Review Fix Exclusive: Q & A with Stronghold 3 Lead Designer Simon Bradbury

Check out this exclusive Q & A with Simon Bradbury, lead designer of “Stronghold 3.”

Review Fix: How is “Stronghold 3” different from the older games in the series?

Simon Bradbury: Well, in some ways it’s actually very close to the first Stronghold – it’s the spiritual successor. We’ve taken all the elements that worked really well in the original and tried to expand and extend them; something the fans have been calling out for. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t made changes and, in particular, there are a lot of differences compared to Stronghold 2. With the sequel we really went a bit crazy adding new features (the medical term is ‘sequelitis’) and for most people (including ourselves!) we made the game too complicated. A good example was the crime system, which forced you to place a chain of over 5 punishment buildings (jails, court houses, etc) just to stop people stealing things from the granary. This distracted from core gameplay so for Stronghold 3 we’ve removed it and have gone back to Stronghold basic. Perhaps the biggest change is the introduction of a very cool new 3D engine. Which not only looks great but also means that this time around we can we can spend more time making sure the game is really fun to play. As well as great lighting and visual effects this new engine also means building villages and castles is no longer restricted to a grid system. In previous games everything had to be placed in very straight lines, which resulted in villages looking like a very organized medieval Manhattan. But now we let you place buildings or walls at any angle, which really helps to give villages that random medieval appearance.

Review Fix: What elements from the old games have found their way into the new game?

Bradbury: Something that we’ve carried over from our free-to-play MMO Stronghold Kingdoms is a refined popularity system that works a lot better. The popularity system affects how quickly new peasants move into your village, so it’s crucial to the game. In the older games, popularity was always ticking away in the background and this caused a problem if you increased your taxes and then forgot about it while battling, for example. Because every few seconds you were getting a negative hit for raising taxes, you would come back to your village and find that everyone had moved out.

Now we’ve got a system that’s much easier to use and when you change something – such as decreasing the amount of food everyone gets or increasing beer rations – you’ll instantly see how that affects your popularity. We think this is much easier and we’re sure players will appreciate not coming back to empty villages.

Another element that’s worth mentioning is that we’ve carried over the honour system from Stronghold 2. This means you place some buildings that only produce honour goods – e.g. honey or vegetables – and those goods are delivered to your keep. Once you’ve got enough you can hold a banquet which increases your honour and can then be used to either upgrade your keep or increase your rank, which gives you access to new buildings or units.

Review Fix: For players who have never experienced the series before, how will “Stronghold 3” captivate them?

Bradbury: Well, it’s the only strategy game out there that successfully combines both Sim and RTS elements. A lot of games excel in those individual genres but none really combine the two – which is something we do in the Stronghold series. This is because you’ve got a fully functioning simulation with the medieval village gameplay and then real-time strategy elements when it comes to creating your army and pillaging the enemy’s castle.

Review Fix: Can you describe the gameplay experience?

Bradbury: Put simply, it’s the world’s best castle building game! You build cunningly designed castles and then defend them against hordes of the enemy or maybe head out with an army to try your luck sieging an enemy’s stronghold. Then, of course, you’ve also got the detailed village simulation that feeds into both the castle building and the military side of the game because you’ve got to have enough resources to build weapons and put those walls up.

Review Fix: How long has the game been in development?

Bradbury: The game has been in development for roughly two years.

Review Fix: What have been some of the challenges during the development process?

Bradbury: Pathing for the AI has always been a challenge for Stronghold games because it has to be more advanced than a lot of other strategy games. This is because you can suddenly block off a potential path by placing a wall in the way, which the AI has to adapt to. Then you can complicate things even more by adding steps that allow the AI to climb over walls and walk around the top, or a gate that you can open or close depending upon whether you’re under attack. It’s a potential nightmare! Luckily we have been working with a pathing middlware supplier who is pretty much building us the world’s most advanced pathing solution – just for us.

Review Fix: What part of the game are you most proud of?

Bradbury: I think the castle walls are a particular stand out improvement. We’ve added physics to the game for the first time and this means we have made the walls fully destructible. However, instead of opting for the potentially easy route of adding scripted damage to the walls, we’re actually procedurally generating them. This means that each time they’re hit by a catapult or trebuchet for example, they’ll collapse differently and potentially even knock over other buildings as huge boulders fly everywhere. It’s a huge technical achievement and really helps to add a sense of drama to the sieges.

Review Fix: Will there be any DLC for the title?

Bradbury: We’re currently looking at potential post-launch DLC.

Review Fix: When is the expected release? And on what platforms?

Bradbury: We’re releasing this fall on PC.