Stronghold crusader is one of my favorite games of all time and it is the best RTS I have played.
The game does not have a fog of war which is good. I always hated the fog of war system. Making "information is power" into a game mechanic is one thing and covering your whole map with fog is another. It might surprise game developers, but half accurate maps and spies had existed in Middle Ages or even ancient times and people were not in the dark that much to don't know that their enemies are a mile away from them.
Game has very good castile building system which is the best that exist in the gaming world. And workforce managing in this game is good and minimal and you do not need to manage every single work force like an independent unit like age of empires or star craft. You build a building and work force goes to the building itself and you inactive the building and your work force come out of it. Simple, efficient and it does not take time from player. And most importantly buildings do not take time to build. Making building take time to build is the most stupid and time-wasting mechanic that i have seen in my life in RTS games.
Units move and take order smoothly. One of the reasons that i do not like total war games RTS part is because their units move and take order very slowly and their system is very clanky, which is because of their bad, clanky 3d engine. But crusader is a 2d game with smooth and beautiful prerender animation. In comparison if you tell your soldiers to take one step to the right in the wall they are standing, in crusader they do that within second but in total war Rome it takes a full 2 minute so the whole unit could slowly rearrange itself.
And also, the game has very beautiful music, atmosphere and art style and when you look into your castle you can see hundreds of your people are working and living in harmony and you can see inside of some buildings too.
Game has some problems too. For example, i wish we could have bigger maps but because of the hardware limitation of that time the maps have limitation in size. And if could have made soldiers to take formation, it would have been awesome.
But the game has a lot of more positive things like a big verity of soldiers and buildings and a lot of other city management systems and a very good fire mechanic. And this game is the best RTS game that i have played and it is still a very good game in 2024 and i wish other RTS games were more similar to stronghold crusader, and they would have learned from this game (but they didn't).
