"this game is dominated by archers" *20s later* "I'm surprised no one uses monks"

Shields in the towers was a big design mistake in this game really. 'You were supposed to destroy the tower archers, not join them!' :D

Horse archers with shields stonks

My only disagreement is Assassins: - They are vulnerable against arrows. - Have you heard about our lord and saviour, the moat?

I always thought shields are useless, but damn, putting them on towers seems kinda op even

Mangonel for me is an S++ tier in small maps, where your towers can reach enemy base - it's such an devastating siege unit, once you get like 3-4 towers close to enemy base with Mangonels - it's simply GG; - no cost for small stones, stones almost 1 shot everything and they also do siege damage over time. You can simply target fire some ground path in enemy base, and go macro your base. You look at enemy after 5mins, and you see deserted base with lord alone in the keep

Another great aspect about pikemen is their ability to sap, so you can fill moats in even under heavy fire

I've got a few disagreements: 1. I would definetly place pikes in S list - they are great counter against xbows and fairly cheap/fast moving for heavy infantry. 2. Knights also should be in S list - they are one of very few units extensively used in 'expert' games (along with catapults, assassins and horse archers with shields of course). The reason for using of knights is simple - they are only unit that could match horse archers in terms of speed; and they are capable of decimating a fairly large forces of horse archers if you have better micromanagement than your opponent of course). I tend to agree more or less with the rest of the ranking though. Good job, mate!

Would have put pike en way higher - good speed -super tanky -can take a lot of crossbow hits -ok vs fire (better than swordmen) -can dig -great vs walls

Shields should be countered by flaming arrows tbh

Insightful ! I'm glad that there are people who are still making videos on this game . It's one of my favourite strategy games !

I didn't expect to watch the whole video

Great video. Thanks for making it. I just started playing this game again after a 15 year hiatus and I’m addicted again.

Never used laddermen the intended way, I use siege towers instead. Still, I sometimes use laddermen as trap detectors. Works pretty well from an ecnomical aspect.

The issue with monks is, they are really slow and die really fast to archers. They are probably the most cost efficient in a melee fight, but it's almost impossible to assault a castle with them because they just get shot to bits.

Thats game fuckin underrated better than age of series keep

Hey guys new list here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/jrh2mNl7ztK8koU.html Wanted to correct some of the misjudges I made on the list, check the new list before commenting, Thanks!

Macemen are underrated. They are easily S+. They are Shocktroopers, best for Blitzkrieg. A Horde of Macemen is like a Horde of Hungry Ravenous Orcs. They are Fast, Brutal and Unstoppable.

Have to disagree on the Pikemen: 1. they are extremly resistant to crossbows 2. they are kinda fast for heavy infantry 3. they also resist fire very well 4. they are excellent in demolishing walls/towers/gates 5. the ability to fill up moats combined with their tankieness 6. they are more resistant to traps, but maybe thats just a feeling i got (didnt check it) In my humble opinion the best siege infantry in Stronghold

Dude, excellent video. I've been playing this game on and off for 12 years and will be playing it this summer. I literally forgot monks exist, I need to start using them!

Fun fact about the archers, if you buy 5 bows and train 5 european archers instead of 5 arabian archers, they still cost less to the arabian counterparts

Very good comparision.Thanks a lot for the information.

very nice bro, got some insights here

how do you make mangonel operates automatically? mine, i have to command them to attack whenever theres an attack from the enemy coming

Honestly, I like this tier list and I have no complaints except I would've kept slingers at A-tier. I absolutely adore using them and they're just SO CHEAP. They still cost 12 gold like a regular archer, but you don't need to wait on a weapon being used. Plus they fire faster than an archer as well though they do have a smaller range.

amazing man best video ever on strong hold

The Unofficial Crusader Patch fixed this game and made it more enjoyable, every stronghold crusader fan should check it out!

Anyone know which version is better for online matches (like in game ranger) and from where to get it ?

Great video for stronghold fans !! Good to got these knowledge :)) time to change a childhood plan to play it !! 😊😊😊😊😊

Keep working unbeliveable video

love it, I wish to see more videos

dud ur awesome, one of the only people ik still playing this gamw

Good work dude!!!

Hidden bonus to Monks -- Fire Ballistas and perhaps other artillery don't automatically target them when they amass for an attack. You have to manually direct your siege weaponry to attack a Monk. I learned that the hard way when I had a force of Fire Ballistas assembling for an attack on one of my enemies and the Abbott managed to wreck half of them before I realized what was happening. For some reason they don't shoot enemy Monks unless you make them. However aside from this unusual downside to Fire Ballistas (or hidden bonus to Monks), I would have said Fire Ballistas are S+ tier. And really any unit that can create Fire is at a significant advantage. The damage by itself would be reason enough since a group of say 15-20 Fire Ballistas will utterly destroy 100+ approaching Crusader units or Pikemen and shred tanky units like it's nothing. But the deadliest weapon in the desert is Fire... These things can assault a stronghold all on their own. I like to make like 40-50 Fire Ballistas although this is probably overkill and park them out in front of the castle. They move slowly but can annihilate everything that comes near at a time. So you move them outside the castle, the enemy approaches with their whole army including of Horse Archers and... You outrange them and kill them all. Then the tanky melees follow and you slaughter all of them too. Then advance and then you burn all their crops and outbuildings, and anything unlucky to be caught in the fire is now dead regardless of how tanky it is. Have it approach the castle walls and it kills everything defending the walls by itself. Then you bring it a bit closer and then you shoot over the walls and set all those buildings clustered close together on fire and ruin their whole damn day. My usual comp though to kill enemies in crusader is about 40 Fire Ballista, 100 Horse Archer, and 30 Assassin. If I need to knock a few walls down I bring 10 catapults but most of the time I don't need em. The only times they're really necessary are when the opponents are on a really tall hill or have high ground advantages and the fire ballistas don't have enough height to shoot over the walls and into the city. Then I shoot at the walls enough to lower them enough for the Ballistas to get in there and set fire to the granary, weapons buildings, etc

Can you tell what's name of Soundstrack for S-tier. I love put Fire ballista on the walls using trick as defenses, plus shield and fire arrows.

I started playing Stronghold way back in 2003 and I agree with most of these. Horse archers and Macemen are my "drive by squad" because they are so fast with good dps. And build 50 catapults and just level whatever buildings they have. Large amounts of catapults work amazingly well against infantry groups. And I'm pretty sure I've never even considered building shields. I will have to start doing that.

Awesome video!

Thank you for all your videos!! Your channel is a S+++++ Tier!

Out of topic, but how do you get those mangonels auto attack the enemy? Mine don't even want to attacks unless I manually order them to one target

I think its really worth mentioning that arabic archers survive a crossbowman hit where european archers dont

For me personally: S+: Horse Archers, Crossbowmen, Shields, Catapults S: Arabian Archers, Macemen, Pikemen, Assassins, Slaves, Fire Ballista, Trebuchet, Tower Ballista A: Swordsmen, Monks, Knights, B: Arabian Swordsmen, Regular Archers, Slingers, Fire Throwers, Tower Mangonel, Ram C: Laddermen, Tunnelers, Spearmen, Siege Tower, Oil Pot Thrower

Good work I love it

How come shields are so effective? Does ai target shields before targeting the troop?

You can combine h.arch. with shields for extra OP synergy. Mobile archer force with immunity to archer fire, counterable only by catapults, which will be dead in few sec. into an engagement

this video is epic ... you are perfect including all this information about the game in one video ... thank you so much again you are damn perfect man .. god bless you .. ❤❤❤

Love the video! Have a question tho regarding defending your castle. Would there be any reason to ever use archers instead of crossbowmen? Or would it be better to mainly use crossbowmen when building tower defenses?

I never learned How to train monks, How do i get them?

Crossbow men not in S++ tier? Heresy to my child self! Had lots of fun watching thanks for the upload :)

hey dude one question, how does the shields work? does it need to be facing the enemy? how many units it can protect?

What unit is that between battering ram and slaves

never used a portablr shield in the game before. Sounds interesting

Cool edit, keep it up

Yes monks are very underrated but tbh impractical. In masses above 200 they can shred most castles if protected from enemy ranged units or already breached. They have a surprising amount of HP and damage and are pretty fast for their body weight. They have 2 main downsides though: 1. They're impractical to recruit. Die need the most expensive and biggest building in the game to recruit them and apart from a slight popularity bonus, it's not used for much else, also the AI likes to target it. And for some reason I can never properly set an alternative waypoint. 2. They're extremely weak against masses of archers. This is why weaker AI like the Caliph actually is stronger because he masses them a lot. Funnily enough crossbowmen are actually bad if your enemy uses monks lol. Pikemen need to be S tier. And I never care about shields because I don't like exploiting the game this way. Shields and Horse archers are the most OP combo in this game.

How good was the music from this game ? And I would put the sneaky arsonists slaves on s tier

S++ = lord. I wonder if we can buy lords in barrack.

Guys, I'm having big problems installing Stronghold Crusader HD on Windows 10, do/did you have the same problems?

Funny, I played an online match with my friend just once… we were dominated by a man named AsLan who used horse archers, shields and assassins. It was a free for all but me and my friend had no choice but to 2v1 him. ‘‘Twas a great night despite getting slaughtered. Love the content man!!!

best part of the shields? they run at the same speed as the horse archers

Fastest and strongly aggresive troops such as maceman or stealthy such as assassin are good for quickly assault defenseless opponent when your distance is near against it...

More stronghold videos plx 😍

Nice list 👍

you forgot to pint that lancers can attack laddermen while on top of walls AND can run if on aggressive stand if you want them as a kind of defensive measure

Ladderman in C tier? Out outrageous! You're way too generous. They are F at most without Unofficial patch.

Got screwed yesterday by siege engineers with firepots. I had just stormed the castle of one emir and thought i could march on to the next. But i didnt see the pot on the full keep. And i had 90 game speed. The fire hit me while marching through a choke point. He didnt even burn his own castle down. So I think they can be very useful in a last stand situation against slow armoured units.

holy moly, after all this years i didn't know port shield can climb tower 😮

Spearmen: triggering the pitch trap and sacrificing since 2001 + occasional moat digging

Put slowest troops (such as pikeman, european swordman, etc) to defend your castle if necessary while you think you are vulnerable, then the rest (if you have more than 150s troops) are attacking...

DOnt normal archers have more range compared to the arabian one?

Funny thing is original Stronghold and Crusader (non-HD or maybe earlier versions) had crossbowmen shoot strong projectiles like they do now, but their distance was shorter than Longbowmen's, and I think but I'm not certain the Arabic Bow's distance was same as Crossbowmen's (i.e shorter than longbow)

i have been playing this game for about 3 years and all the time i was using horse archers and assassin .

Btw how is the state of the multiplayer now? Are people still playing with 300-350+ pop in gameranger? Are they all old players?

late game be like... friend: we can't defeat them they have too many crossbowmans and archers me (stronghold economy veteran) : hold my beer while i convert my 60k gold bread economy in horse archer / shields half map size army enemy team : why game so laggy my 700 horse archer / 100 shields army go : BRRRRR

It's also worth mentioning mangonels can kill your own units and npcs as well

catapults aren't good vs shields??

I was expecting more cost-efficient discussion, but overall this one is pretty good.

Catapult/trebuchet can defeat portable shield easily right?

when playing the original Stronghold, i found out that Knights are very weak against wolves . i don't know whether this is intentional or accidental

Why monks is not used because they are so slow and not tanky enough

honestly i think, in B and A it kind of gets vague, not because the units are alike, but becasue every single unit has a perk, that if used correctly, would make this unit the most useful for 1 type of player out of that rooster

i never knew about that shield tower,now my crossbow will be invincible

There's a weird thing with Knights where they seem to be get stronger in numbers ie one swordsman will beat one knight but 25 knights will beat 25 swordsmen just about and 50 knights will be beat 50 swordsmen quite handily. Totally pointless because you'd never build that many but still kind of cool.

Tunnlers are quite underestimated. Yes, their tunnel attack sucks but in combat they are on par with spearmen and have higher attack speed Pikemen and assasins inflict bonus damage against other armored Units Source: Udwin

Swords are amazing as body guard units, my brother got a few dozen assassins over my walls one game and since then I've taken no chances. I put about 34 of them keep at the start of every game to keep my lord safe. Things have to go really wrong for that to not be enough.

Very nice, very true

I mostly use mangonel if there's enemy castle structure at it's shooting range. It really annoy the enemy because it damage the fortification and building and kill unlucky workers and armies.

Very good man🤝🏻 also I didn't know tunnellers could dig from a distance and I always put them close to walls. Also why use ladders when you can succeed with SIEGE TOWERS!

i fear no man but that thing.. "The dude who only makes Horse archers and assassins" It scares me

A tower full of crossbow men, shield, and mangonel is indestructible defense, the only threat is trebuchet but it can be one-shot by mangonel since mangonel attack range is far more

For the Bugs and a better balanceing, i recommend downloading the unofficial patch

The thing about shields is that they are incredibly awful to manage. Doesn't help that move and leave device actions are both on the same key in shc lmao

An unpopular opinion, but I think you're ranking Normal Archers a bit too low here. Imo Arabian Archers should be B-A tier, depending on where you put Normal Archers. The selling point of normal archers is that they are just so spammable. Their expendability makes them suitable for so many roles: - filling towers - usable on virtually every map. All they cost is wood and a little gold. In a pinch you can always grab wood from the market. - only cost one item: a bow, where crossbows cost a crossbow and leather. This makes archers really really easy to quickly mass. - meatshields for siege weapons. They stop enemies from coming too close and they shoot anything that comes near. You can also have them attack in melee as a last ditch effort to let your siege survive for long enough (12gp isn't too hefty to throw away) - filling moats - breaking down walls if need be - a surprising counter to siege. Sure, 1v1 siege wins, but archers are so spammable that by a sheer numbers advantage you win cost efficiency for your losses. An equivalent number of archers beats a fire ballista - lastly, you can command your Fletcher workshops to move to crossbows when you're done, meaning no cost is wasted on investment I'd probably put normal archers at the top of A tier or the bottom of S

Slingers are actually a counter towards heavy units. But their short range and very low hit points make them obsolete as soon as you can train crossbowmen. Other range units outrange them, so it's easy to protect against them by just shooting them down first. So they basically need archers as support in order to compensate for their lack of range. So I would put them in C. I would also put the spearmen lower. They are extremely fragile and has a mediocre speed, unless when they randomly charge. Their only real use is to kick down ladders. But archers can usually shoot them down before that becomes an issue. They are cheap though, and have a decent mobility. Macemen fills this role a lot better though, due to higher everything. So the spearmen would be either C to me. They are still faster than heavy units, and stronger than slaves. So they can be used as an early defence against them. Archers are still better at this though, but the spears are a useful backup in case you don't have walls yet. I would put horse archers somewhat lower. A tier. Their weakness is being fragile, which means other archers can shoot them down. That is only a real issue if the archers are in towers or on walls, as the horse archers are stronger in melee than archers and can quickly close in. I was surprised by the use of the portable wall guys. I have never seen a good use for them before this video. Putting them in towers would then make archers even more powerful.

I think fire ballista are more superior to catapults in the sense that they can light up a whole castle and also have infinity ammo. But, both have their own place in different strategies.

Lets be honest... in all of the different strongholds (except legends because they throw their spears which can be helpful) spearmen are just cannon fodder

i still confuse about how to use ladderman

Could you make a new Ranking with the Unofficial Stronghold Crusader Patches?

Forgot that fireballista can set building on fire. Perfekt to burn down a castle that is full of enemy soldiers :)

I love this game and watch every video I see of it lol

You could also mention that slaves are basically free moat since you can just spam like 200 of them and then make your moat appear out of thin air

In every skirmish, my late game army usually ends up consisting of: -Horse Archers -Arabian and European Swordsmen -English Archers -Pikemen -Catapults -Battering Ram I usually use the horse archers to run circles around the enemy and pepper tbem with arrows, or as a distraction so my siege engines can tear down a hole in the wall and start pouring in.