Honest warning about the game.

[Ozymandias]

I have played on world 2, world 6 and then again with a fresh start on usa1. I finally just got fed up wth the game, because when it really comes down to it. When the rubber meets the road and you really need to win. Its pay to win.

There is no way anyone can say its not, because I can buy cards right now and instantly build up my castle the second its attacked, or card up flags if i need to build up my parish. Now you might say, "OH but you can time attacks and kill a carder". Yes, you are correct, but they then buy a charter right where you burned the last one down and instantly build the castle and village back to full. Hell, I can even instantly finish research. Not to mention that there are even more powerful cards coming soon. Sure one has to drop 100s of dollars on the game, but they will bully you and beat you to a pulp with their wallet. If you dont do what some of these rich people do, they can just whipe you off the map and, unless you are a rich person, You cannot beat them. Sure you can develop a list of cards over time, but you have to remeber that it will take you months to get what you need and it will take them seconds. By then you are nothing more than a memory.

I urge everyone to please not play this game. It will suck you in with the politics and village building then make you feel resentful later on because you choose not to blow tons of money on the game to win. I am sure I will get trolled, but its probably from those that are already carding.

Of all the games i have played this, by far, is pay to win. If you enjoy competitive pvp strategy this is not for you. Its all about getting epeen, bully politics from rich people, and blowing rediculous amounts of money to get the first 2. I might like to add that the company makes ♥♥♥♥ tons of money from this game thats almost a browser based game, and they do almost nothing to it except add more powerful cards. They could be updating graphics or adding new gameplay elements, but no they just keep raking in that money.

You have been warned.

[Ozymandias]

Forgot one more thing. Multiple accounts.

Yeah how could i forget this.

So basically its a bannable offense to play this game with multiple accounts, however if you buy premium tokens on both accounts you can have AS MANY AS YOU WANT. Thats neutrals droping charters and monking you out of your parish in the night and deleting the parish. Thats safe neutrals that are yeoman that hold 500 man vassel armies. I cant even tell you how ♥♥♥♥♥♥ this makes the game. Its illigal, but only if you dont give us your money.

Not to mention why newer players will get razed alot of times when they start out, because they might be alt accounts. Great policy there Devs

[ReyLagarto Rex]

thanks!

[mudy45]

If you play for free, you cannot play alone. You need lots of friends, and carder friends.

To be a carder, you only need USD $10 in 2 payment, then you can have 14 cards each week, or 2 card every day if you can play twice a day to get the cards. Then you need to play in all worlds, to get more cards, and to develop your ranks more quicly. By playing in other worlds you could get lots of cards from quests.

You shouldnt challange anyone personally before gaining Prince rank. Play farmville until you get Prince. On house / faction war, play low, dont attack anyone.

To challange heavy carder Princes, you need a lot of people, with lots of time, carder Prince on your side, and TS (teamspeak).

When you're not Prince, its better to let the heavy carder Prince pass through. A heavy carder Prince dont want to attack everyone, they have certain objective and wont spend cards on people who dont challange them. You can fight them when you already Prince and already have lots of friends.

Unless you are a heavy carder Prince (who spends lots of money), the game is about communication, its not a solo game. You need to build friendship and trust with others. Not everyone can be beaten with military attack, but strong player will meet and fight with strong players. Everyone can be beaten by a solid group of players.

So the ballance is pay money vs make friends.

You are right about the multi account problem. Most serious player use them.

[HuffnPuff Gaming]

so pay money vs make friends..sounds like most games that are designed this way.

[mudy45]

Well, this game requires better relationship building and communication than other games. Because you need to build a faction of trusted buddies with atleast 20 people, while there are risk of betrayal and spy. Less than that would be ineffective. Simply asking others to join will get you moles in the faction.

There are probably more multi-account players than the main players in this game, and those multi's might be from your enemy house.

Then the faction needs to join with or form an effective house of around 400 person in order to win this game. So one requires diplomats, law makers, judges, recruiters, trainers, house strategist, campaign strategist, combat generals, counter intelligence, spies, cover ops, if you play this game seriously. Doesnt matter whether you're non paying players, carders, or heavy carders, when you have effective faction and effective house, you have chance to win. If you manage to form one, those heavy carders will follow you.

If you dont, doesnt matter how many cards you bought, you'll loose.

[le smoking skull]

oppssss that much hatered :o

[Silvermane]

I think he is angry because he spent a lot of time and money on the game and expected to be treated fairly. Instead, he logged on one day and found all his villages had been conquered. That is equivalent to an MMO where you are killed by other players while offline and have to start over with a first level character.

I think it's bad game design for a player to be able to be defeated quickly and easily and with a significant loss of investment. No one castle can withstand multiple attacks from a faction. That's not skill. That's ganging up on someone which is generally considered unfair. Defeat should either be hard or the loss minimal otherwise many players will wind up with hard feelings.

Here are some ideas to improve the situation:

1. If the defender is offline from the time the attack is launched to the time it lands, all defensive buildings and units get double hit points.
2. Only 1 attack every 8 hours against an offline player.
3. Multiple attacks are staged 5 minutes apart to give the defender and his allies time to react.
4. The liege lord should be notified of any player attack against a vassle. All faction members should be notified of a player attack on a faction member. All parish members should be notified of a player attack on a parish member.
5. There needs to be a way to reinforce an ally while he is offline and deploy the troops in the castle as well as recall them if they are needed elsewhere.
6. When a village is captured, the victor shouldn't be able to trash the place until the original owner and his allies have had a reasonable amount of time to recapture it - say 24 hours.

[Nick]

Originally posted by Silvermane:

I think he is angry because he spent a lot of time and money on the game and expected to be treated fairly. Instead, he logged on one day and found all his villages had been conquered. That is equivalent to an MMO where you are killed by other players while offline and have to start over with a first level character.

I think it's bad game design for a player to be able to be defeated quickly and easily and with a significant loss of investment. No one castle can withstand multiple attacks from a faction. That's not skill. That's ganging up on someone which is generally considered unfair. Defeat should either be hard or the loss minimal otherwise many players will wind up with hard feelings.

Here are some ideas to improve the situation:

1. If the defender is offline from the time the attack is launched to the time it lands, all defensive buildings and units get double hit points.
2. Only 1 attack every 8 hours against an offline player.
3. Multiple attacks are staged 5 minutes apart to give the defender and his allies time to react.
4. The liege lord should be notified of any player attack against a vassle. All faction members should be notified of a player attack on a faction member. All parish members should be notified of a player attack on a parish member.
5. There needs to be a way to reinforce an ally while he is offline and deploy the troops in the castle as well as recall them if they are needed elsewhere.
6. When a village is captured, the victor shouldn't be able to trash the place until the original owner and his allies have had a reasonable amount of time to recapture it - say 24 hours.

#1 - If this was the case it would still not save you from an experienced attacker.

#2 - That pretty much stacks with #1 almost - I don't agree with this.

#3 - Again you are stacking this as Farmville. You know before coming into SHK that this is an open world constant game that is always rolling - you can farm - you can attack - you can run a faction of monkers. It's what you make of it but if it comes down to war then either you fight/get recruited/die off or hope for a peace treaty.

#4 - The vassal thing I kind of agree with that would be nice. The faction-wide thing not so much... maybe a list that faction leaders can see would be better and this also makes the game ultra easy when it comes to attacking and takes a lot of the fun out of it for the attacker.

#5 - I'm starting to think you've been attacked and or reset a few times. All of your points are pretty much turtle mastery at its finest.

#6 - I'm just going to stick with #5 as my answer here.

I play World 5 @ H9.


The short version: I don't really agree with anything you said

[Silvermane]

In RTS games, it takes hours to build up your empire and it is very difficult for another player to wipe you out.
In MMO games, it takes weeks or months to build up your character and it is impossible for another player to wipe you out.
In FPS games, you can spend a long time building yourself up but the death penalty is minimal. You are out of the fight for a few minutes until you respawn.

What is unusual and in my opinion bad about Stronghold Kingdoms is that you can spend weeks or months building yourself up and you can be wiped out quickly, easily, and permenantly.

No doubt, the wolves among us like it that way. What does everyone else think?

[Nick]

Originally posted by Silvermane:

In RTS games, it takes hours to build up your empire and it is very difficult for another player to wipe you out.
In MMO games, it takes weeks or months to build up your character and it is impossible for another player to wipe you out.
In FPS games, you can spend a long time building yourself up but the death penalty is minimal. You are out of the fight for a few minutes until you respawn.

What is unusual and in my opinion bad about Stronghold Kingdoms is that you can spend weeks or months building yourself up and you can be wiped out quickly, easily, and permenantly.

No doubt, the wolves among us like it that way. What does everyone else think?

It would take a dedicated team of people or team of carders to just magically remove me from the game in a couple of hours and any player can trade in some of their free cards and get some card points to buy some defensive cards which last for 2-24 hours to strengthen their defense - this also avoids the whole having to spend money thing. Defensive cards are relatively cheap unless you want to play advanced or expert cards. A 10 point guardhouse card is the easiest way to strengthen a castle and have your attackers work a little harder. If you don't want to have the fear of being attacked then SHK is not for you.

Guess you've never heard of EVE or Darkfall.

They are just villages. You keep your gold / research and faith when you are "wiped" or "reset" from the game - it takes like 1-14 days to rebuild again but it's not the end of the world.

Silvermane which world do you play ?

[Gameboy Nitro]

Forget cards, I find this game is practically unplayable without a premium token. Can't trade at good prices, can't queue research or buildings... unless you are paying for this game, it's better to sit in front of it 24/7 or not play it at all.

[Nick]

If you have time to spend you can trade at good prices. You can queue 1 research and 1 building at a time if you don't have premium. Yes if you have time to burn then this is the perfect game for you and if not then you should avoid it or just be a friendly farmer at your own pace - You don't need to go all serious hardcore if you don't want to.

[Traidor]

Originally posted by Bubba Slim:

Forgot one more thing. Multiple accounts.

Yeah how could i forget this.

So basically its a bannable offense to play this game with multiple accounts, however if you buy premium tokens on both accounts you can have AS MANY AS YOU WANT. Thats neutrals droping charters and monking you out of your parish in the night and deleting the parish. Thats safe neutrals that are yeoman that hold 500 man vassel armies. I cant even tell you how ♥♥♥♥♥♥ this makes the game. Its illigal, but only if you dont give us your money.

Not to mention why newer players will get razed alot of times when they start out, because they might be alt accounts. Great policy there Devs

This just goes to show that word around the campfire is just a pile of uninformed gossip. Players are regularly investigated and blocked for violations of the SHK Rules, most without any player input at all. Firefly gets a lot of 'blah blah must be cheating' tickets from idiots that investigations show are based on nothing.

Here are some tips for next time you submit a ticket.
Compile all evidence you have in a concise manner, then submit a detailed ticket to Support[support.strongholdkingdoms.com]. Posting on the forum gets you nothing but a link to redirect you to support.

Explain which SPECIFIC players are involved and exactly WHAT it is that they are doing. A ticket like this is not going to be checked:

hi! i see playerZ and him sented goods to playerY and i am know they is cheat. pls look!

A ticket like this will also be ignored:

hi! as u know we r faction XYZ1 in H21 and we r at war with H22 and H23 in down. we know they are use multi account! we all know firefly cheat 4 H22 so i dont espect u to do anything

Firefly doesn't know or care what House or faction you are in on which world. It makes NO difference to them in how they perform their duties.

I hope this provides you with some clarity.

[SOL Ranger]

Thanks, uninstalling as we speak, I got the feeling it was going to be a horrible p2w timewaster. Big thanks for sparing me from frustration and waste of time guys, keep giving reviews in comments!

[LegendsLord]

Thanks for the heads up.