the HD edition was easily a sufficient update to the original, just buy that instead is my recommendation. any additional missions here are mostly insanely difficult that require playing again and again just to find the perfect use of what you have to win against overwhelming forces. I've played the whole of the original on VH (except whichever one it was attacking the pig's castle, sod that!) - they're actually inventively challenging!

these are brute force by comparison, and only reward cheesing it. I skipped the new types of missions where you only had troops, some people might like those, but that's not what I play Stronghold for. the DLCs aren't many missions and maybe half are build ones. at least they're cheapI guess

There's no AI battle.

Just as good as the original, with many quality of life improvements. Don't play this if the original wasn't interesting to you. If you've never played the original, you'll probably want to start out with this version and not play the original.