A Guide to beating Sands of Time

[WyngsTriumphant]

Text Wall time!

Disclaimer: I am a lifelong SHC fan, but NOT a top meta player by any means. So i'm sure there's parts of what i write where others have better ideas. But this guide is a simple to follow strategy for any oldtimers or newcomers struggling with Sands of Time demo level lol

1) IMMEDIATELY build a big square tower in the river crossing next to you, and build a stone wall to completely block it. This is the only route into your base, choke it and you'll be fine

2) Buy like 20ish bows. Spam archers and get them in the tower ASAP. MAKE THREE WOODCUTTERS.

3) With this, you'll survive the AI rush attacks easily. After the first two waves or so, you can place a gate, or build a second tower, whatever you think is best. Your main use of stone should be selling it though.

4) Set up 2-3 fletcher's workshops. These will supply the bows you'll need for the archers defending you.

5) Get a stone quarry up, at least two ox posts, and at least 3 iron mines. This is your economic backbone.

6) Place at LEAST a church, and ideally, a chapel too. This is part 1 of how you'll keep happiness up.

7) Place a single hops farm. Get 1 brewer, and get an Inn up once you have the first ale ready. This is part 2 of how you'll keep happiness up.

8) Set your taxes to around -8 Happiness (Mean Taxes). Your religion and ale should offset the negative happiness.

9) For food: I suggest you buy wheat, mill it, and make 5 bakeries. This is enough for a pop of 42-50

10) Make 2-3 Poleturner's Shops and Armorer's Workshops to get the weapons needed for your main army: Pikemen. Sure swordsmen are fine, i prefer Pikemen because they're quicker to make.

11) Rule of thumb: attack the enemy AFTER they just tried (and failed!) to attack you. This is when they are at their most vulnerable.

12) First two AIs on the hill are pretty easy. March around 40-50ish pikemen up the Northeast cliff, and was able to slam my way into the castle and kill the first AI without issue.

13) Reinforce whatever losses you suffered, and just slam right into the southern AI. Exact same "pikemen march" strat works, ez kill.

14) Final AI has an actual castle. I reccommend 70+ pikemen (more the better obv) and around 6ish catapults (AKA 12 engineers). Move them to the southwest island, from the final castle. This is a good staging point, and the AI wont attack them.

15) Spam flower beds back at base, until your troops now have 5 green dots above them. You building all these nice things makes your workers slower (not important anymore) and makes your units 25% stronger.

16) When ready, march up. Have your catapults all collectively bombard the wall/tower closest to the river crossing to make a hole. Get a small squad of pikemen close to the wall so the AI can't replace walls (if you're too far, they can rebuild ASAP).

17) CHARGE ON IN AND WIN! Pro tip: dont make your units target the enemy lord, instead order them to move onto the top of the keep. More will cram in this way.

Yes, this is a lot. Yes, you do have to multitask and place/move very, very quickly. That's Stronghold, y'all. Hope this helps someone.

[Shepron]

Solid strategy, I went a very similar route.

A good alternative to the hops farm on the own side of the river is also a cheese farm to get a leather production going (for crossbowmen and macemen production instead of archers and pikes). Would still do beer but just buy the hops.

On the bread production one can also scale it up to two or three mills (and usually around 8 bakeries for each mill) to sustain a pop way over 100 with double rations get -16 taxes (counteracted by food and Inn giving +8 popularity each), build all iron mines possible and sell excess bread.With that economy you can mass produce weapons or buy everything you want.

With pikes it' also feasible to mix in monks (from the cathedral). They are cheap, move at the same speed and hit hard, bad against arrows but the pikes can tank most of those.

With the sentinel's castle you can also just roll up with a siege tower and walk in without having to tear down the walls, all stone not needed to build fortification for your own river ford can just be sold.

[Seine Dudeheit]

@WyngsTriumphant
thats an very helpfull post, thanks for the effort