Comeon, ranged fights in this game are incredibly imbalanced towards the ranged defender in the tower. You have your pick between OP shield, OP catapult or OP trebuchet to counter that. If you don't use these options you are just going to be grinding thru tons of troops for no reason. It is kind of frustrating that this is the way the game plays, but it is what it is.
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