A Town Guide

Castle

Overview: The castle town is perhaps the strongest of all town types. It has great troops from levels one to seven, although it doesn't have great special buildings compared to other town types. Its magic capabilities are only average, and its heroes - the knight and the cleric - are neither great spellcasters nor super warriors. However, they are some of the most well rounded heroes.

Pros: Two good ranged units (one low-level and one high-level); two flying units; unlimited retaliation with upgraded griffins; fastest unit and best seventh-level unit with the archangel; excellent upgraded units throughout tech tree.
Cons: Require lots of resources; more building dependencies than average; average magic, no great special buildings; angels and archangels very expensive.

Creatures
Every creature, from level one to level seven, is powerful in comparison to its same level counterpart from other towns. In the early game, the pikemen serve well due to their high hit points relative to other level one creatures, and their good attack and defense. The second-level unit, the archer, also provides valuable ranged support early on. This means at the beginning of a game, you can have a good army composed of a sturdy melee stack and a ranged stack.

At later levels, the castle town continues to have good troops. The upgraded griffin is a powerful early flying unit because it has unlimited retaliation, allowing it to counterattack against as many enemies as can attack it in a single turn (the standard griffin can counter two attacks). The swordsman has good attack, defense, and hit points. The level five unit, the monk, provides the castle heroes with one more ranged unit that is among the game's fastest and most powerful shooters. The cavalry unit is one of the top sixth-level troops, and the angel is a great unit due to its speed and combination of damage, attack, and defense.

Castle players should upgrade their archers, griffins, and swordsmen at the first opportunity, in that order. After upgrading these essential troops, go on to upgrading the other creatures. All beginning castle troops are pretty good, so there isn't the upgrade urgency of, say, the fortress or stronghold towns. Halberdiers are faster than pikemen, marksmen gain two shots per round, royal griffins have better speed, attack, and defense, crusaders attack twice, zealots and champions have all-around better stats, and the archangel is the most powerful seventh-level unit in the game.

Buildings
The creature dwellings in the castle have more dependencies than several other town types. The griffin tower, for example, requires the next higher creature dwelling (the barracks) and a blacksmith. The barracks requires a blacksmith in addition to the preceding buildings. The monastery requires the mage guild, and the training grounds require a stables. The later buildings and upgrades will require a good amount of crystal. However, you don't always need all the preceding buildings in order to build the next creature dwelling. The monastery is not needed for the training grounds, which itself is not a requirement for the portal of glory. This town's horde building is the griffin bastion, which is a powerful boon to castle players.

The special buildings aren't very good, although the stables do add a movement boost for any visiting heroes. The Brotherhood of the Sword boosts morale more than a standard tavern does in town defense, but it is otherwise not very useful. The castle is also one of only three towns that can build a shipyard. This town type's resource silo produces +1 ore and +1 wood, while the blacksmith builds ballistas.

The castle grail building is the Colossus, which increases weekly creature generation by 50 percent, adds 5000 gold per day, and increases the morale of all allied heroes by +2.

Magic
Castle towns can only build up to level four mage guilds. Also, they don't tend to get the more fantastic spells like Meteor Shower or Chain Lightning. Because this castle type doesn't get fifth-level spells, it misses out on such valuable spells as dimension door and implosion.