I love how active the stronghold community is

Rat could be a medium enemy if he knew how to use spear economy

I've made an in-depth analysis of this topic lately (as I'm really into hard economic challenges and in past I often used weapon makers for profit) with precisely calculating movement speed of each crafter, even his changed movement speed on the stockpile, which let me create a theoretical model of my castle with exact paths calculated and forecasted profit which was accurate almost in point (+-5%). And yep, crossbows are absolutely superior for gold making, they actually bring nice profit by themselves. You have to consider the value of the material that you're using for crafting a weapon instead of selling on the market (which is 23 for iron and only 1 for wood). Also since crossbow crafters have to walk 3 times to the stockpile and only once to the armory, every tile closer to the stockpile is worth 3 tiles closer to the armory, so you shouldn't really care (ofc you should... You get the point xD) about the distance to the armory and focus on placing it as close to the stockpile as possible. So it's not like you have to put crafter halfway between armory and the stockpile. You can make profit from crossbows even by buying wood (hard economic maps only :D you buy 3 wood for 4 gold each and sell xbow for 30 gold) which isn't true for iron weapons.

Crossbow is always worthy for me because 1. High damage 2. Just need 3 wood planks to make but has the highest sell price (along with some metal gear). 3. Least material cost when compared to sword, mace or metal armor. 4. Doesn't need special tiles (oasis, iron ore) when mass produce. 5. Crossbow production alone with entrenchment is enough for me to survive mission 80 .

Man, I love this community. I've been playing SHC for 11 years of my 18 year old life, and I'm just as in love with this game as back then. Your content is amazing, Keep up the good work

I personally follow the golden rule of early bow productions before transitioning into crossies, maces, and horse archers. I never sell weapons unless they're really piling up in the armory, I hit my army cap really fast with horse archers and I always retreat after roughly 20% of them are dead during a drive-by.

Also please compare the below for long term investment(regardless of the building costs): Buy wheat -> make flour -> make bread to sell for gold vs Buy Hops -> ale -> sell for gold vs Buy wood -> make crossbows -> sell for gold

Hi. Thanks for the experiment. But here is something that you need to consider as well if you want to evaluate the impact of each building. The total yields from these buildings' production is not what you need to take into consideration, but the ADDITIVE value that they bring about. This means you need to subtract the yields that you could have gained if those facilities had not exist, which is selling one iron instead of each armour or 3 woods for each x bow. I'm just gonna give an extreme example to clarify my point. Lets suppose there is a facility that takes one X (X being a good that you produce and can sell for 99 golds) and produces Y (which is worth 100 golds if you sell). The additive value of this facility is 1 gold per production of Y using X. Let's also imagine another facility that takes one Z (Z being a good that you produce and can sell for 1 gold) and produces W (which you can sell for 100 golds) in exactly the same amount of time. This latter facility has an additive value of 99 gold per production of W using Z. You must have sold 53 armours for 30 golds each. But you could have sold the consumed irons for 23 golds each. So the additive value of an armour is 7 golds only, which is 371 for your experiment. For an xbow however you need 3 woods which you could have sold for 3 golds, but you can sell the xbow for 30 golds, which accounts for 27 golds per xbow of additive value. For your experiment you gained 1269 additive value from xbows which is more than 3 times that of armours. You can also calculate this for the rest of the weapons. You should also bear in mind that all these facilities required one worker each, which is something that you need to make proper arrangements for to be able to maintain them (provide food, enough happiness, and security). But in the future, if you want to compare facilities with different numbers of workers, you need to balance their count so they have the same number of workers, and thus, the same operating cost. Besides, the additive value is entirely different if you are going to use those weapons instead of selling them. Just think of it as if you didn't have these facilities. Then for USING 53 armours you had to buy them for 58 golds each (not the 30 golds that is the selling price). So the additive value would have become 35 golds per armour. But that is only if you are planning to use ALL produced armours. So one can conclude that they need to have as many armourers as they require for their troops. But fletchers that produce xbows are beneficial, even if you don't use xbows. Again, thanks for the comparison. These were just some points that I thought you might find interesting and perhaps useful.

Great analisys! Its good to see that stronghold is still popular

Yessss!! I've been waiting for this kind of video.. Thanks

Spam Armorers on -5 Fear Factor and reap the stonks. That is, if you have enough iron.

Theres this one Crusader trail mission I remember, where you only had wood and a small patch of grassland, as the iron/stone was in a very inconvenient spot(across a river, and was being camped by the enemy AI) It was one of the slowest games ive probly played, but I won by just producing Crossbows for profit.

Crossbows and raw iron are what helped me get through the 80th mission of the crusader trail (the one where you are in a cramped space surrounded by water) I kept selling them because they gave me the most money out of everything else I had lol.

Thanks. Great video. Keep going. :))

Well if i were making gold by selling weapons, of course i'm taking method Saladin the Wise, making a lot Blacksmith and Metal Armor and then i'm selling it

revisiting this vid to remind mydels the basics

Nice video short and on point as usual. Could you make a video on the best/most challenging maps?

well, if you buy the buildings (for example fletchers), they cost 180 gold, (80 gold for wood, 100 gold for the rest) You get only 60 gold back from deleting the building and selling the 10 wood. So to make a workshop worth, you need to get sell value (if you sell) or buy value (if yu recruit) equal to 120 by the difference between the alternative sell/buy value of the raw material (for example wood buys for 4 a piece, so crossbows effectively cost 8 gold to make if you buy the wood). For example Crossbows have a profit margin of 22 gold per crossbow or without fearfactor therefore 33 gold, meaning you would need 4 work cycles to break even in the worst case scenario. Usually i would argue, that you need to calculate the extra income from taxation on top, but then it gets complicated ^^ -> check out bakeries, they return their investment way faster ^^ Specially for if you harvest wheat. If you buy wheat however, it would be nice to compare bakeries with negative fearfactor for total price against fletchers without negative fearfactor for total price and check which does more with same amount of wood+gold used for building them and then producing weapons out of the excess wood.

I mean I usually just put down a bunch of poleturner's workshops close to the stockpile,make them craft crossbows,and put a dairy farm or 2 down and a couple of tanners as close to the armory as possible,so I can defend myself asap lol(ps:1 dairy farm is enough for 13 TANNERS to constantly produce leather armor.I tested this MYSELF,and put the tanner's workshops as close as I possibly could to the armories,which is absolutely insane lol)

One think about building weapons is it's difficult to manage, you have to build specific workshops set them up have place in armory keep your eye on wood and iron stocks. Having a few more bakeries to sell bread for weapons is much easier to do

I can't tell you how many hard skirmish missions i have passed because i used fletchers to create crossbows, sold them, and then bought some wood back.

glad to know i’m not the only one who still plays

Making crossbows + buying leather armor. Did this a lot. You have crossbowmen (excellent defense) + a good profit if you have crossbows to sell.

Crossbows are a neat option to make gold when you have absolutely nothing around but space.

I play stronghold when i was kid between age 10 or 12 and i still love it

I absolutely agree with this

Usually i deploy archers ( about 10 ~20 ) to secure each strategic point . Follow be spears and maces for quick rush on enemy lord.

Thank you lord jeff.

I love leather armor, I set up one farm, three producers and let them work. Unlike iron armor, I lose no resources. Wood is cheap but is in need of micromanagement since cutting it has complications and when you detract for how much you can sell iron for, making weapons out of it loses some of its luster.

One quick note, it is entirely possible to farm all wood off of the map. Iron is eternal (like stone) so in the long run metal armor would be best. Iron isn't used in building chains other than i think the burning oil pot so you won't cap build ability. Start with crossies until you get a few metal armourers up then cut crossy production.

firethrowers are the arab counterpark to crossbowmen.

Crossbows and shields are overpowered. Having 30 - 50 crossbows, 30ish shields and 1 ballista in a tower, with the tower in a chokepoint and/or in the direction of the AI, makes you almost unbeateble for any of the AI's. The only threat is enemy mangonels. But that is why I mention 1 ballista, to counter mangonels

you can sell each iron bar for 23 gold and you can make 3 weapons with 2 bars, so if you want profit with iron weapons, you will only get 14 more gold than just selling your iron, on the other hand, each wood costs 1 gp, it means that each crossbow gives you a profit of 27 gold.

that's why Saladin makes metal armor.

Selling Raw Wood gives 2x times more than spears

The biggest problem comes from the fact the insane ammount of gold you can grind in early games. While metal armors do sell the most out of anything in the game when you always sell bulk of iron together with food [maybe taxes if you have ale too] It may feel a bother. Of course in a casual game where you just build towns seeing your workers work is most important then a player will like all the workshops. Its a shame this type of thing wasn't properly nerfed until Crusader 2 where producing weapons might actually be much better... thouh ill be honest im glad they tweaked it bit more like older games in Warlords. Funnily while not a game in the video, tanners in Stronghold 2 produce 3 leather armor per a cow, which messes with me since in Legends they make 1 armor and don't require cows [yes, they don't need cows in Legends to make leather armor]

heres What I do: Make crossbows to sell them for money and use up all that extra wood they cut but I dont need and iron, just sell the iron. I also make regular bows at the beginning after running out of money because buying the 50 bows and archers when start gold is only 2000. weapon production is def worth it

When looking to make the most out of your iron to earn gold, I'd argue that raw iron is already the most efficient way. Build a fletcher's workshop and sell the iron instead. Metal armor only made about 13% more gold than crossbows due to their more efficient production, but it has to make up for the gold you would have gotten from selling the iron directly while wood is extremely cheap. With -5 fear factor, which favors metal armor since it makes the profit from raw resources less impactful, 2 crossbows + 1 iron are worth 83 gold while 2 armors + 3 wood + 8 gold (the 13% production advantage) are worth 71 gold. That's 16% more gold for the fletcher, and not factoring in that faster armor production means less spare iron to sell. Even if you have to buy all the wood while having abundant iron, crossbows _still_ beat metal armor with 71 vs. 68 gold (still assuming -5 fear factor).

Army needs food and water to run. Now it also needs diesel and other fuels. But anyway, the game Stronghold makes no connection between size of army and how much food supply we have. I think that the game design should include the food supply into the equation to limit army size.

Next question: how does weapon production compare with bread production? That would highly depend on available farmland I guess. My point is: if you have much farmland, applefarms are not much worse than bread production. Would it make sense to use all the space around the stockpile for weapon production instead of bread production and place the granary close to the farmland and sell apples and weapons instead of bread? That would be a pretty complex calculation of course and still highly depend on the map/ enemies pressure on farmland etc.

That's strange, I've tried this with just crossbow and spears since they have the best gold/wood ratio and they came out tie. With 3 spear for each crossbow.

My 1 diary farm try to keep up my whole kingdom lather demand is truly chad

I love how we got financial advise in the medieval era

Leather is by far the best option, cause you need only one cow farm to service all your workshops.

The best strategy game i played stronghold crusader before aoe2 when i play aoe2 was disgusting

is it better to produce weapons for your army or to sell metal armor and crossbows and buy whatever needed? weapon production is so slow

For gold spear better than crossbow without taking time in mind

Wood resources are limited. consider that you have to buy wood and then use that for crossbows in the long run. When your iron is max-used for armour production, then one may buy wood and build crossbows to earn gold. or do you think it is better to sell Iron -> buy wood -> make crossbows for gold? (I think still the second option is better)

2:30 would be nice if you had subtracted how much the materials would have been worth if you had just sold them

challenge for you: play against 1 wolf. 40k gold for wolf / you 3k. attack/defend only with swordsman and pikemen. I attacked wolf with 300 swordsmen and pikemen and I lost so bad :DDD

why am I watching these videos I've never played stronghold crusader

10 year afther the communitumy is still there

industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for sultan abdul

Another reason why pikemen are so good. They use up half as much iron as swordsmen

Pikemen good for wall damage

Bow needs 2 wood? Rly? Played that game more than hundreds of hour :D

Am I mistaking or pikes are also made from wood?

not enough peasants for the workshops? lol what? build more huts, build more taverns, buy more beer... having more people paying taxes. where's the problem? the more peasants you have, the better anyway thanks a lot for the video, I just thought about weapon efficiency recently and this was very helpful one extra that would have been really nice: a calculation with gold made by the workshops minus gold you would have made by selling the ressources probably I will do the calculation later and post the results here (edit: I did as you see below, I'm sorry for my bad english and not structuring my comment better, I'm too lazy to proofread rn)

yes

I thought the negative fear factor gives a boost of 50%, not 33,3%.

what do you mean by paying for themselves

I thought this was going to answer whether or not it’s worth to make European troops or just hire Arabian troops.

I've been playing stronghold the last 17 years and just now learned that a crossbow takes 3 wood. I thought it was 2 just like a bow....I'm disappointed in myself

Great content buddy. As a fellow uploader of this game I love that you are taking the time to talk about this stuff! Have a sub from me Sir, and if you fancy it lets have a game sometime. Best wishes to you and your community!

Shields + bows are worth making. Others not.

So.... Make Crossbows for the OP unit and and buy everything else with the profits from selling them.

You don`t need to produce weapons. Just train engineers.

Crossbows are the best. In map with no resources, you can always make profit on crossbows buying wood and selling them. Also make +5 fear factor, build inns and religion and tax people. And then, you dont really need economy at all :-)

i buy them instead of producting

Plz make how to use bread economy correctly and how to get most use of it

Did you let the rat win

But how are they worth it compared to just hiring mercenaries?

yo

I always use Arabian troops.

Ah yes of course. I have never played Stronghold.

Sorry for my boring comments, I just used this comment section as a memo for my amateurish calculations as it seems

If only crossbowmen wore metal armour... stupid leather armours... even Empire Earth has a Knight in metal armour on horseback with a shotgun picture.

are walls worth it? are towers worth it? are keeps worth it? are stockpiles worth it?

But wood is not infinite

Nihil novi