HomeFeaturesStronghold: Warlords
The new Stronghold Warlords demo gets feudalism just rightLords Immobile
Lords Immobile
I’ve missed all the demos so far forStronghold Warlords, the upcoming instalment in Firefly Studios' long-running castle-building-and-bashing series, despite being a big fan of the original games. But seeing as Warlords is being featured at Ye OldePAX X EGX, and I had my hands on the new demo (which is outright now!), I figured now was the time to get stuck in.
Well, I’m glad I tried it. And I’m glad I waited, too. It seems Warlords has been through a lot of changes over the course of its development, but what’s there now is very solid indeed. And while it has been delayed from its original launch date this month to January 26, 2021, I’m happy that Firefly are taking their time. Although I’ve only played the single campaign-ish scenario included in the demo, it gave me a solid hit of the satisfaction I associate with the originalStronghold. Plus, more importantly, it manages to genuinely innovate on the formula. Here’s how.
Watch on YouTube
Watch on YouTube
Finally, we have vassalized Outside Xbox.
So, as you can imagine, this gives a game of Stronghold Warlords quite a distinctive feeling for the series, being as it has essentially become about capture points now. Funnily enough, it reminded me a lot of dieselpunk company-of-heroes-alikeIron Harvest, which I’ve also been playing a lot of this month (because it rules). There’s a lot of crux moments where you have to balance the benefits of early point capture with the risks of overextension, and a lot of thinking about how to balance troop deployment between defending captured points, and offensive action. In addition, I found my vassals made Stronghold’s economic game, which has always been satisfying but limited, into something fascinating, as I worked out where to be self-sufficient, and where to rely upon feudally-bullied imports.
Interestingly, in my quickest victory I focused on using my vassals to send me loads of iron to forge into weapons, which I then sold for extraordinary profit, only to funnel the gold back into more diplomacy buildings to upgrade my vassals with.
More cabbage fields than Sto Lat.
If there’s a drawback to the game’s new feel - or at least to the feel of this demo mission, for who knows how representative of the wider game it is - it’s that for all it leans on the “Warlords” part of its title, it may have taken the weight off the “Stronghold” part a little too much.
With the new emphasis on capturing vassals, Warlords demands a much more aggression-oriented play style. And as for defence, in my three playthroughs of the demo, pretty much all the action took place at the all-important keeps of my vassals, with artillery and archers and the like I had stationed there. There was nothing bad about that in itself. But because you can’t build any castle bits, not even walls, in conquered estates (and because my enemy didn’t really bother attacking my main base when I had these vassals to go for), it meant there was no need to lay so much as a single stone of fortification.
I’ll fight u to bits
Still, I can imagine a dozen ways scenarios could be designed to get round that problem, and I’ve got faith that there will be more, y’know, strongholding in the full game. If Firefly can get that right, and make the game stick together as a whole to boot, we’re possibly in for a return to greatness here.
