A Town Guide

Stronghold

Overview: The stronghold is the old barbarian town type, but it has been shaken up considerably. It starts out weak, but it does have some particularly strong mid to late game units. It is very weak in magic, but has some very useful special buildings. Most notably, stronghold towns can have an escape tunnel, which allows garrisoned heroes to flee or surrender. The heroes for this town type have the game's best attack skill, but are poor in magic ability. Players of this town must strike out and conquer towns with better magic, while fielding armies of high level stronghold creatures as soon as possible.

Pros: Good mid to late level troops; two ranged attackers (one mid and one late); cyclops is a great ranged unit; can escape from towns under siege; can jump to behemoths in three turns.
Cons: Weak low level troops; no castle moat; very weak in magic; no good early ranged attacker; mid level troops are slow; only one flying unit; need lots of crystal, wood, and ore.

Creatures
The stronghold's first and second-level creatures have good attack but very weak defense and hit points. They aren't durable and so need to get their attacks off quickly. The goblin is actually among one of the weakest of first-level troops. The wolf rider has the best attack and speed of the second-level troops, but dies quickly. The wolf raider is a little better due to its two attacks and better speed, but it doesn't improve in durability. Don't count on your first two level troops to survive many skirmishes.

The orc is now a third-level creature, and it is a poor ranged unit, weaker than the elf and even the lower-level marksmen and magogs. You'll have to make due until the powerful sixth-level cyclops is available. In fact, from levels four through seven, the stronghold boasts some powerful creatures. The ogre is very durable and strong, and the ogre magi even more so. The roc is a cheap level five troop that can be acquired quickly and is strong and fast. The upgraded version, the thunderbird, is faster still and has a chance to call a lightning bolt on the thunderbird's target. The cyclops is a strong ranged attacker, second only to the titan, although it suffers the ranged unit's penalty when engaged in melee. The cyclops can also be used during castle sieges to break down castle walls much like your catapult (cyclops kings get two attacks). Try using multiple stacks of cyclopes to bring down enemy castles quickly. The seventh-level creature, the behemoth, is a strong brute, but is even better when upgraded, as its special ability can set up the target for powerful follow ups by the cyclops' ranged attacks and the quick thunderbirds. Compared to other seventh-level creatures, the behemoth comes out on the losing end, but you can acquire it faster than any other town's seventh-level creature.

You should strive to upgrade your rocs and wolf riders first, because they have the most significant offensive upgrades. Cyclopes also gain significant advantages from upgrading, but it's usually hard to acquire them early on because of the high crystal requirements. Then upgrade ogres and orcs. In general, the stronghold creatures are pretty slow, which is another reason to upgrade all your troops as quickly as possible.

Buildings
Stronghold creature dwellings aren't cheap. The later buildings are heavily dependent on crystal, and all buildings require lots of ore and wood, although the good news is they don't have any cumbersome building dependencies. Of all the town types, the stronghold has the quickest path to its seventh-level troops. You can actually get to behemoths in three turns! Just build a wolf pen, then a cliff nest, and the behemoth lair dwelling becomes available next turn. And unlike other seventh-level dwellings, it is relatively cheap. The track to the cyclops requires an orc tower and then the ogre fort. There are thus two building paths for advancing up the creature dwelling tree (cyclops or behemoth; and the behemoth path coincidentally deprives you of your ranged units for quite some time), and they don't cross over. The one horde building increases goblin production.

Stronghold special buildings allow you to buy ballistas and ammo carts. The Hall of Valhalla also gives each hero a permanent +1 to attack. This town doesn't have great siege defense - it is the only town type without a castle moat - but it does have the very useful escape tunnel, which lets you flee or surrender from siege battles (other towns have no option to flee during town defense). They can also sell troops for money at the Freelancer's guild. Their resource silo provides +1 wood and +1 ore.

The stronghold grail building is the Warlord's Monument, which increases weekly creature generation by +50 percent, adds 5000 gold per day, and increases the attack strength of your garrison hero by +20 when defending against a siege.

Magic
Strongholds are as weak in magic as the fortress. Like the fortress heroes, stronghold heroes miss out on the best offensive and movement spells, and must go in search of other towns to conquer if they want potent magic.