>>9426
>As for Stronghold, imo its worst offense is full plate knights moving at a snail's pace.
They get the entire core concept of a siege wrong. Because I played it so much as a child, I thought sieges were these huge battles where thousands of soldiers try to break through walls and gates, fire catapults, the defenders have walls full of archers and crossbowmen, ballistas on top of towers, ditches full of pitch and murderholes and so on and so forth.
Then I got into medieval warfare and read sources, and learned that
- by far the most castles were never besieged
- from the ones that were besieged, the majority defended successfully
- the usual garrison of a castle was under 10 people, even if the castle was big, and the defence strategy was mostly "close the doors and wait for help"
Everything else in stronghold is just arcade stuff as well. Bows doing not much against unarmored people, walls, gates, and towers that easily break down, traps of all kinds, the crude mix of high and late medieval troops, the absence of cavalry except for stuff like siege machine hunting and so on. I am actually fine with this because the game is just old and never really pretended to be realistic, and it hit my nerve just right at the time i was a child.
>>11055
Yes, I am
I never played manor lords and watched only small snippets of it, but I of course fully support autistic nerds who take their time to get details right. A more realistic medieval setting can be so much more interesting and exotic than a setting which basically tries to be modernity and modern structures, just with older clothing and gear. Stuff like a town guard makes sense for people in 2025, but thats no reason to implement the equivalent of modern police. Same for stuff like rural conscripts and stuff like this. People desperately want to see poor, inexperienced farmers with scythes and flails, clothed in rags, because thats what they "know" about these times.
This shit just happened with some big peasants war reenactment in germany. They wanted to get almost realistic numbers of fighters, and they obviously couldnt because they didnt advertise enough, and they dindt want to pay reenactors well. So in the end, they ended up with 5 riders in inaccurate gear, some landsknechts (at least), but also a bunch of 30 year's war reenactors that were 100 years too late, and they absolutely went against the advice of the historians they invited to plan the event. They desperately wanted the uprising peasants to be poor, dirty and ill-equipped, because thats what seemed logical to them, and disregarded all sources that made absolutely clear that the peasants used their militias and all the gear that belonged to them, had their own artillery, pikemen, gunners, people in plate armor and so on. So they ended up with a wild mix of late medieval, landsknecht and 30 years war reenactors vs. a bunch of hobos in potato sacks with flails and pointy sticks. Fuck this shit.