Stronghold Kingdoms Play Styles Guide

Stronghold Kingdoms Play Styles Guide by The Pig

as ye all probably noticed, there are multiple ways of playing this game, and each way has some other techs needed.

in time you will be able to delve into multiple ways (once you get more RP’s from leveling up), but at start, it is better to specialize instead and concentrate on those paths

ways of playing:
– farmer
– banqueter
– robber baron
– monker
– scouter
– AI killer/ military
– trader

whatever way you choose, one tech is important to everyone, and that is Arts (education branch) this will boost up the static honour gains from your villages and is as such the most crucial tech to max out.

a good castle is needed by everyone as well, so fortification and defence techs are needed as well.
being able to trade a bit is handy as well, so maths lvl 2 and merchant guilds are mandatory as well.

then the branch specific techs:

Farmer, as a farmer you will make lots of differen types of food, so you can have happy ppl with many foodtypes.
you will want to explore all the farming techs, arts and decorations so you can have many happy well fed peasants who will generate a lot of honour for you. expanding the granary size is important as well.

banqueter:
banquets can generate quite a bit of honour, but only are really worthwile later in the game, when you can combine lots of different types, so its not a good way to start out with, since only venison and furniture wont make you a baron fast.
also, for the 4 higher tier banqueting goods, you need specialized villages, so 5 villages are mandatory to get to all 8 types (those specialized villages do not have iron which is needed for metalware).

needed techs, well the whole banqueting branch off course.

robber baron, why produce what you can take? pillage the neighbors and take what you deserve needed techs: maxxed command, forced march, troops types and off course pillage.
having a good castle to fend off the angry peasants that want to bring you down is important as well off course, so contruction etc is needed as well.

monker, religion has some nice benefits, you can protect your own villages from attacks, cure diseases, bless your parish and lots of other things, for this one you will need to explore the theology branch

scouter:
scouts are useless to gauge an enemy castle, some peasants will give a better report anyday, but scouts are good at finding whatever fell off the oxcart on the map, and be the first on the spot, you get some honour bonus as well.

AI killer/ military
well, quite a bit like a robber baron, but without pillaging and with an emphasis on clearing out AI camps to get honour that way, off course these do not attrack enemy retalliation lke a robber baron does, but they will need to produce their own resources.

trader:
well, why not sell high, buy low? its a good way to make a profit after all.
multiple markets, max merchants guild, maxx transportation and being able to trade in a longer range are what you need.
increasing storage capacity is good to have so you can turn more of a profit.

in time you will follow multile paths, farmer + trader is a good combination, robber baron and monker as well, banqueting can be added at lvl 15 or so to any build (thou will take up army allowance for the robber/ military type).

have fun, choose your path(s) and remember, next server you can try something else completely