Stronghold Crusader (PC)

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Archers

It is cheaper to buy archer bows and make Archers out of your barracks than it is to hire them from the mercenary post. They both have the same attack rate, defense rate, movement speed, and range.

Conversation keys

The following is a list of things that will be said to an enemy after the corresponding key is pressed. Note: The spelling is the same way as it appears when done in the game.

Key Comment
[F1] Oaf
[F2] Varlet
[F3] Fool
[F4] Knave
[F5] Peasant
[F6] Help Help
[F7] I win you loose
[F8] Ill string you up
[F9] You Damn Fool
[F10] Mwahaha (Snort) haha
[Ctrl] + [F1] Jack o napes!
[Ctrl] + [F2] Buffoon
[Ctrl] + [F3] Straw Pole
[Ctrl] + [F4] Slubberdagollian
[Ctrl] + [F5] Dastard
[Ctrl] + [F6] Dolt
[Ctrl] + [F7] Lollard
[Ctrl] + [F8] Dotard
[Ctrl] + [F9] Weasel turd
[Ctrl] + [F10] Popinjay

Crossbowmen

Crossbowmen are useful for base and offensive measures. You should build up at least fifteen Crossbowmen at the start. Buy them and place a tower near a stronghold or farm, depending on the landscape. For offensive tactics, build up at least 75-100 Crossbowmen, 2 Balista or 8 Assassins and 2 Catapults. Take out enemy tower first, then move the Baslistas and Crossbowmen in for the kill. Pick off enemy troops and use Assassins to take the gate house, or have a Siege Tower so you can get on to the ramparts. Then, have your Crossbowmen shoot the Enemy Lord while only suffering minimal casualties. Note: This does not work well in multi-player games against human opponents without the support of a lot of Swordsmen. However, this is still a high risk tactic in multi-player mode as the opposing lord may wipe out your Crossbowmen. For base defense, when you have your production up and running, you need to have two to three large Siege Towers full of Crossbowmen. This tactic works very well. To get crossbowmen recruits up and running, build one or two dairy farms. Then build three Tanners to each farm and have three or more armorers to build crossbows. Have eight or more peasants around the campfire. You should have your keep enclosed by now. If you have a money source, you can buy Crossbowmen. Have many iron mines or quarries for income. Also, you can have inns and raise taxes. You should also
have gardens for the people.

Easy way to start on Skirmish

The easy way to start off is to build a Mercenary Camp and spawn about 30 Horse Archers. Then put them on patrol around your base. The awesome thing is that they fire arrows even when they move and are fairly strong as well as fast.

Extra Peasants

Use the following trick to get a lot of extra Peasants (more than the campfire limit of 24) for buying whatever kind of forces you need from the Mercenary Post or Barracks. For example, put your Quarries (3 Peasants each) and Oxen to sleep. There will be that many more in your available amount when buying Swordsman or something else. Then just turn them back on when you are done and they will go back to work. This works if you do not want to wait until your Peasants fill up your campfire again, or you just need them immediately.

Food management

It is easier to build, manage, and supply Inns rather than food because ale lasts longer. You can use the extra available farm space to build wheat fields and mills to make flour. Once you have flour, you can sell it for a profit or you can make bread and raise your taxes.

Hold Enemies Captive Inside Their Own Castles

Take a small building such as an Oxen Tether. Place 1 or 2 of them right outside the gatehouse(s) of your enemy's castle, but make sure their keep is enclosed first. Immediately put the Oxen Tethers to sleep. The ground troops will walk to the gatehouse to destroy them but they can't get through, so they just walk back to their spot. Your enemy's buildings outside of the castle will spontaneously crumble because the workers can't get back inside the castle. Also, the gatehouse(s) you blocked might spontaneously crumble after a while. Soon there will be no food and the peasants will leave the castle. The small army will be trapped inside their own walls awaiting your arrival. When your army is built up, you can just waltz over and wipe the whole castle off the map. (Note: Make sure there are no enemies outside of the castle, or else they will probably come and destroy your oxen tethers.

Lookout towers

Lookout towers are very useful, as they give good missile unit defense. Build an army of 20 Archers and select 5 of them. Set the game to slow speed and send the 5 archers to the tower. Quickly select another 5 Archers and send them in
before the others get there. Do the same for the other 10 to get 20 archers on a small tower.

Make your own taunts

First, go into C:\Program Files\Firefly Studios\Stronghold Crusader\fxSpeech or wherever you installed Crusader. You will find a bunch of sound files. You need a microphone to do this. To make this easier, put the list of files in alphabetical order. Now, scroll down to the file Insult1. Insult1=F1 and you get the idea. (You can double click to listen to the file). Now right click on Insult1 to bring up a menu. Look down the list and find, "record". Click on that and it should bring up the sound recorder. Press record, record what you want to say and click stop. Instead of going to file save, press the close box and it should come up with a message stating the directory of the file changed and it will ask you if you want to save the changes. Click yes. Now, you can go into the game, press F1 and you should hear your recording. You can also do this with any other file in the speech folder. Note: Be aware that you can't change the file back to its original voice unless you reinstall the game. This is based on Windows XP and it might not be the same on Windows 98. etc.

Selling weapons

You can sell crossbows for more than just wood and can sell swords for more than raw iron.

Taller walls

Use Hi Plain. Make a wall or something and then build a wall on it and then erase the Hi Plain for a taller wall.

Various Cheats

When you are at the main menu, press shift+alt+a to enable cheat mode. Now at any time during gameplay, press any of the following:

Code - Effect

alt+x - 100 popularity and an extra 100 gold
alt+c - all missions
alt+k - no resources required to build anything