I found the game Stronghold 3 to be disappointing at best
I downloaded Stronghold 3 last night October 25 and the game is hard to play. I tried playing the campaign maps both economic and the military. The maps are very small and the buildings are very big for the map. Placing all the needed buildings is almost like trying to place a car in a mailbox. Also the buildings and walls do not do well on uneven land. They are ok when you have flat ground but when you get to uneven terrain (which makes up most of the small map) they are almost impossible to place.
So it makes it hard to put up a wall to keep the wolfs, bears or enemy troops out.
Then I had to deal with the weekly apple plague which wipes out the apple orchards or mad cow disease. Also the weekly attack of the super wolfs that can take down two armed peasants before one of them goes down dose not help. I am told in the hint part of the game to clear out the wolf dens early but with what? You start out with almost nothing and you get jump almost rite away.
I do like the buildings, they look more real and lifelike. However trying to play the game is very frustrating as you find yourself always running out of recourses. Also hard choices, like weather to keep food to so you don't starve the next time you get hit by a food disease or to spend it on troops so you don't get overrun. Or to sell wood for something you need but still to make enough to meet the time requirement or lose.
The patrol command dose not work at all. All the men at arms do is march to that location and stop, just like a move command. Also the troops sometimes stop marching to the enemy or just stand around while my other solders are getting slathered rite next to them. Sometimes when troops are ordered to a wall, they will just get in front of it instead. I sometimes have to tell solders several times to do one simple task like attack and maybe they will do it, after they get shot to pieces. The sword icon does not always appear when you are trying to click on attacking troops.
I wish that their was a difficulty button that I could hit to tone down the attacks. Games are supposed to be fun. Frankly I had more fun getting my teeth pulled than it is playing this game. The solders (from what little I have been able to see) look good. I really like the men at arms troops and the new spear throwing option. However I don't like to see that now they only have their fist to fight if they close to hand to hand combat. Also everyone in the game (with the exception of the archers) moves very slow. This does not work well since archers are very weak. If I try to move the men at arms and the archers in a group the archers move ahead and are exposed.
What I found the most disappointing thing is that unlike Stronghold 2 their is no Kingmaker option. That is when you have a set of maps that you can challenge NPC,s to fight which was my the best thing. Or make your own maps and then do battle. Their does not appear to be a map editor in Stronghold 3. Stronghold 3 does have a online game set up. However it has some bugs in it like.
1. When you fill out your info and the server dose not like it and rejects it. It dose not tell you why and it seems to confuse it because an hour glass appears (meaning it's thinking). Well I finally got in and applied for a 2v2 match.
2. The online maps will not load. Even when all 4 players are check ok for it. However the chat box is working and I found out that other people are having the same issues. Also none of them have even seen an online map work yet.
In short, this game can be fixed but the programmers should have never released this game in such a incomplete and sorry state. Yes SH2 had some bugs but they were nothing com paired to this.
I would strongly recommend that they fix the issues or don't sell this game.